h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: THE NEW YORK RIOTS 150 YEARS AGO - A87845566
Author: CASSEROLEON - U11049737

Relevant History to 2015.

What do you mean by "balloting"? Normally this word means getting the people to vote. What were they voting for in this case? Or do you mean something else?

Hi Gnomon

I presume that this was very much like the National Lottery and the way that the "draws" are determined e.g. in the FA Cup and other cup competitions.. The word "ballot" applies to the little ball or ticket that people used to use in voting.. and to "vote by ballot" can mean "to draw lots for" something... So I presume that this imposition of compulsory conscription that was not going to be universal but merely based on the drawing of "names out of a hat" raised up all kinds of issues in "the land of the free"...

It would be worth explaining that in the entry, then.

Gnomon

You are probably right. We have lost so many of the meanings of words from back when people had to manage affairs and not leave everything to systems and mechanisms.. I note that that particular meaning of "ballot", while it is still in my 1905 Chambers Dictionary, is missing from the 1978 Longman's.

Great idea, this. I'd like to make a few suggestions:

>>.When the American Civil War broke out the attempt to conscript people in New York resulted in formidable riots which lasted for three days.<<

Okay, that's not exactly true. Conscription in the Union Army didn't start until July, 1863 - a couple of years into the war. In case anybody cares, the Confederacy started their draft in 1862, after the horrendous losses at Shiloh.

>>The "Balloting" started on a Saturday 11th July...<<

You need to say, 11 July 1863.

>>And it is true that, once the American Civil War had been won and lost, the Fe[n]nians claimed that they could now raise an Irish-American army that would go to Ireland and liberate Ireland from British rule.<<

Yes, but that didn't really come about for another 50 years? You might mention failed attempts, though. Somebody once threatened to write an entry on the Fenians' attempted invasion of Canada, but I don't believe it ever got written. However, I did include an excerpt from Mark Twain's newspaper article on the event: at A87797335. Yes, I know he wasn't very serious about it, but he was a humour writer.



There's a wealth of material you could use to enrich this entry. Here are some links to primary sources:

http://chnm.gmu.edu/lostmuseum/nyc/

You might also consider explaining the class issue here. $300 would buy you out of conscription - it was used to hire a 'substitute'. When the mob attacked well-dressed white men, they yelled, 'There goes another $300 man!'

http://www.tenement.org/blog/on-this-day-1863-the-new-york-city-draft-riots/

with this one - I can't believe we didn't have an entry on the Draft Riots before. It's a teaching topic in the US History course.

And, of course, a big feature of that Scorsese movie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKJ_OOKQVrU

About 'ballotting':

I'm gathering the word 'ballot' was merely used to describe the folded pieces of paper with names on them that were chosen by lottery - unlike the 20th-century method of using birthdate numbers.

Here's something I found on that for you:

http://longislandgenealogy.com/Draft/into.html

Hope some of this is useful.

Hi Dmitri

I must confess that this was just a think I put on Facebook this morning particularly in response to a friend's link to something from an African History stream that claimed the worst anti-black race riots for Tuson Oklahamo in 1921.. And I recalled these reports from the London Illustrated News. I gathered that it was 1863 and not at the very start of the conflict. Thanks for that detail.



You wrote "Okay, that's not exactly true. Conscription in the Union Army didn't start until July, 1863 - a couple of years into the war. In case anybody cares, the Confederacy started their draft in 1862, after the horrendous losses at Shiloh"--

Of course you are right this was a new "industrial war" an advance on the French Wars of 1793-1815, and interestingly an article in 1861 had predicted that it would be unwinnable, since if either side won it would only be at the cost of such terrible annihilation that it would be no victory.

>>The "Balloting" started on a Saturday 11th July...<<

You need to say, 11 July 1863.

>>And it is true that, once the American Civil War had been won and lost, the Fe[n]nians claimed that they could now raise an Irish-American army that would go to Ireland and liberate Ireland from British rule.<<
"
"Yes, but that didn't really come about for another 50 years?"


Well my source is a life of Lord Northcliffe who was born in Dublin in July 1865 as Alfred Harmsworth. His father had a decent job there but his mother was so alarmed at the talk of the American Fenians raising this army and bringing civil war to Ireland that she persuaded her husband that he must give up his job and take his family to the English Home Counties.. where she remained an important influence on Alfred for his whole life.. And perhaps encouraged his "war antennae" because there can be little doubt that Northcliffe was not totally wrong in taking the credit for creating a sense of inevitability in the coming conflict between Great Britain and Germany. Perhaps the whole truth about the Belgian Outrages will come out some day.

Thanks for the links.. But I am trying to finish off at the moment a major study called "What on Earth Happened to the American Dream? And why should we care?"

But your mention of "wealth" and "class" in the same breath points to the essential "classlessness" of the USA, not in the sense of having no social stratifications, but on being a Society that just has no "class" and therefore earns very little respect around the world, unlike for example the Greeks..An important reading experience this year was an excellent biography of the great Australian Nobel Laureate Patrick White, who fell in love with Greece and a Greek, on military service in the Second World War.

*******************************


But thanks for your inputs- I will edit accordingly

Cheers Cass

Wrong T city in Oklahoma-

Thanks for this: The Draft of 1863


In 1863 the Union's need for manpower led to the first compulsory draft in U.S. history. While it was intended to "encourage" enlistment, the draft alienated many. Opposition was particularly strong in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Wisconsin, where federal troops had to be called out to enforce compliance with it.
It must be noted that a man who was drafted could buy his way out for $300, about the equivalent of an unskilled laborer's annual income at that time. This feature added to the impression -- strongly held in parts of the Confederacy as well -- that this was a "rich man's war and a poor man's fight."

The most significant resistance to the draft took place in New York City in the summer of 1863. A Democratic Party stronghold, New York had already seen several draft officials killed that year. In July a group of blacks were brought into the city, under police protection, to replace striking Irish longshoremen. At the same time, officials held a lottery drawing for the unpopular draft. The conjunction of the two events led to a four-day riot in which a number of black neighborhoods, draft offices and Protestant churches were destroyed and at least 105 people killed. It was not until several Union regiments arrived from Gettysburg that order could be restored.


From the New York Times Sept 2, 1862. A list of names of .Long Islanders Drafted into the service.
Note: Use the arrow at the top of the page to view Page 2 as well as return to Page 1.
ZOOMING In is possible by right clicking on the page and choosing "zoom-in."
You can also print the page for off line viewing by right clicking and choosing "Print Image."

A Page Filled with Draft Related Articles, opinions and Editorials from the Brooklyn Eagle July 14, 1901 - pdf file




Drafting--How it was Done
The Governors of the States are ordered forthwith, to proceed to furnish their respective quotas of the 300,000 militia called for by the President, and to appoint commandants and designate rendezvous. They are also ordered to cause an enrollment to be made forthwith, by the Assessors of the several counties.

When the enrollment is completed, it is to be filed in the offices of the Sheriffs of the several counties. The Governor is then to appoint a Commissioner for each county to superintend the draft and decide upon exemptions. These cases are specified. Exemptions for physical disability will not be allowed, unless it unfits the claimant for service for a period of more than thirty days, and it must be certified by a Surgeon to be appointed in each county for the purpose. Within ten days of the filing of the lists of enrollment the draft is to be made by the Sheriff of the county, who is to publicly place in a Jury wheel a separately folded ballot for each name on the list; and when they are all in, a person to be appointed by the Commissioners is to draw, blindfolded, a number of ballots, equal to the quota for the county.

Glad to help.

And I'm on board with praising the Greeks - I lived there for five years, myself.

I also agree that the idea of a classless society in the US is ludicrous. It's there, and it's based on money, and it was a very divisive factor during the Civil War - on both sides, where the farmers and working-class people of both Union and Confederacy resented being dragged into a conflict which they viewed as relating more to rich people's concerns. Hence the Draft Riots in New York, and widespread draft dodging and desertion in the South.

Hi Dmitri

Actually one theme that has come up in what I have been writing recently, and that seems very appropriate here, is the umbilical cord between Liverpool and New York from the days when the Sirius beat the Great Western across the Atlantic and made Liverpool the main UK port for transatlantic liners.. This was crucial to the Liverpool "beat" scene which allowed the Beatles to seemingly be ahead of everyone in their essentially positive and Irish-rooted spin on the potential of the Brave New World that the USA was supposed to be leading us towards...A London Illustrated News article from 1861 featured the soup kitchens set up in Lancashire where out of 355,000 people formerly employed in "King Cotton" the Northern Blockade on the South had created a "Cotton Famine" so that there was only work for 40,000. And the Cotton Famine in Lancashire convinced Gladstone of the great moral integrity of the Liverpool/Lancashire workers who supported the Cotton Famine as opposed to the mill owners who resented the British Navy allowing such a violation of "free trade"...Mention of a strike by Irish longshoremen in New York and the bussing in of Black "blacklegs" in 1863 in the build up to these riots would suggest that most of the USA, like most of the world, did not have anything like the English tradition of poor relief being a natural charge on local government...And, though the English tradition had been almost swept away in 1834,the riots in Cheshire the next time there was an economic down-turn and Irish paupers found that they had no free-ticket back to Ireland any more created such a storm that "outdoor relief" was still paid...So I am not sure that the unemployed Lancashire workers really had to strain their superior moral qualities too hard being paid to do nothing for the duration of the war and the blockade; while the wealthy mill owners had to pay their taxes and Poor Rates...Of course one result was a search for alternative supplies most notably in Egypt, where Britain and France were investing heavily in the Suez Canal project, and of course India...This was to mean that emancipation did not serve the African-American former slaves who hoped to grow cotton on a crop-sharing basis and become genuinely free and independent. Cotton like most global commodities suffered a 30% price fall between 1870 and 1914, so, a bit like oil at the moment, all kinds of hopes and dreams were dashed.

Yes, very good point - one of the things that broke the back of the King Cotton phenomenon was the fact that Europe found alternate suppliers during the war. And the price of cotton bottomed out.


Although that did mean that African Americans had to migrate to find opportunities, there were two good effects of this.

1. The cotton planters of the South, who were using 'Black Codes' to try and force African Americans back into condition resembling slavery, had less backing, because there was less profit in it.

2. The South HAD to diversify. And that really helped everybody in the long run.

Sorry, that's off the topic of Draft Riots.

Yes.. But sadly it was not just cotton.. The same phenomenon of the opening up of vast continental land masses through the massive use of venture Capital, especially driven by the same mania of "statism" that lay behind the Union cause [as with the drive for unification in Germany and Italy, and in fact the Russian Empire] reduced the value of Labour and its capacity to compete and earn a living, especially because the rise of those "great powers" led to the Arms Race so that rewards to Capital in order to pay for the big state were a major priority for politics and government... As I pointed out re the race riot in Oklahoma in 1921 this was the era of T.S. Eliot's "Wasteland" when revolutionary nihilism threatened to capitalise on disillusionment over the pre-war establishment and the whole forward march of "Western Civilization"...Hence Fascism, Nazism, Leninism and Stalinism. It is a problem that "we" have not managed to solve a hundred years later, which is why the current crisis in the USA is so important...For part of the whole problem is/was the "diversification" of which you write. From 1773 wage levels were higher in the American colonies than in the UK. Adam Smith attributed this to growth, which was fair enough, though scarcity of Labour relative to Demand was crucial...For so long Capital invested in the USA could earn good profits, as long as the economy was growing, which it was until the USA grew to be a number one economy in many fields of production.. But "diversification" did mean that work became dumbed-down and de-skilled while being better paid, because of the Industrial Scale of the American unions who won a share of the increased profits for their members ...But J.K. Galbraith wrote in 1958 that a mass-consumer goods economy was already showing signs of technological stagnation for the US public were pretty ignorant and little interested in science and technology. Matthew Arnold had written back in the 1870s, when he began to fear the "Americanization" of the world,that "Made in the USA" tended to mean simple, practical, solid and functional, something for "the common man" in the land of the common man, but that would not really be worth anyone importing from the USA, and actually soon fit only for the scrap heap...The except, of course, was the US holiday playground Cuba.. Funny to see coverage recently of the traffic in Cuba still largely made up of those old Fifties US cars with their simple and basic engineering wrapped up in fanciful Brave New World Hollywood styling.

(Re Post 11: actually Southampton has long been the UK's main transatlantic passenger port, not Liverpool. Southampton is closer to London, Southampton Water is deeper and has double tides meaning that the largest ships can dock no matter what the tides are doing without the need for dredging, it is closer to France and from the 1840s the when the London & South West Railway owned the docks and a ferry company, the docks were owned by the railway company meaning transporting passengers and luggage from London to the liners were much easier. That is why the RMS Titanic sailed from Southampton, not Liverpool and why the White Star headquarters were in Southampton. To this day P&O's headquarters are in Southampton (though registered in Bermuda for marriage purposes). Liverpool is a larger cargo port, though.)

<BB<

For marriage purposes?

Cunard asked the Government to change the law to make it easier to conduct shipboard weddings, they said no, so now the ships are registered in Bermuda.

<BB<

(Both Cunard and P&O make a fortune from shipboard weddings...)

<BB<

Hi Bluebottle

What I said was that there "is the umbilical cord between Liverpool and New York from the days when the Sirius beat the Great Western across the Atlantic and made Liverpool the main UK port for transatlantic liners..".. Because of the Post Office contract that came with that victory of the Sirius Liverpool became the base for the Cunard Liners, the first time-tabled steam-shuttling back and forth that became such a feature of the great period of Liverpool and Lancashire: and the German Blitz on Liverpool early on in 1940 was recognition of this "umbilical cord"- that could become an Trans-Atlantic lifeline... And Southampton, had no such comparable connection with North America, not being called into being by the development of British America as was the case of Liverpool [and its sister city of Manchester]. Southampton was a major port for the Mediterranean from before 1848 when that direct maritime link made it possible for the Plague to "hitch a ride" direct to England bringing the Black Death. Was it already one of the Cinque Ports in the eleventh century?

And, as Dmitri has mentioned diversification, the decline of the North of England and its Victorian industries, with a return of the centre of gravity of the UK economy back to Southern England has obviously favoured the longer maritime and Merchant Adventurer tradition of Southampton, while the fact that widespread dereliction and bomb-damage persisted in Liverpool right into the Sixties was closely connected with the "putting all your eggs in one basket" economics favoured by Adam Smith, so that the decline of King Cotton and the competition both from southern ports like Southampton as well as the growth of transatlantic air travel have left those two great West-Coast Cotton Cities- Liverpool and Glasgow- with very similar challenges that have dominated much of their histories throughout the twentieth century and right up to the present day.

Cass

Sorry- obviously that should have been 1348 for the arrival of the Black Death in the Southampton region.

The Cinque Ports are the five main ports of Kent and Sussex, not Hampshire. Southampton was important in the wool trade, but before the coming of the railway was not as important as other ports.

Southampton and the nearby port of Portsmouth were both in the top ten most bombed towns/cities in the country. In fact my wife got a day off work a couple of years ago when they discovered a UXB when they were making a new Tescos supermarket and evacuated the northern end of town. Alas, the city centre still is dominated by tasteless 1950s buildings, but fortunately escaped the brutalist architecture that blighted Pompey.

<BB<