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Your excerpt of the day...
Anna Dickinson's description of the July 1863 draft riots in NYC... quoted from The Civil War Archive edited by Henry Steele Commager and revised and expanded by Erik Brunner
"On the morning of Monday, the thirteenth of July, began this oubreak, unparalleled in atrociities by anythign in American history and equaledonly by the hoorrors of the worsdt days of the French Revolution. Gangs of men and boys, composed of railroad employees , workers in machine shops,, and a vast crowd of those who lived by preying upon others, theives, pimps, professional ruffians, the scum of the city, jailbirds, or those who were running with swift feet to enter the prison doors, began to gather on the corners and in streets and alleys, where they lived; from thence issuing forth, they visited the great establishments on the line of their advance.. comandding their instant close and the companionship of the worksmen- many of them peaceful and orderly men- on pain of the destruction of one and murderous assault upon the other, did not their orders meet with instant compliance.
A body of these, five or six hundred strong, gathered about one of the enrolling offices in the upper part of the city, wherethe draft was quietly proceding, and opened the assault upon it by a shower of clubs, bricks, and paving stones torn from the streets, folling it up by a furious rush into the office. Lists, records, books,, the drafting wheel, every article of furniture or work in the room, was rent in pieces and strewn about the floor or flung into the streets, while the law officers, the newspaper reporters- who are expected to be everywhere- were compelled to make a hasty retreat through on opportune rear exit, accelerated by the curses and blows of the assailants.
A safe in the room, which contained some of the hated recors, was fallen upon by the men, qho strove to wrench open its impregnable lock with their naked hands, and baffled beat them on its iron doors and sides till they were stained with blood, in a mad frenzy of senseless hat and fury., And then, finiding every protable article destroyed- their thirst for ruin growing by the little drink it had had- and believing or rather hopping, that the officers had taken refuge in the upper rooms set fire the house and sttood watching the slow and steady lift of flamesfilling the are demoniac shrieks and yells, while they waited for the prey to escape from some door or window, from the merciless fire to their merciless hands. One of these, who was on the other side of the street, courageously stepped forward and, telling them that they had utterly demolished alll they came to seek, informed them that helpless women and children were in the house and besouught them to extinguish the flames and leave the ruined premises- to disperse or to at least seek some other scene.
By his dress recognizing in him a government official, so far from hearing or heeding his humane appeal, they set upon him with sticks and clubs and beat him till his eyes were blind with blood, and he, bruised and mangled, succeedded in escaping to the handful of police who stood helpless before this howling crew , now increased to thousands. With difficulty and pain the inoffensive tenants escaped from the rapidly spreading fire, which having devoured the house originally lighted, swept across the neighboring buidligns till the whole block stood a mass of buring flames. The firemen came up tardily and reluctantly, many of them of the same class as the miscreants who surrounded them and who cheered at their approach, but either made no attept to perform their duty or so feeble and farcical a one as to bring disgrace upon a service they so generally honor and enoble.
At last, when there was here nothing more to accomplish the mob swollen to a frightful size, including myriods of wretched, drunken women and the half-grown vagabond boys of the pavements, rushed throught the intervening streets, stopping cars and insulting peaceable citizens on their way, to an armory where were manufactured and stored carbines and guns for the government. In anticipation of the attack, this, earlier in the day had been fortified by a police squad capable of coping wit htan ordingary crowd of ruffieans, but as the chaff before fire in the presence of these murderous thousands. Here, as before, the attacke was begun by a rain of missiles gathered from the streets, less fatal, doubtlesss, than more civilized arms, but frightful in the ghastly wounds and injuries they inflicted. Of this no notice was taken by those who were stationed within. It was repeated. At last, finding they were treated with contemptuous silence and that no sign of surrender was offered the crowd swayed back, then forward, in a combined attempt to force the wide entrance to the doors. Heavy hammers and sledges which had been brought from forgeds and workshops, caught up hastily as they gathered the mechanics into their ranks, were used with frightful violence to beat them in at last successfully. The foremost assailants began to climb the stairs but were checked and for the moment driven back by the fire of the officers, who at last had been commanded to resort to their revolvers. A half score fell wounded and one who had been acting in some sort as their leader- a big, brutal Irish ruffian- dropped dead.
The pause was but for an instant. ...."
To Be Continued....
http://history-forums.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1016
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