The New York draft riots of July, 1863, had their origin largely in a fear of black labor competition which possessed the city's, Irish unskilled workers. Upon emancipation, they believed, great numbers of Negroes would cross the Mason-Dixon line, underbid them in the Northern labor market and deprive them of jobs. Similar fears helped produce mass anti-Negro violence in World Wars I and II, also periods of acute labor shortage. The movement of Negro strikebreakers into the East St. Louis, Illinois, area, for example, touched off the demonstrations which occurred there in July, 1917, (1) while the upgrading of a few Negro employees signalled the start of the ugly Philadelphia transit strike of August, 1944.(2)
But the New York draft disturbances remain the bloodiest race riots of American history. Police figures on deaths among the white rioters ranged from 1,200 to 1,500, and it is impossible to know how many bodies of Negro victims of the lynch mobs were borne away by the waters on either side of Manhattan Island.(3) Significantly, the Negro population of the metropolis dropped 20% between 1860 and 1865, declining from 12,472 to 9,945.(4)
This article will seek to answer some of the more important questions bearing upon the white workers' dread of labor competition from contrabands: What predictions as to the consequences of emancipation were made by pro-slavery politicians and journalists between the campaign of 1860 and the sultry week of July 12, 1863? How did abolitionists and Republicans try to allay the fear stirred up in the minds of white workers by opponents of emancipation? Did former slaves within Union lines in the South really wish to go northward at that time? Was there any appreciable migration to the North? In addition, this article will examine the actual, rather than anticipated, labor competition between whites and Negroes in various occupations in New York, with special attention to the crucial longshore field and to the anti-Negro violence which marked the waterfront strikes of 1855 and 1863.(5) For that violence was to be repeated, intensified a thousandfold, in the draft riots immediately following the strikes of 1863....
[The full text of the article is available at <http://lachlan.bluehaze.com.au/books/albon_man/labor_ny_draft_riots_1863/>.] -- Yoshie
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