August 1863–The North Celebrates Two Iconic Victories. Meanwhile the Draft is Running on Fumes

By Gary Far­row, Danville His­tor­i­cal Society

Even a turn in the Union’s mil­i­tary for­tunes could not reignite the will of men, in the likes of Danville and Cabot, to fight. Their sen­ti­ments were shared by many across the North and were man­i­fest­ed by abysmal ful­fill­ment of draft quo­tas, not so sub­tle push­back by states against the first Fed­er­al con­scrip­tion law, and out­right riot in one of the nation’s biggest cities.

August 1, 1863 North Star

Our Victories and Peace

All hon­or to the heroes of Get­tys­burg and Vicksburg…The result of oper­a­tions of Meade [at Get­tys­burg] is deliv­er­ance of the North from the last inva­sion; for, though the ene­my may with his splen­did cav­al­ry, ven­ture upon a sud­den dash and raid into some loy­al States, he can­not hope to begin anoth­er inva­sion with any­thing like the chances which he had at the com­mence­ment of the late one. His retreat, how­ev­er, can only be the begin­ning of the end of the last inva­sion; for every con­sid­er­a­tion points to a pur­suit and a scat­ter­ing of the rebel armies which are the cen­tre of the rebellion.

The result of the oper­a­tions of Vicks­burg…. reopens the Mis­sis­sip­pi, divides the Con­fed­er­a­cy, and deliv­ers the states of Mis­sis­sip­pi and Alaba­ma into the hands of the Union…there is no pow­er in this region capa­ble of resist­ing our armies.

…But heavy and tri­umphant as is the hand of our nation­al pow­er, let us reflect that rebel­lion is by no means crushed. Now would seem to be the time to rise above mere par­ti­san schemes on a plane of hon­or, mag­na­nim­i­ty and states­man­ship wor­thy of repub­li­can insti­tu­tions… now would seem to strength­en the Union ele­ment in the South­ern States by reas­sur­ing it of a recog­ni­tion of pro­tec­tion under the Constitution….

Indeed has it not become all impor­tant to the North that the Admin­is­tra­tion should purge itself of all con­nec­tion with rad­i­cal vagaries? There is not the first sign that the North will ever unite on these schemes, for they are death and destruction…The strange, wild, crazy spir­i­tu­al set who have the con­ceit to think they can impro­vise a bet­ter Union than Wash­ing­ton and the fathers grew into, must have the non­sense shak­en out of them.

Lin­coln did not exact­ly share the public’s cel­e­bra­to­ry mood over the vic­to­ry of Get­tys­burg. He penned this bit­ter let­ter to Gen­er­al Meade. “Again, my dear gen­er­al, I do not believe you appre­ci­ate the mag­ni­tude of the mis­for­tune involved in Lee’s escape—He was with­in your easy grasp, and to have closed upon him would, in con­nec­tion with our oth­er late suc­cess­es, have end­ed the war—As it is, the war will be pro­longed indef­i­nite­ly. …Your gold­en oppor­tu­ni­ty is gone and I am dis­tressed immea­sur­ably because of it. -” Unlike per­haps most of us, Lin­coln regained his bal­ance, filed the let­ter in his desk draw­er and nev­er sent it.

The Draft

The draft for this coun­try, and in fact for this Dis­trict still remains suspended…It is pre­sumed to take place some­time. We learn that near­ly every draft­ed man in Cabot paid in $300 com­mu­ta­tion mon­ey… In Marsh­field, (if we are cor­rect­ly informed) quite a num­ber con­clud­ed to serve rather than pay the exemp­tion money.

War and General News Items

The State of Michi­gan has ordered that no more new reg­i­ments be raised with­in the state… that all recruit­ing in the State shall until fur­ther orders, be for the men for reg­i­ments and bat­ter­ies now in the field, and all men enlist­ing there­fore will have choice of reg­i­ments and will be enti­tled to the usu­al gov­ern­ment and State bounties.

August 8, 1863 North Star

No Draft in New Jersey

It seems that the War Depart­ment has assent­ed to the propo­si­tion to raise the quo­ta of troops in New Jer­sey by vol­un­teer­ing, pro­vid­ed it can be done in thir­ty days. The quo­ta is 8783 men; and Gov­er­nor Park­er has issued a stir­ring and patri­ot­ic procla­ma­tion to the peo­ple to come for­ward and vol­un­teer, and aid vol­un­teer­ing by pay­ments of addi­tion­al boun­ties … This action of the demo­c­ra­t­ic Gov­er­nor of New Jer­sey is cred­itable to him as a pub­lic ser­vant, and we should think would silence the croak­ings of polit­i­cal oppo­nents, who accuse him of disloyalty.

Mean­while, the 54th Mass­a­chu­setts Reg­i­ment, one of the first black Afro-Amer­i­can units in the Union, made a dra­mat­ic assault in South Carolina.

The Assault at Fort Wagner

…Soon after four o’clock the fir­ing from Fort Wag­n­er ceased… [This] led to the sup­po­si­tion that the ene­my had evac­u­at­ed the work, and it was deter­mined to attempt its occupation…

This was at dusk…the col­ored reg­i­ment which for some rea­son was giv­en the post of extreme hon­or and dan­ger in advance, and was drawn up in line of bat­tle expos­ing its full front to the enemy…

It was now quite dark… the 54th Mass­a­chu­setts led by Col Shaw was with­in 200 yards of the works, when the men gave a fierce yell and pushed up to the glacia [ditch]…

The ene­my hith­er­to silent as the grave, while our men were swarm­ing over the glacia, opened up on them… The gal­lant negroes, how­ev­er plunged on regard­less of this mur­der­ous recep­tion and many of them crossed the ditch, although it con­tained four feet of water, gain­ing the para­pet. They were dis­lodged, how­ev­er, in a few min­utes with hand grenades, leav­ing more than one-half their num­ber, includ­ing their brave colonel, dead upon the field.

Colonel Shaw would be buried in a mass grave with his men. The exploits of the 54th would lat­er be dra­ma­tized in the acad­e­my award win­ning film, Glory.

August 15, 1863 North Star

The Draft

…We trust the good name of Ver­mont will not suf­fer, when the num­ber of sol­diers pro­cured by the draft comes to be count­ed, but we con­fess, thus far, to a severe dis­ap­point­ment in this respect. We fear that one fourth of our quo­ta will be raised by this con­scrip­tion. Many of the nine months men will reen­list in the vet­er­ans reg­i­ments which are soon to be raised, but unless the draft brings into the field more Ver­mon­ters than it promis­es to now, the three vet­er­an reg­i­ments will not fill the defi­cien­cy in the draft.

Curi­ous­ly, the anti-abo­li­tion­ist North Star had not pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed on the draft riots that occurred in New York City July 13 through 16, which was by some accounts the most vio­lent act of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence the coun­try had ever seen. The riots were pro­voked by the Fed­er­al Provost Marshall’s attempt to enforce the Fed­er­al con­scrip­tion act. The city’s Irish Catholic immi­grants were enraged at the idea of being forced into mil­i­tary ser­vice to free blacks that Lin­coln, cit­ing his war pow­ers, had ordered by exec­u­tive fiat [Eman­ci­pa­tion Procla­ma­tion] back in Jan­u­ary. Bait­ed by New York’s busi­ness elites, who hat­ed Abo­li­tion­ism because it com­pro­mised the busi­ness loans they had made to the South, and their inabil­i­ty to come up with the $300 com­mu­ta­tion to buy their way out of the draft, the Irish poor’s three-day ram­page result­ed in the destruc­tion of pub­lic build­ings and the loss of 100 black lives. The US mil­i­tary could not get into the city until the end of the first day of riot­ing. Vol­un­teer and mili­tia reg­i­ments had to be divert­ed from fol­low­ing up on the suc­cess of Get­tys­burg and sent in to restore order. What fol­lows is some of the polit­i­cal after­math to those events.

The Draft in New York City

Wash­ing­ton Aug 8 – Gov­er­nor Sey­mour under the date of Aug 2d writes to the Pres­i­dent with respect to the draft in New York and Brook­lyn con­demn­ing the course of the [Fed­er­al] Provost Mar­shal in com­menc­ing the draft with­out con­sul­ta­tion with the City or State offi­cers at the time….while there were not even sol­diers enough in New York to man the for­ti­fi­ca­tions in the har­bor. The Gov­er­nor com­plains of unfair­ness in the enroll­ment, and thinks that this lot­tery in human life, as he terms it, there should be strict impar­tial­i­ty. In the rur­al dis­tricts the draft has been exe­cut­ed with jus­tice, and con­scripts have accept­ed their fate. In the dis­trict of New York, how­ev­er, with a pop­u­la­tion less, the num­ber is in some cas­es dou­ble that of the for­mer [rur­al dis­tricts]. The attack upon the enrolling offi­cers, which sub­se­quent­ly grew into the most destruc­tive riot known in the his­to­ry of the coun­try, he pro­nounces unjustifiable. …

The Pres­i­dent in reply, under date of Aug 7, says he can­not sus­pend the draft in New York because time is too important…[In the future] he would direct the draft to pro­ceed only on the aver­age quo­ta of all the districts….The Pres­i­dent would not object to abide the deci­sion of the Supreme courts; he would be will­ing to facil­i­tate it, but could not con­sent to lose time.

War and General News Items

…Of the draft­ed men in this state, not one in ten will be avail­able to the gov­ern­ment. The Rut­land Couri­er says every one draft­ed that can beg, bor­row or steal $300, is get­ting exempt, and the bal­ance that do not get off some oth­er way are sked­dling to parts unknown.

The com­mu­ta­tion mon­ey paid by draft­ed men will amount, it is sup­posed, to some forty or fifty mil­lions of dol­lars through­out the country.

The Provost Mar­shal of Pitts­burg had a desert­er flogged at the whip­ping post, the oth­er day, and was imme­di­ate­ly in dan­ger of being lynched.

August 22, 1863 North Star

Slavery

…His­to­ry fur­nish­es no case in which a nation­al evil which has tak­en a cen­tu­ry to strength­en and locate itself… the work of ten gen­er­a­tions is not to be undone in a day, with­out a shock to inno­cent inter­ests and unwhole­some con­vul­sions to society.

War and General News Items

The Cana­da papers notice the arrivals of large num­bers of young men from the Unit­ed States who have fled to the Province to avoid the conscription.

The Drafted

The Danville draft­ed men have most of them been to Wood­stock, for exam­i­na­tion. Quite a num­ber, though not quite half, were exempt­ed, and those inspect­ed in most of them paid the com­mu­ta­tion mon­ey. We know of none who fur­nished substitutes.