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Book Description:
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1900. Excerpt: ... ARCHBISHOP HUGHES AND THE DRAFT RIOTS. By Thomas F. Meehan, A.M. Durtng the week of July 11-18, 1863, New York City was in a turmoil over the conscription ordered hy the Government to fill the State's quota in the Union army. In the record of the tumult we have an interesting contrast of the narrow intolerance of the radical leaders and the last public act of devotion and single-minded patriotism of the great prelate who was even then stricken with the malady that so soon after proved fatal. The draft began in New York on Saturday, July 11, in the Twenty-second Ward, the drawing of the names taking place at the office of the Provost Marshal, No. 677 Third Avenua For some time previous the agitation of the scheme had occasioned bitter controversy. To many the war seemed a failure, and the scheme of a draft only an effort to coerce into the army poor men and all those who were unable to offer the three hundred dollars necessary to secure a substitute. The Republican papers, especially Horace Greeley's Tribune, teemed with tirades against Catholic and Irish Democrats. In the Tribune of July 9th, in what is called " A friendly letter to Archbishop Hughes," the editor took that prelate to tefik for congratulating himself that he and his people had no part in bringing on the calamity of the war. It charges him and "your people" with being responsible for it by their adhesion to the Democratic party and that party's consequent political successes; and by the refusal of the priests of his Church to preach abolition and antislavery doctrines from their pulpits. Sunday, July 12th, the day following the first drawing of the conscription, the city was in a fever of excitement and the storm burst almost with Monday's dawn. The enrolling offices in the Eighth and Ninth...