Memoirs of an editor : fifty years of American journalism / Edward P. Mitchell.

IN CIVIL WAR TIME

59

was already raging in the neighborhood of Third Avenue
and Forty-sixth Street, where the provost marshal's deputies were attempting to execute the provisions of the Conscription Act in the Ninth Congress district of New York.
The building had been attacked, was doomed already to
destruction, and there and elsewhere in the town the members of his force were fighting the infuriated rabble, mostly
of foreign birth at the beginning, with the loyalty and
pluck that distinguished the behavior of the police (and,
indeed, of the volunteer firemen) throughout the week.
The special caution about the windows was supposed
to have been suggested by two circumstances: first, that
a well-known Abolitionist was a neighbor; secondly, that
we employed a colored maid. Horace Greeley and his
Tribune were attacked on the same afternoon in Printing
House Square. The building was partly gutted and set
on fire. The police, charging up Nassau Street to Spruce,
dispersed a crowd of 5,000 or so there assembled and
stamped out the blaze the rioters had kindled. Both
Greeley and Raymond of the Times fortified their establishments the next day and were prepared with small
cannon and hand-grenades to repel further invasion that
did not occur. As to our colored maid, she was a real
source of danger. The race prejudice was so strong that
when the mob passions got beyond fear of law negroes
were hunted everywhere, beaten to death, hanged to
lamp-posts, trees, and telegraph-poles, and, it was said,
in some cases burned when dying.
It is not the intention here to recite the story of that
memorable week, except as a few of its incidents came
under observation through the drawn shutters of our windows or from the roof of the castle-like block. From the

specific purpose of draft obstruction the riot widened into
an outbreak of secession sympathy and a general attack
upon the administration's prosecution of the war and
policy of emancipation. Having got that far, it was speed