Introduction

The Boston Draft Riot occurred on July 14th of 1863.  The Union government was undertaking its first large-scale mandatory military draft enrollment  and potential conscription (requirement to take up arms) for military service.  Yet by 1863, more American citizens, like Boston’s impoverished Irish Americans, had become increasingly weary of the Civil War.  Lower class families of Boston were attempting to survive the hardships of wartime society.  This had become a more acute problem since significant losses of Irish-American men in the bloodiest battles of the first two years of war.  As the Union struggled to make advances towards winning the Civil War, government demands increasingly made inroads into the daily lives of its citizens.  This created growing opposition to increasing Federal wartime authority.  In Boston, the quick and decisive response by military and police quelled the riot within one day.  The short duration prevented the riot spreading from the predominantly Irish American North End neighborhood and downtown area into other Boston neighborhoods.

The major factor that triggered the uprising of violence was opposition to Federal draft procedures.  The prominent involvement of the impoverished Irish American populations suggests that socioeconomic status proved a critical catalyst in draft rioting.  Women and boys were especially prominent participants during the earlier stages.  Subsequent stages of the riot involved increasingly more adult men, with less women and boys participating.  Thus, the gender and ages of the persons who participated in the riots and when these participated is significant as well.  Women and boys were actively protesting the continued and pending forced loss of their male family providers, in a wartime situation where the daily struggle to survive was already a harsh reality.  The continued loss of their fathers, husbands, brothers and sons to the war effort created an increasing economic strain on lower-class working urban households, and the women and boys were fed up with it.

In 1860, Irish immigrants comprised 26% of Boston’s 177,800 population.  Irish immigrants were largely concentrated in Boston’s North End, South Cove and Fort Hill neighborhoods at this time.  The North End was particularly described as squalid and plagued by disease, crime and alcoholism.  Gambling houses and overcrowded tenement buildings infested with rats were packed amongst smelly stables and the stench of low tide.  Many Irish immigrants lived huddled in warehouses and building basements.  Irish men were primarily employed as dock workers and day laborers along urban waterfronts and in urban factories.  Irish women were primarily employed as domestic servants in middle- and upper class residences in upscale areas like Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhood (Ward 6).

Despite their poverty and status as undesired immigrants, numerous Irish Americans willingly enlisted during the initial surge of patriotism for the Union cause at the beginning of the Civil War.  Overall, Irish Americans comprised about 150,000 of about 1 million Union soldiers – 15% of citizen-soldiers who served over the course of the Civil War.  Subsequently, Irish American regiments participated in some of the severest battles, and had been heavily decimated by injury, disease and death.  Boston’s Irish American population also contributed significantly to the Civil War effort.  The Irish 19^th Massachusetts suffered 231 casualties during the Seven Days Battles.  The Irish 28^th Massachusetts Volunteers underwent a 25% casualty rate at the Battle of Antietam.  The remainder of the 28^th Massachusetts was consolidated into the Irish Brigade, and were among the high casualties in December of 1862 at the Battle of Fredericksburg.  The Irish Brigade were in the thick of the battle at Marye’s Heights, and underwent a staggering 44% casualty rate.  

When the draft came, it was met with fiery resistance by those who had become increasingly disenchanted with the Civil War.  With waning northern public interest in supporting an increasingly horrific war, enlistment became lackluster.  By 1863, Boston’s Irish American communities felt that they had already contributed significantly towards the cost of blood for the Union war effort.  The Conscription Act allowed any citizen to pay a $300 fee and thus become exempted from military service.  America’s poor class viewed the $300 fee as discrimination against the less well off, because it provided the opportunity for the wealthy to buy their way out of war service.