New York Draft Riot - cont.
July 14, 1863
Crowds erected barricades on First and Third Avenues to hold
off police and soldiers.
2,000 people gathered outside the Union Steam Works at 21st Street and Second Avenue, where rifles were produced for the Army. Police were stationed inside to defend the factory and the 4,000 rifles stored there. A squad of two hundred officers pushed the crowd up Second Avenue to 32nd Street where they came under attack by bricks thrown from rooftops. At 34th Street, one hundred and fifty members of the New York State Militia opened fire on the crowd with rifles and a small cannon. The crowd moved back down Second Avenue and a group of five hundred rioters occupied the Unions Steam Works until the police retook the building and removed the rifles. In response, rioters burned the factory and the remains of the police station on 22nd Street.
George Templeton Strong watched the fire, writing:
A splendid blaze it made, but I did not venture below Second Avenue, finding myself in a crowd of Celtic spectators disgorged from the circumjacent tenement houses. They were exulting over the damage to 'them bloody police,' and so on. I thought discretion the better part of curiosity. Distance lent enchantment to that view.
