The Great Riots of New York, 1712 to 1873Headley, Joel Tyler
History
The Great Riots of New York, 1712 to 1873
Headley, Joel Tyler
Draft Riot, New York, N.Y., 1863; New York (N.Y.) -- History; Riots -- New York (State) -- New York
"The mob have attacked the armory, Second Avenue and Twenty-first
Street. There is danger of firing the building."
Fifteen minutes later came: "It is impossible for us to protect the
armory at Second Avenue and Twenty-first Street."
_Answer_--"Draw your men off. D. C."
The squad, in evacuating the building, found themselves cut off both in
front and at the sides.
The only mode of escape was through a hole in the rear wall, some
eighteen feet from the ground, and scarcely a foot and a half in
diameter. Piling up boxes to reach this aperture, these large men
squeezed themselves through one by one, feet foremost, and swinging to a
gutter-trough, dropped into the yard below. Climbing from thence over a
wall into a stone-yard, they sped across it to the Eighteenth Precinct
Station in Twenty-second Street. Here taking off their uniforms, they
made their way singly, or in groups of two or three, back to the central
office.
No sooner did they leave the building than the mob entered it, and the
work of pillage commenced. Every man armed himself with a musket. The
stacks of weapons left, after they had taken all they wanted, were
broken up or rendered useless. One thrown out of the window fell on a
man's head in the street and killed him.
While the armory was being attacked, another mob was sacking and burning
houses on Lexington Avenue, near Forty-seventh Street. Within five
minutes from the announcement of this fact, came from the Sixth Precinct
the following dispatch: "A mob of about seven hundred attacked some
colored people in Baxter Street, and then went to the saloon of Samuel
Crook, in Chatham Street, and beat some colored waiters there."
A few minutes later from Sixteenth came: "A crowd of about three hundred
men have gone to the foot of Twenty-fourth Street, to stop men in the
foundry from working."
At the same time the following was received from the Twenty-first
Precinct: "The mob avow their determination of burning this station. Our
connection by telegram may be interrupted at any moment."
Another from the Twentieth said: "A very large crowd is now going down
Fifth Avenue, to attack the _Tribune_ building."
As fast as the wires could work, followed "from the Twenty-fourth
Precinct:"
"The mob have fired the buildings corner of Broadway and Twenty-fourth
Street."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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