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

by Barnet Schecter

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.

Genres: History, Civil War, Nonfiction, American History, New York, Politics, American Civil War

448 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Barnet Schecter is an independent historian, He holds a B.A., magna cum laude, from Yale University and an M.F.A. from Queens College, CUNY.

Reviews

[Russ · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first learned about the New York Draft Riots of 1863 in the movie Gangs of New York. I found the topic interesting and wanted to learn more, so years later I have read this book about the event. As expected, there was a whole lot more going on than what was portrayed in the movie.

I have also recently been learning more about the U.S. Civil War, so reading about the Draft Riots is timely. The book approaches the War from a social and political point of view. I learned a lot about the social conditions during the War, and how the average working man felt about things. Just like today, the Civil War era was a time of great change, and society needed to figure out what direction was best to take.

I enjoyed all the background information about the politics of the time and how the Republicans and Democrats fought each other in the newspapers and halls of government just as the soldiers were fighting each other on the battlefields.

This book really let me in on how much racism there was during the Civil War period. As much as we like to think that the Confederacy was pro-slavery and union was abolitionist, things were much more complicated in reality. Abolitionists were seen as radical by some and were routinely criticized.

As for the riots themselves, there are heroes and villains, and many acts of vicious cruelty. Once again, things aren't as easy as Irish vs. African. The rioters were actually only a small segment of the overall Irish population, and in many cases were misled by inaccurate information from those who would use them for their own gain.

The draft riots were very important in U.S. history and had far-reaching implications. I found it enjoyable to learn more about them and how they fit in with everything else that was going on in the late 1800s in America.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book ties together the causes, motives, and back door dealings, behind the riots. Gives an excellent account of the riots and what free African Americans, and the people trying to help them went through. Very scary episode in our history that gets overlooked. Well done..

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Devil's Own Work covers the period in the Civil War when violent protests broke out in New York City and other places in response to the draft --probably directed by the Copperhead underground, who pit the poor Irish immigrants against the black people, in hopes of weakening the Union war effort. The New York City police of the era, the Metropolitans, were generally not effective in breaking up the riots or in preventing the fires or lynchings that broke out.
It was left to a regiment of New York Union army to finally put down the rioting.
Interesting descriptions of the involvement of Horace Greeley, who was a target of the rioters for supporting the war, and who risked his life to go to work every day amid the violent protests outside the doors of the New Yorker, an influential weekly newspaper that carried his impassioned editorials.
The riots lasted about a week but had far-reaching effects. Whereas before the riots, blacks had lived in scattered areas of the city, afterwards they tended to clump together in Harlem, seeking safety in sticking together in one neighborhood. If affected the political alignment of the Democratic and Republican constituencies, and was just about the death knell of the Tweed machine. Southern blacks -- in this era before the great Northern migration -- migrated to Oklahoma and Arkansas for agricultural jobs. It exposed the divide between the classes in America -- as it was possibly the first time that the class war was exploited for political purposes. And it inevitably affected the success or lack of it in the Reconstruction of the South economically and socially as an egalitarian society. It seemed like the war was fought for nothing when injustices were allowed to prevail and the black people were pushed back into a state of subjugation.

[Robin Ray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading The Devil's Own Work in combination with Eric Foner's Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad brings fresh light to New York's dirty, self-serving politics in the years before and during the Civil War. The business interests there had a tremendous stake in maintaining the status quo in the South, and their newspaper mouthpieces goaded recent immigrants into a pitch of racist violence during the Draft Riots. Schecter deserves great credit for this illuminating piece of research. I especially appreciated his Walking Tour appendix, listing places affected by the riots and otherwise mentioned in the book. I'll have it in hand next time I visit New York.

[Jessica Jewett · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd recommend this book to those interested in the political maneuvers behind, during, and after the draft riots. I took off one star because it was very broadly written and I prefer more personal accounts by the average people who witness historical events. The moral of the book is state politics were then and always will be corrupt. Average people are pawns in political games.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a history basically of the New York City draft riot of 1863, with sections before and afterward to track the different threads of the main forces involved: black abolition and Democratic/Irish immigrant opposition to it. Much of the narrative I have read in other histories of the riot, but that is inevitable with such a famous event. There are only so many known facts from the period. Good writing, and if you don't know anything about the topic, this is a solid introduction.

[Jay Atwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Informative and well researched but poorly organized. One would expect the thesis to be given up front and used as an organizing principle but this author chose to present things chronologically and give his thesis in the final chapter. Regardless of his expertise I'm not sure I'd want this author as the professor in a class...

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Was a good book but bogged down a bit. I am surprised these crazy Draft Riots do not get more play, this was a crazy happenstance.

[Ed · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was interested in Northern support for the Confederacy. It was bad enough that non-slave-owners fought for the South, but why would Northerners support slavery. Racism, of course! I still find the unquestioning racism of the nineteenth century hard to understand, but this book adds a much more interesting story to that of racism. the Draft riots in New York involved poor Irish immigrants who feared job competition from free blacks and who felt that the draft law again favored the rich. That much over simplifies the story. Schecter tells it in great detail. Using letters and court transcripts he gives a very personal feel to the vicious murder of innocent blacks. Using newspapers he captures the rhetoric of the times. He adds in accounts of the battles being fought and the national political scene. i was somewhat exhausted by the time I finished and i skipped the last three chapters where he carries the story into reconstruction. I'll leave that for another day. For now I can say that i have a much better understanding of the position of the Irish Catholics in New York during the war. I also have a more complex view of the Protestant nativist abolitionists.

[Drew · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book covers a little known piece of Civil War history. Focusing primarily on the four-day long draft riots that plagued New York City in July of 1863, this book brings light to the internal challenges that faced Lincoln's government in trying to reunite the nation. As this book shows, racism and racial violence were not confined to any one region of the US. This book really dismisses the myth of the "good" north fighting against the "bad" south because they all saw the evils of slavery: far from this simple.

[Heather G]

Very informative

This book was very informative and the facts were very well written. The editing for the Kindle edition needed work, the first word was missing or misspelled in every chapter, along with other spelling errors. There was also no question of Schecter's political leanings, so impartial he was not. But given the lack of material out there on the Civil War Draft Riots it certainly was educational.

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting, found out a lot about NYC, and about some people streets in Yonkers were named after. Did anyone know how close NYC was to seceding from the State, and then the Union to join the Confederacy.

[Cleopatra1074 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book,If you have an interest in this time period its a very informative book, tells alot about america at this time.