18631776 Club
Mob torches the draft office on Third Avenue; four days of violence begin
Some 500 men, led by volunteer firemen, storm the provost marshal's post at 47th Street, furious that $300 buys a rich man's way out of the Union Army.
By the summer of 1863, New York's working-class neighborhoods were primed to explode. The Enrollment Act let wealthier men buy their way out of the draft for $300, while poor and immigrant laborers had no such option. On July 13, a mob of roughly 500, led by volunteer firemen, attacked the provost marshal's office at Third Avenue and 47th Street and set it ablaze. Four days of violence followed, much of it turned against the city's black residents, before militia and federal troops diverted from the Gettysburg campaign restored order…
