Horace Greeley, The American Conflict: A History of the Great Rebellion in the United States of America, 1860-65: its Causes, Incidents, and Results: Intended to exhibit especially its moral and political phases with the drift and progress of American opinion respecting human slavery from 1776 to the close of the War for the Union. Volume II.

[507] a small body of soldiers under Capt. Putnam, 12th regulars, whom Gen. Harvey Brown, commanding in the city under Gen. Wool, had sent to quell the riot, and who did it, by ordering his men to fire at those who were hurling missiles at them from the house-tops, while a body of artillerymen entered the houses and made prisoners of their male inmates. Capt. Putnam returned 13 killed, 18 wounded, and 24 prisoners; while of his men but two or three suffered injury. The whole amount of property destroyed by the rioters, for which the City was held responsible to the owners, was valued at about $2,000,000.

During this night and the following day, several regiments of our disciplined Militia arrived, on their return from Pennsylvania, soon followed by other regiments of veterans from the Army of the Potomac; and it would not thereafter have been safe to attempt rioting. The City authorities now appropriated large (borrowed) sums to pay bounties for volunteers; so that the City's quotas were substantially filled without recourse to drafting: the Government much preferring volunteers, of course, but utterly unwilling, because unable, to forego a resort to drafting when men were not otherwise forthcoming. In other words, it could not admit that its right to endure depended on the volunteering in sufficient numbers of citizens to defend its existence.

There were simultaneous and subsidiary riots in Boston, in Jersey City, and at Troy and Jamaica, N. Y.; with preliminary perturbations in many other places; but all these were plainly sympathetic with and subordinate to the New York effort, and quickly subsided when that was overborne. So there was, at different periods of the War, forcible resistance offered to conscription in two or three counties of Wisconsin, perhaps a few more of Pennsylvania, and possibly two or three other localities. But in no single instance was there a riot incited by drafting, wherein Americans by birth bore any considerable part, nor in which the great body of the actors were not born Europeans, and generally of recent importation. Considering how wide-spread, earnest, intense, was the feeling of repugnance to the War, especially after it had assumed an anti-Slavery aspect, this fact tends strongly to establish the natural strength in a republic of the sentiment of deference to law and to rightful authority, even when that authority is held to be abused or perverted.

Gov. Seymour next appealed¹ to the President, urging a suspension of the Draft, because of the alleged excessive quota required of the urban districts of his State--saying

It is just to add that the Administration owes this to itself; as these inequalities fall most heavily on those districts which have been opposed to its political views.

He further insisted that the enforcement of the Draft be postponed till after its constitutionality shall have been adjudged by the courts — saying:

It is believed by at least one-half of the people of the loyal States that the Conscription Act, which they are called upon to obey because it is on the statute-book, is in itself a violation of the supreme constitutional law. There is a fear and suspicion that, while they are threatened with the severest penalties of the law, they are to be deprived of its protection. * * * I do not dwell upon what I believe would be the consequence of a violent, harsh policy before the constitutionality