The New York City draft riots (July 13–16, 1863), sometimes referred to as the Manhattan draft riots and known at the time as Draft Week, were violent disturbances in Lower Manhattan, widely regarded as the culmination of working-class discontent with new laws passed by Congress that year to draft men to fight in the ongoing American Civil War.
The protests turned into a race riot against African Americans by Irish American rioters. President Abraham Lincoln diverted several regiments of militia and volunteer troops after the Battle of Gettysburg to control the city. The official death toll was listed at either 119 or 120. One historian estimated a loss in killed and wounded of 1000, most of whom were of the mob, and a probable damage to private property of $1,500,000 (equivalent to $39,200,000 in 2025). According to another historian, 18 people are known to have been killed by the rioters, 11 of whom were Black.
The riots were one of the largest civil urban disturbances in American history. Conditions in the city were such that Major General John E. Wool, commander of the Department of the East, said on July 16 that "Martial law ought to be proclaimed, but I have not a sufficient force to enforce it." According to Toby Joyce, the riot represented a "civil war" within the city's Irish community, in that "mostly Irish American rioters confronted police, [while] soldiers, and pro-war politicians ... were also to a considerable extent from the local Irish immigrant community."
The military did not reach the city until the second day of rioting, by which time the mobs had ransacked or destroyed numerous public buildings, two Protestant churches, the homes of various abolitionists or sympathizers, many black homes, and the Colored Orphan Asylum at 44th Street and Fifth Avenue, which was burned to the ground. The area's demographics changed as a result of the riot. Many black residents left Manhattan permanently with many moving to Brooklyn. By 1865, the black population had fallen below 11,000 for the first time since 1820.
Background
New York's economy was tied to the South; by 1822, nearly half of its exports were cotton shipments. In addition, upstate textile mills processed cotton in manufacturing. New York had such strong business connections to the South that on January 7, 1861, Mayor Fernando Wood, a Democrat, called on the city's Board of Aldermen to "declare the city's independence from Albany and from Washington"; he said it "would have the whole and united support of the Southern States." When the Union entered the war, New York City had many sympathizers with the South.
The city was also a continuing destination of immigrants. Since the 1840s, most were from Ireland and Germany. In 1860, nearly 25 percent of the New York City population was German-born, and many did not speak English. During the 1840s and 1850s, journalists had published sensational accounts, directed at the white working class, dramatizing the evils of interracial socializing, relationships, and marriages. Reformers joined the effort.
The Democratic Party's Tammany Hall political machine had been working to enroll immigrants as U.S. citizens so they could vote in local elections and had strongly recruited Irish. In March 1863, with the war continuing, Congress passed the Enrollment Act to establish a draft for the first time, as more troops were needed. In New York City and other locations, new citizens learned they were expected to register for the draft to fight for their new country. Black men were excluded from the draft as they were largely not considered citizens, and wealthier white men could pay for substitutes.
New York political offices, including the mayor, were historically held by Democrats before the war, but the election of Abraham Lincoln as president had demonstrated the rise in Republican political power nationally. Newly elected New York City Republican Mayor George Opdyke was mired in profiteering scandals in the months leading up to the riots. The Emancipation Proclamation of January 1863 alarmed much of the white working class in New York, who feared that freed slaves would migrate to the city and add further competition to the labor market. There had already been tensions between black and white workers since the 1850s, particularly at the docks, with free black people and white immigrants competing for low-wage jobs in the city. In March 1863, white longshoremen refused to work with black laborers and rioted, attacking 200 black men.
Riots
Monday
There were reports of rioting in Buffalo and some other cities, but the first drawing of draft numbers—on Saturday, July 11—occurred peaceably in Manhattan. The second drawing was held on Monday, July 13, ten days after the Union victory at Gettysburg. At 10:00 AM, a furious crowd of around 500, led by the volunteer firemen of Engine Company 33 (known as the "Black Joke"), attacked the assistant Ninth District provost marshal’s office, at Third Avenue and 47th Street, where the draft was taking place.
The crowd threw large paving stones through windows, burst through the doors, and set the building ablaze. When the fire department responded, rioters broke up their vehicles. Others killed horses that were pulling streetcars and smashed the cars. To prevent other parts of the city being notified of the riot, rioters cut telegraph lines.
Since the New York State Militia had been sent to assist Union troops at Gettysburg, the local New York Metropolitan Police Department was the only force on hand to try to suppress the riots. Police Superintendent John Kennedy arrived at the site on Monday to check on the situation. An Irish-American himself, Kennedy was a steadfast unionist. Although he was not in uniform, people in the mob recognized him and attacked him. Kennedy was left nearly unconscious, his face bruised and cut, his eye injured, his lips swollen, and his hand cut with a knife. He had been beaten to a mass of bruises and blood all over his body. Physicians later counted over 70 knife wounds alone. He would never fully recover.
Police drew their clubs and revolvers and charged the crowd but were overpowered. The police were badly outnumbered and unable to quell the riots, but they kept the rioting out of Lower Manhattan below Union Square. Inhabitants of the "Bloody Sixth" Ward, around the South Street Seaport and Five Points areas, refrained from involvement in the rioting. The 19th Company/1st Battalion US Army Invalid Corps which was part of the Provost Guard tried to disperse the mob with a volley of gunfire but were overwhelmed and suffered over 14 injured with 1 soldier missing (believed killed).
The Bull's Head hotel on 44th Street, which refused to provide alcohol to the rioters, was burned. The mayor's residence on Fifth Avenue was spared by words of Judge George Gardner Barnard, and the crowd of about 500 turned to another location of pillage. The Eighth and Fifth District police stations, and other buildings were attacked and set on fire. Other targets included the office of The New York Times. The mob was turned back at the Times office by staff manning Gatling guns, including Times founder Henry Jarvis Raymond. Fire engine companies responded, but some firefighters were sympathetic to the rioters because they had also been drafted on Saturday. The New York Tribune was attacked, being looted and burned; not until police arrived and extinguished the flames was the crowd dispersed. Later in the afternoon, authorities shot and killed a man as a crowd attacked the armory at Second Avenue and 21st Street. The mob broke all the windows with paving stones ripped from the street.
The mob beat, tortured and/or killed numerous black civilians, including one man who was attacked by a crowd of 400 with clubs and paving stones, then lynched, hanged from a tree and set alight.
The Colored Orphan Asylum at 43rd Street and Fifth Avenue, according to Leslie M. Harris an "imposing symbol of white charity to blacks and of black upward mobility" that provided shelter for around 230 children, was attacked by a mob at around 4 pm. A mob of several thousand, including many women and children, looted the building of its food and supplies. However, the police were able to secure the orphanage for enough time to allow the orphans to escape before the building burned down. The children were taken out by the backdoor of the home and escorted to Twentieth Precinct station house by the Superintendent of the asylum, Davis, where they were received by Sergeant Petty. Throughout the areas of rioting, mobs attacked and killed numerous black civilians and destroyed their homes and businesses, such as James McCune Smith's pharmacy at 93 West Broadway, believed to be the first owned by a black man in the United States.
Near the midtown docks, tensions brewing since the mid-1850s boiled over. As recently as March 1863, white employers had hired black longshoremen, with whom many white men refused to work. Rioters went into the streets in search of "all the negro porters, cartmen and laborers" to attempt to remove all evidence of a black and interracial social life from the area near the docks. White dockworkers attacked and destroyed brothels, dance halls, boarding houses, and tenements that catered to black people. Mobs stripped the clothing off the white owners of these businesses.
Tuesday
Heavy rain fell on Monday night, helping to abate the fires and sending rioters home, but the crowds returned the next day. Rioters burned down the home of Abby Gibbons, a prison reformer and the daughter of abolitionist Isaac Hopper. They also attacked white "amalgamationists", such as Ann Derrickson and Ann Martin, two white women who were married to black men, and Mary Burke, a white prostitute who catered to black men.
Governor Horatio Seymour arrived on Tuesday and spoke at City Hall, where he attempted to assuage the crowd by proclaiming that the Enrollment Act was unconstitutional. General John E. Wool, commander of the Eastern District, brought approximately 800 soldiers and Marines in from forts in New York Harbor, West Point, and the Brooklyn Navy Yard. He ordered the militias to return to New York.
Wednesday
The situation improved July 15 when assistant provost-marshal-general Robert Nugent received word from his superior officer, Colonel James Barnet Fry, to postpone the draft. As this news appeared in newspapers, some rioters stayed home. But some of the militias began to return and used harsh measures against the remaining rioters. The rioting spread to Brooklyn and Staten Island.
Thursday
Order began to be restored on July 16. The New York State Militia and some federal troops were returned to New York, including the 152nd New York Volunteers, the 26th Michigan Volunteers, the 27th Indiana Volunteers and the 7th Regiment New York State Militia from Frederick, Maryland, after a forced march. In addition, the governor sent in the 74th and 65th regiments of the New York State Militia, which had not been in federal service, and a section of the 20th Independent Battery, New York Volunteer Artillery from Fort Schuyler in Throggs Neck. The New York State Militia units were the first to arrive. There were several thousand militia and Federal troops in the city.
A final confrontation occurred in the evening near Gramercy Park. According to Adrian Cook, twelve people died on this last day of the riots in skirmishes between rioters, the police, and the army.
The New York Times reported on Thursday that Plug Uglies and Blood Tubs gang members from Baltimore, as well as "Scuykill Rangers [sic] and other rowdies of Philadelphia", had come to New York during the unrest to participate in the riots alongside the Dead Rabbits and "Mackerelvillers". The Times editorialized that "the scoundrels cannot afford to miss this golden opportunity of indulging their brutal natures, and at the same time serving their colleagues the Copperheads and secesh [secessionist] sympathizers."
Aftermath
The exact death toll during the New York draft riots is unknown, but according to historian James M. McPherson, 119 or 120 people were killed, although other estimates list the death toll as high as 1,200. Violence by longshoremen against black men was especially fierce in the docks area:
West of Broadway, below Twenty-sixth, all was quiet at 9 o'clock last night. A crowd was at the corner of Seventh avenue and Twenty-seventh Street at that time. This was the scene of the hanging of a negro in the morning, and another at 6 o'clock in the evening. The body of the one hung in the morning presented a shocking appearance at the Station-House. His fingers and toes had been sliced off, and there was scarcely an inch of his flesh which was not gashed. Late in the afternoon, a negro was dragged out of his house in West Twenty-seventh street, beaten down on the sidewalk, pounded in a horrible manner, and then hanged to a tree.
In all, eleven black men and boys were hanged over five days. Among the murdered black people was the seven-year-old Bermudian nephew, Joseph Reed, of Robert John Simmons of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, whose account of fighting in South Carolina, written on the approach to Fort Wagner July 18, 1863, was to be published in the New York Tribune on December 23, 1863 (Simmons having died in August of wounds received in the attack on Fort Wagner).
The most reliable estimates indicate at least 2,000 people were injured. Herbert Asbury, the author of the 1928 book Gangs of New York, upon which the 2002 film was based, puts the figure much higher, at 2,000 killed and 8,000 wounded, a number that is widely disputed. Total property damage was about $1–5 million (equivalent to $20.5 million – $103 million in 2025). The city treasury later indemnified one-quarter of the amount.