"Riots in New York July-Aug '63; northeast corner of Catherine and Cherry Street during the Draft Riots in 1863."

The New York City Draft Riots were a week-long violent action that occurred in Manhattan in the summer of 1863. The impetus for the riots was discontent among working-class populations (largely Irish immigrants) with new laws regarding a draft for the Civil War. The working classes were upset at the wealthy who could buy their way out of conscription for $300.

What began as a discontent regarding the draft, in the days as the first draft numbers were being drawn, quickly devolved into race riots. White mobs attacked black people and their homes, public buildings, the homes of abolitionists, churches, and in a violent conflagration, the Colored Orphan Asylum at 44th Street and Fifth Avenue was burned to the ground.

The police department attempted to quell the violence but had little luck. (The police superintendent John Alexander Kennedy was brutally beaten.) The military eventually arrived and by July 16 (four days after the riot had begun) there were several thousand Federal troops in the city, and news had begun to spread that the draft was being postponed.

The results of the riots were drastic, 120 people killed, more than 2000 injured, hundreds of homes and business damaged and 11 black men lynched. As a result of this violence, many blacks who lived in Manhattan left the city and moved to Brooklyn. The population shift was so dramatic that by 1865, the number of blacks living in Manhattan was lower than it had been in 1820.