Resumo de The Civil War - Welch, Richard F.

The most violent urban uprising in Americanhistory occurred in July 1863, when thousands of poor workers took tothe New York's streets with bricks, torches and clubs to protest themilitary draft and its $300 exemption provision. After tour days ofturmoil, the riots were finally suppressed, though their influencereverberated for decades.Barnet Schecter's The Devil's Own Work: TheCivil War Draft Riots and the Fight to Reconstruct America (Walker& Company, New York, 2005, $28) portrays the riots as crucialevents in two extended, violence-laced movements, the struggle forabolition and racial equality, and the sometimes intersecting movementfor labor reform. The racial theme dominates the book. By daring theonset of Reconstruction from the issuance of the EmancipationProclamation, Schecter argues that the riots were the first chapter inthe contest between radicals and reformers committed to racial equalityagainst conservative and reactionary forces whose object was to limitthe effects of emancipation and impose a nationwide racial caste system.Home to a variegated black population, whichincluded workers, middle class professionals and clerical leadership,antebellum New York was also headquarters of the country's largestabolitionist organization, the American Anti-Slavery Society. Thecity's social and economic elite were strongly imbued with abolitionistsentiment while largely disdainful of an Irish Catholic working class.The Irish were welcomed and organized by the New York City Democraticmachine, Tammany Hall, which was strongly pro-Southern andanti-abolitionist.Fort Sumter and Lincoln's call for volunteerstemporarily banked the fires of racial and political animosity Butgrowing casualty lists, including heavy losses in the Irish Brigade,led to increasing disenchantment in the Irish working class slums. TheEmancipation Proclamation and the implementation of the draft, with itsbitterly resented exemptions for men who could find a substitute orcome up with a $300 commutation fee, further inflamed the poor workers'neighborhoods. The volatile mix finally exploded on July 13, when mobs,stoked by Copperhead agitators, torched the draft office.Schecter's coverage of the riots is gripping.He makes excellent use of both official sources and private memoirs,including those of both blacks and Quaker abolitionists.The rioters tended to attack uptown draftoffices and homes of abolitionists or Republicans. In the downtownareas the mobs torched black churches and businesses, while individualblacks were beaten and lynched. On the fourth day of the riot, NewYork's militia units and some Federal regiments returned fromPennsylvania to douse the riots via a liberal application of theirfirepower. Though the official death total was 105 killed, Schecter ?pointing to the heavy use of musketry and even cannons ? persuasivelyargues that about 500 were killed, mostly rioters.Many city merchants attempted to provide aidfor blacks made homeless, injured or orphaned by the violence. Cityofficials, in contrast, discriminated against blacks filing claims forlosses, while Tammany judges handed out the lightest sentences to thosecharged with crimes during the outbreak. In the meantime, William MarcyTweed, later famous as Boss Tweed, organized a Substitute Committeethat raised money to pay the $300 exemption fee for anyone who did notwant to be drafted. In the end, few New Yorkers were brought into theArmy through conscription.The remainder of the book deals withReconstruction, emphasizing its New York connections such as the 1868Democratic convention held at Tammany Hall and the nomination of NewYork governor Samuel Tilden as the Democratic candidate for president.The long shadow of the draft riots could be seen through the violenceof the Ku Klux Klan, White Leagues and Red Shirts, who desired whitesupremacy.Schecter concludes by followingReconstructions collapse following the 1876 election. The Devil's OwnWork provides a solid overview of racial pom the antebellumperiod to 1877. Schecter's narration and analysis of the course andeffects of the draft riots is especially well told. The secondary themeof intertwined industrial conflict gets less attention, and theconnection between the two disappears at times, possibly because it issimply too much information to control, possibly because race and laborissues did not always converge. Similar attempts to link the draftriots directly to Reconstruction sometimes seem strained. Additionally,the chapters dealing with the pre- and postwar period rely almostexclusively on secondary material, especially the work of JamesMcPherson. Readers familiar with current trends in Reconstruction willfind Schecter's rendition highly familiar.There are a few basic errors that someoneshould have caught (e.g., Andrew Jackson was not a "planter fromKentucky" ? he was from Tennessee, and Theodore Roosevelt's father wasTheodore Roosevelt, Sr., not Robert Roosevelt).Those reservations aside, The Devil's OwnWork is a useful and readable contribution to Civil War literature. Theexploration of the riots themselves is thorough and well-researched,and the antebellum and Reconstruction aspects give the reader anexcellent synthesis of modern scholarship and interpretations of thosewatershed ev

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