In Search of History

The Civil War Draft Riots (1996x8)

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The year 1863, the President was Abraham Lincoln, a new law calling for more troops on the front lines came to pass and civil discontent was about to erupt in the worst violence our nation had ever seen. Soon there would be blood in the streets - the New York City Draft Riots of 1863. In the wake of the first federal draft in U.S.. history, the city exploded...and for a week it was chaos. With troops away in Pennsylvania, facing Lee’s invasion at Gettysburg, the city had been left virtually defenseless. Armed mobs of maily Immigrant Irish workers fought police and rampaged through the streets of America’s largest city. They burned government offices, sacked homes of wealthy republicans and destroyed newspaper offices. The rioters felt that the civil war had been transformed from a fight to save the Union into a struggle to free the slaves. They feared that thousands of emancipated slaves would head north and take their jobs. It was only the arrival of 30,000 troops fresh from Victory at Gettysburg, that brought the riots to an end.