Rioting on First Avenue

(New-York Historical Society)

Rioting on Lexington Avenue

(New-York Historical Society)

A "Back" Tenement Dwelling

(Civil War Treasures from the New-York Historical Society, [Digital ID: nhnycw/ai ai01013] http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpcoop/nhihtml/cwnyhshome.html)

The New York City Draft Riots became the ultimate expression of community protection. Essentially, the violence was an attempt by Catholic Irish (1) and other white native born or immigrant laborers and gangs (2) to protect and reclaim community space from an encroaching Republican dominated government. The Irish, however, were not the only ethnic group to rebel, but as Irish immigrants comprised the mobs' bulk, they hold an important place in riot week history. Therefore, the violence must be viewed through an Irish prism while remembering to include other ethnic groups. Although the riots contained larger economic, antigovernment, antiwar, and antiabolition elements, on the local neighborhood by neighborhood level they represent a community frustrated and fearful of rapidly changing societal norms (3). The new draft, coupled with a $300 exemption clause which many poor whites could not afford, exacerbated by squalid living conditions (4), emancipated slaves, Republican/Protestant-owned businesses, and anti-Catholic prejudice (5) heightened Democrat Irish and other whites' concerns over Republican Orangeman hegemony, job loss, lowered social status, and the sustained poverty these people experienced during the antebellum period from Dublin to Belfast, Berlin to Munich, London to Liverpool, Turin to Rome, Boston and New York City. In essence, the Draft Riots were a violent culmination of events rooted in Irish, European, and American history.

Hard evidence supporting the community protection theory occurs near the end and after the first day of violence. On the second day, Tuesday, July 14, the riots ceased to be a collective effort between immigrant groups (6). The relatively nonviolent German immigrants, for instance, mostly quit the mobs after making their antidraft point. The Irish and other whites, however, marched violently forward. Even after the draft's suspension on Wednesday, July 15, they continued attacking, destroying, and murdering Republican symbols: African-Americans, known wealthy Republican businesses, homes, police, and soldiers.

The important key to the community protection theory is women's, juveniles', and children's active participation. Although the aforesaid took part in the earlier era's rioting, during the Draft Riots they occupied a much more visible space. For example, women exhorted the men to "die at home" protecting the community rather than on southern battlefields. But, this group's participation was not limited to rhetoric. On the riots' second day an enraged female mob beat U.S. Eleventh New York Volunteers' (the Fire Zouves) Colonel Henry O'Brien's face to a pulp, then drug him through the streets to his own home, stripped him naked and finally committed "the most atrocious violence on the body" (7) before he died--a grusome process lasting six hours. Combined with men's activities, the New York City Draft Riots adds up to a community protection action bent on evicting Republican symbols in order to improve or at least maintain the predraft/prewar Irish and laboring white status quo, men and women, young and old.