|
| 
Riots and Civil Unrest
Contents
1863 Draft Riots > Orange and Green Riots
of 1870 and 1871
1863 Draft Riots
Eager to prove their patriotism and quiet nativist
critics, New York's Irish immigrants volunteered in large numbers
to fight in the Union army, often serving with great distinction
in such regiments as the Fighting 69th. Yet New York's Archbishop
Hughes spoke for a number of Irish and non-Irish in the city when
he predicted that Catholics would fight only for the preservation
of the Union, not for the end of slavery. Like others, he regarded
abolitionists as dangerous radicals and supported the Church's official
position that slavery was allowable under canon law as long as owners
did not mistreat their slaves. He also argued that slaves in the
South were often better off than the Irish poor in Northern cities,
particularly the slums of New York.1
Therefore, the country met President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation
Proclamation of January 1863 with mixed reactions. Republicans saw
it as a necessary war measure that would give a much-need moral
tone to the North's struggle and help attract African American volunteers
to a diminishing army. Conversely, Northern Democrats felt the Proclamation
detracted from the main goal of the war, which was the preservation
of the union. New York Tammany politicians in particular viewed
both the Proclamation and the Conscription Act passed soon after
as evidence of the Lincoln administration's growing centralization
of power away from the city into the hands of the Republican elite.2
Irish workers objected to emancipation and conscription on more
practical terms; angered by wartime job shortages and low wages,
and fearful of African-American job competition, they saw both acts
as an attempt to uplift African Americans at their expense. Such
fears came to a head when officials in New York tried to enforce
the first federal draft on July 12. Despite their distinguished
military service, Irish immigrants were still the most underrepresented
group in the army compared to the overall population, so the first
draw fell most heavily on them. Angered by a controversial $300
exemption waiver in the Conscription Act, which would allow wealthier
individuals to buy their way out of service, workers protested the
draft by attacking various symbols of Republican, federal, and abolitionist
power, including an uptown draft office, the office of newspaper
editor Horace Greeley, and the homes of prominent Republicans. The
protesters the first day included German, Irish, and native industrial
workers and artisans, but they had limited aims and soon dissipated.
They were followed by mobs of laborers and longshoremen, many of
them Irish, who turned increasingly violent as they tore up railroad
lines, burned down the Colored Orphan Asylum, and brutally beat
and killed soldiers, African Americans, and authority figures. By
the time five Union regiments were able to march up from the Battle
of Gettysburg to restore peace on July 15-16, at least 105 people
had been killed, including at least eleven black men beaten and
lynched by the mobs.3
Irish opposition to emancipation and conscription gave them a reputation
for treason and disloyalty, discounting the loyal service of thousands
of Irish volunteers in the Union army. For many nativist critics,
Irish participation in the Draft Riots was another indication of
Irish immigrants' savagery, unfitness for self-government, and their
inferiority to other white races. Newspapers like Greeley's Herald
Tribune and George William Curtis' Harper's Weekly highlighted Irish
involvement in the riots, featuring illustrations of simian-faced
mobs and denounced their "barbarism."4
Conversely, Irish papers were quick to defend the reputation of
the Irish community, contesting the characterization of the mob
as solely "Irish" and playing up the role of Irish men
and women who worked to end the violence. While a new draft was
conducted the following month without incident by "Boss"
William M. Tweed (1823-1878) and his Tammany Hall Democrats, the
memory of the riots remained fresh in the minds of the African American
community and the Protestant elite, who forever associated the affair
with the "savage Irish." In the months after the riots,
Republican leaders paraded African-American victims around the city,
honoring them with military marches and public ovations. Despite
this treatment, blacks fled from the city in droves, fearful that
similar outbreaks of violence would occur again.5
The reactions of nativists, radical Republicans, and elite reformers
toward Irish involvement in the draft riots cemented immigrants'
devotion to Tammany Hall and the Democrats. Tammany claimed to represent
the interests of the poor and working class, as opposed to the Republican
Party and reformers, who they identified with uptown aristocrats
and nativism. Boss Tweed and his Tammany ring recognized the potential
political strength of the city's Irish population and other immigrant
groups, who continued to arrive in droves during the 1860s and 1870s.6
The Draft Riots continued to linger in the city's memory as the
worst episode of ethnic and racial violence in New York's history.
Irish opposition to abolition and fears of African-American competition
left bitter feelings between the two groups, while nativist reformers
and Republicans viewed Irish advancement through Tammany with resentment.
Continued immigration of poor Catholic Irish throughout the 1870s
and 1880s maintained the image of the violent "shanty Irish."
Long after the second and third generations of famine immigrants
had begun to establish an economic foothold in the city, Anglo Americans
continued to deny them social acceptance based on their religion
and perceived inability to assimilate. It was only with the arrival
of Southern and Eastern European immigrants that they could view
the less-foreign Irish as acceptable and loyal Americans.7
See also: African-Americans;
Irish; The Meehan-Moore
Family; Nativism and Discrimination; Ninety-Seven
Orchard Street/The Irish at 97 Orchard Street.
1 Iver Bernstein, The New York City Draft Riots:
Their Significance for American Society and Politics in the Age
of the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); Frederick
M. Binder and David M. Reimers, All the Nations Under Heaven: An
Ethnic and Racial History of New York City (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1995); Michael A. Gordon, The Orange Riots: Irish Political
Violence in New York City, 1870 and 1871 (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1993); Kevin Kenny, The American Irish: A History (New York:
Longman, 2000).
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
|
|
|
