On this day in New York · July 12, 1871
The Orange Riot Turns Eighth Avenue into a Battlefield
A Protestant parade the city first tried to ban, then chose to guard with soldiers, ended with more than sixty New Yorkers dead on Eighth Avenue.
The facts
- Date
- July 12, 1871
- Location
- Eighth Avenue, Manhattan
- Dead
- More than 60 civilians and three National Guardsmen
- Cause
- A guarded Orange Order parade through Irish Catholic neighborhoods
On Wednesday, July 12, 1871, a few dozen Protestant Irishmen of the Orange Order set out to march up Eighth Avenue in Manhattan to mark a centuries-old victory over Catholic Ireland. The city had first moved to forbid the parade, then reversed itself and sent police, state militia, and cavalry to protect it, which drew enraged crowds of Irish Catholic laborers. Along the route, under a hail of thrown objects, the militia opened fire into the packed street. More than sixty civilians and three guardsmen were killed, most of them Irish workers, in one of the deadliest days of civil violence the city has ever seen.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
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such a lesson was needed every few years. Had one thousand of the rioters been killed, it would have had the effect of completely cowing the remainder
Banker Henry Smith, quoted in the New York Tribune, 1871
Source: Orange Riots, Wikipedia
Why it still matters
The papers largely cheered the crackdown, and the comfortable classes made no secret of who they thought the streets belonged to. It was among the last great sectarian street battles of Irish New York, and effectively the last Orange parade of its kind, a tradition the city decided cost more to defend than to quietly let fade.
Sources
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