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
PETER HEUSTON.--Peter Heuston, sixty-three years of age, a Mohawk
Indian, dark complexion, but straight hair, and for several years a
resident of New York, proved a victim to the riots. Heuston served with
the New York Volunteers in the Mexican war. He was brutally attacked
and shockingly beaten, on the 13th of July, by a gang of ruffians, who
thought him to be of the African race because of his dark complexion. He
died within four days, at Bellevue Hospital, from his injuries.
JEREMIAH ROBINSON (colored).--He was killed in Madison near Catharine
Street. His widow stated that her husband, in order to escape, dressed
himself in some of her clothes, and, in company with herself and one
other woman, left their residence and went toward one of the Brooklyn
ferries. Robinson wore a hood, which failed to hide his beard. Some
boys, seeing his beard, lifted up the skirts of his dress, which exposed
his heavy boots. Immediately the mob set upon him, and the atrocities
they perpetrated are so revolting that they are unfit for publication.
They finally killed him and threw his body into the river. His wife and
her companion ran up Madison Street, and escaped across the Grand Street
Ferry to Brooklyn.
WILLIAM JONES (colored).--A crowd of rioters in Clarkson Street, in
pursuit of a negro, who in self-defence had fired on some rowdies, met
an inoffensive colored man returning from a bakery with a loaf of bread
under his arm. They instantly set upon and beat him and, after nearly
killing him, hung him to a lamppost. His body was left suspended for
several hours. A fire was made underneath him, and he was literally
roasted as he hung, the mob revelling in their demoniac act. Recognition
of the remains, on their being recovered, was impossible; and two women,
mourned for upwards of two weeks, in the case of this man, for the loss
of their husbands. At the end of that time, the husband of one of the
mourners, to her great joy, returned like one recovered from the grave.
The principal evidence which the widow, Mary Jones, had to identify the
murdered man as her husband, was the fact of his having a loaf of bread
under his arm, he having left the house to get a loaf of bread a few
minutes before the attack.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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