"FIVE DAYS OF MAYHEM AND BLOODSHED THAT WOULD BE KNOWN AS THE CIVIL WAR DRAFT RIOTS… IN ALL RIOTERS LYNCHED ELEVEN BLACK MEN": RARE FIRST EDITION OF BARNES' DRAFT RIOTS IN NEW YORK, 1863, AN EXCEPTIONAL COPY IN ORIGINAL WRAPPERS

BARNES, David M. The Draft Riots in New York, July 1863. The Metropolitan Police: Their Services During Riot Week. Their Honorable Record. New York: Baker & Godwin, 1863. Octavo, original printed tan wrappers; pp. (1-5), 6-117, (3).

First edition, issued same year as the deadly July 1863 "Draft Riots," featuring over 100 pages of eyewitness reports and testimony that appeared in the New York Times, together in book form for the first time, a terrifying account of white mobs stoning, lynching, burning and murdering Black victims, including an infant and a nine-year-old boy, destroying over 50 buildings and leaving the city a "noticeably white domain" after many Black New Yorkers fled, an especially rare copy in original wrappers.

Following Lincoln's election, New York pro-slavery forces increasingly stoked the fears of Irish and German workers, asserting that emancipated slaves would flee the South and take their jobs. These fears were heightened by the Emancipation Proclamation and passage of a federal draft law in 1863 that added fuel to the fire. On July 13, 1863, following the first lottery of the draft law, the city erupted as white mobs targeted Blacks who, because they were denied citizenship, were not subject to the draft. With that, "the five days of mayhem and bloodshed that would be known as the Civil War Draft Riots began. The rioters' targets initially included only military and governmental buildings… but by afternoon of the first day… rioters attacked a Black fruit vendor and a nine-year-old boy" before moving to the Colored Orphan Asylum and its over 200 children. A raging mob of thousands "'armed with clubs, brick bats etc. advanced upon the Institution.' The crowd took as much of the bedding, clothing, food and other transportable articles as they could and set fire to the building."

Both Black men and women were attacked, but the mobs singled out men "for special violence. On the waterfront, they hanged William Jones and then burned his body. White dock workers also beat and nearly drowned Charles Jackson, and they beat Jeremiah Robinson to death and threw his body in the river. Rioters also made a sport of mutilating the Black men's bodies, sometimes sexually. A group of white men and boys mortally attacked black sailor William Williams—jumping on his chest, plunging a knife into him, smashing his body with stones—while a crowd of men, women, and children watched. None intervened, and when the mob was done with Williams, they cheered, pledging 'vengeance on every nigger in New York.' A white laborer, George Glass, rousted Black coachman Abraham Franklin from his apartment and dragged him through the streets. A crowd gathered and hanged Franklin from a lamppost as they cheered for Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president… In all, rioters lynched eleven black men over the five days of mayhem…. As Iver Bernstein states, 'For months after the riots the public life of the city became a more noticeably white domain'… by 1865 the Black population had plummeted to just under 10,000, its lowest since 1820" (Harris, In the Shadow of Slavery, 279-88).

This rare first edition of Draft Riots in New York assembles, for the first time together in book form, eyewitness accounts and reports that initially appeared in the New York Times. In the book's preface, Barnes honors the city's police who faced the mobs unaided for two days before being joined by the military. He reports: "Eighteen persons are known to have been killed by the rioters, eleven of whom were colored. The number of buildings burned by the mob… were over 50… the aggregate amount of property destroyed and stolen amounts to upwards of $1,200,000." The book's appendix details the vicious murders of the Black victims, including an infant thrown from a second story window and a seven-year-old boy stoned to death, along with multiple lynchings with bodies set on fire and victims whose mutilated bodies were dragged through the streets. Sabin 3513.

Text very fresh with trace of marginal dampstaining to some early leaves not affecting text, paper spine with expert restoration, minimal edge-wear to fragile wrappers.