Partially printed document signed ("Abraham Lincoln"), as President, resuming the draft in New York less than a month after the deadly New York City draft riots

Lincoln, Abraham

Published by Washington, D.C., 1863

About this Item

1p., plus integral blank. 4to (9-3/4x7-3/4 inches). The first military draft in U.S. history was passed by Congress in early 1863 and signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln in March of that year. The Enrollment Act (or Civil War Military Draft Act) 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. Only July 13, during the draft lottery in New York City, a riot broke out, leading to three days of violence and destruction. 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. 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. Almost immediately, calls came to suspend the draft in New York, most notably by Horatio Seymour, the Governor of New York, who wrote to Lincoln several times in the weeks which followed arguing against the constitutionality of the draft and the inequity in its application. Lincoln replied on August 7, refusing to acquiesce to Seymour's demands, writing: "I shall direct the draft to proceed in all the Districts, drawing however, at first, from each of the four Districts, towit: the second, fourth, sixth, and eighth . I do not object to abide a decision of the United States Supreme Court, or of the judges thereof, on the constitutionality of the draft law. In fact, I should be willing to facilitate the obtaining of it; but I can not consent to lose the time while it is being obtained. We are contending with an enemy who, as I understand, drives every able bodied man he can reach, into his ranks, very much as a butcher drives bullocks into a slaughter-pen. No time is wasted, no argument is used. This produces an army which will soon turn upon our now victorious soldiers already in the field, if they shall not be sustained by recruits, as they should be. It produces an army with a rapidity not to be matched on our side, if we first waste time to re-experiment with the volunteer system, already deemed by congress, and palpably, in fact, so far exhausted, as to be inadequate; and then more time, to obtain a court decision, as to whether a law is constitutional, which requires a part of those not now in the service, to go to the aid of those who are already in it; and still more time, to determine with absolute certainty, that we get those, who are to go, in the precisely legal proportion, to those who are not to go. My purpose is to be, in my action, just and constitutional; and yet practical, in performing the important duty, with which I am charged, of maintaining the unity, and the free principles o.

Seller Inventory # 373004

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Partially printed document signed ("Abraham Lincoln"), as President, resuming the draft in New York less than a month after the deadly New York City draft riots
• Publisher: Washington, D.C.
• Publication Date: 1863
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)
• Seller catalogs:
  • Americana
  • History, Travel & Geography