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Public Employee Press
Media
Beat
Book Review
Class and racial tensions erupt in bloodshed
on the streets of New York
Kevin Bakers Paradise
Alley is a historical novel about one of the bloodiest urban uprisings
in U.S. history, the Civil War draft riots, when class and racial tensions
fueled the fires as the streets of New York became the battlefront.
The novel is steeped in graphic, historical descriptions of New York City.
In the summer of 1863, little was needed to ignite the smoldering populace.
Residents already endured high inflation, scarce employment, corrupt city
government, and the highest crime rate in the western world. The poor
and working class lived in overcrowded tenements on streets strewn with
garbage and dead horses.
New York City had nearly one million souls, packed into the tail
end of Manhattan, writes Baker. Irish immigrants escaping famine
flooded in, competing for refuge and work with other immigrants, free
African Americans and escaped slaves. The Irish often replaced African
Americans in low jobs and hard ones ... for wages that will barely
feed them.
The campaign to abolish slavery was not widely popular among the white
working class. Most local politicians were Confederate sympathizers. In
1863, Abraham Lincoln issued two decrees that sparked hatred among the
diverse groups: The Emancipation Proclamation freed all slaves in the
U.S., and the Conscription Act imposed the nations first military
draft on white men from 20-45.
The price of a life
When most working men earned barely $300 a year and a slave could be purchased
for $1,000, the rules of the new draft let a man pay $300 for a substitute
to fight in his place.
White laborers feared that emancipated slaves would migrate north and
take their jobs for lower wages while they fought what was popularly known
as a poor mans fight and a rich mans war.
In some of the darkest, most regrettable days in our past, white mobs
of thousands, protesting the draft, mauled police and army officers, looted
businesses, and torched buildings. They turned their wrath toward African
Americans, beating, burning, mutilating and lynching hundreds.
Baker relates this grim history through the life stories of realistic
characters: Ruth Dove, an Irish rag picker; her husband Billy Dove, an
escaped slave; Ruths criminal ex-husband, Dangerous Johnny Dolan;
Irish immigrant Deirdre Dolan OKane, a maid; her husband Tom, a
soldier; and Herbert Willis Robinson, a New York Tribune reporter who
follows the development of the riot and the mobs.
The Draft Riots occurred in 1863, but when we read Paradise Alley,
we cannot help comparing the screaming voices of that time with protests
we have heard in contemporary times about immigrants and minorities taking
our jobs.
Susan
Bailey,
Authors Talk Committee
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