Lincoln, Abraham:

$60,000 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

[PARTIALLY PRINTED DOCUMENT, SIGNED "ABRAHAM LINCOLN" AS PRESIDENT, RESUMING THE DRAFT IN NEW YORK LESS THAN A MONTH AFTER THE DEADLY NEW YORK CITY DRAFT ... The first military draft in U.S. history was passed by Congress in early 1863 and signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln in March of that year. The Enrollment Act (or Civil War Military Draft Act) required the enrollment of every male citizen between twenty and forty-five years of age, as well as those immigrants who had filed for citizenship, unless exempted by the Act. It set enlistment quotas for each state, and required states to draft men if they did not meet their enlistment quotas through volunteers. It also included the policies of substitution (furnishing a suitable substitute to take the draftee's place) and commutation (paying $300 to avoid the draft), which led to substantial resentment among working-class citizens not wealthy enough to pay their way out of service.On July 13, during the draft lottery in New York City, a riot broke out, leading to three days of violence and destruction. Although initially focused on the draft, the protests subsequently devolved into vicious race riots. The rioters were largely Whites who, in the wake of the Emancipation Proclamation, claimed to fear that freed enslaved men would migrate to the city and take their jobs. Since Blacks were exempted from the draft, the Draft Act only heightened fears of Black migration to the city. The violence against the Black community (

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