58: Conscription & Riots (“A Rich Man’s War, But a Poor Man’s Fight”)

“Here’s a damned abolitionist! … He’s a Tribune man! Hang the son of a b****!”

This is the story of Civil War conscription and riots.

Conscription is completely foreign to Americans. They’ve never relied on force to fill the military’s ranks. But the Civil War is changing that. Left with the choice to either give up or draft men in the army, the Confederacy, then the United States, both turn to conscription. When it appears that the burden of fighting will fall disproportionately on the shoulders of New York’s mostly Irish-Catholic working class, it unleashes racial, economic, and religious angst, and causes one of the worst (if not the worst) riots in American history.

Meanwhile, Southern women are starving. Their husbands and sons are fighting, but the Confederacy and its states are doing nothing to check a rampant rise in the cost of food. Stuck with choosing between letting their children starve or rioting, it’s a no-brainer. They’re choosing the latter.

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