Slavery and four years of war

by Joseph Warren Keifer

The armory on Second Avenue, in which some arms and munitions were stored, although guarded by a squad of men, was soon taken possession of, its contents seized, and the building burned. This was not accomplished until at least five of the mob were killed and many more wounded by the police. In the lower part of the city the assaults of the rioters were mainly upon unoffending colored men.

At least one dozen were brutally murdered, while many more were beaten, and others driven into hiding or from the city. One colored man was caught, kicked, and mauled until life seemed extinct, and then his body was suspended from a tree and a fire kindled beneath it, the heat of which restored him to consciousness.

A demonstration was made against the Tribune newspaper office. The great mob from the vicinity of 46th Street reached the park near this office about five o'clock in the evening, and some of its leaders, breaking down the doors, rushed into the building and commenced destroying its contents, and preparing to burn it. A determined charge of the police, however, drove them out, and the building was saved.

The police, though heroic in their efforts to protect the city, were only partially successful. The draft was suspended. The building on Broadway near 28th Street, in part occupied as an office by Provost-Marshal Marriere, was fired, and the entire block burned. The Bull's Head Hotel on 44th Street was likewise burned to the ground because its proprietor declined to furnish liquor to the mob. The residences of Provost-Marshal Jenkins and Postmaster Wakeman and two brown-stone dwellings on Lexington Avenue were also destroyed by fire, and several members of the police and marines were stoned to death, and others fatally injured.

The Board of Aldermen met and adopted a resolution instructing a committee to report a plan whereby an appropriation could be made to pay the commutation ($300) of such of the poorest citizens as might be conscripted. General Wool, who commanded the Department, issued a call to the discharged returned soldiers to tender their services to the Mayor for the defence of the city. This call met with some response on the following morning, and General Harvey Brown assumed command of the troops in the city. The second day (14th) the riot was even more malignant than on the first. The mob had complete control of the city and spread terror wherever it moved.

Governor Horatio Seymour now reached the city, and promptly issued a proclamation, commanding the rioters to disperse to their homes under penalty of his using all power necessary to restore peace and order. The riot continuing, he, on the same day, issued another proclamation, declaring the city in a state of insurrection, and giving notice that all persons resisting any force called out to quell the insurrection would be liable to the penalties prescribed by law. These proclamations, however, had little effect. The second day was attended with still further atrocities upon negroes. The mob in its brutality regarded neither age, infirmity, nor sex. Whenever and wherever a colored population was found, death was their inexorable fate. Whole neighborhoods inhabited by them were burned out.

On several occasions the small military force collected on the second day met and turned back the rioters by firing ball cartridges. Lieutenant Wood, in command of 150 regular troops from Fort Lafayette, in dispersing about 2000 men assembled in the vicinity of Grand and Pitt Streets, was obliged to fire bullets into them, killing about a score, and wounding many, two children among the number. This mob was dispersed. Citizens organized to defend themselves and the city.

Governor Seymour spoke to an immense gathering from the City Hall steps, and counselled obedience to the law and the constituted authorities. He read a letter to show that he was trying to have the draft suspended, and announced that he had information that it was postponed in the city of New York. This announcement did something to allay the excitement and to prevent a spread of the riot.

Colonel O'Brien, with a detachment of troops, was ordered to disperse a mob in Third Avenue. He was successful in turning it back, but sprained his ankle during the excitement, and stopped in a drug store on 32d Street, while his command passed on. A body of rioters discovering him, surrounded the store and threatened its destruction. He stepped out, and was at once struck senseless, and the crowd fell upon his prostrate form, beating, stamping, and mutilating it. For hours his body was dragged up and down the pavement in the most inhuman manner, after which it was carried to the front of his residence, where, with shouts and jeers, the same treatment was repeated.

The absent militia were hurried home from Pennsylvania, and by the 15th the riot had so far spent itself that many of its leaders had fallen or were taken prisoners, and the mob was broken into fragments and more easily coped with. Mayor Opdyke, in announcing that the riot was substantially at an end, advised voluntary associations to be maintained to assure good order, and thereafter business was cautiously resumed.