The draft was begun in New York on the eleventh of July, 1863. That date fell upon a Saturday. The draft had been opposed in some of the newspapers and in public speeches as unconstitutional, and as an invasion of those private rights which free government is instituted among men to secure. There was murmuring and muttering throughout the Saturday's operations and by the time that Monday came there was throughout the city an aroused spirit of protest which threatened violence. That violence came with a vengeance when the draft was resumed on Monday. Angry crowds surrounded the offices in which the drawings were to be made. The street cars were stopped and their horses unhitched. Then the draft offices were invaded and sacked, and in some cases the buildings were set on fire. At one point an entire block was burned by the mob; at another point there were battles fought between the populace and the police which rivaled in violence and in slaughter skirmishes on the lines in Virginia. Mobs filled the streets in every direction, and for a time had their own way. The office of the New York "Tribune" was assailed and it was defended only by running out chutes from which hand grenades could be dropped into the throngs below, and by arming the printers and other employees with muskets and abundant cartridges. The office of the "Evening Post" was defended against the mob by steam jets shot from hose attached to the boilers that worked the machinery and the presses. In the meanwhile every negro who made his appearance in the street was assaulted and eleven of them fell victims to the anger of the populace. A negro orphan asylum in Fifth avenue at 44th street was sacked and burned by the infuriated rioters and its helpless little wards narrowly escaped by the way of back doors. In Second avenue the police and soldiers were attacked from the windows and the roofs of houses. They quickly wreaked a terrible vengeance. They pushed their way into every house and every room of every house, assailed everybody they could find there, whether guilty or innocent of offense, thrust many of them through with bayonets without inquiring as to their degree of culpability, brained many others in like unquestioned manner with locust clubs, threw some of them over balusters upon the stones below, hurled some out of fourth and fifth story windows to be crushed upon the pavement, followed the fleeing ones to the roofs, and shot them there as the most northern of northern historians has recorded--we quote his exact language--"refusing all mercy, and threw the quivering corpses into the street as a warning to the mob."