The controversial Conscription Act had been passed to keep the hard-pressed
Union army supplied with manpower. Two years into the war, Union enlistments
were running out, and massive casualties stemming from a lethal combination
of inept Union and brilliant Confederate generalship had undermined the
North's commitment to the war.
Jefferson Davis' Confederate government had passed an unpopular conscription
act a year before, but Lincoln had resisted doing the same. Acutely aware
of his political capital and how best to spend it, he saw conscription as
political suicide and an invitation to a dangerous Consitutional fight.
Supplying more ammunition to Lincoln's powerful enemies within the North
would further weaken the tottering Union alliance.
But the casualty lists from Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville
and Gettysburg had left no choice.
In Northern cities a generation of Irish immigrants were carving out lives
however they could. Viewed with hostility by earlier arrivals and the American-born,
they could often find only menial jobs. Some banded together in street gangs
with names like the Bowery B'hoys and the Plug Uglies. Some joined the local
fire companies, which were often thinly-veiled protection rackets. Some
looked to the growing Tammany Hall machine for protection.
Freed blacks streaming northward found their way to New York City, many
of them willing to do the same work for less pay than the Irish. And with
the draft threatening to pull more Irish from their jobs and homes, it didn't
take long for many to see the black labor force as a direct threat to survival.
Lincoln's announcement of limited emancipation the previous September had
given many supporters of a war to save the Union reason to reconsider. Now
they saw the war as Lincoln's fight to free the slaves, and they wanted
no part of it.
The new draft law required each state to provide a set quota of recruits,
and Washington didn't much care how the governors got them. All of the parties
hoped to avoid holding an actual draft. To sidestep such a crisis, state
and local governments typically offered sizable cash bounties to swell the
volunteer rolls. The system was intended as a carrot-and-stick affair: the
cash being the carrot and the draft being the stick.
With state and local bounties added to a U.S. bounty of $300, a man scraping
out the barest of livings could net himself a $600 nest egg the minute he
enlisted—serious money in 1863 dollars. To some this offered an escape
route from grinding poverty, but others who could afford it preferred to
pull themselves out of the draft pool by paying substitutes to join in their
place.
Substitute brokers thrived in the North, taking fees from draft-eligible
men, paying cash to substitutes and pocketing whatever was left.
Spurred by anti-war Democrats fanning their hostility toward blacks, many
New York Irish came to the conclusion that they were providing the raw material
for the draft-and-bounty, carrot-and-stick system.
At a downtown music hall Tony Pastor, the popular anti-Lincoln entertainer,
sang, “We are coming, Father Abr'am, three hundred dollars more!”But
in spite of the cash bounties, New York—already a hotbed of anti-war
and anti-Lincoln feeling—was unable to meet the draft quota. A date
was set, and a federal official would spin a large drum and pull from it
the names of the first unlucky draftees.
On July 11, 1863, Lincoln waited impatiently in Washington for more news
from Gettysburg, and an uneasy New York began to stir.
In the early afternoon, a crowd began to gather outside the draft office....
Learn more about the Draft Riots >
