The Great Riots of New York, 1712 to 1873 by Joel Tyler Headley

Author:Joel Tyler Headley [Headley, Joel Tyler]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Riots -- New York (State) -- New York, Draft Riot, New York, N.Y., 1863, New York (N.Y.) -- History
Published: 2004-11-01T05:00:00+00:00

Fifteen minutes later came: "It is impossible for us to protect the armory at Second Avenue and Twenty-first Street."

Answer—"Draw your men off. D. C."

The squad, in evacuating the building, found themselves cut off both in front and at the sides.

The only mode of escape was through a hole in the rear wall, some eighteen feet from the ground, and scarcely a foot and a half in diameter. Piling up boxes to reach this aperture, these large men squeezed themselves through one by one, feet foremost, and swinging to a gutter-trough, dropped into the yard below. Climbing from thence over a wall into a stone-yard, they sped across it to the Eighteenth Precinct Station in Twenty-second Street. Here taking off their uniforms, they made their way singly, or in groups of two or three, back to the central office.

No sooner did they leave the building than the mob entered it, and the work of pillage commenced. Every man armed himself with a musket. The stacks of weapons left, after they had taken all they wanted, were broken up or rendered useless. One thrown out of the window fell on a man's head in the street and killed him.

While the armory was being attacked, another mob was sacking and burning houses on Lexington Avenue, near Forty-seventh Street. Within five minutes from the announcement of this fact, came from the Sixth Precinct the following dispatch: "A mob of about seven hundred attacked some colored people in Baxter Street, and then went to the saloon of Samuel Crook, in Chatham Street, and beat some colored waiters there."

A few minutes later from Sixteenth came: "A crowd of about three hundred men have gone to the foot of Twenty-fourth Street, to stop men in the foundry from working"

At the same time the following was received from the Twenty-first Precinct: "The mob avow their determination of burning this station. Our connection by telegram may be interrupted at any moment."

Another from the Twentieth said: "A very large crowd is now going down

Fifth Avenue, to attack the Tribune building."

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