[Illustration:  THE DRAFT RIOTS IN NEW YORK CITY]

The beginning of the drawings under the draft act in New York City, on Monday, July 13, 1863, was the signal for four days of rioting.  In the course of this uprising, draft headquarters were destroyed; the office of the Tribune was gutted; negroes were seized, hanged, and shot; the homes of obnoxious Unionists were burned down; the residence of the mayor of the city was attacked; and regular battles were fought in the streets between the rioters and the police.  Business stopped and a large part of the city passed absolutely into the control of the mob.  Not until late the following Wednesday did enough troops arrive to restore order and enable the residents of the city to resume their daily activities.  At least a thousand people had been killed or wounded and more than a million dollars’ worth of damage done to property.  The draft temporarily interrupted by this outbreak was then resumed and carried out without further trouble.

The results of the draft were in the end distinctly disappointing to the government.  The exemptions were numerous and the number who preferred and were able to pay $300 rather than serve exceeded all expectations.  Volunteering, it is true, was stimulated, but even that resource could hardly keep the thinning ranks of the army filled.  With reluctance Congress struck out the $300 exemption clause, but still favored the well-to-do by allowing them to hire substitutes if they could find them.  With all this power in its hands the administration was able by January, 1865, to construct a union army that outnumbered the Confederates two to one.

=War Finance.=—­In the financial sphere the North faced immense difficulties.  The surplus in the treasury had been dissipated by 1861 and the tariff of 1857 had failed to produce an income sufficient to meet the ordinary expenses of the government.  Confronted by military and naval expenditures of appalling magnitude, rising from $35,000,000 in the first year of the war to $1,153,000,000 in the last year, the administration had to tap every available source of income.  The duties on imports were increased, not once but many times, producing huge revenues and also meeting the most extravagant demands of the manufacturers for protection.  Direct taxes were imposed on the states according to their respective populations, but the returns were meager—­all out of proportion to the irritation involved.  Stamp taxes and taxes on luxuries, occupations, and the earnings of corporations were laid with a weight that, in ordinary times, would have drawn forth opposition of ominous strength.  The whole gamut of taxation was run.  Even a tax on incomes and gains by the year, the first in the history of the federal government, was included in the long list.