The vast numbers involved in the NYC draft riots were right of the boat from Ireland, or in the various gangs which fought for control of portions of the Lower East Side.
It terms of not liking Blacks, the numerous gangs would bump off each other. It was common practice ...and still is. The NY gangs, like all lawless gangs, had the same type of mind set as the Southern rebels, which was to have no regard for any laws, in fact they attempted to carve out enclaves for themselves made up of rebellious lawbreakers.
The draft riots were the result of a mob mentality, very similar to how the KKK operates. The mob was quelled by Federal troops ordered in by the White House when it became evident local NYC police would be unable to stop the rampaging gangs. Recall in the 1860's communications of that period did not include the split second Internet & cell phones conversations.
In terms of the foolish comment "Lincoln (the racist)", the only racists around here are the ones still fighting for their Lost Cause of rebellion & treason, and still promoting the era of the failed Slave Empire & segregation, which lasted up until the mid-1960's.
This news item from Australia's Herald Sun (1-8-05)
'Mississippi burning still'
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"PHILADELPHIA, Mississippi -- More than 40 years after one of the most notorious crimes of the turbulent civil rights era -- the "freedom summer" slayings of three young civil rights workers -- a reputed Ku Klux Klansman has been charged with murder.
Edgar Ray Killen, 79, a 'preacher', was arrested at his home, and police said there would be more arrests over the killings, dramatised in the 1988 movie Mississippi Burning'.
Newsday, on 1-13-04 reported the following: 'Killen posted the $250,000 bond using family lands as collateral. Area residents said the bond had been set too low and that Killen's release would support the area's image as an outpost of state-sanctioned intolerance.'
"I just can't believe it," said Jewel McDonald, a member of the Philadelphia Coalition, a group that advocated for Killen's arrest. "Lives were lost. But we have to remember, this is Mississippi."
Killen was one of 19 suspected Klan members arrested for their participation in the murders geared to prevent Blacks from voting.
In a nation based on the principle that everyone is equal and no one is above the law, the flouting of the law in Mississippi and elsewhere during the civil rights struggle was an injustice to the people who were abused and to the entire nation.
Killen admits racial hatred. In 1968, Killen told FBI agents he wanted to know who killed Martin Luther King, Jr. so that he could shake the killer's hand. In 1999 Killen told the Associated Press, "I'm as strong for social separation as I ever was."
'Four decades after her son and two other voter-registration volunteers were abducted and killed in Mississippi, Carolyn Goodman's desire has not changed. "I'm only looking for justice," she said from her Upper West Side apartment Friday after the arrest of a longtime leader of the Ku Klux Klan on charges of killing the three." "I'm not looking for any revenge. I am not," Goodman, 89, said. "This man should be off the street ... he should be behind bars, but that's it, period."
USA Today reported on 1-10-05: 'The very light court sentences handed out in the orginal Klan trail was due to Mississippi federal Judge William Cox who stated at the time: "They killed one nigger, one Jew and a white man. I gave them all what I thought they deserved."
'Three of the four Klan members the FBI believe bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in 1963, a blast that killed four young black girls — Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley — were belatedly convicted in an Alabama state court. Only Herman Cash was never charged in the case, and he died in 1994. Robert Chambliss was found guilty of the murders in 1977 and sentenced to life in prison. Thomas Blanton Jr. was convicted in 2001 and sent to prison for life. A year later, Bobby Frank Cherry was convicted after feigning insanity. He died in November at age 74.'
Byron De La Beckwith, the gunman who shot Medgar Evers in {the back} as he walked in the driveway of his home in June 1963, was finally convicted by a state jury in 1994. He died in 2001 while serving a life sentence.
Also in 2002, 73-year-old Samuel Bowers, a Klan imperial wizard, was found guilty of ordering the 1966 firebombing that took the life of Vernon Dahmer Sr., a Mississippi civil rights leader.
The purpose of the trials of now old men for an old murder case is to make sure history does not repeat itself.