Hosted this event. Its about an hour. Good evening, everyone. Welcome to New York Historical society. Im vicepresident for public programs. Im thrilled to welcome you to our spectacular robert h. Smith auditorium. Tonights program, the battle for new york, rallying and rioting, is part of the distinguished Speaker Series which is the heart of our public programs. We always want to thank mr. Schwartz for his support which enabled us to invite so many authors and historians. He would like to thank all the Council Members for all their great work and support. Lets give them all a hand. [ applause ] the program will last an hour and include a question and answer session. The q a will be conducted on note cards. You should have received a note card and pencil as you were entering. We will have our Staff Members circulating through. Just raise your hand if you want a card. They will be collecting them a little later in the program. There will be a normal book signing with our speakers. Copies of their books will be in our museum store which is on the 77th street side of the building. Were thrilled to welcome barnett sheckter. He is the author of several books on American History, including the devils own work, the civil war draft riots and the fight to reconstruct america. He was an adviser on several exhibitions here, including lincoln and new york and is a fellow of the new york academy of history and a contributor to the encyclopedia of new york city. We are pleased to welcome john straspaw back to New York Historical. He has been writing about the culture and history of new york city for a quarter of a century. His history of Greenwich Village was selected as one of the best books of the year. His most recent book, city of is a decision, the history of new york city, during the civil war, has been awarded the civil war round tables new york Fletcher Pratt award for best Nonfiction Book of 2016 among others. Our moderator is richard brookhesier. Harold taltzer is not able to come tonight. A Senior Editor of the national review, he is the author of 11 books including james madison, alexander hamilton, american and founding father redidscovering washington. He was awarded a medal by george w. Bush in a white house ceremony. Before we begin, i would like to ask if you have a cell phone or anything and a beeper that you turn it off for the duration of the program. Now, please join me in welcoming our guests. Thank you. [ applause ] i know its a long walk. Look, thank you all for coming. I am not harold holtzer. He knows the civil war personally. Hes a good friend of the civil war. Couldnt be with us tonight. So i will try to sub in for him. We are very lucky to have these two authors. I have use third books many times. I expect we will have a very informative, great time tonight. I want to start off as devils advocate. New york has is full of civil war monuments. They all commemorate the union side. The greatest public statue in the city is on 5th avenue and 59th street. Its general sherman. He is marching through georgia being led by victory. Theres an almost equally fine statue in Madison Square park of admiral faragut. He is sailing into mobile bay. Lincoln kicked off his first president ial campaign and cooper union. When he was murdered, he was mourned by brooklyns greatest poet walt whitman. I was married in the union lee club. In their lovely library. So whats the problem . This is the unified city of the union, right . Thats what was so shocking about the behavior of new yorkers before and during the outbreak of the war was that here was a city within the limits of the socalled loyal states which was actually a hot bed of as john puts it, it was a city of sadition. Its a complex history. You can go back to the revolution and think about new yorks geography as its destiny. John adams said new york is the nexus of the northern and southern colonies. Its at the center of the atlantic seaboard. Its a great area for shipping, for commerce. Culturally, it becomes torn between its ties to the south and its loyalty to the north. And i think cotton had a lot do with that. I go on about this in my book. The size of the International Cotton trade, the explosion of it in the first half of the 1800s. New york was 40 of what new york was shipping out was one commodity, cotton. Thats enormous. Then tobacco and then sugar. New york had long ties to the south. William bryant said new york was more of a Southern City than a northern city. Also banking, i would imagine. Myrrh cherchandising. The spread of the cotton plantations and the spread of slavery through the south was funded by new york banks, supplied by new york merchants. New york shipping magnates shipped the product of that. It was a very long and very close relationship. A lot of people in new york, not just the bankers and shipping magnates, but anybody on the docks, in the hotels, where 100,000 southerers a year would visit new york, there were 800,000 people in new york and 100,000 southerners in the summer of 1860. Thats a lot of folks. Anybody working in a restaurant, a hotel, a gambling house had reasons to feel prosouth, proslavery and antiabolition. They are here for business and for tourism . Yes. Both. What was the political complexion of the city . Well, i mean, one indicator was the fact that the lame duck mayor Fernando Wood, in his message to the city council, was that new york city should take it upon itself to separate from the union. We can become a kind of duty free port. We will break off and eventually the old northwest will break off, too. We will trade amongst ourselves. I think it was going to be the republic of triinsula. Its an idea we might want to dust off and reconsider. How seriously was he taken . He was not at the time. Except for in his brothers newspaper, Benjamin Wood thought it was a great idea. Everybody else lambasted him. It sounds like norman mailer. Norman knew his new york history. He brought it back up. As i say, i think we might want to look at it now. Lincoln brushed it off with his usual humor. Im not too worried about the doorstep of the nation setting up housekeeping on its own account. There is a serious side to it, which is that words have consequences. The fact is that wood was marginalized for what he said. Especially when the war really broke out. Of course, he jumped on the bandwagon and raised his own regimen and so on. During that critical winter, what new york said had impact on the south. Theres a bombshell question here, to what degree were new york merchants who were calling for peaceful cessation, let the south go, we will work this out, to what degree were they and Horace Greeley, to what degree did they encourage the south . If their bluff had been called maybe not have is a seed cessed. How well does lincoln do in new york . Terribly . New york was largely a democrat city. The democrats were in those days as we know the conservatives. The very new Republican Party were the what we would call the liberal party now. New yorkers voted against him in new yorkers and brooklynites, the two being separate entities, by a margin of two to one in 1860 and in 1864. Although, Horace Greeley and a few other influential republicans in new york made big strides to get him into the white house and then to keep him into thejority of new yorkers never voted for him. Of new york city . New york state went for him. He won new york state in 1864 by 1 . Thats when he was running against george mclellan. There was an interesting back story to this. If we go back to 1856, first time republicans ran a president ial candidate, john freemont, who lost, but the republicans gained control in new york state of the legislature and the governors mansion. So its interesting to look at the rhetoric of someone like Fernando Wood when he is talking about new york is a sececeding e union. Theres a microcosm. New york reflects the tensions going on nationally. Up state, down state. Essay, ihe is saying, im in fa municipal rights. He is standing up for city against the upstate republicans. So theres this kind of he is drawing an analogy almost between national and local politics. What we see as we go through the war and this will play in later when were talking about the violence that erupts in new york, some of the tensions are sparked by republicans upstate who are making laws for the city, putting in a new metropolitan police department, a board that controls it, putting in sabbath laws that clot close is a loans on sundsaloons that doesnt happen anymore. Exactly. Fort sumpter falls. What is the reaction in new york city to that . People rush out thats a very polarizing event. It was. For all that they had argued against it and feared it coming and said that they would not fight for the union, they instantly went out and signed up in droves. New yorkers of all times. And of all classes. You know, im going to take i do take a cynical view of that because im a new yorker. People thought that it was going to be a threemonth war. We were going to march down south. We were going to kick some butt. We were going to come back with laurels around our bayonets. You were signing up for a summer adventure in the spring of 1861, you were going to be back by september. For working new yorkers, it was a paycheck. There had been a lot of unemployment in new york. The idea of getting paid not well but regularly was exciting to them and a big incitement, i think, to sign up. Once they start seeing battle, seeing the elephant, as it was called, first bull run and all those that volunteerism goes through the floor. They stop signing up. Which leads to having the draft. Whats the ethnic makeup of the city . Its more than if you look at the city in the 1860, about 800,000 people total. And largest ethnic component are the irish and irish americans who make up about a quarter of that. 200,000. Then germans. How many germans . Im not sure. Not as many . Probably the second largest. Free africanamericans are about 1. 5 , 12,500 people. Which is a bit of a dip from its high in the 1840s of 16,000. I think its important when you are looking at this response to fort sumpter to also talk about the motivations of the irish who filled a lot of these regiments and created these. Theres a whole story there where the british are perceived the british, obviously, the eternal enemy of the irish are perceived as sympathizing with the south because they need the cotton. Which they were. They need cotton for their mills. So the irish feel that they want to participate to protect the union, the United States is this great young democracy. Its not britain. Anything its not britain and britain doesnt like them. A friend of mine the enemy this was sort of onthejob training for them to join up, to fight in the civil war so that they would have some experience when they went back and kicked the british out of ireland. The war, first bull run happens. Then a lot of nothing happens for a long while. People slowly begin to realize this is going to be a long war. As we all know, lincoln goes through many generals before he finds some good ones. When is the draft instituted . The draft really comes in in two stages. Theres a militia draft in the summer of 62. Then in march of 63, theres the First Federal the first one we have ever had . Right. If you think about the American Revolution, we had a draft. But it was at the state level. So the governors were in control. Suddenly of course, that fit with american ideology, revolutionary ideology, you dont have a Standing Army controlled by a central power. So this is a huge watershed in march of 63 that suddenly theres this bureaucracy in washington if fan fact, they created a bureaucracy. Suddenly, this can reach into every household and tap men directly into a National Army. So that in itself was a cause of outrage. The fact that you could also pay 300 or hire a substitute and get out of the draft was an extreme irritant. Why was that written into the law . Well, from the Government Point of view, they were doing everyone a favor. They were capping the price of a substitute. If you didnt have the 300, the 300 a clause, then people could bid on substitutes in an open market. The rich could pay 1,800 or whatever they could afford. 300 is how well off do you have to be to have 300 to if you are working on a dock or in a factory, you are maybe making 1 a day. You are looking at almost a years salary. Its prohibitive for an individual working class person. What people did was they pooled their money. They created draft insurance with their factory buddies. If one of them got drafted, they would pay for it. Eventually, what happened was that citiy ies and towns would float bonds as we will see in new york. Collectively, the city would hire substitutes and pay off the money for poor men who couldnt afford it. Monroe james monroe wanted a draft in the war of 1812, but congress wouldnt pass it. So this is a new thing. Were there any new york units during the war that distinguished themselves in ways that made them note worthy here that were celebrated here that became local heros . Sure. Corcoran Thomas Corcoran and the irish were hugely famous here. And did well. They were one of the only union units at the first battle of bull run who stood their ground. Corcoran was captured, spent a long time in prison. He came back they shut the city down to have a parade for them when they brought him back. He was a big deal. Phillip carney, the one armed devil, was almost impossibly dashing. He was like a fictional character. He didnt last very long, because his he was outrageously brave and kept going in front of his men and got killed. Very famous. And the is the 7th. Yes. The 7th didnt do much of anything. In fact, it did nothing during the war. The 7th marched around and looked great and everybody loved them. Officers from the when they mustered out of the 7th, went on to do things on the battlefield. The 7th never saw battle. I think he would should mention the 69th fighting irish regiment of volunteers. These were irish nationalists who had started the unit. They really suspected that the army was using them as cannon fodder. Because they were put in the front of the worst battles. They suffered horrendous casualties. They were a good unit though. Thats what they do with them. Right. On the other hand its what you do with irishmen in those days. There was a lot of prejudice. December everybody was cannon fodder. That was the point. It was a doomed charge. Right . Well, it was like five doomed charges. It was a terrible thing. Thats the perception. Right. Okay. But thats important to get out there. Now i want to get to the draft riot. Our memory of it is irish draft rioters. But there were also these very gallant irish units fighting at the same time. So we shouldnt paint with too broad an ethnic brush here. Exactly. What brings tensions to the point at which people take to the streets over this . I think that when they finally start doing the draft, thats the last straw for its not just for the irish. Its for white working men which was most of the working men in new york city. By that point, by the summer of 1863. Their wages had stayed steady or real wages had stayed steady or gone down. But wartime inflation had doubled the cost of everything, the price of everything. They were not happy about the emancipation proclamation. It shifted the point of the war from they had been told they were going to fight originally to preserve the union. Now they were fighting to preserve the union and free the slaves, which was something very few of them had any interest in fighting and dieing for. Then the draft comes along. If they dont have a years wages set aside to buy their substitute, theyre going to go. And i think that was the final spark that caused it. Its a draft riot. Its some somebodys book i think it is yours. You could look at it more as a city wide workers revolt than a draft riot. The draft was the cause, but grievances had been building up in the class for several years. Did they think of the republicans who were in the city as the elite . Yeah. Absolutely. And targeted them in the rioting. They were targeting any black person. Black males at first, they were curiously not tar getting black females for the first day or two. Then they started to. They were looking for mayor updike, they went to his house and they were going to burn it down. They were looking for edwin booth, because edwin was sort of a celebrity spokesman for lincoln and for the war effort. They would have probably done some nasty things to him. So, yeah, republicans were the to many of the rioters, the small, elite minority who had gotten them into this mess. They were very unhappy about it. Unfortunately, the people they thought had gotten them into the mess were the free africanamericans in the city. They were the innocent cause of all the troubles, as one person put it, a british visitor put it. So what happened was at the riots broke out, they started as a political rally. People marched uptown, they targeted the draft office at 46th street and 3rd avenue. Sparked into it, burned it to the ground. As the day went on, after they tried to gather weapons and attack the mayors house and the political targets, the whole thing degenerated into a racial where did blacks live then . Whats interesting is that you really didnt have what you might call a black ghetto or black ghettoes at the time. Partly because of poverty, blacks and whites lived together in some of the worst slums on earth. The five points neighborhood Near Civic Center today. So that made blacks defenseless in a sense that they couldnt rally together and fight back. Blacks were hunted down wherever they lived. An example is down where the Brooklyn Bridge is today, theres a huge access ramp to the Brooklyn Bridge. That has wiped out a neighborhood that contained black mutual aid societies, churches, rooming houses for seamen, under Ground Railroad stops and distribution points for abolitionist literature. These became targets of the rioters. Some of these the people who ran the boarding