The Devil's Own Work The Civil War Draft Riots and the Fight to Reconstruct America

by Schecter, Barnet

• ISBN13: 9780802715081
• ISBN10: 0802715087
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-01-09
• Publisher: Walker Books

Summary

On July 13, 1863, the largest riots in American history broke out on the streets of New York City, nearly destroying in four days the financial, industrial, and commercial hub of the nation. Placing the riots in the context of social tension and reform from the 1840s through the 1870s, Barnet Schecter sheds new light on the Civil War era and on the history of protest and reform in America. Barnet Schecteris the author ofThe Battle for New York:The City at the Heart of the American Revolution. He lives in New York City. On July 4, 1863, Robert E. Lee and his Confederate army retreated in tatters from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and the Union began its march to ultimate victory in the Civil War. Nine days later, the largest riots in American history broke out on the streets of New York City, nearly destroying in four days the financial, industrial, and commercial hub of the nation. Northerners suspected a Confederate plot, carried out by local "Copperhead" sympathizers; however, the reality was more complex and far-reaching, exposing fault lines of race and class still present in America today. Angered by the Emancipation Proclamation, issued six months earlier, and by Abraham Lincoln's imposition of the first federal military draft in U. S. history, which exempted those who could pay $300, New York's white underclass, whipped up by its conservative Democratic leaders, raged against the powerful currents of social change embodied by Lincoln's Republican administration. What began as an outbreak against draft offices soon turned into a horrifying mob assault on upper-class houses and property, and on New York's African American community. The draft riots drove thousands of blacks to the fringes of white society, hastening the formation of large ghettoes, including Harlem, in a once-integrated city. As Barnet Schecter dramatically shows inThe Devil's Own Work, the cataclysm in New York was anything but an isolated incident; rather, it was a microcosmwithin the borders of the supposedly loyal northern statesof the larger Civil War between the North and South. The riots erupted over the same polarizing issuesof slavery versus freedom for African Americans and the scope of federal authority over states and individualsthat had torn the nation apart. And the riots' aftermath foreshadowed the compromises that would bedevil Reconstruction and delay the process of integration for the next 100 years. The story of the draft riots comes alive in the voices of passionate newspaper rivals Horace Greeley and Manton Marble; black leader Rev. Henry Highland Garnet and renegade Democrat Fernando Wood; Irish soldier Peter Welsh and conservative diarist Maria Daly; and many others. In chronicling this violent demonstration over the balance between centralized power and civil liberties in a time of national emergency,The Devil's Own Work(Walt Whitman's characterization of the riots) sheds light on the Civil War era and on the history of protest and reform in America. "Schecter throws a wide net in his detailed account of the riots, setting the violence amid the racism, political corruption and brutal inequities of the time, looking not only at what inspired the rebellion, but also at what it left in its wake: a seven-year exodus of black residents and a political climate ripe for the 'ongoing counter-revolution against Reconstruction.'"Alison McCulloch,The New York Times Book Review "Schecter's riveting narrative places the violence, dramatized by Martin Scorsese'sGangs of New York, in a national context, as a microcosm of forces that deferred integration for a century."USAToday "A coruscating chronicle of this shameful episode i

Author Biography

Historian Barnet Schecter is the author of The Battle for New York: The City at the Heart of the American Revolution. He lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Key Dates and Events	xi
Prologue: "We Have Not One Devil, But Many to Contend With"	1
1. "The Rebel Horde Had Invaded Pennsylvania in Force"	9
2. The Battle Lines Are Drawn: Race, Class, and Religion	29
3. Horace Greeley and the Birth of the Republican Party	46
4. Fernando Wood, the "Southern" Mayor of New York	59
5. "Slavery Must Die That the Nation Might Live"	77
6. Emancipation and Its Enemies	96
7. "A Highwayman's Call on Every American Citizen for '$300 or Your Life'"	113
8. "Down with the Rich Men!": The New York City Draft Riots Begin	125
9. "Chased, Stoned, and Beaten": "A Crusade Against Negroes"	143
10. Monday Night: "The Fiery Nucleus of the Entire Riot"	157
11. "Government in the Hands of the White Race Alone"	171
12. "The Police Cannot Much Longer Sustain the Contest"	184
13. Doom or Deliverance: Wednesday, July 15—Day Three	201
14. "Hellish Passions Culminating in Riots, Arson, and Murder"	214
15. The Final Days: Thursday and Friday	224
16. A Plot to "Make the Northern States a Battle-Field"	240
17. Aftermath: Sitting on Two Volcanoes	253
18. "Our Bleeding, Bankrupt, Almost Dying Country"	269
19. "Villainous Threats of Laying Northern Cities in Ashes"	286
20. War's End: Slavery Is Dead, the "Demon of Caste" Lives On	298
21. "Condemnation and Reversal of Negro Suffrage"	310
22. Strange Bedfellows: Greeley and the Liberal Republicans	332
23. A Final Devil's Bargain: The End of Reconstruction	353
Appendix. A Walking Tour of Civil War New York	371
Notes	377
Bibliography	413
Index	423