For three days and nights this mob burned and killed at will and fought
every officer of the law until the streets ran red with blood. They
burned the Negro Orphan Asylum, beat, killed or hanged every negro who
showed his face, sacked the home of Mayor Opdyke, at 79 Fifth Avenue,
and attempted to burn it. They smashed in the _Tribune_ building, gutted
part of it and would have reduced it to ashes but for the brave defense
put up by some of its men.
On the third day the announcement was made that the draft was suspended.
Five thousand troops reached the city and partly succeeded in restoring
order.
More than a thousand men had been killed and three thousand
wounded--among them many women.
The Democratic papers now boldly demanded that the draft should be
officially suspended until its constitutionality could be tested by the
courts. The State and Municipal authorities of New York appealed to the
President to suspend the draft.
He answered:
"If I suspend the draft there can be no army to continue the war and the
days of the Republic are numbered. The life of the Nation is at stake."
They begged for time, and he hesitated for a day. The victories of
Gettysburg and Vicksburg were forgotten in the grim shadow of a possible
repetition of the French Revolution on a vast scale throughout the
North.
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