The Great Riots of New York, 1712 to 1873 — Text and Context

A Century and a Half of Disorder

The book's scope is ambitious, covering riots from 1712 to 1873. Headley groups them by type: the Negro Riots of 1712 and 1741, the Stamp Act Riot of 1765, the Doctors' Riot of 1788, and a series of 19th-century upheavals—election riots, abolition riots, the Flour Riot of 1837, the Astor Place Riot of 1849, and the Police and Dead Rabbits riots. The catalog subjects list only three categories, but the excerpts show a wider range: economic grievances (Flour Riot), ethnic tensions (Orange Riots of 1870 and 1871), and theatrical rivalry (Astor Place). Headley's preface acknowledges omitting minor riots, but the table of contents suggests he aimed for comprehensiveness within a single volume.

The Draft Riots as the Centerpiece

Although the book covers many events, the Draft Riots of 1863 dominate. Headley devotes multiple chapters to them, and the excerpts provide vivid, harrowing detail. One passage describes Sergeant McCredie's force of fourteen men charging a mob, only to be surrounded and nearly annihilated: only five emerged unwounded. The narrative follows individual officers—Bennett, Travis, Phillips—through beatings, stripping, and near-death. Headley's prose is visceral: "clubs, iron bars, guns and pistols, and rained upon with stones and brick-bats." He credits Commissioner Acton, Seth Hawley, General Brown, and Colonel Frothingham for suppressing the riots, reinforcing his pro-authority stance. The excerpts do not reveal the rioters' motivations beyond resisting the draft, but Headley's focus on police heroism is unmistakable.

Sources and Narrative Voice

Headley's preface itemizes his sources: the Historical Society archives for early riots, a pamphlet titled "Behind the Scenes" for the Astor Place Riot, and official reports for the Draft Riots. He thanks David Barnes for facts on the Police Department. This reliance on official and published accounts shapes the book's perspective. The narrative voice is authoritative and moralizing: riots are "disorderly masses" that must be suppressed. Yet the excerpts also show a journalist's eye for detail—the young woman hiding Sergeant McCredie between mattresses, Officer Bennett's wife finding him alive in the dead-house. Headley does not fabricate dialogue but reconstructs scenes with novelistic specificity, a technique that makes the history vivid but raises questions about accuracy.

Readers should approach Headley's work as a primary document of 19th-century attitudes toward civil disorder, not as an objective history. His sources are narrow—official reports and newspapers—and his sympathies lie squarely with the police and military. The book's value lies in its raw detail and its reflection of how a contemporary chronicler understood urban violence. For a fuller picture, compare Headley's account with modern histories that examine rioters' perspectives and the social contexts he omits.

Sometimes I still think about that old Headley history, how a city's anger can leave marks that take generations to fade. It reminded me of the quiet patience in William Pitt and the Great War — A Reader’s Guide, where leadership struggles against chaos. Both left me sitting still afterwards, just feeling the weight of what people endure.