John E. Wool and the New York City Draft Riots of 1863: A Reassessment.

            In class, and in our textbook, we learned about the New York City draft riots that occurred in July of 1863.  The riots broke out after lower class white citizens of New York City realized that they would be drafted into the army.  They felt this was not fair for two reasons.  First, the black population of  NYC was not subjected to the draft, and second, wealthy white citizens could pay $300 to avoid be drafted.  This created the problem of lower class whites being drafted into the army, and then the blacks would take their jobs while they were away.  In the article I read, Laurence Hauptman argues that a lot of modern day historians mistakenly blame the riots on John Wool, a general who had been a hero during the War of 1812.  Wool, who was 79 years old at the time of the riots, was said to have been "too old to take aggressive action".  Many of Wool's contemporaries as well as the military command in Washington D.C. cited Wool as the scapegoat for the riots.  However, Hauptman argues that this was the result of political agendas and rivalries. 

            In Wool's personal letters to his wife and other military officers, he acknowledges the hostilities in the city.  Weeks before the outbreak of the riots, Wool was requested to dispatch a large portion of his men to Gettysburg, in an attempt to defeat Lee and the Confederacy.  Wool reluctantly obliged, but demanded that he receive reinforcements of state troops from New York.  However, Governor Horatio Seymour, who frequently bumped head with Wool, ignored his request and as a result, Wool faced the difficult task of taming the riots without the amount of men he needed.

            This is an interesting alternative view of the draft riots to consider.  While the riots were a mass display of civilian hostilities, it was something that may have been prevented, or at the very least, suppressed more quickly that it was.  Wool, in the end, had a tarnished reputation even though he was aware of the potential outbreak of violence. 

Works Cited

Fellman, Michael, Lesley J. Gordon, and Daniel E. Sutherland. This Terrible War: The Civil War and Its Aftermath. 2nd ed. Pearson Education, Inc, 2008.

Hauptman, Laurence M. “John E. Wool and the New York City Draft Riots of 1863: A Reassessment.” Civil War History 49, no. 4 (December 2003): 370-87. http://muse.jhu.edu.libproxy.eku.edu/journals/civil_war_history/v049/49.4hauptman.html (accessed April 12, 2013).