HUB History - Our Favorite Stories from Boston History

By the summer of 1863, the Civil War had dragged on longer than anyone thought at the outset, and leaders on both sides were desperate for more money, arms, manufactured goods, and most of all men. That growing desperation had inspired secretary of war Edwin Stanton to authorize Massachusetts governor John Andrew to start enlisting the nation’s first Black troops a few months before, including the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment, whose well deserved fame was refreshed with the movie Glory. The influx of fresh and motivated troops contributed to Union gains throughout the rest of the war, but the so-called colored regiments were not enough. In July of that year, Congress passed a law compelling able bodied men into military service for the first time. Here in Boston, the burden of that draft law fell disproportionately on the working class Irish Americans of South Boston and the North End. And as we’ll see, the Irish had strong resentments based in class, race, religion, and economics that made them suspicious of compulsory service. These tensions boiled over on the evening of July 14th, 1863 as marshals attempted to serve the first draft notices in the crowded and narrow streets of the North End, with the US Army eventually firing artillery and small arms into a crowd of civilian protesters at point blank range.

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• A Plain Statement of Facts by a Plain Man
• William Lloyd Garrison letter
• Major Cabot’s report
• Emma Sellew Adams’ Remembrance of the Boston Draft Riot
• David Weston’s diary
• Campbell’s trial

• NYT July 16, 1863
• NYT July 17, 1863
• NYT July 18, 1863

• Joseph Lueck
• William Hanna
• Joe Regan
• Brett Palfreyman
• Patrick Browne
• Ian Jesse
• Jack Tager
• Judith Ann Giesberg