The Annals of the Civil War Written by Leading Participants North and South
Alexander Kelly McClure, Ed.

[299] the original assault on the draft office, in Third avenue, disappeared after that demonstration, and thenceforward the mob was actuated solely by an instinct of rapine and plunder. The limits of this sketch will not admit a recital of every encounter between the rioters and the city's defenders. Outbreaks would occur simultaneously in widely-separated sections of the city, compelling the police and military to split up into small detachments. These latter would combine, as they happened to meet in the streets, so that it would be impossible to give a connected narrative of the services of any individual portion of the command. I will, accordingly, briefly summarize the principal occurrences of the riots not yet described:

Thursday, July 14.-Lieutenant Wood, Ninth Infantry, commanding the mixed detachment from the Narrows, being assaulted, about ten A. M., in Pitt street, fired on the mob, killing fourteen and wounding seventeen. He dispersed, at the point of the bayonet, another mob in Division street. The “Permanent guard” received special mention for its gallantry in both the above actions. Captain Dilks, with two hundred policemen, had a desperate fight, on Second avenue, near Thirtieth street, with over one thousand rioters, whom he routed with severe loss. Later in the day, the mob returned, in increased numbers, and overpowered the police, but were again repulsed, by Captain Franklin (Twelfth Infantry), after a spirited fight, in which a number of rioters were killed. Mayor Opdyke's house was partially sacked by a mob of boys. An attack was made on some houses at Forty-sixth street and Fifth avenue, which was suppressed by Captain Putnam (Twelfth Infantry), with a loss to the rioters of forty men. The residence of James Gibbon, a relative of Horace Greeley, in Twenty-ninth street, between Seventh and Eighth avenues, was emptied of its contents. Brooks Brothers' clothing store, in Catharine street, was ransacked, until Captain Franklin came to the rescue. Four barricades were erected in Ninth avenue, near Thirty-fifth street, which Captain Wilkins, with the Governor's Island troops, captured and destroyed after a lively fight. My section, of which I had resumed command after it was rescued from Colonel O'Brien, was attacked at Thirty-sixth street and Seventh avenue. I went into battery, but my raw gun detachments worked clumsily, and the mob vanished like smoke into the side streets. As the excitement was intense in that neighborhood, and General Sanford was apprehensive for the safety of the arsenal, I bivouacked where I was, having the “Permanent guard,” under Lieutenant Porter, First United States Artillery, as my support.

Wednesday, July 15.-Several thousand rioters, who were