Seeing the New York Draft Riots From July 13 to 16, 1863, only 10 days after the end of the battle of Gettysburg, New York City was paralyzed by the largest civil insurrection in United States history. The violence was triggered by inequities in the new military draft, stoked by resentments over wartime hardship, and inflamed by hatred of the Lincoln administration's anti-slavery turn and the city's African-Americans who were seen as its beneficiaries. For four days, thousands of poor and working-class whites attacked people, destroyed and looted buildings, and battled badly outnumbered police officers and state militiamen until the arrival of federal troops. The number of casualties was somewhere between 100 and 1,200. A small group of uncredited artists employed by the weekly pictorial newspapers followed the crowds and recorded events that would reach the public eye in the form of wood engraved illustrations. The riots were international news, and soon after the violence ended, pictorial papers across the Atlantic also published riot pictures. View slide show  Joshua Brown is executive director of the American Social History Project and professor of history at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is writing a history of the visual culture of the Civil War.