The Bloody Week! Riot, Murder & Arson, Containing a Full Account of this Wholesale Outrage on Life and Property, Accurately Prepared From Official Sources by Eye Witnesses, with Portraits of "Andrews," the Leader and "Rosa," his Eleventh Street Mistress

(New York City Draft Riot)

Published by Coutant & Baker, New York, 1863

About this Item

Second edition, revised and corrected. 32pp. 8vo. The New York City Draft Riots were a series of violent uprisings in lower Manhattan in July 1863. The causes were numerous, although much of the unrest stemmed from the recent passage of Enrollment Act (or Civil War Military Draft Act), which was signed into law on March 3, 1863 and required the enrollment of every male citizen between twenty and forty-five years of age as well as those immigrants who had filed for citizenship, unless exempted by the Act. It set enlistment quotas for each state, and required states to draft men if they did not meet their enlistment quotas through volunteers. It also included the policies of Substitution (furnishing a suitable substitute to take the draftee's place) and Commutation (paying $300 to avoid the draft), which led to substantial resentment among working-class citizens not wealthy enough to pay their way out of service. Although initially focused on the draft, the protests subsequently devolved into vicious race riots. The rioters were largely white and in the wake of the Emancipation Proclamation, claimed to fear that freed enslaved men would migrate to the city and take their jobs. Since Blacks were exempted from the draft, the Draft Act only heightened fears of Black migration to the city. The violence against the Black community in New York (as well as against abolitionists) was substantial: the death toll reached upwards of 120, and numerous homes and churches were burned. It permanently changed the demographics of Manhattan, as many Black families relocated to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, or New Jersey. Resentment also stemmed from the fact that New York's economy was intimately tied to the South, in particular cotton, which passed through the city on its way to upstate textile mills. In fact, New York had such strong connections to the South that early in the war, then-mayor Fernando Wood, suggested to the New York City Council that New York secede from Albany and Washington, and declare itself a free city in order to continue its profitable cotton trade with the South. Since most of the New York State Militia was fighting with Union troops at Gettysburg, the New York Police Department was the only force on hand to deal with the rioters initially, and they were badly outnumbered and underequipped. By day four of the riots, five New York Militia units had reached the city along with the 26th Michigan Volunteers and the 27th Indiana Volunteers, and were able to start restoring order. Eventually there were several thousand troops in the city and they brutally put down the remaining rioters This rare pamphlet published soon after the Draft Riots were quelled contains a series of eye-witness accounts describing the "horrors perpetuated on the citizens of the city of New York - the catalogue of a series of barbarities almost without parallel in the dark ages and certainly transcending anything of modern times" (p. 1). Sabin 5987 Later half morocco and marbled paper covered boards, original wrappers bound in, minor wear.

Seller Inventory # 374151

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Bloody Week! Riot, Murder & Arson, Containing a Full Account of this Wholesale Outrage on Life and Property, Accurately Prepared From Official Sources by Eye Witnesses, with Portraits of "Andrews," the Leader and "Rosa," his Eleventh Street Mistress
• Publisher: Coutant & Baker, New York
• Publication Date: 1863
• Binding: 32pp. 8vo
• Edition: Second edition, revised and corrected.
• Signed: Signed
• Seller catalogs:
  • Americana