The New York City draft riots : their significance for American society and politics in the age of the Civil War /

Bernstein (Washington University, St. Louis) devotes less than a quarter of his book to New York's Civil War draft riots themselves, already thoroughly described in Adrian Cook's The Armies of the Streets (1974). Instead, he uses the riots to uncover social cleavages among rioters, merchants, and industrialists, which he then traces to their prewar origins in the social changes experienced by a modernizing city. Bernstein concludes by showing that the social upheavals symbolized by the riots ended not with the appearance of troops in July 1863, but in 1872, with the consolidation of New York's elites in such a way that lower-class political influence was stymied. Bernstein has used richly varied sources. In his imaginatively argued text (reminiscent in approach to Sean Wilentz's Chants Democratic, 1984), he discusses topics as diverse as changing work patterns, labor organization, organized philanthrophy, racial and ethnic conflict, and Boss Tweed. Although this work will evoke challenges, it is a major effort at integrating the complex historical strands of the mid-19th-century city and it belongs in every college and university library. -P. F. Field, Ohio University

Here, Bernstein (History/Washington Univ.) offers an impressive chronicle of a particularly black chapter of the Civil War--the New York City draft riots of July 1863, the bloodiest riots (105 dead) in American history. As the Civil War reached its midpoint, many Union soldiers, discouraged by the pace and the carnage, served out their duty contracts and opted for returning to their homes--prompting the federal government to institute the first draft in the country's history. But, particularly in N.Y.C., where the contrasts between rich and poor were most pronounced, those most liable for the draft--the working poor--quickly rebelled, seeing the draft as an instrument for Lincoln's Republican Party to maintain its ascendancy, and as a concerted effort by the government to transfer the burden of the war to the poor. An ugly racial dimension also arose, since the Conscription Act exluded blacks, thus inflaming the white poor who saw the draft law as degrading the status of white labor. The placement of the city's draft lotteries in the heart of the uptown tenement and shanty district was the straw that broke the camel's back. Though the riot was ultimately quelled by five regiments rushed north from Gettysburg, Bernstein argues that the outcome was by no means assured (e.g., had Lee not retreated south from Gettysburg, the feds might not have had the might available to end the riots). A well-documented work that should stand as the definitive account of this civil siege. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.