The Devil's Own Work: The Civil War Draft Riots and the Fight to Reconstruct America [Paperback]

Barnet Schecter (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 9, 2007

On July 13, 1863, the largest riots in American history broke out on the streets of New York City, nearly destroying in four days the financial, industrial, and commercial hub of the nation. Placing the riots in the context of social tension and reform from the 1840s through the 1870s, Barnet Schecter sheds new light on the Civil War era and on the history of protest and reform in America.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The 1863 draft riots in New York City, the bloodiest in the nation's history, emerge as a microcosm of the convoluted and contradictory politics of the Civil War era in this absorbing study. Historian Schecter (The Battle for New York: The City at the Heart of the American Revolution) pens with a gripping account of the five days of rioting. But he also probes beneath the turmoil to examine the ethnic, religious and class conflicts that made the confrontation so explosive. The rioters, largely working-class Irish Catholics, vented their fury at a draft law that exempted those who could pay $300, at the city's WASP Republican business elite and, inflamed by racist demagoguery, at African-Americans with whom they competed for low-wage jobs and status in America's racial hierarchy.Schecter contends that these dynamics played out nationally in the gradual demise of Reconstruction, thus setting the stage for racial and labor conflict in the century to come. Copiously researched and highlighted with a wealth of period commentary, his lucid narrative colorfully recreates a historical watershed and offers a rich exploration of the Civil War's unfinished business. 40 b&w photos, maps, not seen by PW.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

When fireman Peter Masterson led a mob's attack on a federal draft office, producing the first murders of New York City's 1863 riot, he ignited social tinder that was not exclusive to New York in mid-nineteenth-century America. Historian Schecter backgrounds his thorough account of the tumult with social disorders that frequently occurred elsewhere. To existing social resentments, particularly of Irish immigrants toward economic competition from blacks, the Civil War added its combustibles, for New York was not stoutly Unionist. Peace Democrats dominated its politics; its business class sympathized with the South; and its Copperhead newspapers denounced the war and the draft. These factors affected the course of events that Schecter masterfully narrates. From Masterson's initial incitement to the frenzy's subsidence several days and hundreds of deaths later, the author moves seamlessly between the conflagration on the street and the frantic attempts of authorities to quell the mayhem, and explains the affair's ramifications on the Reconstruction era. An excellent encapsulation of the war's social context in the North. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Walker & Company (January 9, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802715087
• ISBN-13: 978-0802715081
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #865,904 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sobering, bizarre, and true, December 31, 2005

By 

Brian D'Amato "-- author of "In the Court... (Midwest) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Devil's Own Work: The Civil War Draft Riots and the Fight to Reconstruct America (Hardcover)

Well, I'm only on page 110, but I couldn't resist being the first reader reviewer (disclosure: Barnet and I went to school together). This is a highly engaging and detailed account of the urban paroxysm of 1863, but it's more than that. Having chronicled the siege of New York during the Revolutionary War in his first book, Schecter has turned to the second of the city's three major conflagrations (the third being of course 9/11, with the nearly bloodless English victory over the Dutch in 1664 not really counting) and has produced an essential addition to any self-respecting shelf on the world's greatest city.

Many people these days may have formed their main impressions of the riots from the last scenes of Martin Scorsese's film "Gangs of New York." The reality given here is quite different but even more shocking. And although "The Devil's Own Work" is similarly peopled by colorful and often grotesque characters, its mood is if anything more like Luc Sante's books, or like the original "Gangs" by Herbert Asbury. More importantly, Schecter's book is incisive and very readable military history. One of the book's most thoughtful features is a "walking tour" appendix which points out almost all the key locations in the text, some of which are still enough like their 1864 selves to give you a touch of the time-traveler's shiver -- or is it more of a prescient apprehension that events very much like these could easily happen here again?

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Most Interesting Reading, January 29, 2006

By 

Joe Black - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Devil's Own Work: The Civil War Draft Riots and the Fight to Reconstruct America (Hardcover)

This bit of American history was unknown to me until I read this book. That alone made it worthwhile. Why it remains under-reported is unclear, but anyone who wants to expand their knowledge of the Civil War beyond the Ken Burns basics should grab this book.

Especially interesting were the descriptions of living conditions in New York, the rabble-rousing, solicitous nature of democratic politicians and the history of urban violence. Many will find irony in the fact that at that time, the Republican party was considered socially liberal and had the support on New York's newspapers.

The only fault I can find with this book is its sometime tedious treatment of minor events and details of the week-long riot. The reader can easily fix that by skipping pages and quickly get caught up in the flow of events. The immensity of detail makes that easy.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Definitive Book on the Civil War Draft Riots and Aftermath, January 5, 2006

By 

Jerry D. Morelock "Editor in Chief, Armchair ... (Fulton, MO) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Devil's Own Work: The Civil War Draft Riots and the Fight to Reconstruct America (Hardcover)

Barnet Schecter's new book is much more than an in-depth examination of one of America's most deadly civil disturbances, it is a tour de force rendering of the many problems the newly "Re-United" States suffered through during the entire Reconstruction Era (1865-1877).

Schecter's exhaustive look at the real causes behind the July 1863 'Draft' Riots is certain to make this book the definitive account of those several tragic days; yet, he doesn't end his compelling story when authorities finally -- with the help of Federal troops -- brought the violence to a halt on July 17, 1863. Schecter traces the post-riot effects that the economic, racial and political forces unleashed during the riots had on the attempts to 'reconstruct' the South and achieve social justice for all Americans during the Reconstruction Era. The research is impeccable, the narrative is compelling and the entire book is an outstanding 'window on the past,' chronicling an entire era.

Supplementing this 'must-have' book is a delightful appendix, the author's 'Walking Tour Guide to Civil War New York' that readers may use to discover the surprising history of that era still to be found in America's greatest city.

I enthusiastically recommend Barnet Schecter's outstanding new book, as well as his previous book, "The Battle for New York," an outstanding account of Washington's battles from Long Island/Brooklyn to Ft. Washington during the Revolutionary War in 1776. Like "Civil War Draft Riots," Schecter has provided an informative and very interesting walking tour guide for "The Battle for New York" (also available on amazon).