“In the second year of the great civil war, New York was a city full of tribes. It wasn’t a city, really. It was more a furnace where a city someday might be forged” said Amsterdam Vallon, the main character played by Leonardo DiCaprio in Martin Scorsese’s motion picture, Gangs of New York [2002].
Gangs of New York displays the bustling New York City in 1862, through the times of the Civil War and the conflicts amongst the people that lived there. Gang violence was at a high. The slums, called “The Five Points” (now called Columbus Park) were ruled by criminal streets gangs “The Dead Rabbits” which were led by the Irish Catholics, and a gang of Protestant “Native” New Yorkers. Vallon, leader of the Dead Rabbits sought to seek revenge on Bill the Butcher, played by Daniel Day-Lewis, leader of the Natives, over the killing of his father.
New York City in the early 1860s was consumed with immigration, the Civil War, gang violence/ riots, and the deep division of the Union and the Confederacy.
The Irish and Germans were high recruits in the draft for the Civil War. New York was a major entry point for immigrants from Europe, and Army recruiters stood ground, encouraging newcomers to join the army and fight for on the Union’s side to defend their new country. (Warner, S., 2011, pg.57) “The 1840 famine in Ireland and the appearance of crowded Irish slums and shanties in New York is such a well-known case. The change in urban survival also followed upon distance events.” The rapid amount of Irish and Western European immigration coming into New York caused rivalry with the Native New York gangs and the Dead Rabbits specifically.
Abraham Lincoln’s win in the 1861 election sparked high conflicts amongst the Confederates and supporters of the South, and the Union supporters and colored folk. Many were angry over the new conscription act and the Emancipation Proclamation signed by Lincoln. Confederates yelled “Go back to Africa!” and protested with signs that read “Lincoln is trying to make the white man a slave!”
This racism was long lasting and many American’s still have the same mindset today, as did their ancestors from the Civil War days. Black Americans were attacked daily, because of their new announced freedom from the shackles of slavery. (Coates, T., 2014) “In 1860, slaves were the single largest, by far, financial asset of property in the entire American economy.” Two hundred fifty years of slavery, ninety years of Jim Crow segregation, sixty years of separate but equal, and still, racism is in full fledge.
The United States over 150 years ago was not so different than it is now, when it comes to the mindset of these different groups in the country. The Blacks vs. the Whites, the Democrats vs. the Republicans, True-blooded Americans vs. newcomers/ immigrants. The conflicts, racism, and hate among these different groups are still present.
Although New York was dominated by Democrats, and was a state of the Union during the Civil War, there was strong economic ties to South. Mayor Tammany Hall, who was controlled by William Tweed controlled the politics in the city and many politicians were put in power through illegal means. Many Democrat politicians were sympathetic to the Confederacy and wanted to continue profitable cotton trade with the South.
Some true Union supporters even sought to go to the North Western because New York wasn’t as Democratic as they posed to be. Much like how Jenny Evergreen of Gangs of New York dreamed of moving to San Francisco, California, under the impression that the West was more progressive and free than New York.
Draft riots in 1863 caused even more division with the residents who were angry over the war conscription. The conscription that many could not afford to buy themselves out of for $300 at the time, now close to $8,000.
The gangs in the area –including the Dead Rabbits and the Natives–, the police department, Union army militia, the Irish, Poles, Germans and Black residents were all rioting and fighting one another because of the conscription. “Stores closing in fear of the mob, rioters attacking colored boarding houses, robbing them and settling them on fire, the mob is arming, police is of no avail, and Blacks are being attacked.” Amsterdam Vallon narrated. These riots which lasted three days, remain the largest civil and most racially-charged urban disturbance in American history. (Foner, E., 1988)
After the scene in Gangs of New York with the draft riots, the rivalry between the Dead Rabbits and the Natives come to an end after the defeat of the Natives. Vallon buries Bill the Butcher in a cemetery in Brooklyn and said, “My father said we was all born of blood and tribulation and so was our great city. For those of us that lived in died in them furious days, everything we knew was mildly swept away. No matter what they did to build this city up again, for the rest of time, it would be like no one even knew we was ever here.” The final scene of the film shows the New York skyline changing over 140 years as modern-day Manhattan is built. From the Brooklyn Bridge to the World Trade Center, and the cemetery becomes overgrown and forgotten.
After the Civil War, most of the country had to rebuild themselves and transform life in the cities. More immigration occurred, the industrial revolution emerged, and there were many more transformations in the country, specifically in New York. “The residential and industrial sprawl of postwar North America’s construction boom was the culmination of both processes.” (Fowler. 1996 pg.142) Fowler, speaking on post-World War II rebuilding of America, this was much like the rebuilding after the Civil War. The United States shifted in economic, residential, and political means.