- Joined
- Jan 7, 2013
- Location
- Long Island, NY
July 13 is the 151st Anniversary of the start of the Draft Riot in New York City. I have avoided the sorts of "controversialist" threads in the Immigrants forum that seem to set off wild fires here at CivilWarTalk, but I thought that this might be a good controversy to discuss.
We all know that the subject of Civil War Memory has grown in importance over the last quarter-century since the publication of David Blight's Race and Remembrance on the political uses of the memory of the Civil War. One of the less examined areas of the war, the Draft Riot, has not been a major subject of the memory historians. But how it would be remembered was definitely of concern to New Yorkers at the time.
At the time of the Draft Riot there was a lot of pressure on Archbishop John Hughes, the tough, pro-Union leader of the city's Catholic Church, to halt the rioting through his personal intercession with the rioters. Hughes may have been reluctant to act initially because to do so would lead to the riot being viewed as a Catholic or Irish riot.
Today we usually think of the riot as an Irish event, but there are other ways to remember it. The problem, of course, is that no one wants to own the riot. There are people today who defend secession, reenact secessionist military units, etc., but not many people take the part of the rioters. Memory of the Confederacy is clearer than memory of the riot because no one researches it in hopes an ancestor participating in the looting.
I will suggest some possible frames for looking at the riot in separate posts. I hope you will suggest others and debate the validity of each of these without invective. I am still trying to make my mind up about the riot.
1. The riot was an Irish riot-the most common frame. You know this one. If you didn't learn it at your mother's knee, you learned it from Gangs of New York.
We all know that the subject of Civil War Memory has grown in importance over the last quarter-century since the publication of David Blight's Race and Remembrance on the political uses of the memory of the Civil War. One of the less examined areas of the war, the Draft Riot, has not been a major subject of the memory historians. But how it would be remembered was definitely of concern to New Yorkers at the time.
At the time of the Draft Riot there was a lot of pressure on Archbishop John Hughes, the tough, pro-Union leader of the city's Catholic Church, to halt the rioting through his personal intercession with the rioters. Hughes may have been reluctant to act initially because to do so would lead to the riot being viewed as a Catholic or Irish riot.
Today we usually think of the riot as an Irish event, but there are other ways to remember it. The problem, of course, is that no one wants to own the riot. There are people today who defend secession, reenact secessionist military units, etc., but not many people take the part of the rioters. Memory of the Confederacy is clearer than memory of the riot because no one researches it in hopes an ancestor participating in the looting.
I will suggest some possible frames for looking at the riot in separate posts. I hope you will suggest others and debate the validity of each of these without invective. I am still trying to make my mind up about the riot.
1. The riot was an Irish riot-the most common frame. You know this one. If you didn't learn it at your mother's knee, you learned it from Gangs of New York.