Depiction of the Draft Riots in New York City, ca. 1863 (Illustrated London News)
New York City played a huge—and hugely conflicted—role in the Civil War. In the decades leading up to it, the city’s commercial fortune was tied to the international cotton trade, and by extension, to slavery. So the majority of New Yorkers, from dock workers to bank presidents to the politicians they elected, adamantly believed the city's life depended on the continuation of the status quo, including plantation slavery, and opposed any move to end it.
At the same time a highly vocal and visible minority of New York abolitionists, including Horace Greeley, played fundamental roles in the Republican Party and in Lincoln’s election. Still, New Yorkers voted more than 2-to-1 against him in 1860 and again in 1864. They deserted from his army when he issued the Emancipation Proclamation. They erupted in the deadliest riots in U.S. history when he instituted conscription. Afterward, the city fathers set up an entire bureaucracy devoted to keeping New Yorkers out of the army. New Yorkers were among those who colluded with Lincoln's assassin, and with Confederate saboteurs who came to burn the city.
For all their opposition to the war, New Yorkers, being New Yorkers, nevertheless figured out how to make huge profits from it. A whole new class, the "shoddy aristocracy," became millionaires on war profits. On balance, the war was good for New York and positioned the city for decades of incredible growth. John Strausbaugh, author of City of Sedition: The History of New York City During the Civil War (Twelve), covers a fascinating aspect of war history that took place far from the battlefields.
Strausbaugh is a journalist and cultural commentator, a regular contributor to the New York Times, and host of the Times’ Weekend Explorer video podcast series. His book is available for signing.
