The Devil's Own Work

by Barnet Schecter

  UPPER WEST SIDE/HARLEM/WASHINGTON HEIGHTS: On Central Park West at Seventy-seventh Street, the New-York Historical Society's Henry Luce III Center for the Study of American Culture displays artifacts from the Civil War era, including a draft wheel, from which names of conscripts were drawn during the lottery. Civil War monuments in or near Riverside Park include the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument at 89th Street; an equestrian statue of the German American general Franz Sigel at 106th Street and Riverside Drive; and the General Grant National Memorial at 120th Street, the largest mausoleum in North America, which contains the tomb of Ulysses S. Grant and his wife, Julia. On the edge of Morningside Park at Morningside Drive and 116th Street, a small monument honors Carl Schurz, a German American, senator, and leader of the Liberal Republican revolt against Grant in the election of 1872. (He is also commemorated by Carl Schurz Park at the foot of East 89th Street, the site of Gracie Mansion). St. Philip's Church now stands at 204 West 134th Street. Fernando Wood's grave is in the uptown Trinity Cemetery at 153rd Street and Broadway. Bennett Park, on Fort Washington Avenue and 183rd Street, was named for James Gordon Bennett, the founder and editor of the New York Herald.

  BROOKLYN

  Points of interest include the Harbor Defense Museum at Fort Hamilton and Civil War-era cannons on the grounds; the Monitor Museum in Greenpoint, commemorating the ironclad that was built and launched here; the Domino sugar plant from the 1850s in Williamsburg; nineteenth-century industrial buildings on Water Street in DUMBO, Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass; Civil War-era factory buildings in Red Hook, now converted into art galleries; the remains of the Atlantic and Erie Basins, where draft rioters burned the grain elevators; houses from the 1830s and 1840s and a firehouse from 1855 in the Vinegar Hill neighborhood ("Irish Town") next to the Brooklyn Navy Yard.2

  The Historic Hunterfly Road Houses in Crown Heights were once part of Weeksville, a settlement of free blacks founded by James Weeks in 1838. In 1863, Weeksville became a haven for black refugees fleeing the draft riots in Manhattan. Green-Wood Cemetery contains the graves of some four thousand Civil War soldiers and sailors from both sides of the conflict, including monuments to sixteen Union generals and two Confederate generals. Also in these 478 acres are the grave sites of prominent New Yorkers of the period, including Horace Greeley, Henry Raymond (founder and editor of the New York Times), the abolitionists James and Abby Gibbons, and several people killed in the draft riots.

  THE BRONX

  Among the grave sites in Woodlawn Cemetery are those of William E. Dodge, William Havemeyer, and other prominent New Yorkers of the period.3

  STATEN ISLAND

  Points of interest include the graveyard at Sandy Ground, a free-black settlement, and Historic Richmond Town, which hosts an annual reenactment of incidents from the draft riots that occurred on Staten Island.4

  QUEENS

  A church in a parking lot in downtown Flushing is the remnant of a free-black settlement.5 Cypress Hills Cemetery contains the graves of numerous Confederate prisoners who were buried alongside Union veterans. Calvary Cemetery has a monument to the Irish Sixty-ninth Regiment, and the grave sites of General Michael Corcoran and Sergeant Peter Welsh, as well as other Irish American veterans. Lutheran All Faiths Cemetery, among others, also has Civil War veterans' graves.

  NASSAU COUNTY

  Old Bethpage Village Restoration, near Farmingdale, Long Island, has an annual reenactment of the draft riots that took place in the town of Jamaica.

  Notes

  ABBREVIATIONS

  MACNY Municipal Archives of the City of New York

  N-YHS New-York Historical Society

  NYPL New York Public Library

  PROLOGUE: "WE HAVE NOT ONE DEVIL, BUT MANY TO CONTEND WITH"

  1. Ruffin, Diary, 3:70; Geary, We Need Men, p. 105; New York Tribune, July 14-18, 1863.

  2. Ruffin, Diary, 3:71; McPherson, Battle Cry, p. 665.

  3. Ruffin, Diary, 3:71 and l:xxxix—xl; Anticipations of the Future, pp. 285-312, 327-42.

  4. Cook, Armies of the Streets, p. xi; Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, p. 866; Kinchen, Confederate Operations, pp. 20-21.

  5. Times, July 16, 1863.

  6. Ibid.

  7. Official death toll: Cook, pp. 193-95, 213-18; Report of the Committee of Merchants, p. 7.

  8. Strong, Diary of the Civil War, p. 337. According to Strong, he suggested to Mayor Opdyke that citizen volunteers be enlisted, and the mayor replied that such a step would turn the riots into a "civil war."

  9. New York Daily News, July 6, 1863; Mushkat, Fernando Wood, p. 138; Harper's Weekly, August 1, 1863; Strong, pp. 333, 337; Bernstein, Draft Riots, pp. 8-11, 56-57.

  10. Introduction by McCune Smith in Garnet, A Memorial Discourse, p. 56; New York World, July 8, 1863; Hale, Horace Greeley, pp. 257-61, 271-74.

  11. Emerson, Abby Gibbons, 1:385; Foner, Reconstruction, p. 585; Quigley, Second Founding, p. xiv.

  12. Bernstein, p. 3; McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 500, 558-59; Daily News, July 13, 1863.

  13. Foner, pp. xxv, 585; McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 559-60 and Ordeal, p. 497; Mushkat, The Reconstruction, pp. 27-28.

  14. Harris, In the Shadow of Slavery, pp. 189-90; Mushkat, The Reconstruction, p. 28; Bernstein, p. 56; Ackerman, Boss Tweed, pp. 11-30.

  15. Quigley, pp. xii, 50; Mushkat, The Reconstruction, pp. 10, 12; Foner, pp. 575-83.

  16. Garnet, A Memorial Discourse, pp. 69-91; Mushkat, The Reconstruction, pp. 130, 236; Nast, cartoons in Harper's Weekly, Sept. 5 and Oct. 10, 1868.

  17. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction, p. 18; Trelease, White Terror, p. 419.

  18. Morris, Fraud, p. 3; Foner, pp. 575-83; Woodward, Reunion and Reaction, pp. xi, xii, 12.

  19. Woodward, pp. xi, xii; Slavery and the Making of America: The Challenge of Freedom, PBS film; "A Lynching Memorial Unveiled in Duluth," New York Times editorial, Dec. 5, 2003.

  20. Allen, The Tiger, pp. x-xi; "scientific charity," including footnote: Bernstein, pp. 68-69.

  21. Schlesinger, Jackson, pp. 490-91; Foner, pp. 28-29, 156-57, 585.

  22. Stoddard, Volcano, pp. 4, 316-33; Foner, pp. 514, 583-86; Homberger, Life of a City, p. 196; Ottley and Weatherby, eds., The Negro in New York, p. xvi (preface by James Baldwin).

  23. Lowenfels, ed., Walt Whitman's Civil War, p. 141; Anbinder, Five Points, p. 155.

  24. "Celtic devils" quoted in Spann, "Union Green," p. 205; Tribune, July 14, 1863.

  25. Daly, Diary, p. 179; Lee, Discontent in New York, p. 102.

  26. Daly, pp. 182-83; Emerson, Abby Gibbons, 1:385.

  27. Garnet, p. 73; Foner, p. 232. Next paragraph: Burrows and Wallace, pp. 785, 877.

  I. "THE REBEL HORDE HAD INVADED PENNSYLVANIA IN FORCE"

  1. Lee, The Wartime Papers of Robert E. Lee, p. 515; McPherson, Battle Cry, p. 648; Swinton, Seventh Regiment, pp. 292-93; Sears, Gettysburg, pp. 12, 13, 15.

  2. McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 647, 649; Swinton, p. 293; Herald, July 10, 1863; Delafield, Letterpress Copybook, pp. 375-80.

  3. Tribune, June 30 and July 7, 1863; McPherson, Battle Cry, p. 494n.

  4. McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 646-47, 635.

  5. Sears, pp. xiii, 2, 15; McPherson, Battle Cry, p. 647.

  6. Lee, Papers, pp. 507—9; Sears, pp. 76-77; Stevens, 1863, p. 231; Herald, July 10, 1863; McPherson, Battle Cry, p. 650.

  7. Sears, p. 14; Lee, Papers, pp. 434-35; Stevens, p. 107.

  8. Geary, pp. 103-5; Bernstein, pp. 8-9; Burrows and Wallace, pp. 865-66; Ruffin, Diary, 1:222, 229 and 3:71.

  9. Quoted in Spann, Gotham at War, p. 10.

  10. Ruffin, Diary, l:xl.

  11. Sears, p. 51; McPherson, Battle Cry, p. 645; Hale, pp. 243-44; Swinton, p. 292.

  12. Spann, Gotham at War, p. 60; Burrows and Wallace, pp. 881-82.

  13. Nugent, "The Sixty-ninth Regiment at Fredericksburg," p. 198.

  14. McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 572 and 645-47.

  15. Stevens, p. 9; Swinton, p. 292; Grant quoted in Stevens, p. 94; McPherson
, Battle Cry, pp. 645-46.

  16. Swinton, p. 293; McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. vii and 647.

  17. Lockwood, Our Campaign, pp. 15-18; Wingate, Last Campaign, p. 3; Swinton, pp. 292-93; Wall, Horatio Seymour, p. 33; Spann, Gotham at War, p. 97.

  18. Wall, pp. 33-34; Swinton, pp. 294-98.

  19. Wall, p. 33; Delafield, pp. 375-80.

  20. McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 651-52; Stevens, p. 218; footnote: Stevens, p. 174.

  21. McPherson, Battle Cry, p. 652; Stevens, pp. 234-35.

  22. McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 653-54; Stevens, pp. 236-37 and 255; Catton, Never Call Retreat, pp. 178-79.

  23. McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 653-55; Stevens, pp. 255-64; Catton, pp. 180-81.

  24. McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 653-55; Stevens, pp. 255-64; Catton, pp. 181-83.

  25. McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 653-55; Stevens, pp. 255-64; Catton, pp. 183-84.

  26. McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 653-55; Stevens, pp. 255-64; Catton, p. 184.

  27. Quoted in Governor Seymour's "Second Annual Message," Fairchild Collection, N-YHS, typescript.

  28. Opdyke, Documents, p. 264; Spann, Gotham at War, p. 97.

  29. This paragraph and footnote: Spann, Gotham at War, p. 49.

  30. Opdyke, pp. 264 and 292; Geary, pp. 20-21, 104-5; Bernstein, p. 9.

  31. Sandburg, Lincoln: The War Years, 2:362; Evening Post, July 23, 1863.

  32. Wall, p. 31; Stevens, p. 301; Geary, p. 65.

  33. Stevens, p. 301; Spann, Gotham at War, p. 62; McPherson, Battle Cry, p. 818; Yacovone, Freedom's Journey, p. 79.

  34. Geary, pp. 103-5; Bernstein, p. 9.

  35. Kinchen, pp. 15-16; Stevens, p. 301; Catton, p. 170.

  36. Kirk, Heavy Guns and light, pp. 104-5; Asbury, Gangs of New York, pp. 113-14.

  37. McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 656-60; Stevens, pp. 266-76; Catton, pp. 185-86.

  38. Stevens, p. 299; Kinchen, pp. 20-21; quote and details of crossing river: Headley, Confederate Operations, p. 133; Stern, Secret Missions, p. 155.

  39. McPherson, Battle Cry, p. 661; Carhart, Lost Triumph, pp. xii, 2 - 5.

  40. McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 661-64; Stevens, pp. 278-88; Catton, pp. 186-91.

  41. Carhart, pp. xii-xiii, 6.

  42. McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 661-64; Stevens, pp. 278-88; Catton, pp. 186-91.

  43. McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 661-64; Stevens, pp. 278-88.

  44. Strong, p. 328; McCague, Second Rebellion, pp. 4 - 5.

  45. Daily News, July 6, 1863.

  46. Stevens, p. 108.

  47. Wall, p. 28; Bernstein, pp. 7-8.

  48. Lincoln quoted in Richard Posner, "Desperate Times, Desperate Measures," New York Times, August 24, 2003.

  49. Stevens, pp. 108-11.

  50. Burrows and Wallace, p. 888; Bernstein, p. 10; Wall, pp. 32-33. Provost Marshal General James Fry later acknowledged that New York's quota did not give the state credit for the full number of volunteers it had raised: Fry, New York and the Conscription of 1863, p. 9.

  51. Stevens, pp. 109-11.

  52. Quoted in Mcjimsey, Genteel Partisan, pp. 47-48.

  53. Stevens, pp. 110-11.

  54. Mcjimsey, pp. 46-48; Mushkat, Fernando Wood, p. 137; World, June 15, 1863.

  55. Mcjimsey, pp. 46-48; World, June 9, 1863.

  56. Daily News, June 16, 1863.

  57. Ibid.

  58. Ibid., July 6, 1863.

  59. This paragraph and the following account of Lee's retreat: Wingate, pp. 33-38; Stevens, pp. 291-93; Sears, pp. 477-85.

  2. THE BATTLE LINES ARE DRAWN: RACE, CLASS, AND RELIGION

  1. Mcjimsey, p. 49; McCague, pp. 12 and 44; Herald, July 13, 1863.

  2. McCague, pp. 44-46; Tribune, July 7, 1863; John Jay to Stanton, War of the Rebellion, ser. 3, 3:540.

  3. World, July 11, 1863; Wall, pp. 35-36; Andrew Jackson Downing quoted in Burrows and Wallace, p. 790.

  4. Burrows and Wallace, p. 862; Stevens, pp. 123-29.

  5. McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 11-15; Schlesinger, pp. 8-9; Bernstein, pp. 77-81.

  6. McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 23-24; Schlesinger, pp. 8-10. Jefferson quoted in Schlesinger, p. 8.

  7. McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 25-27; Schlesinger, pp. 30-33 and 90-92; Burrows and Wallace, pp. 571-73.

  8. McPherson, Ordeal, pp. 32-33, 498 and Battle Cry, pp. 31 and 88; Ignatiev, Irish Became White, p. 100.

  9. Gilje, Mobocracy, pp. 92, 100, 118-19, 128, 133, 135, 140-41, 176-78, 187-88, 201-2,277,286.

  10. Headley, Great Riots, p. 149; O'Donnell, 1001 Things, pp. 23-26.

  11. Gibson, New York Irish, p. 70; Cogan, "The Irish-American Press," pp. 34-35; Gilje, pp. 129-36; O'Donnell, pp. 24-25.

  12. Burrows and Wallace, pp. 542-44.

  13. Ibid., p. 544; McPherson, Battle Cry, p. 8.

  14. Burrows and Wallace, pp. 544-46.

  15. Ignatiev, pp. v, 69, 76, 87, 100-101, 109-12, 117, 120-21.

  16. Burrows and Wallace, p. 554; Gilje, pp. 159-60; Harris, pp. 5, 97, 118-19; second footnote: Harris, p. 119.

  17. Burrows and Wallace, pp. 553-56; Strong, p. 335; Ignatiev, p. 41.

  18. Burrows and Wallace, pp. 547-48; no black ghettoes: Harris, pp. 7, 75-76 and Freeman, The Free Negro, pp. 165-66.

  19. Burrows and Wallace, pp. 554-55; Five Points and footnote: Anbinder, Five Points, p. 4 and maps.

  20. Quoted in Gibson, p. 15.

  21. Quoted in Freeman, p. 97.

  22. Quoted in Burrows and Wallace, p. 547.

  23. Including footnote: Hewitt, Protest and Progress, preface and pp. xv-xvii and Harris, pp. 34-35, 84.

  24. Burrows and Wallace, p. 543.

  25. Conyngham, Irish Brigade, pp. xiii-xiv; Gilje, p. 146; Harris, pp. 3, 7; footnote: Harris, pp. 3, 7.

  26. Du Bois, p. 18; Harris, p. 174.

  27. Burrows and Wallace, pp. 549-52; Harris, pp. 171-72, 192-95; footnote: Woodson, Negro Migration, p. 2.

  28. Freedom's Journal, October 26, 1827; footnote: Quigley, p. 17.

  29. Burrows and Wallace, pp. 434, 551; Harris, pp. 170, 174-75, 187-88.

  30. Burrows and Wallace, p. 551; Mayer, All on Fire, pp. 313, 327, 445; Harris, pp. 175, 194-97.

  31. Burrows and Wallace, pp. 551-52; Harris, pp. 194-95.

  32. Burrows and Wallace, pp. 571-73; Schlesinger, pp. 126, 143, 90-92.

  33. Burrows and Wallace, pp. 572-73; Schlesinger, pp. 76-79.

  34. Burrows and Wallace, pp. 573-74; Hale, pp. 38-39; Encyclopedia of New York City, p. 164.

  35. Burrows and Wallace, pp. 573-74.

  36. Ibid., pp. 574-75; Schlesinger, pp. 97-98, 100-102.

  37. Burrows and Wallace, pp. 556-57; Harris, pp. 191-97.

  38. Burrows and Wallace, pp. 557-58; Harris, pp. 197-98; Gilje, pp. 162-70.

  39. Burrows and Wallace, pp. 558-59.

  40. Hale, pp. 38-39.

  41. Harris, pp. 198-202; Burrows and Wallace, p. 559.

  42. Burrows and Wallace, pp. 434, 559-60.

  43. Harris, pp. 135-37, 145-54.

  44. Freeman, p. 177; Harris, pp. 145-47.

  45. Freeman, p. 177; Harris, pp. 145-47.

  46. Harris, p. 154, 167; Freeman, pp. 178-79.

  47. Association for the Benefit of Colored Orphans, Seventh Annual Report, pp. 8-9.

  48. Freeman, p. 178; Harris, p. 157; Stauffer, The Black Hearts of Men, pp. 123-24.

  49. Association for the Benefit of Colored Orphans, Seventh Annual Report, p. 6; Harris, p. 157.

  50. Freeman, p. 152.

  51. Stauffer, p. 219.

  52. Ibid., pp. 218-24 and 188.

  53. Schlesinger, pp. 169-70, 192-93,424-26.

  3. HORACE GREELEY AND THE BIRTH OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

  1. Hale, pp. 40-41; Greeley, Recollections, p. 144.

  2. Burrows and Wallace, pp. 611-15.

  3. Greeley, Recollections, p. 145.

  4. Ibid., pp. 145-50; Hale, pp. 37-39; Burrows and Wallace, pp. 768-69.

  5. Greeley, Recollections, pp. 285-87.

  6. Burrows and Wallace,
pp. 620 and 629.

  7. Ibid., pp. 629-31; O'Donnell, p. 32.

  8. Burrows and Wallace, pp. 631-33.

  9. Ibid., pp. 612 and 616.

  10. Ibid., pp. 784-85; Homberger, pp. 44-47. Griscorn quoted in Burrows and Wallace, p. 785.

  11. Burrows and Wallace, pp. 633—34 and 637.

  12. Ibid., pp. 633-35.

  13. Ibid., pp. 636-37.

  14. Ibid., p. 636.

  15. Leland, The First Hundred Years, pp. 3-5.

  16. Burrows and Wallace, pp. 636-38.

  17. McPherson, Battle Cry, p. 130; O'Donnell, pp. 32-43.

  18. O'Donnell, pp. 38, 127-28; Conyngham, pp. xviii-xix.

  19. Burrows and Wallace, pp. 769-73.

  20. McCague, p. 13; Burrows and Wallace, pp. 650-51.

  21. Burn, Three Years Among the Working-Classes, pp. 14 and 120.

  22. Burrows and Wallace, pp. 659, 567-69; Bernstein, p. 168.

  23. McCague, p. 20.

  24. Judson, Mysteries and Miseries of New York, pp. 9-12.

  25. Burrows and Wallace, pp. 761-65; Asbury, pp. 39-41; Gibson, pp. 30-34.

  26. Gibson, pp. 28-29.

  27. Hale, pp. 56-62, 131-33.

  28. Ibid., pp. 132-33; McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 115-16; Lossing, Our Country, 2:1629-30.

  29. Greeley, "Why I Am A Whig," pp. 1-5; Greeley, Recollections, p. 286; Hale, p. 47.

  30. McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 52-54.

  31. Greeley, Recollections, p. 285.

  32. Hale, pp. 140-42.

  33. McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 70-77.

  34. Hale, pp. 143-44 and 156-59.

  35. McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 118-19; Hale, p. 159.

  36. Hale, pp. 159-64. Greeley did not come up with the name on his own. George Henry Evans had spoken of a "Great Republican Party of Progress" eight years earlier, and Alvan Bovay had tried to form a "Republican" party in the West earlier in 1854, appealing for help to Greeley, who turned him down; Greeley asserted, apparently with great acumen, that the moment was not yet ripe (Hale, pp. 164-65).

  37. McPherson, Battle Cry, p. 126; Hale, p. 170.