On this day in New York · July 13, 1863
The Draft Riots Set the City on Fire
Days after the first names were drawn for a Civil War draft, working-class New York exploded into what is still the deadliest riot in American history.
The facts
- Dates
- July 13 to 16, 1863
- Location
- Manhattan
- Death toll
- 119 to 120 officially, with estimates as high as 1,200
- Trigger
- A draft that let wealthy men pay $300 to avoid service
On July 13, 1863, days after the Union began drawing names in New York for the country's first wartime draft, mobs of mostly working-class men swarmed through Lower and Midtown Manhattan. Rioters burned draft offices, cut telegraph lines, and turned their rage on the city's Black residents, torching the Colored Orphan Asylum on Fifth Avenue as more than two hundred children escaped out the back. The draft had let wealthier men buy their way out for three hundred dollars, and that unfairness lit the fuse. Troops fresh from the field at Gettysburg marched into the city to put it down. The official death toll was 119 or 120, and some estimates run far higher.
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.
-
The riots were one of the largest civil urban disturbances in American history
New York City draft riots, Wikipedia
Source: New York City draft riots, Wikipedia
Why it still matters
The riots laid bare how deeply the war divided New York, a city tied by trade to the cotton South and packed with immigrants who saw the draft as a rich man's war fought with poor men's lives. The violence against Black New Yorkers drove thousands out of Manhattan for good and reshaped where they lived for generations.
Sources
Get the day it happened, the day it happens.
Every morning brief ends with this day in New York history, and every day adds a page to this almanac. Free, in your inbox.
Free to start. The unsubscribe link actually works.