New York City Draft Riots - Background

Background

New York's economy was tied to the South; by 1822 nearly half of its exports were cotton shipments. New York had such strong business connections to the South that on January 7, 1861, Mayor Fernando Wood called on the city's Board of Aldermen to "declare the city's independence from Albany and from Washington"; he said that it “would have the whole and united support of the Southern States.” When the Union entered the war, New York City had many southern sympathizers.

The city was also a continuing center of immigrants; since the 1840s, most were from Ireland and Germany. In 1860, nearly 25% of the New York City population was German-born and many did not yet speak English. During the 1840s and 1850s journalists had published sensational accounts, directed at the working class, dramatizing the "evils" of interracial socializing relationships and marriages; reformers joined the effort. Newspapers carried derogatory portrayals of blacks and ridiculed "black aspirations for equal rights in voting, education, and employment". Pseudo-scientific lectures on phrenology were popular, although countered by doctors. At the time, some areas of the city, such as Lower Manhattan, had mixed populations of residents.

The Democratic Party political machine of Tammany Hall had been working to enroll immigrants as U.S. citizens so they could vote in local elections, and had strongly recruited Irish, who already spoke English. In 1863, with the war continuing, Congress passed a law to establish a draft for the first time, as more troops were needed. In New York City and other locations, new citizens learned that they were expected to register for the draft to fight for their new country. Black men were excluded from the draft as they were not considered citizens. Free black men and immigrants competed for low-wage jobs in the city.

While New York political offices were held by Democrats, the election of Abraham Lincoln as president had demonstrated the rise in Republican political power nationally. The Emancipation Proclamation of January 1863 alarmed much of the working class in New York, who feared that freed slaves would migrate to the city and add further competition to the labor market. There had already been tensions between black and white workers since the 1850s, particularly at the docks. In March 1863, white longshoremen refused to work with blacks and attacked 200 black men. In this area of the city, there were a variety of interracial venues of brothels and bars, and neighborhoods were mixed in terms of residents. Men also competed as hacks, craftsmen and other jobs.