The Deadliest Riot in American History At the height of the Civil War, just weeks after thousands of men had died on the battlefields of Gettysburg, Pa., a sweltering New York City—crowded, filthy, and seething with class and ethnic tensions—erupted in mob violence. The draft riots would rage across the city for five brutal days, during which the white working masses—many of whom had narrowly escaped Ireland’s devastating potato famine—vented their fury on wealthy New Yorkers, abolitionists, Republicans, and, most viciously, the African-American populace. To this day the riots of July 1863 remain the bloodiest civil disturbance in American history,...