James power white pages new york city11/13/2023 ![]() 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. Newly elected New York City Republican Mayor George Opdyke was mired in profiteering scandals in the months leading up to the riots. 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. Black men were excluded from the draft as they were largely not considered citizens, and wealthier white men could pay for substitutes. ![]() In New York City and other locations, new citizens learned they were expected to register for the draft to fight for their new country. 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. citizens so they could vote in local elections and had strongly recruited Irish. The Democratic Party's Tammany Hall political machine had been working to enroll immigrants as U.S. Newspapers carried derogatory portrayals of black people and ridiculed "black aspirations for equal rights in voting, education, and employment". 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. In 1860, nearly 25 percent of the New York City population was German-born, and many did not speak English. Since the 1840s, most were from Ireland and Germany. The city was also a continuing destination of immigrants. 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. In addition, upstate textile mills processed cotton in manufacturing. New York's economy was tied to the South by 1822, nearly half of its exports were cotton shipments. By 1865, the black population had fallen below 11,000 for the first time since 1820. Many black residents left Manhattan permanently with many moving to Brooklyn. The area's demographics changed as a result of the riot. ![]() 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. 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." Conditions in the city were such that Major General John E. The official death toll was listed at either 119 or 120 individuals. Initially intended to express anger at the draft, the protests turned into a race riot, with white rioters attacking black people, in violence throughout the city. At the time a typical laborer's wage was between $1.00 and $2.00 a day, and the fee was equivalent to $7,100 in 2022. The rioters were overwhelmingly Irish working-class men who did not want to fight in the Civil War and resented that wealthier men, who could afford to pay a $300 commutation fee to hire a substitute, were spared from the draft. President Abraham Lincoln diverted several regiments of militia and volunteer troops after the Battle of Gettysburg to control the city. were also to a considerable extent from the local Irish immigrant community." According to Toby Joyce, the riot represented a " civil war" within the city's Irish community, in that "mostly Irish American rioters confronted police, soldiers, and pro-war politicians . The riots remain the largest civil and most racially charged urban disturbance in American history. 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 white working-class discontent with new laws passed by Congress that year to draft men to fight in the ongoing American Civil War. A recruiting poster in New York City in June 1863 for the Enrollment Act, also known as the Civil War Military Draft Act, which authorized the federal government to conscript troops for the Union Army
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