Civil War
Hundreds of thousands of New York's young men fought during the Civil War, more than any other Northern state. A war was not in the best interest of business, because much of New York's trade was based on moving Southern goods. The city's large Democrat community feared the impact of Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860. By the time of the 1861 Battle of Fort Sumter, political differences had vanished and the state quickly met Lincoln's request for soldiers and supplies. While no battles were waged in New York, the state wasn't immune to Confederate conspiracies, including one to burn various New York cities and another to invade the state via Canada.
In 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed the slaves in states that were still in rebellion against the union. In March 1863, the federal draft law was changed so that male citizens between 20 and 35 and unmarried citizens to age 45 were subject to conscription. Those who could afford to hire a substitute or pay $300 were exempt. Antiwar newspaper editors attacked the law. Democratic Party leaders raised the specter of a deluge of southern blacks. On the lottery's first day, July 11, 1863, the first lottery law was held. On Monday, July 13, 1863, five days of large-scale riots began.
Read more about this topic: History Of New York
Famous quotes containing the words civil war, civil and/or war:
“... there was the first Balkan war and the second Balkan war and then there was the first world war. It is extraordinary how having done a thing once you have to do it again, there is the pleasure of coincidence and there is the pleasure of repetition, and so there is the second world war, and in between there was the Abyssinian war and the Spanish civil war.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“Deep-seated are the wounds of civil brawls.”
—Marcus Annaeus Lucan (39–65)
“I realized how for all of us who came of age in the late sixties and early seventies the war was a defining experience. You went or you didn’t, but the fact of it and the decisions it forced us to make marked us for the rest of our lives, just as the depression and World War II had marked my parents.”
—Linda Grant (b. 1949)