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Monday, July 13, 1863
It was another hot and humid day in New York City. The five Confederate spies dressed as ordinary workingmen disembarked from a smuggler’s ship docked at the port of New York. They had finally left Norfolk, Virginia, the previous day under the cover of darkness.
Across town, Jimmy O’Brien awoke when he heard the baby crying. It had been sweltering in the city for a few days now and the air was so stifling at night it had been difficult to sleep. He and his family lived in the ground-floor apartment of a dilapidated tenement building in an area of New York City called Five Points. Lying next to him was his wife Bridget, whom he had met on the ship coming to America from Ireland.
He had left Dublin for New York City several years ago to seek his fortune in America. Ireland was still reeling from the potato famine and there was no future for him there. He took passage on what in those days was known as a “coffin ship” due to the many deaths of passengers that occurred during the Atlantic crossing. Diseases spread quickly through these ships due to overcrowding and poor sanitation, hence the name.
As his ship left Ireland, Jimmy spotted Bridget in the corner of the hold. She was traveling with other single women who had embarked from Ireland. Single women left Ireland in droves after the deaths of their parents or eviction from their family homes.
Jimmy and Bridget fell in love and were married by the ship’s captain. On their wedding night, they succeeded in gaining some sort of privacy with a blanket partition. Bridget was pregnant by the time the ship docked at the New York City wharf.
Jimmy was able to find them a place to live with the assistance of an uncle who had emigrated to New York City several years earlier. His uncle was also able to secure him a good-paying job in a warehouse down on the docks. Before too long, Jimmy and Bridget O’Brien had three children and his wife was expecting a fourth. But then all hell broke loose.
Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States and South Carolina seceded from the Union. In the beginning, there were parades and cheering while bands played and New York City young men proudly marched off to war. Bridget begged Jimmy not to enlist in the army for she needed him at home to help care for their children. Jimmy agreed and continued working at his menial job in the warehouse down on the docks.
By the spring of 1863, many of the New York City dockworkers were complaining about their low wages and long working hours brought on by the war. They decided to go on strike, and Jimmy was forced to walk a picket line with the rest of his friends.
The shipping companies operating the docks in New York City brought in strikebreakers or “scab” workers to break the strike. Striking dockworkers would taunt the replacement or “scab” workers and throw rocks and stones at them as they entered the warehouse. The “scab” workers included free black men who recently escaped from southern plantations. They worked for lower wages than the regular full-time dock workers.
Jimmy continued to do his best to support his family with as much temporary work as he could find. Fresh food was becoming scarce in the city as it was being sold to the Union Army at exorbitant prices. Coffee, when it was available, had more sawdust than coffee beans. Epidemics of diseases like dysentery and cholera were becoming rampant in his neighborhood and throughout the poorer sections of the rest of the city. Fortunately, his children were spared from the ravages of a recent cholera epidemic, but his next-door neighbor’s children were not as lucky.
But this morning, as he watched his wife try to soothe their crying baby in bed, he put on his old work dungarees. His other two children were still sleeping, so he closed their bedroom door quietly so as not to waken them. He went into the kitchen to eat breakfast. He smothered a half-eaten piece of stale bread he found in the cupboard with jam his wife had made and wolfed it down. He drank the remains of day-old coffee from last night’s dinner. After finishing breakfast, he kissed his wife goodbye and went to try and find some work for the day.
Jimmy stopped into several neighborhood establishments, but the owners told him they did not have any work for him that day. As he walked down the street, he avoided the ones with signs in their windows which said “No Irish!” so he kept on walking.
By midmorning, having secured no work for that day, Jimmy went into McSorley’s Bar for a cold beer. He encountered several of his friends who used to work at the warehouse on the docks. He joined them at the bar and ordered a cold beer.
Meanwhile, the Civil War Draft lottery began the previous day in New York City. The first selection of names in the draft lottery wheel was picked on Sunday when most of the citizens were in church or their homes. The second drawing of names for the draft was scheduled to be picked this day.
A hotheaded Irishman named Shamus Reilly was sitting in the corner of the bar arguing with his friends.
“Hell, no I ain't fighting in any war for the Colored! Lincoln can go to hell for all I care!” and Shamus slammed his beer down on the table.
His friends tried to calm him down, but the other men in the bar picked up on his anger and shouted “Here, here!” and drank large gulps of beer.
Jimmy was sitting alone at the bar. Shamus recognized him and sauntered over to him. “What about you, O’Brien? You want to fight for some Colored fellows?” He said as he sneered at Jimmy.
Jimmy ignored him and kept sipping his beer. Shamus laughed and returned to his table after ordering several more rounds of beer for his friends.
Unexpectedly, a young man ran into McSorley’s Bar and waved a newspaper in his hand. “They’re here, they’re here.” He shouted and waved the newspaper for all to see. “The names of those drafted!!” He exclaimed.
Shamus Reilly jumped up and grabbed the paper from his hand. He scanned down the list of names, stopping at any ones he recognized and yelled them out. Several men jumped up from their tables and began shouting. “What the hell, that’s me!”
Shamus raised the paper and yelled, “See, I told you! They’re forcing the Irish to fight!” and flung the paper on the floor and began stomping on it with his dirty work boots.
Other men also began stomping on the paper and shouting expletives about President Lincoln and the government. Before long more people stopped and peered into the bar to see what the commotion was about. Several men broke chairs in the bar and began taunting each other.
“They can’t force the Irish to fight for no Coloreds!”
More and more immigrants began joining the crowds standing outside of the bar. Several of Jimmy’s friends seized him by the arms and wrenched him off of his bar stool. They hauled him out the door with them as they began marching with Shamus down the street.
At that point, the crowd turned into a drunken anti-draft mob and began shouting all together: “Hell no, we won’t go!” and “Old Abe Lincoln ain’t my president!”
Shamus steered the anti-draft mob uptown in the direction of the Provost Marshall’s district draft offices on Third Avenue & Forty-sixth Street.
