Riot (12 page)

Before those four terrible days, I looked beyond skin and saw people. But it was our skin that made us targets, not our hearts. I am slow to come around to being the old Claire again, but I think she lurks somewhere within me.

(we hear the soft sounds of “The Black Rose”) Priscilla, we can’t go back again. Maybe the three of us—you, me and Robert—back in school were seeing things with the eyes of children then. Perhaps our
innocence is forever gone. But sitting with my mum and working on the quilt that you and I started, and seeing my father get up and push on despite his disappointment, I think that if we can’t go back, then we should try even harder to go forward. And I do want to go forward, to a place where loving someone because they have a gentle smile and a friendly hello is as easy as it once was.

I see Maeve now and again. I think she truly loved Liam and misses him terribly. Life hasn’t been easy for her, as it hasn’t been easy for many of the poor folks in these streets. We share a word or two of little importance and sometimes even a smile. We go on with our lives. We are not comfortable with each other, but neither do we hate each other and that’s good.

Do write Robert. I think he will love to hear from you. But write me much, much more, because I adore you so.

Your true friend,
and with all my love and all my heart,
Claire

The music rises as the camera pulls away from CLAIRE and continues through to the last dissolve.

EXT. THE PEACOCK INN

EXT. THE STREETS OF LOWER NEW YORK

EXT. GULLS IN SILHOUETTE OVER THE HARBOR

The End

[Time Line of the events leading to the New York Draft Riots of 1863]

1619
: First Africans brought to North American English colonies as slaves

1775–1783:
The American Revolutionary War

1776:
The Declaration of Independence

1789:
Despite opposition from some Americans, the newly ratified Constitution of the United States accommodates slavery. The importation of slaves is banned as of January 1, 1808, but slavery is still legal.

1827:
Slavery is abolished in New York State

1845–1851:
The Great Irish Famine. More than one million people die of disease and starvation in Ireland, and another million emigrate to the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and elsewhere. Many of the Irish come to New York, where, as poor immigrants, they settle in Lower Manhattan.

November 6, 1860:
Abraham Lincoln is elected President. Many in the slave states see him as pushing toward abolition of slavery in the United States.

December 1860–June 1861:
South Carolina secedes from the United States and is followed over the next few months by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. Later, Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia joined the Confederacy.

February 1861:
The Confederate Government is formed.

April 12, 1861:
The American Civil War begins with a Confederate attack on Fort Sumter.

By January 1863:
As the war rages on, mostly in the Southern states, a steady stream of blacks attach themselves to the Union Army or escape north. While few reach New York City, rumors precede them, and the city is filled with talk of thousands entering the city and competing for the few available jobs.

January 1, 1863:
Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that most slaves in the areas of rebellion are free in the eyes of the federal government.

March 3, 1863:
Lincoln signs the first conscription act in U.S. history, authorizing the president to draft “all
able-bodied male citizens of the United States, and persons of foreign birth who shall have declared on oath their intention to become citizens…between the ages of twenty and forty-five years….” A later section of this law stated “That any person drafted…may…furnish an acceptable substitute to take his place in the draft; or he may pay…such a sum, not exceeding three hundred dollars…for the procuration of such substitute.”

July 1–3, 1863:
Battle of Gettysburg. In this bloodiest battle of the Civil War, the tide of the war turns in favor of the Union. Lincoln decides that it would be a good time to enact the conscription law he felt was necessary. Several New York regiments are at Gettysburg.

July 11, 1863:
First draft drawing occurs in New York City, without incident. The provision of the draft allowing draftees to be exempted by providing a substitute or paying $300 was particularly galling to the poor Irish.

Monday, July 13, 1863:
Second draft drawing occurs in New York City. A crowd, led by a company of volunteer firemen and consisting largely of poor Irish immigrants, attacks the Provost Marshal’s Office. As the violence spreads, blacks and property became targets. The Colored Orphan Asylum is burned down.

Tuesday, July 14, 1863:
Rioters return to the streets and
the violence continues. Militia ordered into New York City, including the 74th and 65th National Guard, and the vaunted Seventh Regiment, among others.

Wednesday, July 15, 1863:
Draft is suspended. Violence begins to subside as militias begin to arrive and suppress rioting.

Thursday, July 16, 1863:
More militias arrive. At a final confrontation near Gramercy Park, many rioters die.

April 9, 1865:
General Robert E. Lee surrenders to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House.

April 14, 1865:
President Lincoln is shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre and dies the next morning.

May 1865:
American Civil War ends. Remaining Confederate forces surrender, and the United States is reunited.

December 6, 1865:
Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, abolishing slavery.

July 9, 1868:
Fourteenth Amendment is ratified, conferring citizenship on everyone born or naturalized in the United States.

February 3, 1870:
The Fifteenth Amendment is ratified, conferring voting rights without regard to race, color, or previous servitude. Gender is not mentioned.

[Author’s Note]

It was the bloodiest civil disturbance in American history. Four terrible days in July of 1863 that would leave hundreds dead and injured and forever change the face of New York City. How could this happen in the largest city of North America? And what would it mean for not only the participants but also for generations to follow?

The New York City Draft Riots nearly changed the course of American history. They definitely changed the hearts and minds of the people who lived and worked in our nation’s busiest city. But how could so much blood run down the streets of Broadway and Fifth Avenue when the real conflict, the Civil War, was being fought hundreds of miles away?

There is what we study as “history,” and then there is the history behind that history, which we must know to understand what happened. The causes of the New York
City Draft Riots begin in 1619, when the first Africans were brought across the Atlantic as slaves. These unfortunates, captured along the West Coast of Africa, worked in the cotton fields of Georgia and Alabama, in the rice paddies of South Carolina, and in the tobacco fields of Virginia and Kentucky. But they also worked in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam. They built fortifications and houses; they cleared lands. Some managed to earn, or were given, their freedom. Others languished in slavery until their deaths. In 1991 a construction crew found more than four hundred graves of African Americans on Elk Street in Manhattan. That site is now known as the African Burial Ground.

While slavery was primarily a Southern institution, the slave trade and its products offered profits to businesspeople throughout the land, even in New York.

Blacks, free and slave, worked in New York City in many capacities before the Civil War. Some became very successful, while others lived the demeaning life typical of the lowest economic groups. Slavery was not popular in New York, and the state ended it completely in 1827. In that same year, John B. Russwurm and the Reverend Samuel Cornish, two black New York City residents, produced
Freedom’s Journal
, the first newspaper published by African Americans in the United States. Black schools were opened and blacks began to run their own businesses.

By the 1850s most of the blacks in New York were not doing that well, but they were a lot better off than their
brothers in the South, who, enslaved for life, had little chance for a brighter future.

Enter into this precarious economic situation an immigrant population from Europe. The Great Famine in Ireland alone caused a million deaths from disease and starvation. That many more were forced into emigration. Thousands of the Irish soon found themselves in New York City, desperately trying to compete for the few jobs available. They, like some of their black neighbors, lived in miserable conditions. The Five Points region of New York, where many of the Irish poor lived, was a dangerous and unforgiving area where people died easily and hope was scarce.

The Civil War brought a new perspective to the inhabitants of Lower Manhattan. For the blacks it meant a chance that their brothers and sisters in the South might soon be free. But for the Irish it meant that a newly freed population would now be competing for the same jobs that they so desperately longed for.

President Abraham Lincoln wanted more soldiers to fight for the Union. In March 1863, Congress gave him the authority to call a draft. Despite the Union Army’s need for more men, Lincoln was hesitant because of the unpopularity of the war. But in the beginning of July 1863, Union forces turned back a determined Confederate attack in a place called Gettysburg. This, Lincoln figured, was a safe time to use the draft.

The Irish immigrants in New York City had already
been bombarded with rumors of blacks ready to enter the city and take away their jobs. Despite Lincoln’s statements that the war was about preserving the Union, the Irish felt as if they were being asked to risk their lives simply to free the slaves who would then compete against them. To make matters worse, a provision of the draft said that those drafted could either provide a substitute, or buy their way out of the draft for three hundred dollars. Few people in Five Points or similar neighborhoods had anything near that amount of money. The Irish took to the streets.

The targets of Irish rage were the rich, the newspapers that supported the war, and the blacks they saw as their competition. They vented that rage for four terrible days, chasing down and murdering blacks, burning buildings (including the Colored Orphan Asylum), and attacking anyone who looked wealthy.

Gettysburg had been the bloodiest battle of the Civil War. New York supplied the second highest number of soldiers in that battle and had sustained the most casualties. When these battle-weary warriors were called back to New York City to put down the rioters, they did it with a shocking brutality, often using automatic weapons against unarmed civilians. When the riots ended, the city was in shock.

But what about the Irish and blacks who had befriended one another and worked together? How about the families who were part Irish and part black? What would the effect be on them? How would they reconcile their differences?

The aftermath of the New York City Draft Riots would
be far reaching. Many blacks left the city, never to return. Families were broken, and many neighborhoods forever changed. What happened in New York City during that one hot week would be a precursor to American history for years to come.

President Abraham Lincoln

The neighborhood Five Points, New York City

This letter from Helen M. Anderson, a slaveholder, is being sent to Lemuel Jackson Bowden, who was serving as a Virginia senator under the auspices of the Unionist Party. Miss Anderson complains that her slaves, freed by the Union Army, are being insolent and taunting her with their preparations to go to New York.