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In March 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, the Union government instituted
the first national draft in American history. Northern Democratic papers warned
working-class whites, particularly the urban Irish, that the draft would force
them to fight in a war to free the slaves, who would then move north to take
their jobs and marry their daughters. A series of anti-war riots broke out
during the summer of 1863 in cities across the North. The most serious occurred
in New York City, where huge mobs demolished draft offices, lynched blacks, and
destroyed large sections of the city in four days of rioting. The most notorious
target of the anti-draft and anti-black violence was the Colored Orphan Asylum. Harper’s
Weekly cartoonist Thomas Nast would thereafter associate the burning of the
Colored Orphan Asylum with Irish-Americans and the Democratic party. |
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