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The New York City Draft Riots: Their Significance for American Society and Politics in the Age of the Civil War (Paperback)

~ (Author) "On Friday, July 17, 1863, the last day of the draft riots, Peace Democrat Congressman and newspaper editor James Brooks published a brief article entitled..." (more)
Key Phrases: midweek rioters, loyal nationalism, black riot victims, New York, Union League Club, Young America (more...)
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  • This item: The New York City Draft Riots: Their Significance for American Society and Politics in the Age of the Civil War by Iver Bernstein

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Editorial Reviews

Review


"An original work in the historiography of Civil War America and labor history, and also synthesizes much of the current historical research. It stimulates and provokes. Most important, it recaptures much of the world we have lost."--New York Times Book Review
"Especially appealing....When Bernstein crosses historical genres, it's an almost synesthetic pleasure....The New York City Draft Riots establishes a world as it was lived in. Its outline shows clearly against the backdrop of our own populist racism, in what is still the unreconstructed North."--Village Voice
"An outstanding piece of social, economic, and political history, suggesting the benefits of integrating new and older historiography, the book also illustrates a pitfall or two that historians may wish to keep in mind.....An excellent, revelatory book....His writing is clear and his immense research shines on every page."--Reviews in American History
"Detailed and sophisticated....An impressive book. Bernstein displays ingenuity in conceiving of the riots as something more than an abrupt, momentary episode, and he has dug deep to locate sources....Clearly the new interpretive authority."--Georgia Historical Quarterly
"Not since David Montgomery's Beyond Equality (1967) has the relationship between Civil War politics and the social history of the urban-industrial North been explored so successfully as in this study."--Journal of American History


Product Description

For five days in July 1863, at the height of the Civil War, New York City was under siege. Angry rioters burned draft offices, closed factories, destroyed railroad tracks and telegraph lines, and hunted policemen and soldiers. Before long, the rioters turned their murderous wrath against the black community. In the end, at least 105 people were killed, making the draft riots the most violent insurrection in American history.

In this vividly written book, Iver Bernstein tells the compelling story of the New York City draft riots. He details how what began as a demonstration against the first federal draft soon expanded into a sweeping assault against the local institutions and personnel of Abraham Lincoln's Republican Party as well as a grotesque race riot. Bernstein identifies participants, dynamics, causes and consequences, and demonstrates that the "winners" and "losers" of the July 1863 crisis were anything but clear, even after five regiments rushed north from Gettysburg restored order. In a tour de force of historical detection, Bernstein shows that to evaluate the significance of the riots we must enter the minds and experiences of a cast of characters--Irish and German immigrant workers, Wall Street businessmen who frantically debated whether to declare martial law, nervous politicians in Washington and at City Hall. Along the way, he offers new perspectives on a wide range of topics: Civil War society and politics, patterns of race, ethnic and class relations, the rise of organized labor, styles of leadership, philanthropy and reform, strains of individualism, and the rise of machine politics in Boss Tweed's Tammany regime.

An in-depth study of one of the most troubling and least understood crises in American history, The New York City Draft Riots is the first book to reveal the broader political and historical context--the complex of social, cultural and political relations--that made the bloody events of July 1863 possible.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

  • Paperback: 384 pages
  • Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (October 10, 1991)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0195071301
  • ISBN-13: 978-0195071306
  • Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 2.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #817,057 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Iver Bernstein
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Surprise Me!
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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
On Friday, July 17, 1863, the last day of the draft riots, Peace Democrat Congressman and newspaper editor James Brooks published a brief article entitled "The Riot-Its History." Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
midweek rioters, loyal nationalism, black riot victims, draft rioters, journeymen bricklayers, sweatshop district, uptown wards, riot week, black workingmen, municipal expansion, exemption fund, federal conscription, draft riots, street pavers, white workingmen, small bosses, bad workmen, woodworking trades, white rioters, bloody week, furniture workers, racial murders
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, Union League Club, Young America, East Side, Tammany Hall, Industrial Congress, Workingmen's Union, United States, Fernando Wood, Irish Catholic, August Belmont, Central Park, Wall Street, Horace Greeley, East River, Astor Place, City Hall, Union Leaguers, Customs House, John Roach, Ninth District, Tweed Ring, Common Council, Upper West Side, Peace Democrat
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The New York City Draft Riots: Their Significance for American Society and Politics in the Age of the Civil War
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Race & Class In Civil War America, January 15, 2005
By Chimonsho (Turtle Island) - See all my reviews
This is a fine, insightful study of the New York "Draft" Riots, which were about far more than military conscription. It does have some problems of organization and repetition, as others note. Overly harsh critics probably assume that this is a conventional, event-oriented tale of the riots themselves, but Bernstein's forte is analysis rather than narrative. He explains their context, causes and importance for understanding urban tensions in an era of intense stuggles over freedom, industrialization, work, wages, immigration, assimilation and exclusion. He tells the story well enough (though a coherent chronology is hard to locate), focusing on what it reveals about a period of fundamental change in US history. See also T. Anbinder, "Five Points;" N. Ignatiev, "How the Irish Became White;" and the hoary tome by H. Asbury, "Gangs of New York."
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19 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Editor? Hello, Editor?, December 22, 2003
This review is from: The New York City Draft Riots: Their Significance for American Society and Politics in the Age of the Civil War (Hardcover)
If you're looking for descriptive battle sequences of the three-day riot which rocked New York City in July of 1863, this is NOT the book to read. Carefully (and thankfully) avoiding the sensationalism that often accompanies discussions of these draft riots, this book was one of the first to identify and discuss the causes (political, social, economic, racial, etc.) that led up to this insurgence. And, for this, Mr. Bernstein has done a more than admirable job.

However, and as the other reviewer mentions, the book suffers--really suffers--from a good deal of repetition and a haphazard presentation of statistics and other data. Not that the stats don't belong--they absolutely do--I just wish they had been more smoothly incorporated. This is why the title to this review asks where Mr. Bernstein's editor was. Any decent editor could have made this a more engaging text. It could and should maintain its scholarly style, but it doesn't have to be as dry, distant and self-referring as it is now.

My only other critique: Similar riots exploded in Brooklyn during those same days, but little mention is made of that. The reasons for those riots weren't exactly the same. A comparison of the two uprisings would have been interesting. Still, this is a well-researched book but it should only be read for research purposes.

Rocco Dormarunno, author of The Five Points

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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Not Gangs of New York, April 21, 2009
This review is from: The New York City Draft Riots: Their Significance for American Society and Politics in the Age of the Civil War (Paperback)
A mediocre read, this author did a fair and to average job in explaining the New York "Draft" Riots, and does at least hit the mark on the fact they were about far more than the draft. This book is somewhat mixed up organizationally; it is also repetitive. I agree with one other reviewer, that the overly harsh critics probably assume that this is a conventional, event-oriented tale of the riots themselves; Mr. Bernstein's forte is analysis rather than narrative. Bernstein explains in his repetitive manner the causes of these urban tensions in an already explosive era of ongoing war were the additional stresses of industrialization, work conditions, wages, immigration, and problems of assimilation. The Irish in particular, were facing harsh discrimination and outright hatred from many groups in New York at the time, over all these issues. A fair to average book, but this is not "Gangs of New York."
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars Unbelievably Boring
If you want to read about the New York City draft riots, do not read this book. As other reviewers have stated the book draggs on and is rediculously repetitive. Read more
Published on June 14, 2004 by T. Trubac

1.0 out of 5 stars Why I Hated History in College as Well as High School
I will make this short and to the point. In my later years I've grown to love reading history. This book reminded me of why I hated it in school. Read more
Published on November 18, 2003

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