"My Friends" when in July 1863, the city of New York was Under the Reign of a Mob ...

£1,500 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

A scarce broadside satirising Governor Horatio Seymour’s conduct in the Draft Riots, which were the largest domestic uprising during the Civil War specifically between the Irish and the free Black community. The tension centred on a clause that exempted men who could find a substitute and pay $300. The first draft, held on July 11, passed without incident. Yet it became clear that the working classes were affected disproportionately by the draft, being largely unable to afford the commutation fee to hire a substitute. As such, the second draft was disrupted by a crowd of about 500, led by the Black Joke Engine Company 33 (Irish volunteer firefighters). Governor Seymour was on holiday in New Jersey at the time and returned to help re-establish order in the city. The broadside reads: “When arson, plunder, murder, and all the infernal passions of a brutalized mob were holding high carnival, and civilization went draped in mourning” Seymour “requested the men doing these bloody deeds, to meet him in front of the City Hall in New York, and there began his coaxing, blarneying address to them, with the words ‘MY FRIENDS.’ His whole speech was in keeping with this introduction.” Furthermore, it is also an attack on the Irish immigrant community complete with voting tallies from the 1862 election for Five Points the “Practical Amalgamation District”; Corlears Hook the “Democratic Miscegenation District”; the Dance Houses “or Free Love District”: area that include 2743 “Groggeries”, 27

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