The Draft Riots
On July 11, 1863, draft officers began drawing names in heavily Democratic New York City, where sentiment against abolition and conscription ran high and racial tensions had reached a boiling point. From July 13 to 17, 1863, New York erupted into four of the bloodiest days of mob violence in United States history. The uprising began with thousands of people foregoing work to demonstrate outside the draft office on Third Avenue. A stone hurled through an office window and the discharge of a pistol turned the demonstration into a riot. Surging into the draft office, the rioters smashed everything, then proceeded to the headquarters of the New York Times and the New York Tribune, and moved on to loot and burn the four-story Colored Orphan Asylum. Hundreds were injured and 105 killed.
On July 11, 1863, draft officers began drawing names in heavily Democratic New York City, where sentiment against abolition and conscription ran high and racial tensions had reached a boiling point. From July 13 to 17, 1863, New York erupted into four of the bloodiest days of mob violence in United States history. The uprising began with thousands of people foregoing work to demonstrate outside the draft office on Third Avenue. A stone hurled through an office window and the discharge of a pistol turned the demonstration into a riot. Surging into the draft office, the rioters smashed everything, then proceeded to the headquarters of the <em>New York Times</em> and the <em>New York Tribune</em>, and moved on to loot and burn the four-story Colored Orphan Asylum. Hundreds were injured and 105 killed.