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

THE NEW YORK RIOTS.

(From a Correspmuklat.)
NEW YORK, 1ir4,17.

How shall I begin ? What is passing at this
moment before nay 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 to day. Gen. Lee's army had
fallen back routed aid demoralised. The Federals
had forced their way down the Mississippi, over-
coming bath Vicksburg and Pert Hudson. The
South. was l.eaten 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 civii 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 Conscri?tion Law.
A country, 1,00,000 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
standards, was now further to be drained of its man-
hood by a levy en mum, 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 he as galling es 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-
tnting 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,3 took np the cry of their
sympathizers who even in unexhansted America
have nothing to lose and all to gain by disorder.
It!sistanc3 to the draught broke:ont, 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 oan 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 wart, 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 :hose very niggers
in the Southern States ; really, however, because tho
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
manuoiltdia worldviaa ay
asenseof the word, but even the home
in Pennsylvania, and the public
force consistedw
of 2,600 police, a most efficient force,
and in each few
kindcitizens as could be organised into
a of
m a raw e
guard on the spur of the moment.
'These
efforts toput down the mob
here and there, b:
either because they could not
show themselves Sufficient numbers where they
were most wanted, or
ftd because the lack of proper
plan and direction_rustra
their efforts, the fact
is that they were Worsted
evening
nere than one encoun-
ter, and towards the
of Tuesday the
populace had the upper hand •
in almost every ward
of the city.
We anchored in New York harbour on that same
evening, but were not allowed to h
l
that
ed
and until the fol-
lowing morning. The first hint We received that
King Mob reigned supreme was the extortion
dole. to be paid to the hackney coachman , of 15
drove
us—three of us—from the wharf to the
_
distance of about one mile and a half. As we drove
up Broadway at about 11 a.m. we were first stew,
with the absence of those thousand gay, flaunting
omnibuses which in normal times throng that
famous thoroughfare from morning till night,
private carriages, were off the field,
These, and all
and the few unwieldly, unpractical hackney Coaches
that were plying about for hire had it, of course, all
their own way, and we perceived that the 13 fare
we had been charged was only the usual tax his
Majesty the Mob levied on his lieges on this the
sappy day of bis enthronement.
As I found myself housed in my hotel at last,
and was able to issue forth end 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
revolver in his pocket or on his writing-desk. Your
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 let 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-
l'eals Was at a standstill, and such provisions as milk,

vegetables, &c., were not to be had at any price,
even at first-rate hotels.

The worst of it all was that one co hardly
make out what was the matter. The p. ople were
evidently panic-struck, mortified, vex c, helpless.
The mob had risen all at once, like on in their
path, and had gained the victory aim t without a
struggle. Something like 80, 90, or even as many
as 150 persons, you were told, had been killed in
the various encounters. Five or six negroes had
been hanged. Several officers of the militia had
fallen. One of them, Col. O'Brien, had rashly fired
his revolver upon a crowd; he had fallen into the
hands of the mob, and had met with a "thousand
deaths" at their hands- Then such a shop had been
sacked, such a house gutted; such a person had been
pounced upon and robbed of his watch in Fifth
Avenue. The whole town was a scene of massacre
and pillage. The evil was great, and the exagge-
ration still greater. The worst feature in the whole
affair was the ominous glare of incendiary fires
lighting up the startled city throughout the night.
Such were the topics of men's talk in New York
on Wednesday. In the evening the police, backed
by the Militia, made a deliberate attack on the mob
at their headquarters in First and Second Avenues,
bet ween Eighteenth and Nineteenth streets, and were
repulsed, although they had two howitzers with
them, and made free use of them. One of the offi-
cers in command, Colonel Jardine, was badly
wounded, and no less than 16 of his men were killed.
The mob have plundered several gunshops, they are
armed with capital rifles, and fire with tolerably
good aim from the windows. Similar encounters
were renewed in the course of the night, and always
with the same results, unfavourable to the public
force. The Militia regiments began to arrive from
the battle-fields in Pennsylvania on that very night
—the 65th, or Buffalo corps, and the 7th, a crack
corps, to which all the young bucks of the New York
city gentry are proud to belong. I saw myself
some of the troops as they came in on Thursday
morning; dirty and ragged they looked, poor fel-
lows, and jaded and halt-killed by the oven-like
atmosphere of the terrible heat which greeted us
here at our landing. Notwithstanding such vast
reinforcements, the troops met with another check
in First Avenue, in a desultory fight between
Seventeenth and Twenty-second street yesterday
morning, and the day closed, I believe, without any
definitive success on their part, although the town
had already resumed its ordinary appearance from
the earliest hour in the morning, and perfect tran-
quillity reigned wherever I moved about in the
evening. The disturbances which had broken out
in all the suburbs and environs of the city were also
everywhere abating, and the communications were
easily re-established.
The murderous and rapacious disposition evinced
by the mob, and the outrages perpetrated by them,
at once weaned from their cause the sympathies of
those who would otherwise have looked with interest
on the movement. Tne " draught insurrection" de-
generated into a mere Irish riot. Party spirit was at
an end at once, and a cry arose of " Everybody for
himself !" Everywhere men stood up in defence of
their own lives and property. I went about onWed-
nesday evening till late after midnight, and saw
banking-houses protected by garrisons of resolute
men, busy with rifle and cannon, and feasting on the
sandwiches and champagne supplied by their liberal
patrons. I visited the Sub-Treasury, the stately
hall of which was turned into a regular fortress
and was being strongly barricaded, with for-
midable looking brass fieldpieces pointed at
the door. The outside look of things was quiet
and orderly ; but inside the buildings every man
was ready for a mortal strife, the hour for which
happily never came. The newspaper offices were
also strongly armed. Some of them, as that
of the New York Times, which had been threat-
ened by the mob, were blazing with gaslights, as if
out of bravado and defiance, The Iribune office
was, I believe, attacked on Tuesday, but the mob
were unable to effect an entrance, and all their fury
was spent on the window of an inoffensive lower
floor. The alarm at the time I speak of—Wednes-
day night—was great, yet the better class of New
Yorkers were cool and collected. Indeed, they
heard and talked of white men killed and black men
hanged with an unconcern, with a sang froid which
curdled my very blood. The indifference of these
people to the logs of human life is surprising, and I
heard black Republicans, men of a meek, inoffensive
disposition in private life, talk of the necessity of
quelling opposition by bloodshed with a glibness
and a gusto worthy of a Caligula or Torquemada.
About 12 o'clock at night I saw the wounded Col.
Jardine conveyed to the St. Nicholas Hotel in Broad-
way, where Governor Seymour was sitting up in
council. The wounded officer was driven up in a
hackney coach, and was probably not very seriously
hurt,

Viewed as a mere thieves' riot, the draught rebel-
lion will, of course, soon be put down. Yet the
New York State and city authorities have taken
great pains to announce the suspension of the draught
and the City Council is deliberating on a grant of
2,500,000 dole. for the relief of the conscripts —i.e.,
to buy off those, or some of those, who cannot muster
300 dole. for their own redemption. The whole affair
of the draught would thus be reduced to a new en-
listment by bounties, and would bring the Conscrip-
tion Law to a dead letter. It would also be no small
bone thrown into the jaws of the barking populace.
But the humane intentions of the New York authori-
ties meet with anything but favour at Washington,
and give no trifling offence to the stern Republicans in
the State itself. The United States' Government, it
is understood, in.>ists on the draught at any price—
the draught, the whole draught, and nothing out
the draught, as mere matter of punctilio, even
should Federal victories render its operations super-
fluous. Altpgether, I see no very good blood spring-
ing up between the rulers of this "Federal State"
of New York and the Federal Government at Wash-
ington. Governor Seymour, who only came up from
Albany, his official residence, on Wednesday, pro-
claimed the city and neighbourhood to be in a
" state of insurrection," thereby thinking he had
taken all the necessary steps for the restoration of
order. But New York is now threatened with " mar-
tial law" from Washington, and people here are dis
posed to question the legality as well as the oppor-
tuneness of a measure which would place this State
at the discretion of the Federal military authorities.
On the whole, this American Union strikes a new-
conler as a rather loose bundle of sticks. There is a
latent but active struggle between State and States
Government—l mean between individual, or muni-
cipal, and Federal Government. A man at the head
of such an empire as New York is not always ready
to attend the behests of a petty functionary whose
immediate jurisdiction extends no further than a
blank city of empty spaces, and a fifty square miles
district. True, the President represents national
sovereignty, and ought to rely on the support of the
men who raised him to power all over the Union and
in New York itself. But partisanship goes through
many phases in a free country, even in the short space
of four years, and the power of the Central Govern-
ment is limited by the power which is also vested in
the Government of the individual States. The
consequences of a clash between these two powers
are beyond most men's calculations. Meanwhile,
there are men in New York who openly protest that
the language and acts of the Central Government
are the very spirit and temper which drove the
outh into rebellion, and would now seem to be try-
iz theto drive the North into like rebellion." Success
South,
, andl the very excesses of the Irish
rioters,
enough to strengthen the hands
of the men of Washingtonit for a time. But the game
is not up yet,
andv
got than turned to
gooord yuisses.sometimes more easily

Ncehamber. Yesterday
JULY 18.
The riot is put down • th
force overawes York.
ehs theT
struggle begins in the coup it --a streets, but the
Was a perfectly quiet day in
the neig.hbour-
shteillpiriel -.
England
sense of a largo militaiy
intentioned rabble. The news frornn
hood is equally reassuring, and in
counties, in Pennsylvania and the NeewaEdPining
States, not only have all incipient disturbance?
easily suppressed, and the rebels ~ squelched:, been
the operations of the draught have proceeded regn:
larly and are now happily completed. The President
has signified his desire that the draught should also
immediately and thoroughly be proceeded with in
New York ; and there seems a disposition on the

part of the authorities at Washington to take the
execution of the Presidential order upon themselves.
The independence of the State of New York is thus
seriously endangered for ti e present; and the
Union party in the city and State are eagerly and
truculently hounding on the Washington Govern-
ment to crush every vestige of local jurisdiction.
The draught is to be enforced, and it is the Presi-
dent alone who has the right and the might to en-
force it. I'he attacks of the Republicans upon
Governor Seymour are violent, even beyond the
limits of American abuse. Seymour himself and
his Democratic party are traduced as the authors of
all this last week's rioting. Their sympathies are
said to be with the elaveowners iu the South, and
with the cutthroats and robbers of the North. They
are banded as the enemies of the Union and the
couhtry, men to bo closely watched and held in
check with a strong hand.

To give you an idea of the instability of public
opinion in this country, I may as well tell you that
no later than Tuesday last, when about landing, I
was assured by the unanimous assertion of all my
American fellow-citizens, most of whom were the
blackest of Republicans, that no man had a better
chance of being the successful candidate for the next.
Presidential election than Governor Seymour, and
that no man better deserved it.

But Governor Seymour is now thought to be
lukewarm in the cause of the war and indifferent to
the interests of the Union ; therefore the conscrip-
tion must be furthered in spite of him, and power
is to be taken from his hand lest he should show
remissness or tenderness in its enforcement.
Yet a man need be neither a rebel nor a traitor
to think that a law of conscription in America was
an unwise measure in itself, and the 300 dol. clause
an iniquitous disposition. Aman need be no enemy of
his country for h ;Ming that an army of one million
combatants ought to be equal to any task, and that
it were better to think of rendering it efficient by
discipline than of enfeebling it by the introduction
of raw and reluctant recruits. That the law, how-
ever improvident and impolitic, must be executed,
may be true, but a man may be the very best of
patriots, and yet be glad of any means by which
the enforcement of the law may be effected with
forbearance and humanity.
American party spirit, however, is not amenable
to such considerations. The Republicans wish to
" go the whole hog' in this matter of the draught,
and the New Yorkers of that hue do not hesitate to
crush their hitherto popular Governor in the attain-
ment of their object. Seymour can at this present
moment reckon on no very extensive support. The
City Council, almost to a man, and The wealthiest
people are with him ; but nearly the whole State
Legislature, the public functionaries, and the middle
classes would sell their very birthright for the
Union, and for anything they may fancy conducive
to its maintenance.

It will not do, however, for the prevailing party
to rely too sanguinely on their success. There is
disaffection among the soldiers, I am told; the
Militia regiments which were summoned in haste
from Pennsylvania were ready and eager enough to
put down a mere thieves' riot; but they protest
they will not fight for the draught, and will not be
brought into collision with their countrymen on
that score.