Boston riot 1863

That ushered in a penchant for riots that included the Liberty Affair in , the Boston Massacre in and the Boston Tea Party of Sixty African-Americans carrying clubs, knives and hatchets in confronted a group of white people who had captured a runaway slave. The whites fought off the rescuers and arrested 15, but not before one of them was injured.

Many had made fortunes in textile manufacturing, which gobbled up cotton harvested by slaves in the south. When the gentlemen assembled, Mayor Theodore Lyman stood on a chair and asked them to desist. They tied him up and started to drag him through the streets, but two men rescued him. He holed up in the old statehouse. Then a coach provided by authorities took Garrison to jail and charged him with disturbing the peace.

In the end, they let him go. A smaller confrontation developed in Gilje in Rioting in America. During the Boston Slave riot of , abolitionists led by Brahmin Thomas Wentworth Higginson armed themselves with axes. They attacked a courthouse in which fugitive slave Anthony Burns was held. They failed to free him, and the governor placed Boston under martial law. Then in , a speech by Booker T. A melee erupted as Washington spoke. His followers provoked a melee in which someone threw red pepper and stink bombs.

Twenty-five police showed up and arrested Trotter. Many ethnic riots, but not all, started because the Yankee laboring poor feared losing their livelihoods to the cheap workforce arriving from Ireland.

The Yankees developed a predilection for beating up the Irish and trashing their homes. In , Yankee workmen rioted against Irish immigrants , throwing stones through the windows of their homes.

That was only a prelude to the Brothel Riots of , when Yankee firefighters, teamsters and mechanics tore down two notorious West End brothels, the Beehive and the Tin Pot. The mood that generated the growth of the Know Nothing Party of the mids showed up early in Massachusetts.

During three days of rioting in July , Yankee laborers nearly destroyed the Irish section of Boston. Hindus speculates the deaths of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson on July 4 may have inspired a torrent of nativist feeling. The clear meaning of the Revolution was getting muddied by immigrants and their strange Catholic symbols and rituals. In came the Broad Street riot. That year, a financial panic caused hard times throughout the country and economic uncertainty for Yankee laborers.

Irish immigrants fought mostly volunteer Yankee firefighters on Broad Street. On July 1, , union members and socialists organized a peaceful parade of men, women and babies through the streets to a mass meeting on Boston Common.

Soldiers and sailors attacked the marchers, trampled their banners and burned their pamphlets in the street. After an hour and a half of fighting, the police intervened. Boston had a relatively small African-American population until the s, when many migrated north for better jobs and opportunity.

But Boston grew increasingly inhospitable to its black population. Urban renewal destroyed neighborhoods and the local government offered little economic or political advancement.

In June , a dozen women calling themselves Mothers for Adequate welfare locked themselves into a welfare office in the Grove Hall section of Roxbury. Police tried to eject them, and a fight broke out. The fight escalated into a large scale riot, as angry young people stoned police cars, smashed windows and set fires. Police arrested 30 rioters, while dozens of on both sides went to hospital with injuries. The hardest working man in show biz did keep many young African Americans rooted to their TV sets.

But others stoned cars on Blue Hill Avenue, looted liquor stores, burned a furniture store and beat up some white people. The Boston riot, however, was more contained than those in Washington or Chicago or Detroit. A police officer managed to rescue him, swinging his club and escorting him into a store for safety. Howe was beaten again when he tried to leave the store. By late afternoon the angry crowd had grown. Boston police barricaded themselves in the station house for safety.

Prince Street, where the Boston draft riot began. Courtesy Boston Public Library. John Andrew was at the Harvard commencement. He called in troops from the forts in the harbor and local camps. Mayor Frederic Lincoln used the police telegraph to summon the militia. He ordered the troops to protect the armories. Cabot took up position in the armory, aiming two cannon at the door as the mob converged outside. He got word the crowd was beating a militiaman, so he sent soldiers with bayonets to save him.

The police succeeded in dispersing the mob on Prince Street but the unrest had spread throughout the North End and was extending to Haymarket Square and Faneuil Hall. The federal draft officer in Boston, expecting an attack on his office, wisely gathered up the important papers and books and left the city.

Andrew realized that deploying black troops to put down an uprising of Irish-Americans would simply be adding fuel to the fire. Irish immigrants, by and large, resented the notion of a war to end slavery and feared that free blacks from the South would take away their jobs. He sent an order for Dimick to send troops immediately. Andrew also sent word to other units around Boston, placing them on alert. Mayor Frederick Walker Lincoln , in office and Dimick selected three companies of the 1st Battalion Massachusetts Heavy Artillery totaling men, placing Major Stephen Cabot in command, and dispatched them to Boston.

Cabot had just come off duty as officer of the day. Hot and tired, he had laid down for a nap when awakened by the news. He and his troops disembarked in Boston at about They marched directly to the State House, each man having been issued 20 rounds, and reported to the Governor. Andrew instructed Cabot that he was to serve at the disposal of Mayor Lincoln. There was much hollering and shouting, some stone throwing, but the soldiers reached the Cooper Street Armory unharmed.

They closed themselves inside and prepared to make a stand. Cabot issued orders to Captain Jones who had charge of the armory, instructing him to place a cannon, double loaded with canister, facing the main door of the armory. Jones urged Cabot to load with powder only, dreading the notion of firing live ammunition on civilians.

Cabot repeated the order to load with canister and insisted that he alone would take responsibility for any casualties. As the sun began to set, the crowds only increased. Around , Cabot got word that a militiaman had been isolated and was being beaten by the crowd. He sent out 20 men to save him. The soldiers moved out into Cooper street with bayonets fixed, drove back the crowd and rescued the man. But the mob soon counterattacked with stones. Cabot was forced to send out additional men.

It was at this point, with a significant number of soldiers under attack in Cooper Street, that shots were fired. Cabot was inside the armory at the time and was not able to determine who gave the order to fire, if an order had been given at all. No one was harmed, but the crowd was further enraged by the gunfire. Cabot went out himself to help his men to safety. The crowd took axes and sledge hammers to the armory doors and before long they began to give way.

When the armory doors began to give, Cabot gave the order that all dreaded. He ordered the cannon primed and fired. The canister shot all but blew apart the closed doors, tearing into the crowd outside. Cabot had posted riflemen who fired through what remained of the doors while the cannon was reloaded. Once this was done, he ordered the firing to cease. The dead included men, women and children of all ages.