Martha Derby Perry was stunned when she looked out her upper-floor window into the New York City street below. She was sitting at the bedside of her husband, assistant surgeon John Perry of the 20th Massachusetts Volunteers, as he recovered from a severely fractured leg. Below, she’saw rushing up Lexington Avenue, within a few paces of our house, a great mob of men, women, and children; the men, in red working shirts, looking fairly fiendish as they brandished clubs, threw stones, and fired pistols. Many of the women had babies in their arms, and all of them were completely lawless as they swept on.’

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For five days, from Monday, July 13, until Friday, July 17, 1863, terror reigned in the streets of New York. Armed mobs protesting the first Federal conscription threatened the nation’s manufacturing and commercial center. What began as a demonstration against the draft and Abraham Lincoln’s Republican administration rapidly degenerated into bloody race riots that left at least 105 people dead. The New York City Draft Riots were by far the most violent civil disorder in 19th-century America. The widespread destruction threatened the very foundations of the Union.

The New York City Draft Riots came at a critical point during Lincoln’s efforts to centralize the Federal government’s power. The war was not going well for Lincoln in the spring of 1863. After two years of fighting, the Union Army had shown few signs that it could win the conflict and both sides had suffered enormous casualties. The Union ranks continued to thin due to death and desertion, and many three-year enlistments would soon be up. Volunteers could no longer be counted upon to replenish the ranks.

The War Department concluded that only a draft could supply the necessary manpower. A Federal provost marshal for each congressional district was appointed and empowered to conduct the draft and arrest those refusing to comply. The new law made all men between 20 and 35 and all unmarried men between 35 and 45 liable for military duty. Drafted men who presented an ‘acceptable substitute’ or paid $300 were exempted. This placed the burden of service most heavily on poor whites, who resented the exemption.

For the first time in American history, the Federal government imposed itself directly into the affairs of the working class. The draft act juxtaposed three emotional issues–rich-poor relations, black-white relations and local-federal relations–into one explosive issue. Poor white laborers, many of them recent immigrants to the United States, felt threatened by the possible influx of cheap black labor. Since blacks were not full citizens, they could not be drafted. The rich could afford exemption. Poor whites, with some justice, felt discriminated against, which created an atmosphere that was ripe for revolt.

The draft began as scheduled on Saturday, July 11, and New Yorkers quickly realized that the governor and the Democrats were not going to be able to prevent conscription. Over the weekend of July 11 and 12, working people gathered in saloons, streets and kitchens to discuss their response to the draft lottery, which was scheduled to resume on Monday, July 13. As New York Her-ald Editor James Gordon Bennett later wrote, ‘Those who heard the scattered groups of laborers and mechanics who congregated in different quarters on Saturday evening…might have reasonably argued that a tumult was at hand.’

The Draft Riots began on July 13 between 6 and 7 a.m. Employees of the city’s railroads, shipyards, machine shops and ironworks and hundreds of other laborers failed to show up for work. By 8 o’clock, the workers were streaming up Eighth and Ninth avenues, closing shops, factories and construction sites and urging their workers to join them. The procession congregated in Central Park for a brief meeting, then formed into two columns that marched to the Ninth District provost marshal’s office. They carried ‘NO DRAFT’ placards.

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