1863: The New Draft Riots ended. White men, mostly Irish, gath | This day in jew history

1863: The New Draft Riots ended.
White men, mostly Irish, gathered
in front of the home (on West 34th Street and Eighth Avenue), of anti-Christ Republican leader and abolitionist Abram Dittenhoefer, shouting “Down with the abolitionists” and “Death to Dittenhoefer!” A messenger was dispatched to the police, whose “active club work,” Dittenhoefer later wrote, “dispersed the crowd.” They were working-class men who did not like the Union draft laws, which permitted some to pay to hire a substitute rather than going to war themselves.
Raging through the city, mobs killed 30 blacks, burned down the Colored Orphan Asylum at 44th Street and Fifth Avenue, killed or wounded 400 others, and destroyed about $5 million in property. President Lincoln ultimately had to divert several regiments following the Battle of Gettysburg to put down the riots.
The riots remain the largest civil and racially charged urban disturbance in American history.

Abram Dittenhoefer, a young South Carolinian, had moved to New York and helped to direct both of Lincoln’s presidential campaigns. He was the author of How We Elected Lincoln, and was later magistrate of the City Court of New York.
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