The Sun.
London, England, 1863-08-01 00:00:00

THE NEW YORK RIOTS.

(From a Correspondent.)

NEW YORK, July 17.

How shall I begin ? What is passing at this
xnoment before my eyes is of so strange, and yet so
tragic a nature ; it comes so, suddenly- upon me,
,and I arrive so much too late• to ,be able to trace
the effects up to their causes that I hardly know
from what point my narrative should take its start.
On Saturday, I am told, nothing could be more
calm than the city of New York ; the labours of
the week closed in the midst of the most perfect
security—nay, of general popular exultation. New
York had been crammed with " glorious news" to
its heart's content; it had read paragraphs full of
"stunning victories," as usual; but this time the
boasting bulletins had lied with less than their
wonted effrontery, and the joyous tidings received
confirmation from day today. Gen. Lee's army had
fallen back routed and demoralised. The Federals
had forced their way down the Mississippi, over-
coming both Vicksburg and Port Hudson. The
South was Leaten at all points; it gave signs of a
:universal collapse. The Unionists had carried the
day. The " Civil War in America" was at an end.
Who could have looked forward to civil war in
New York ?

The immediate pretext for popular collision was,
indeed, at hand. The United States' Government was
bent on the full execution of the Conscription Law.
A country, 1,000,000 out of 20,000,000 of whose
Inhabitants were already under arms, where the
strongest appeal to patriotism and enormous bounties
-failed at last to bring volunteer recruits under the
tandards, was now further to be drained of its man-
hood by a levy en masse, a forced levy. What was
worse, the levy was to fall unequally on the dif-
ferent classes of citizens. In a land of freedom and
equality the son of the poor was to leave his work-
shop and march ; the wealthy man could buy him-
self off with 300 dollars. Conscription in America
was to be as galling as in France or Italy, but it
was less just or equitable than in Prussia. It was
a clear case of " Gold v. Blood."
Conscription, however, was merely the outward
pretext. The real causes lie deeper. The evil had
its roots in the social condition of the American
Commonwealth, and points, perhaps, to the neces-
sity of a thorough modification. The peace party,
the men who have no faith in the prompt or even
eventual subjugation of the South, who with
all their attachment to the Union are convinced of
the impossibility of maintaining it, and who, with-
out having actual sympathies with slavery, think,
however, that the matter must be compromised, and
look with dismay upon wholesale and instant—i.e.,
violent emancipation; who hold, in short, that
either the Union, or else ultra-Abolitionist prin-
ciples, must be given up—these men, consti-
tuting the best class of the " Democrats," did
not in their hearts too sanguinely rejoice in
the late successes of the Federal armies. They
hold the men of Washington in contempt, and little
less than abhorrence, and think that Mr. Lincoln
and his Cabinet, by disregarding the warnings and
encroaching upon the rights of States government,
are bringing the country to an evil pass. In their
heart they already set up the individual State
against the Union. As these men manifested their
disapprobation of the immense scale upon which the
war was carried on, the lower classes, upon whom
fall its heaviest burdens, those who are called to
arms on compulsion,: took np the cry of their
sympathizers who even in unexhausted America
have nothing to lose and all to gain by disorder.
Resistance to the draught broke:out, and it soon de-
generated into a mere love of riot and thirst for
plunder.

The plunder was sufficiently unorganised and
objectless. Two of the six draught offices were
opened on Monday, and in one of them the opera-
tions proceeded with regularity up to 11 o'clock
before noon. The other office, however, was assailed
by the mob, the authorities were overpowered, the
house was burnt down ; the victorious rabble then
proceeded to the first office, where the business of
the day was already completed, broke into the
empty premises, and levelled them also with the
ground by fire.
The draught was thus suspended, and its adver-
saries had gained their point. But, as they were
masters of the field they thought they might as well
disport themselves in it, and all the rest of that
Monday and the following day the most populous
quarters of New York became a frightful scene of
pillage and murder. It does not seem that any of
the banks or the houses of the wealthiests merchants
were attacked or even seriously endangered. The
mob flew at a lower game. It was the ready-made
tailors' shops, dry goods stores, and the like that
tempted their cupidity, and all' their murderous
fury was especially expended upon the negro popu-
lation. There is no doubt now but that this dis-
turbance was at bottom nothing but an Irish riot on
a large scale. All the lists of dead, wounded, and
prisoners hitherto published contain hardly any
other than Irish, and a very few German names.
These are the men whom the draught more inexo-
rably strikes, and no one can wonder at their ani-
mosity against the " 300 dollars men." Nearly the
whole well-to-do American population can easily
buy themselves off if they have a mind so to do,
and the war is to be fed by conscription, as it was
originally by enlistment, out of that immigrant
population whom the sovereign citizens, at whose
mercy they are placed by want, employ to do
their hard and dirty work. Consequently these
immigrants, especially the Irish, rebelled, and their
wrath was directed against the blacks, ostensibly
because the war, as Paddy fancied, was undertaken
for the benefit of the brethern of those very niggers
in the Southern States ; really, however, because tb)
negro is the great competitor of the white man in
the North in all the branches of that hard and dirty
work which the Irish and German immigrant would
fain monopolise and keep up at his own price. The
negro was cudgelled, the negro was stoned, the
negro was hanged, the negro was hunted out ; before
evening on Tuesday there was not one coloured face
to be seen in New York streets. The city was, or
deemed itself, defenceless ; not only the military, in
an old world sense of the word, but even the home
Militia/ was away in Pennsylvania, and the public
force consisted of 2,500 police, a most efficient force,
and in Such few citizens as could be organised into
a kind of re
These mad: civic guard on the spur of the moment.
here and there;
efforts to put down the mob
show themselvies but,. either because they could not
sufficient numbers where they
were most wanted, or
r because ;he lack of proper
plan and direction
is that they were worstedfrustrated their efforts, the fact
and towards in more than one encoun-
ter,the evening
populace had the nupperhand in of Tuesday the
of the city. almost every ward
We anchored in New York harbour on that same
evening, but were not allowed to land until the fol-
lowing morning,. The first hint We received that
King Mob reigned supreme was the
dols. to be paid to the hackney coachmanortien tof 15
us—three of us—from the what to • th:h hotel—a
distance of about one mile and a half, As we drove
up Broadway at about 11 a.m. we were first struck
with the absence of those thousand gay, flaunting
omnibuses which in normal times throng that
famous thoroughfare from morning till ni •
ght.
These, and all private carriages, were off the field,
and the few nnwieldly, unpractical hackney coaches
that were plying about for hire had it, of course, all
their own way, and we perceived that the £3 fare
we had been charged was only the usual tax his
Majesty the Mob levied on his lieges on this the
happy day of bis enthronement.
As I found myself housed in my hotel at last,
and was able to issue forth and commune with
friends and acquaintances. I was astonished at the
awe and consternation with which the whole city
seemed struck. Hardly a man but showed you a
n—desk. Your
revolver in his pocket or on his wri"ti „
friend warned you not to venture out on foot, and
gave the first example by hiring those clumsy hack-
ney carriages on the drivers' own terms. Jewellers
and silversmiths had lot down their iron shutters;
bankers garrisoned and barricaded their counting-
houses. It was not merely the omnibuses, but the
cars also, or tramways in the streets, and the ferry-
boats, that were interfered with by the mob ; busi-
nen was at a standstill, and such provisions as milk,