Hey everybody, it is Saturday, which means it's time to go back into the archive for one of our previous episodes, and today it's our April eleven episode on the New York Draft Riots from previous hosts Sarah and Bublina. We're coming up on the hundred and fifty fifth anniversary of these riots. They started on July eight, sixty three, so it seemed like a good time to return to it. And while it is known as the Draft Riots, it was about a lot more than the Civil War draft. Immigration, class struggles, and labor issues all played a part as well, and it remains a horrifying example of racist violence. Also, the New York Draft Riots will be making an appearance in our brand new sister podcast, This Day in History Class, which launched on July one, So you can tune in to the end of today's episode to hear a trailer for This Day in History Class, and you can hear a different take on the Draft Riots on that show on July. Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast I'm to Blame a chalk reboarding and and all of you history fans out there have probably heard a little bit about a certain anniversary that's coming up. It's the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Civil War that's kicking off this year, actually this month in fact, with the anniversary of the attack at Fort Sumter, and it's such a pivotal era in American history that we're really still figuring out how we should formally commemorate this in podcast form. We'd love your ideas, because we don't want to just do some massive, multi year Civil War series. Yeah, because something more original than that. Right, people are going to be talking about this for the next four years, So you know, if you have any ideas of how you would like to hear about it that maybe you aren't hearing about it in that way other places, let us know. But the truth is we often touch on topics around this particular era. We talked about the Craft's escape a couple of months ago, and very recently we talked about Victoria Woodhull, who was America's first female presidential candidate, and that all took place during this era and the riots will discuss in this episode were also very much related to the war, and even though they didn't constitute a battle per se, they did temporarily turn New York City into a battleground in what's often called the worst civil disturbance in American history. Yeah, you've seen the movie Gangs of New York. You you know how bloody and violent these riots really were. Yeah, but what is it exactly that made them so bad? I mean, there were smaller draft riots that took place in other areas of the country. So why did the eighteen sixty three New York Draft riots get so out of control? There were really a few factors involved, and of course we're going to go into all of these in more detail, but just so you have them before we get going. There was the draft, the issue around that, there were union wartime policies. There were issues with race relations, socio economic securities, and class struggles. So a lot going on. Yeah, and so what we're going to talk about here is how did these issues combine to fuel this kind of perfect storm of rage in New York's working class And what exactly happened over those four full days that the riots lasted, and of course, finally, what did it take to put a stop to all of it? All? Right, So, before we get into all of that that we're going to set the scene. A lot of New York's working class. New York City's working class in the mid eighteen hundreds was made up of recent immigrants, and a lot of them were from Germany and Ireland, and it became a primary destination for the Irish in particular, especially after the Potato famine of the eighteen forties. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, from eighteen forty one to eighteen fifty, Irish made up forty nine per cent of the total immigration to the United States, So a huge group of people. Yeah, I think it's something like one in four New York residents was an Irish immigran. And of these they were mostly unskilled laborers such as doc workers, ditch digger, street pavers, and mostly poor. So in general, over the first couple of years of the war, working class, the immigrant community, they basically supported it in general, and in fact they were encouraged to almost by Irish by leaders in the Irish Catholic community. So you know, to support it in some way, if not by enlisting, then finding another way to the effort at home. Yeah, to support the union. Um, some some did participate. But by the time eighteen sixty three rolled around, that sentiment in general, that sentiment of support had changed somewhat. For one, the Irish brigade off the Union had lost a lot of men in battle Um. President Lincoln also issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January one, eighteen sixty three, and what that did is it basically gave the war a new purpose besides the original goal of preserving the Union, which was freeing slaves um. The new goal that is Irish American didn't like this because they were afraid that African Americans were gonna come up once they were free, they were going to come up north and take their jobs. So that was with this low paying job market that they were in, right, So that was why that sort of decreased their attitude of support for the war. Yeah, and it's worth mentioning the relations between working class African Americans in working class Irish immigrants were pretty similar. You know, they were in similar, similar positions. They shared a lot in common. They were both poor, both faced discrimination, They lived in close proximity together in the lower half of Manhattan, and they were, as we mentioned, competing for these same low skill labor jobs, and that job competition, we should mention it grew especially heated during the war. One memorable occasion, for example, was in spring of eighteen sixty three during a strike of Irish stock workers African Americans. They had been called in a strike breakers in the city suation and so the strikers attacked and beat them until federal troops came around for protection. So this is what was in the air at the time. Yeah, so trouble was brewing already, right, And then the final straw was when Federal Congress passed the Enrollment Act, also known as this Conscription Act, on March third, eighteen sixty three. Now, this authorized a draft that required all able bodied men between the ages of twenty and forty five to serve unless you furnished an acceptable substitute or paid the government a three hundred dollar fee. And there was another aspect to this as well, according to Susannah Eural Bruce's article Summer of Irish Rage in America Civil War. This act it also provided that any immigrant who had declared his intent to become a citizen could now be drafted unless he left the country within sixty five days, so totally changing the game here. Yeah, in New York's working class immigrant community is consequently enraged over this new act. And there were a few reads behind that military service used to be optional. You mentioned earlier that it was encouraged at least in the beginning of the war, but it was still optional. Now it's required, So they felt like they were being forced to fight to free slaves who they thought might just come to New York City and take their low paying jobs. And then the other thing that enraged immigrants over this act was that it obviously favored the wealthy, who could get out of service by dropping that three hundred dollars and paying somebody else to do it right. So it made an already tense situation even worse, much worse. And then another thing that kind of helped, you know, set the scene for this was the thousands of New York troops traveled south in late June to help out with the Gettysburg campaign, so left the city virtually undefended. So that is the situation in New York City when on Saturday, July eighteen sixty three, the first day of the city's first draft lottery begin since the new law. So the next night after after that very first draft, working class New Yorkers met up in streets and saloons and went over the names of the men who had been drawn for the draft already and and started to make a plan, started to talk about ways that they could fight back and stop this from getting any further out of control. Yeah, And then in the morning on Monday July, when more names were to be drawn, a bunch of them began working their way uptown, headed towards the Provost Marshal's office on Mass and they picked up some more workers from workshops and factories on their way. Now we should mention that at this point the group also included German speaking artisans and native born Protestant journeyman. Many of them were even volunteer fireman, which was a really powerful political and organizational force in the city at the time. And this was in addition to the working class Irish laborers. And we just want to mention that because a lot of times you've seen sources that, oh, it's it's the Irish, it's all the Irish. And there were other people involved at least on this first day at well as well. And there were women in the group as well as men that should be noted too, so in her article, Bruce paints this kind of scary picture. I mean, imagine this coming towards you achieve people. Yeah. She refers to New York attorney George Templeton Strong's description of the day, in which he describes a growing crowd of quote gaunt looking savage men and women and even little children, armed with brick bats, stone poker, shovels and togs, coal scuttles, and even tin pans and a bit of iron. Okay, so they found a little rag tag. I mean, kind of scary. But don't be fooled because even though they're carrying little bits of iron and they have kids hanging out with them, the crowd meant business, and there were enough of them to to accomplish some So as the draft selection began around ten thirty in the morning, thousands of these protesters began to gather around the building and they interrupted the lottery and then they torched the building. So, I mean, I think that was the first really big signal that this was something major. Unfortunately, though they didn't stop there. The protesters had several targets over the next few days which were related to some of the tensions that we discussed in the intro to this podcast. For example, major target African Americans, perhaps the most visible target of the entire four days. We're going to discuss people and institutions related to the Republican Party that was another big target of their's um. They chose this party as a target because it was the party that had started the war, that had instituted the draft, that wanted to abolish slavery, all of those things that they saw as a threat to their you know, their lives, their security. Merchants and stores were also a target, particularly for looting, but also partially for their associations with wealth. And policemen and union soldiers who attempted to defend the government property were also another big target. So we're going to go through the day by day destruction tally and cover some of the individual stories. But by the end of that first day, it's it's pretty crucial that some of the writers switched their allegiance, including the group of firefighters that we mentioned who began to help the police Instead, some people saw that this was not the fight they wanted and that it was getting out of hands. So the majority of the mob that kept on rioting through the week was working class and they were mostly working class Irish. So starting with some of the damage done on day one, after setting fire to the Provost Marshal's office, writers seized and burned the armory at Second Avenue in twenty one, which contained rifles and guns, and it was generally just a symbol of war. But the writers then they moved on. They attacked homes of policemen and businessmen. They also attacked and torched the Colored Orphan asylument fifth Avenue and thirty fourth Street, which is one that you hear about a lot, and sometimes you see accounts that described two thirty seven children barely escaping, though some other sources say that that's a little bit of an exaggeration. They were actually evacuated prior to the attack. But I mean, regardless, hundreds of kids were left homeless. Well in African Americans were increasingly targeted throughout the day too, and so was their property, and so were whites that helped them. Even prostitutes who catered to interracial clientele were targeted. Um really pretty far reaching with who they were going after. And African Americans, the whites who helped them were chased, assaulted, lynched, in some cases, and a lot of them just got out of the city because they didn't really have any other choice and it was the safest thing to do. And kind of the last major point of Day one was the attack on the New York Daily Tribune newspaper offices. UM. The confrontation between the police and the writers had really escalated, and the newspaper editor, Horace Greeley, was considered an ardent Republican, and protesters thought that the paper not only represented Republican ideals but was kind of a mouthpiece for them and decided to go after it. Yeah, so we could see Day one pretty much reached out to all those socio economic, racial, all those issues that we talked about in the beginning that they had political, um, everything came into play even on that first day, and Day two was kind of more the same, right. I mean, writers continued to attack wealthy people, their homes, their businesses, They closed down factories, they took weapons from munitions plants, they burned bridges literally and figuratively, I assume. UM, they wrecked telegraph and railroad lines. Um. Even other non rioting Irish Catholics weren't safe from them. According to an article by Ivan Bernstein and Civil War Times and Derrickson. An Irish woman with a black husband died of injury she got will try to protect her son from rioters. I mean, they basically would have killed her son if she hadn't shielded him with her own body. Another example that's that you hear a lot Colonel Henry O'Brien, commander of the eleventh New York Volunteers. He tried to support policemen by having his men fire a cannon over the raging crowds of rioters settle him down a bit. Yeah, um, But rumors later circulated that at least one woman and a child had died because of this. So rioters ended up going to O'Brien's home, destroying it, and then when he came back to check on the damage, they captured him, and men and women rioters alike beat him with their fists and clubs, and they took turns pounding his face beyond recognition. So so yeah, violence extends to the Irish as well. It also extends to retail. A Brooks Brothers store in the downtown at seventh Ward is attacked, So you're probably wondering why Brooks Brothers the store was a contractor for the U. S Government and also still today a retailer catering to wealthy people, and they had had some recent labor troubles of their own. Hundreds of tailors had gone on strike for higher wages only four months earlier. So the riders were seeing well bricks, brothers, we've got our eyes on YouTube. Yeah, And by that afternoon, rioters had also erected barricades. And this is an interesting point because they basically just use the debris resulting from the riots to put put it around their own waterfront neighborhoods in various locations around the city, to to use a shields from police who were trying to kind of get at them and keep them down, kind of make their own little city to write like a little fort. So these were kind of, um, I don't know, I guess they were sort of a double edged sort. They were easy for police to find, so they know knew exactly where to go look for the riders, go where the barricades are, but they were also really tough for them to breach. So it just made battles I think a little more intense, definitely. So as we get into day three, we start to see the police and the politicians really taking more action finally, but throughout all of this, the violence on African Americans had continued, and Day three was really no different. They were hanged, oil poured into their wounds, burned. One terrible example is that of Abraham Franklin, who was a disabled African American coachman. He was hanged, his body was pulled down by US troops, and then it was strung up again by the rioters. Finally, he was cut down by a sixteen year old butcher named Patrick Butler and dragged through the streets. His corpse was dragged through the streets by the genitals. So really horrific things that the rioters are doing. Yeah, and I mean this wasn't just being ignored local authorities and politicians. They had been trying new strategies or at least debating and thinking about what to do to get the situation under control kind of all week long, since Monday and UH and D three. The New York National Guard and the police they finally decided to join forces and focus on a few key areas around the city. So put out the biggest fires. Yeah, put out the biggest fires. Um, kind of keep the people in the wealthier neighborhoods contained and safe and then target certain areas where these barricades were. And this made for more violent encounters between the rioters and the police, but it also helped, as we said, contain that violence more around the barricaded areas and those working class neighborhoods where a lot of the stuff was going on. And the politicians, for their part, they were basically at opposite ends of the spectrum. The Republicans, they basically viewed this as a straight up violent uprising. They had been urging Mayor George Optic all week to declare martial law and just take care of it, put a stop to it. Yeah. The Democrats, though, both in the state and Tammany Hall, saw the riots as something that was somewhat legit. You know, there was a there was a legitimate complaint behind it all, and it was a working class political protests. So they were looking for other solutions they and want to go for martial law. So on the third day they hoped that they might curb some of the rioters anger by proposing a relief act to help alleviate the quote unequal operation of conscription by appropriating two point five million dollars through the sale of conscription exemption bonds. And this is Tammy Hall Democrats, and they had been saying all along that the draft was unconstitutional and they hope that just by coming out with this relief Act, maybe people would calm down a little bit and realized that the politicians were trying to figure out a solution for them. Yeah. Unfortunately, though it didn't have the desired result. The violence just spread to Staten Island into Brooklyn, and there were federal orders to delay implementation of the draft. Um they were published in the papers the next day. So, I mean, it really looked kind of hopeless at this point that they were going to be able to settle it peacefully. And then day four we have a new introduction of players in this whole thing. More than four thousand troops returned from Gettysburg and they were called back specifically for this purpose to occupy the city, to face the rioters and working with the police and militia and naval forces and even West Point Cadets who were already involved try to get things back under control. And the increased military presence did let the city restore some of its normal activities. They could reopen the street car and the stage service, but there were still outbursts of violence and soldiers were attacked, and troops started fighting back and even took some rioters prisoner um. But finally the battles were dying down. Yeah, once the military presence was there and they started fighting back, that these were kind of the last battles of the week. But I don't know, just going back to the movie there, if you have seen Gangs of New York and the end when they're fighting against the rioters and the troops show up and then all of a sudden, the Navy star bombing the city, well, Bruce actually says that Scorsese took some license here where that happens, because that never happened. The Navy ships never bombed to the city. So just a little fun fact there if you're a fan of the movie. Bombing city is always pretty bad politics. Yeah, it would have been pretty bad for a Lincoln, sources say if he had if he had actually done that would have been bad for reelection. Yeah, But just just in real life, with the introduction of the four thousand troops by Friday, there was this sort of uneasy piece finally in New York City, but it was estimated that the city had suffered one point five million to two million dollars in property damage and somewhere around one d Nineteen people are known for sure to have been killed. Sometimes though you see figures going up to a thousand people, although those might have been based on unsubstantiated reports. Regardless, though thousands of people were injured or displaced throughout this entire thing, and according to Bruce, for a lot of Native New Yorkers, the riots just confirmed their prejudices about Irish immigrants. However, it's worth pointing out that although they initially blamed Lincoln and his administration for what had happened, the Irish Catholic community did express a lot of regret for the violence, and in the aftermath of the riots, pretty much as soon as it was over, you know, leaders of the Irish community and people in it, they were they felt bad about what had happened. It's also worth pointing out that there were irishmen on both sides of the situation. There were many who were off fighting for the war and who condemned what had happened as soon as they had heard about it. Yeah, and the eventual outcome of the draft, because you know, that's what this whole thing started over, is pretty bizarre. It was eventually enforced that August, and since there was a heavy military presence there to oversee it and a county loan ordinance to pay the three waiver fee for poor on scripts, it went off without incident. You know, it seemed like it was going okay. Um. But according to Bruce, over the next couple of years, the Tammany Hall Democrats raised enough money to buy the exemption of nearly every drafted man who didn't want to serve. So, I mean, I'm sure this is a major simplification, but it kind of seems pointless. It does, I guess me, make the whole draft seem kind of ineffective. But I think it may have gone at least a little ways in making the Irish working class working class in general feel a little less hopeless about the whole war situation. Um. And it's worth pointing out also that many New York are still fought in the war after that. They still joined up with some local militia and immigrants included, so there were still people who took part in part in the war. Effort, even if the draft didn't necessarily get them there. Well, and Bruce even even has a good quote about that, you know, feeling less like rioting and more like protesting politically and trying to get political rights. Yes, she says that the working class became increasingly skilled at hunching their protests with balance rather than their fists. So it's a positive development. Yeah, I think that's a positive note to end to kind of uh riote Us and Gry episode. Thank you so much for joining us for this Saturday classic. Since this is out of the archive, if you heard an email address or a Facebook U r L or something similar during the course of the show, that may be obsolete. Now, so here's our current contact information. We are at History Podcast at how stuff Works dot com, and then we're at Missed in the History all over social media. That is our name on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Pinterest, and Instagram. Thanks again for listening for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff Works dot com? Hello, I'm Tracy V. Wilson. I host the podcast stuff You Missed in History Class with my friend and colleague Holly Fry over the past few years. Every day on our social media, we've been talking about what happened on this day in history. So buyard rest in pacifist and activists who helped plan that marched on Washington for jobs and freedom was born on this day in nineteen twelve, or on this day in seventeen eighty nine, women marched on Verside to demand a solution to an enormous food shortage. Those things that not happen on the same day, but you get the picture. So for years we've been doing that, and it suddenly dawned on us, what if this was its own podcast. So that's what we're doing. Starting July one, we're launching kind of a little sister podcast to stuff you missed in history class. It's called This Day in History Class. It's about five minutes a day every day, and it gives you the highlights of something notable that happened on that day in history. So come and listen. You'll be able to find This Day in History Class on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and wherever else you find podcasts.

Hey everybody, it is Saturday, which means it's time to go back into the archive for one of our previous episodes, and today it's our April eleven episode on the New York Draft Riots from previous hosts Sarah and Bublina. We're coming up on the hundred and fifty fifth anniversary of these riots. They started on July eight, sixty three, so it seemed like a good time to return to it. And while it is known as the Draft Riots, it was about a lot more than the Civil War draft. Immigration, class struggles, and labor issues all played a part as well, and it remains a horrifying example of racist violence. Also, the New York Draft Riots will be making an appearance in our brand new sister podcast, This Day in History Class, which launched on July one, So you can tune in to the end of today's episode to hear a trailer for This Day in History Class, and you can hear a different take on the Draft Riots on that show on July. Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast I'm to Blame a chalk reboarding and and all of you history fans out there have probably heard a little bit about a certain anniversary that's coming up. It's the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Civil War that's kicking off this year, actually this month in fact, with the anniversary of the attack at Fort Sumter, and it's such a pivotal era in American history that we're really still figuring out how we should formally commemorate this in podcast form. We'd love your ideas, because we don't want to just do some massive, multi year Civil War series. Yeah, because something more original than that. Right, people are going to be talking about this for the next four years, So you know, if you have any ideas of how you would like to hear about it that maybe you aren't hearing about it in that way other places, let us know. But the truth is we often touch on topics around this particular era. We talked about the Craft's escape a couple of months ago, and very recently we talked about Victoria Woodhull, who was America's first female presidential candidate, and that all took place during this era and the riots will discuss in this episode were also very much related to the war, and even though they didn't constitute a battle per se, they did temporarily turn New York City into a battleground in what's often called the worst civil disturbance in American history. Yeah, you've seen the movie Gangs of New York. You you know how bloody and violent these riots really were. Yeah, but what is it exactly that made them so bad? I mean, there were smaller draft riots that took place in other areas of the country. So why did the eighteen sixty three New York Draft riots get so out of control? There were really a few factors involved, and of course we're going to go into all of these in more detail, but just so you have them before we get going. There was the draft, the issue around that, there were union wartime policies. There were issues with race relations, socio economic securities, and class struggles. So a lot going on. Yeah, and so what we're going to talk about here is how did these issues combine to fuel this kind of perfect storm of rage in New York's working class And what exactly happened over those four full days that the riots lasted, and of course, finally, what did it take to put a stop to all of it? All? Right, So, before we get into all of that that we're going to set the scene. A lot of New York's working class. New York City's working class in the mid eighteen hundreds was made up of recent immigrants, and a lot of them were from Germany and Ireland, and it became a primary destination for the Irish in particular, especially after the Potato famine of the eighteen forties. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, from eighteen forty one to eighteen fifty, Irish made up forty nine per cent of the total immigration to the United States, So a huge group of people. Yeah, I think it's something like one in four New York residents was an Irish immigran. And of these they were mostly unskilled laborers such as doc workers, ditch digger, street pavers, and mostly poor. So in general, over the first couple of years of the war, working class, the immigrant community, they basically supported it in general, and in fact they were encouraged to almost by Irish by leaders in the Irish Catholic community. So you know, to support it in some way, if not by enlisting, then finding another way to the effort at home. Yeah, to support the union. Um, some some did participate. But by the time eighteen sixty three rolled around, that sentiment in general, that sentiment of support had changed somewhat. For one, the Irish brigade off the Union had lost a lot of men in battle Um. President Lincoln also issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January one, eighteen sixty three, and what that did is it basically gave the war a new purpose besides the original goal of preserving the Union, which was freeing slaves um. The new goal that is Irish American didn't like this because they were afraid that African Americans were gonna come up once they were free, they were going to come up north and take their jobs. So that was with this low paying job market that they were in, right, So that was why that sort of decreased their attitude of support for the war. Yeah, and it's worth mentioning the relations between working class African Americans in working class Irish immigrants were pretty similar. You know, they were in similar, similar positions. They shared a lot in common. They were both poor, both faced discrimination, They lived in close proximity together in the lower half of Manhattan, and they were, as we mentioned, competing for these same low skill labor jobs, and that job competition, we should mention it grew especially heated during the war. One memorable occasion, for example, was in spring of eighteen sixty three during a strike of Irish stock workers African Americans. They had been called in a strike breakers in the city suation and so the strikers attacked and beat them until federal troops came around for protection. So this is what was in the air at the time. Yeah, so trouble was brewing already, right, And then the final straw was when Federal Congress passed the Enrollment Act, also known as this Conscription Act, on March third, eighteen sixty three. Now, this authorized a draft that required all able bodied men between the ages of twenty and forty five to serve unless you furnished an acceptable substitute or paid the government a three hundred dollar fee. And there was another aspect to this as well, according to Susannah Eural Bruce's article Summer of Irish Rage in America Civil War. This act it also provided that any immigrant who had declared his intent to become a citizen could now be drafted unless he left the country within sixty five days, so totally changing the game here. Yeah, in New York's working class immigrant community is consequently enraged over this new act. And there were a few reads behind that military service used to be optional. You mentioned earlier that it was encouraged at least in the beginning of the war, but it was still optional. Now it's required, So they felt like they were being forced to fight to free slaves who they thought might just come to New York City and take their low paying jobs. And then the other thing that enraged immigrants over this act was that it obviously favored the wealthy, who could get out of service by dropping that three hundred dollars and paying somebody else to do it right. So it made an already tense situation even worse, much worse. And then another thing that kind of helped, you know, set the scene for this was the thousands of New York troops traveled south in late June to help out with the Gettysburg campaign, so left the city virtually undefended. So that is the situation in New York City when on Saturday, July eighteen sixty three, the first day of the city's first draft lottery begin since the new law. So the next night after after that very first draft, working class New Yorkers met up in streets and saloons and went over the names of the men who had been drawn for the draft already and and started to make a plan, started to talk about ways that they could fight back and stop this from getting any further out of control. Yeah, And then in the morning on Monday July, when more names were to be drawn, a bunch of them began working their way uptown, headed towards the Provost Marshal's office on Mass and they picked up some more workers from workshops and factories on their way. Now we should mention that at this point the group also included German speaking artisans and native born Protestant journeyman. Many of them were even volunteer fireman, which was a really powerful political and organizational force in the city at the time. And this was in addition to the working class Irish laborers. And we just want to mention that because a lot of times you've seen sources that, oh, it's it's the Irish, it's all the Irish. And there were other people involved at least on this first day at well as well. And there were women in the group as well as men that should be noted too, so in her article, Bruce paints this kind of scary picture. I mean, imagine this coming towards you achieve people. Yeah. She refers to New York attorney George Templeton Strong's description of the day, in which he describes a growing crowd of quote gaunt looking savage men and women and even little children, armed with brick bats, stone poker, shovels and togs, coal scuttles, and even tin pans and a bit of iron. Okay, so they found a little rag tag. I mean, kind of scary. But don't be fooled because even though they're carrying little bits of iron and they have kids hanging out with them, the crowd meant business, and there were enough of them to to accomplish some So as the draft selection began around ten thirty in the morning, thousands of these protesters began to gather around the building and they interrupted the lottery and then they torched the building. So, I mean, I think that was the first really big signal that this was something major. Unfortunately, though they didn't stop there. The protesters had several targets over the next few days which were related to some of the tensions that we discussed in the intro to this podcast. For example, major target African Americans, perhaps the most visible target of the entire four days. We're going to discuss people and institutions related to the Republican Party that was another big target of their's um. They chose this party as a target because it was the party that had started the war, that had instituted the draft, that wanted to abolish slavery, all of those things that they saw as a threat to their you know, their lives, their security. Merchants and stores were also a target, particularly for looting, but also partially for their associations with wealth. And policemen and union soldiers who attempted to defend the government property were also another big target. So we're going to go through the day by day destruction tally and cover some of the individual stories. But by the end of that first day, it's it's pretty crucial that some of the writers switched their allegiance, including the group of firefighters that we mentioned who began to help the police Instead, some people saw that this was not the fight they wanted and that it was getting out of hands. So the majority of the mob that kept on rioting through the week was working class and they were mostly working class Irish. So starting with some of the damage done on day one, after setting fire to the Provost Marshal's office, writers seized and burned the armory at Second Avenue in twenty one, which contained rifles and guns, and it was generally just a symbol of war. But the writers then they moved on. They attacked homes of policemen and businessmen. They also attacked and torched the Colored Orphan asylument fifth Avenue and thirty fourth Street, which is one that you hear about a lot, and sometimes you see accounts that described two thirty seven children barely escaping, though some other sources say that that's a little bit of an exaggeration. They were actually evacuated prior to the attack. But I mean, regardless, hundreds of kids were left homeless. Well in African Americans were increasingly targeted throughout the day too, and so was their property, and so were whites that helped them. Even prostitutes who catered to interracial clientele were targeted. Um really pretty far reaching with who they were going after. And African Americans, the whites who helped them were chased, assaulted, lynched, in some cases, and a lot of them just got out of the city because they didn't really have any other choice and it was the safest thing to do. And kind of the last major point of Day one was the attack on the New York Daily Tribune newspaper offices. UM. The confrontation between the police and the writers had really escalated, and the newspaper editor, Horace Greeley, was considered an ardent Republican, and protesters thought that the paper not only represented Republican ideals but was kind of a mouthpiece for them and decided to go after it. Yeah, so we could see Day one pretty much reached out to all those socio economic, racial, all those issues that we talked about in the beginning that they had political, um, everything came into play even on that first day, and Day two was kind of more the same, right. I mean, writers continued to attack wealthy people, their homes, their businesses, They closed down factories, they took weapons from munitions plants, they burned bridges literally and figuratively, I assume. UM, they wrecked telegraph and railroad lines. Um. Even other non rioting Irish Catholics weren't safe from them. According to an article by Ivan Bernstein and Civil War Times and Derrickson. An Irish woman with a black husband died of injury she got will try to protect her son from rioters. I mean, they basically would have killed her son if she hadn't shielded him with her own body. Another example that's that you hear a lot Colonel Henry O'Brien, commander of the eleventh New York Volunteers. He tried to support policemen by having his men fire a cannon over the raging crowds of rioters settle him down a bit. Yeah, um, But rumors later circulated that at least one woman and a child had died because of this. So rioters ended up going to O'Brien's home, destroying it, and then when he came back to check on the damage, they captured him, and men and women rioters alike beat him with their fists and clubs, and they took turns pounding his face beyond recognition. So so yeah, violence extends to the Irish as well. It also extends to retail. A Brooks Brothers store in the downtown at seventh Ward is attacked, So you're probably wondering why Brooks Brothers the store was a contractor for the U. S Government and also still today a retailer catering to wealthy people, and they had had some recent labor troubles of their own. Hundreds of tailors had gone on strike for higher wages only four months earlier. So the riders were seeing well bricks, brothers, we've got our eyes on YouTube. Yeah, And by that afternoon, rioters had also erected barricades. And this is an interesting point because they basically just use the debris resulting from the riots to put put it around their own waterfront neighborhoods in various locations around the city, to to use a shields from police who were trying to kind of get at them and keep them down, kind of make their own little city to write like a little fort. So these were kind of, um, I don't know, I guess they were sort of a double edged sort. They were easy for police to find, so they know knew exactly where to go look for the riders, go where the barricades are, but they were also really tough for them to breach. So it just made battles I think a little more intense, definitely. So as we get into day three, we start to see the police and the politicians really taking more action finally, but throughout all of this, the violence on African Americans had continued, and Day three was really no different. They were hanged, oil poured into their wounds, burned. One terrible example is that of Abraham Franklin, who was a disabled African American coachman. He was hanged, his body was pulled down by US troops, and then it was strung up again by the rioters. Finally, he was cut down by a sixteen year old butcher named Patrick Butler and dragged through the streets. His corpse was dragged through the streets by the genitals. So really horrific things that the rioters are doing. Yeah, and I mean this wasn't just being ignored local authorities and politicians. They had been trying new strategies or at least debating and thinking about what to do to get the situation under control kind of all week long, since Monday and UH and D three. The New York National Guard and the police they finally decided to join forces and focus on a few key areas around the city. So put out the biggest fires. Yeah, put out the biggest fires. Um, kind of keep the people in the wealthier neighborhoods contained and safe and then target certain areas where these barricades were. And this made for more violent encounters between the rioters and the police, but it also helped, as we said, contain that violence more around the barricaded areas and those working class neighborhoods where a lot of the stuff was going on. And the politicians, for their part, they were basically at opposite ends of the spectrum. The Republicans, they basically viewed this as a straight up violent uprising. They had been urging Mayor George Optic all week to declare martial law and just take care of it, put a stop to it. Yeah. The Democrats, though, both in the state and Tammany Hall, saw the riots as something that was somewhat legit. You know, there was a there was a legitimate complaint behind it all, and it was a working class political protests. So they were looking for other solutions they and want to go for martial law. So on the third day they hoped that they might curb some of the rioters anger by proposing a relief act to help alleviate the quote unequal operation of conscription by appropriating two point five million dollars through the sale of conscription exemption bonds. And this is Tammy Hall Democrats, and they had been saying all along that the draft was unconstitutional and they hope that just by coming out with this relief Act, maybe people would calm down a little bit and realized that the politicians were trying to figure out a solution for them. Yeah. Unfortunately, though it didn't have the desired result. The violence just spread to Staten Island into Brooklyn, and there were federal orders to delay implementation of the draft. Um they were published in the papers the next day. So, I mean, it really looked kind of hopeless at this point that they were going to be able to settle it peacefully. And then day four we have a new introduction of players in this whole thing. More than four thousand troops returned from Gettysburg and they were called back specifically for this purpose to occupy the city, to face the rioters and working with the police and militia and naval forces and even West Point Cadets who were already involved try to get things back under control. And the increased military presence did let the city restore some of its normal activities. They could reopen the street car and the stage service, but there were still outbursts of violence and soldiers were attacked, and troops started fighting back and even took some rioters prisoner um. But finally the battles were dying down. Yeah, once the military presence was there and they started fighting back, that these were kind of the last battles of the week. But I don't know, just going back to the movie there, if you have seen Gangs of New York and the end when they're fighting against the rioters and the troops show up and then all of a sudden, the Navy star bombing the city, well, Bruce actually says that Scorsese took some license here where that happens, because that never happened. The Navy ships never bombed to the city. So just a little fun fact there if you're a fan of the movie. Bombing city is always pretty bad politics. Yeah, it would have been pretty bad for a Lincoln, sources say if he had if he had actually done that would have been bad for reelection. Yeah, But just just in real life, with the introduction of the four thousand troops by Friday, there was this sort of uneasy piece finally in New York City, but it was estimated that the city had suffered one point five million to two million dollars in property damage and somewhere around one d Nineteen people are known for sure to have been killed. Sometimes though you see figures going up to a thousand people, although those might have been based on unsubstantiated reports. Regardless, though thousands of people were injured or displaced throughout this entire thing, and according to Bruce, for a lot of Native New Yorkers, the riots just confirmed their prejudices about Irish immigrants. However, it's worth pointing out that although they initially blamed Lincoln and his administration for what had happened, the Irish Catholic community did express a lot of regret for the violence, and in the aftermath of the riots, pretty much as soon as it was over, you know, leaders of the Irish community and people in it, they were they felt bad about what had happened. It's also worth pointing out that there were irishmen on both sides of the situation. There were many who were off fighting for the war and who condemned what had happened as soon as they had heard about it. Yeah, and the eventual outcome of the draft, because you know, that's what this whole thing started over, is pretty bizarre. It was eventually enforced that August, and since there was a heavy military presence there to oversee it and a county loan ordinance to pay the three waiver fee for poor on scripts, it went off without incident. You know, it seemed like it was going okay. Um. But according to Bruce, over the next couple of years, the Tammany Hall Democrats raised enough money to buy the exemption of nearly every drafted man who didn't want to serve. So, I mean, I'm sure this is a major simplification, but it kind of seems pointless. It does, I guess me, make the whole draft seem kind of ineffective. But I think it may have gone at least a little ways in making the Irish working class working class in general feel a little less hopeless about the whole war situation. Um. And it's worth pointing out also that many New York are still fought in the war after that. They still joined up with some local militia and immigrants included, so there were still people who took part in part in the war. Effort, even if the draft didn't necessarily get them there. Well, and Bruce even even has a good quote about that, you know, feeling less like rioting and more like protesting politically and trying to get political rights. Yes, she says that the working class became increasingly skilled at hunching their protests with balance rather than their fists. So it's a positive development. Yeah, I think that's a positive note to end to kind of uh riote Us and Gry episode. Thank you so much for joining us for this Saturday classic. Since this is out of the archive, if you heard an email address or a Facebook U r L or something similar during the course of the show, that may be obsolete. Now, so here's our current contact information. We are at History Podcast at how stuff Works dot com, and then we're at Missed in the History all over social media. That is our name on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Pinterest, and Instagram. Thanks again for listening for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff Works dot com? Hello, I'm Tracy V. Wilson. I host the podcast stuff You Missed in History Class with my friend and colleague Holly Fry over the past few years. Every day on our social media, we've been talking about what happened on this day in history. So buyard rest in pacifist and activists who helped plan that marched on Washington for jobs and freedom was born on this day in nineteen twelve, or on this day in seventeen eighty nine, women marched on Verside to demand a solution to an enormous food shortage. Those things that not happen on the same day, but you get the picture. So for years we've been doing that, and it suddenly dawned on us, what if this was its own podcast. So that's what we're doing. Starting July one, we're launching kind of a little sister podcast to stuff you missed in history class. It's called This Day in History Class. It's about five minutes a day every day, and it gives you the highlights of something notable that happened on that day in history. So come and listen. You'll be able to find This Day in History Class on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and wherever else you find podcasts.