West Farms 393 



and especially in the city of New York. Some volunteered 

 for the defence of the Union, some remained passive, and 

 others were " Copperheads" of the usual kind. While a great 

 many individual soldiers enlisted from all parts of the Borough, 

 the following companies were recruited almost wholly in the 

 places given; 6th Artillery, Company C, wholly, and Com- 

 pany K, partially, at West Farms, Company H in Morrisania; 

 5th Infantry (Duryea's Zouaves), Company F, partially, in 

 Fordham; 17th Infantry, Company C, Morrisania; 176th 

 Infantry (Ironsides), Company G, in Pelham. When the 

 draft was inaugurated, in 1863, the lawless classes took ad- 

 vantage of the absence of the troops in Pennsylvania and the 

 weakness of the civil power to resent the draft by forcible 

 means and mob violence; though they did not go so far as 

 their rebellious neighbors on Manhattan Island. 



The disturbances in connection with the draft in New York 

 began on July 13, 1863, when the vicious and ignorant who 

 composed the mobs, burned the offices of the provost-marshal, 

 destroyed the lists of those subject to the draft, attacked and 

 killed individual soldiers found in the streets, resisted the 

 police to the point of murder, tore up railroad tracks, cut 

 telegraph wires, hung negroes wherever found, burned and 

 sacked several houses belonging to eminent supporters of the 

 government, and burned the Colored Orphan Asylum. 



The reports of all these lawless doings did not have their 

 effect upon the inhabitants north of the Harlem River until 

 the next day, Tuesday, the fourteenth, when their passions 

 were aroused by reading the newspaper accounts of the pro- 

 ceedings of the previous day. Mobs visited the draft offices 

 at Morrisania and West Farms and destroyed the lists, in their 

 ignorance believing that the names could not be replaced. 

 The telegraph offices in Melrose and Williamsbridge were 



