the War Department. No effort had been made to garrison the city
against the possibility of an armed uprising to resist the draft.
Demagogues had been haranguing the people for months, inflaming their
minds to the point of madness on the subject of this draft.

On the night before the drawing was ordered in New York the leading
speaker had swept the crowd off their feet by the daring words with
which he closed his appeal:

"We will resist this attempt of Black Republicans and Abolitionists to
force the children of the poor into the ranks they dare not enter. Will
you give any more of your sons to be food for vultures on the hills of
Virginia? Will you allow them to be torn from your firesides and driven
as dumb cattle into the mouths of Southern cannon? If you are slaves,
yes,----if you are freemen, no!"

When the lottery wheel began to turn off its fatal names at the
Government Draft Office at the corner of Forty-sixth Street and Third
Avenue on the morning of July 14th, a sullen, determined mob packed the
streets in front of the building. Among them stood hundreds of women
whose husbands, sons and brothers were listed on the spinning wheel of
black fortune.

Their voices were higher and angrier than the men's:

"This is a rich man's war--but a poor man's fight----"

"Yes, if you've got three hundred dollars you can hire a substitute from
the slums----"

"But if you happen to be a working man, you can stand up and be shot for
these cowards and sneaks!"

"Down with the draft!"

"To hell with the hirelings and their wheel!"

"Smash it----"

"Burn the building!"

A tough from the East Side waved his hand to the crowd of frenzied men
and women:

"Come on, boys,----"

With a single mighty impulse the mob surged toward the doors, and
through them. A sound of smashing glass, blows, curses. A man rushed
into the street holding the enrollment books above his head:

"Here are your names, men--the list of white slaves!"

The mob tore the sheets from his grasp and fell on them like hungry
wolves. In ten minutes the books were only scraps of paper trampled into
the filth of Third Avenue. Wherever a piece could be seen men and women
stamped and spit on it.

They smashed the wheel and furniture into kindling wood, piled it in the
middle of the room and set fire to it. No policemen or firemen were
allowed to approach. Every officer of the law, both civil and military,
had been chased and beaten and disappeared.