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Indybay Feature

JFK FDR AND THE C.I.A.

by Andy Freedman
America has a Republican President Donald Trump who is for a dictatorship and Democrats who in this post 9/11,post Covid-19 world are for their own dictatorship.President John Kennedy a Democrat who supported Democracy had fellow Democrats who became Republicans as his biggest opponents.While moderate Republicans rightnow support Democracy,
 America has a Republican President Donald Trump who is for a dictatorship and Democrats who in this post 9/11,post Covid-19 world are fo...
In 1860 the Republican Party which backthen was an anti-Slavery party nominated Abraham Lincoln for President.What had happened was this,England which America won a war of Independence against in 1776.England which burned down the Whitehouse in 1812,was supporting the Confederacy.They couldn’t directly do it,but British business’s while the British Government didn’t officially do it,did.Which is a trick the British Government used to use.
Because up until then,the American Southern Plantation owners used the money they made from unjust slavery to pay the U.S.Congress to do something where they bought cheap goods imported from England while American factories,which were trying to sell the samethings weren’t making as much as they could.
England in 1776 offered freedom to African-Americans who fought against their mistreater.And now England was supporting slaveowners leaving America to hold onto slaves,sure because it was about keeping America from becoming a country in 1776,and making America smaller to reconquer it in 1860,so they could go eitherway on the unjust enslavement of African-Americans.
After the CivilWar was won and maybe because it was indirectly against England,despite rioting in NewYork City and Boston over being drafted to fight a war for Black people during the Civilwar,the Irish still served disproportionately in the Union Army.
Now that the Union Army had won and slavery was ended but unfortunately segregation apartheid existed in the American South.
Amendments added into the U.S.Constitution after the CivilWar which said African-Americans were to be treated equally,the U.S.Supreme Court ruled didn’t mean a local state couldn’t pass local state laws saying all Black people in the state had to pass a racebased test to vote,that unfairly banned Black-White marriage, and all Public places needed to have no Black people or a separate section for Black people.
It wasn’t until the 1950’s that the U.S.Supreme Court ruled those Amendments added in after the CivilWar really mean,that African-Americans are to be treated equally.And besides local states getting rid of those laws to enforce it’s Constitution the Federal Government can pass laws or have a Presidential Executive Order so the Federal Government can make sure no state segregates people,bans marriage,or mistreats anyone based on skincolor,Ethnicbackground,or religion.
It’s waiting 100 years to enforce Amendments added into your own Constitution.
So until Democrat Franklin Roosevelt was elected President in 1932,African-Americans were because of Lincoln and Ulysses Grant Republican.But in the South 90% were legally banned from voting not the same as just not voting.
Woodrow Wilson a Democratic President from Virginia a Southern state who became Governor of NewJersey a Northern state and then President of the United States,ran a Democratic Party that supported immigration for Jewish,Italian,and Irish people.Amended the Constitution to let Women vote in American elections in 1920,but supported the apartheid segregation of African-Americans in the South.
And a different form of legal segregation in the North,where while Black-White marriage in Illinois and NewYork was legal,any restaurant or apartment building in NewYork City or Chicago could,”Freely choose whether to serve or rent to Black people”,.It’s not the Government ordering a restaurant to put up a ”Whites only”,sign the way all Southern states required.
But it allowed 9 out of 10 restaurants in NewYork City the sameway the restaurants did in Chicago to tell an African-American in 1919,they didn’t serve Black people and call a cop on them if they don’t accept discrimination and leave.Since people need to eat,”Freely choose”,really meant African-Americans were in a different way then the South unfree.Since 9 out of 10 apartment buildings also wouldn’t rent to them,so you had segregated neighborhoods
So Woodrow Wilson Democrats were the Contradiction of equaltreatment for everyone but more unequal treatment for Black people then even other White people supported.Of course it all began because while Amendments were added in to fix it,the Constitution originally in 1789 had slavery in it.
Once Franklin Roosevelt a Democrat from NewYork a Northern state,who had a Second home he spent most of his time at in the American South,WarmSprings,Georgia was elected President in 1932 and took office in 1933.
Roosevelt did the great things for the American Majority Wilson might support.Childlabor was banned,Old people got Social Security,every kid was in a free Public school,hungry people mostly poor White got free Government money or a Government job they could choose to quit,which quickly moved them into the Middleclass so they had enough to eat and they weren’t homeless and in Hooverville tents anymore even if America was still in an economic Depression.
However since segregation in the South hadn’t ended yet in the 1930’s,you had Northen and Southern Democrats.
A Northern Democrat in Minneosota for example supported a ban on Childlabor Social Security and felt it was fine if the few Black children who’s families lived in the neighborhood also attended the free Publicschool. And Black-White marriage was legal in Minneosota.He was a Democrat who’s favorite President was Democrat Franklin Roosevelt but he admired Republican Abraham Lincoln for ending slavery also.
A Southern Democrat in Alabama for example supported the ban on childlabor,SocialSecurity,but insisted there be Two Public schools One for White kids and One legally for Black kids only built.Black-White marriage was banned in Alabama.They had a racist state law where they could arrest a Black and White person for asking for a marriage license.His favorite President was Democrat Franklin Roosevelt and he hated Republican Abraham Lincoln.Both the Northern Liberal who was against segregation and admired Republican Lincoln and the Southern racist,were both members of the Democratic Party who didn’t like the current Republican Party.
Because Black people in the North while segregated into all Black neighborhoods due to apartment buildings in other places not renting to them,could vote without a test unlike the South.When a Blackman was elected to the U.S.Congress,while he would in the 1930’s have not been able to go into any restaurants in Southern city/U.S. Capitol Washington D.C.,or if there wasn’t a “Whites only”,there was a segregated section with a “Colored,sign.
While the Blackman would be as legally,apartheid,segregated in Southern Washington D.C.,as in Mississippi,Washington D.C. is a Southern city.Because Washington D.C.,doesn’t belong to any state it’s America’s Capitol the buildings the Blackman could enter through the same door as White people and sit next to White people in the cafeteria and stand up and nonviolently argue with White people,were the U.S.Congressional building and the U.S.Senate building.So while having legal apartheid due to state laws in the South America would also have African-American U.S.Congressman.Franklin Roosevelt arranged while not ending segregation or lynchings in his adopted state of Georgia,to have all the Black U.S.Congressmen be Democrats.The White Segregationist Democrat from Mississippi,accepted that the Blackman from Harlem was a Democratic Congressman,who would also be at the Demcratic Convention in a Northern city.
While this lead to at least 35% of African-Americans whether they could vote or not identifying as Democrats.
Martin Luther King Sr.,who would be considered based on his politics a Liberal Democrat probably to protest NewYorker Franklin Roosevelt not doing more about lynchings and segregation,as one of the few Black people in Georgia who passed the state test for Black people and could vote and in that one building stand temporarily next to a White person,remained in the Republican Party until the 1960’s.
In 1945 either Franklin Roosevelt died of natural causes and then while he was leading the American military against Hitler.After Roosevelt’s death Hitler died also.
Or since in the book,”The Thousand Days”,a kids book with pictures that was on bookstore shelves in the 1960’s and disappeared until it was made available on Amazon.Com in 2018.
In the pictures of JFK for kids,Fellow Democrat John Kennedy is put in topdown cars before and during his Presidency and shot and killed in One to either single he was a Roosevelt enemy or as a coincidence.
Roosevelt if he was killed,since Hitler had been in power 8 years before Roosevelt went to war against him,segregation and lynchings against Black people continued,and Japanese-Americans were put in Internment camps on American soil,White Liberal supporters of Franklin Roosevelt’s NewDeal programs said,
”We are the ones who did the rightthing and got Franklin to ban childlabor and give Old people SocialSecurity.In exchange for doing that for us,Franklin who is now 63 yearsold,wants to do things to Civilliberties that while Franklin wouldn’t mean to do it,could unintentionally lead to members of the White American Majority ending up in Internment camps for people who are considered anti-Government,can you imagine if that happened to nonviolent people in America?And we are fighting Hitler rightnow.”
If Roosevelt was killed,then yes it appears his own supporters were concerned where he would go on Civillibeties.
Roosevelt’s death would be ruled natural causes,so no one would know that America was preparing to use a nuclear bomb on Japan to avenge the death of a man,Roosevelt,who couldn’tve been killed unless he was getting ready to do something his own Liberal supporters felt could be a CivilLiberties problem.While who knows if Franklin Roosevelt Jr.,his son would be future King of a land with no Constitution.
This was the same Franklin Roosevelt Sr.,who accepted having J.Edgar Hoover as the head of the created in 1935 F.B.I. and while there was an O.S.S.,was getting ready to create the C.I.A.
If the Organization which was for Democracy in America,felt Communism in Russia was a different type of dictatorship,and was happy Communist Russia was joining America and England in fighting Hitler.
Got Japan which had it’s Army fighting on Hitler’s side but may have agreed,while each Asian country they conquered was territory to share with Hitler,to privately give Russia the information to kill their ally Hitler and free Jewish concentration camp prisoners.Since it was Japanese-Americans in camps in America,to join in helping to keep America free and stopping Roosevelt from being a dictator,by being used by Liberal Organization people.
The topdown car if Kennedy was a Liberal former Navyman who felt his father Joe’s support of the Nazi’s was wrong.And fought Hitler and helped NewDealers keep America free,was because Chicago Mayor and rumored O.S.S. American Intelligence man Anton Cermak was standing next to a Topdown car in Miami in 1933 that rumored O.S.S.American Intelligence man and President-Elect Franklin Roosevelt was in.
Allegedly the shooter was trying to kill Roosevelt who was for Democracy.And somehow the shooter accidentally shot Cermak,who if he was for a dictatorship was visting Roosevelt before Roosevelt took office.
Ok but then if this is all true Roosevelt turned into Cermak because he was for Dictatorship by 1945.
Rumor has it Lyndon Johnson,Jimmy Carter,and Joe Biden are all sons of Franklin Roosevelt.Franklin Jr.’s halfbrothers,while Nancy Reagan was adopted by Loyal Davis Roosevelt’s nephew,so the American Presidency and the C.I.A. which runs America has Roosevelt,Hoover,Rockefeller,and Eleanor Roosevelt relatives all over like Royal families.
From 1945-1959-The sameway D.C. was segregated but the exception to the rule were Government legislative buildings,Baseball stadiums in the South would allow a Black person to sit in the dugout with White people and play in the field with them.And on Military bases Black people would now be allowed to be in the same Military units as White people,so while apartheid continued in the American South.
Jackie Robinson became the First African-American ProBaseball player for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1946,and Harry Truman Roosevelt’s Vice-President who became President and used nuclear weapons on Japan in 1945 before leaving office in 1953.
Harry Truman who was a Democrat President from Missouri a state that had slavery but fought on the Union side.So Lincoln worded his Emancipation Proclamation to not ban slavery in Missouri and WestVirgnia just ban slavry everywhere else.Truman signed the Executive Order in 1948 letting Black people in the military serve in the same units and sit next to White people while on a military base,integrating the Army.
When Truman the Democrat from Missouri,Dewey the Republican from NewYork who despite belonging to Abe Lincoln’s Party didn’t call for integrating the Army or giving Black people equalrights,Henry Wallace the Progressive Party candidate who supported equalrights for Black people but was allegedly the nominee of a Russian funded political party,Henry Wallace used to be One of Roosevelt’s Vice-Presidents but he didn’t get along with him.So he was another one during Roosevelt’s Presidency who was dropped from the ticket when Roosevelt was alive and running for reelection,and Strom Thurmond the Democrat from SouthCarolina who was running as a Third Party candidate because he was angry fellow Democrat Truman didn’t keep Black people in segregated units and segregated places while serving in the Army,in a Four way race.
After the Chicago Tribune printed on the headline,”Dewey defeats Truman”,Truman to let everyone know he won this Four way 1948 Presidental race walked on the stage and smiled while holding a newspaper that said,”Dewey defeats Truman”,everyone laughed.But during Truman’s inauguration fellow Democrats from the South,eventhough Missouri was a slave state also,turned their back on Truman,the Army’s integrater while he was being sworn in.
Truman in 1948 while running for reelection agreed to recognize and help create the country Israel.And since Roosevelt was for it,Truman the Democrat agreed with Republicans to create the C.I.A.,all of this before winning a close Fourway race.
In 1959,John Kennedy the Irish-Catholic Democrat U.S.Senator from Massachusetts knew that while there were Liberal Democrats who supported ending segregation against Black people in the American South,Government assistance for all poor people,and having America as a Democracy.Besides Democrats in the South who were for Government assistance for White people and continuing segregation,there were Democrats who would end segregation in the South give Black people equalrights in exchange for a Mandatory National Service bill that would allow people who haven’t been drafted by the military or convicted of a crime to do labor.
Half the Black people and the Liberal White people who supported Franklin Roosevelt’s NewDeal programs but wanted to make sure that there were not for the White American Majority internment camps and forced labor in America.And while Russia was a dictatorship of a kind felt Franklin Roosevelt would use an upcoming coldwar against Communist Russia to do that,if Franklin Roosevelt was killed,these idealistic Black people and White people would do unpaid labor for the small business’s and farms of people,who are willing in another way not based on skincolor to enslave other people and have a dictatorship.50% of Black people and because they would include nonviolent Government critics 30% of White people.
Meanwhile supporters of this dictatorship also existed in the Republican Party.
John Kennedy needed since unpaid labor competes with business’s a Democracy.And knew while his father Joe and brother Bobby undermined him by supporting Republican Senator Joe McCarthy a friend in the other party.
”Communists in the state Department”,was McCarthy a supporter of dictatorship with dead Democrat President Franklin Roosevelt’s son,Franklin Roosevelt Jr. as King,trying to figure out if John Kennedy was involved in a group that had anything to do with Roosevelt’s death for Joe and Bobby’s cooperation other Kennedy’s would still be able to do business with the richest families in America.
They keep behaving like if someone was killed for trying to unfairly end Democracy you get to behave like they were killed for no reason and after killing or arresting Democracy advocates ruin Democracy.When Franklin Roosevelt may have died of natural causes,despite the pictures in “The Thousand Days”,and if he was killed that was why.
John Kennedy while knowing that most African-Americans wanted equalrights in a Democratic society knew that some Black people figured the dictatorship with equalrights for all but forced labor for some was the only way segregation for all would end.And they were joining White people like a Barack Obama Church group in investigating whether John Kennedy did anything to Roosevelt while he was getting ready to give all Black people equalrights since the investigations asked for by White people began in 1946 before he ran for Office.
Once Kennedy was the First Irish-Catholic President of the United States of America,willing to accept that most Americans backthen were Protestant.Kennedy sent advisors into Vietam but didn’t go to war and was going to withdraw the advisors after the 1964 election,sent people into Cuba but would only go as far had it continued further to replace one Communist leader of Cuba with another.
Not because John Kennedy liked Communist dictatorships but because the Organization said,they would help African-Americans to get equalrights in America which would make America free for all the different groups of White people also,since Civilrights laws say no one can be mistreated for,”Skincolor,Religion,Race,Creed.”,When my White Jewish GreatGrandpa born in Austria raised in England when he came to Ellis Island it said on the form,”Race:Hebrew”,.So Jews,Italians,the Irish backthen as non Anglo-Saxon White people were considered races.
And having a Second Superpower the Soviet Union controlling half of Europe,would mean America wouldn’t get certain economic things if it invaded even more countries then Vietnam and tried to impose a dictatorship at home.So America to be a Democracy Russia needed to be allowed to keep their dictatorship since they at least fought Hitler in WorldWarII and controlled Half of Europe.
On Civilrights John Kennedy on TV said how the bible says it is wrong to be against anyone for skincolor.An important response to racists in the South distorting the bible.And while John Kennedy was President there was the 1963 march on Washington.
After Marilyn Monroe who had a relationship with John Kennedy was doing things to be a C.I.A. asset and C.I.A. asset and former Firstlady Eleanor Roosevelt ended up dead in 1962,when they both made attempts on John Kennedy’s life to try and pressure Kennedy into wars in Cuba or Vietnam which could be used for the dictatorship at home.
Kennedy was shot riding in a topdown car on November 22,1963.Lee Harvey Oswald who while he may have shot a Cop trying to frame him that day,said he didn’t shoot Kennedy was killed on National TV before he could finish explaining his side of the story.
Jack Ruby originally born with the lastname Rubenstein a hitman for the Chicago Mafia which the C.I.A. allegedly hired to kill Kennedy,shot Oswald on TV.
Now in 2026 because Democrat Bill Clinton while picking up the economy for regular people,also created a Corporation for National Service to move America closer to Mandatory National Service.And while Martin Luther King Jr.,was against Mandatory National Service Bill Clinton renamed Martin Luther King Jr. day,Martin Luther King Jr.,service day,and helped the C.I.A. to prepare to do 9/11,after he left office,the sameway Eleanor Roosevelt was for blowing up a building in NewYork City in 1962.
You now in 2026 have Donald Trump Republicans who are for the forced labor dictatorship without Black people, and a continued ban on abortion,and more Government funded religion dictatorship Republicans.
Dictatorship Democrats who as long as it is White,Black,and Brown business owners getting unpaid labor,and abortion is relegalized are willing to do this to other fellow Liberal people.
Liberal Democrats who are for equalrights for all people,government money to help people,no limits on Civilliberties but they can’t win.
Moderate Republicans they support equalrights for Black people,some Latino undocumented immigrants remaining in America,Abortion in the First Trimester,Government assistance for people,no fored labor,but many small business owners would become Federal Government employees eventhough it’s not really Conservative to want more Government employees,and if they must keep funding Christian churches make sure the religion isn’t used to encourage people to limit other people’s rights or die to limit other people’s rights.
Those moderate Republicans might take the Party from Trump,and other then Two issues are similar enough to Democrat John Kennedy to be who he would be today.These moderate Republicans are now critics of the C.I.A. and enemies of fellow Republican Donald Trump.
Underneath this text is proof England supported the Confederacy during the CivilWar that there were draft riots and how Democrat Roosevelt created Republican J.Edgar Hoover’s F.B.I.

President Calvin Coolidge first appointed Hoover as director of the BOI, the predecessor to the FBI, in 1924. After 11 years in the post, Hoover became instrumental in founding the FBI in June 1935, where he remained as director for an additional 37 years until his death in May 1972 –

The New York City draft riots (July 13–16, 1863), sometimes referred to as the Manhattan draft riots and known at the time as Draft Week,[3] were violent disturbances in Lower Manhattan, widely regarded as the culmination of working-class discontent with new laws passed by Congress that year to draft men to fight in the ongoing American Civil War. The protests turned into a race riot against African Americans by Irish American rioters. President Abraham Lincoln diverted several regiments of militia and volunteer troops after the Battle of Gettysburg to control the city. The official death toll was listed at either 119 or 120. Rhodes gives "an estimated loss in killed and wounded of 1000, most of whom were of the mob, and a probable damage to private property of $1,500,000." Barnes writes: " Eighteen persons are known to have been killed by the rioters, eleven of whom were colored."[3]


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DISUNION
The Boston Draft Riots
BY BRETT M. PALFREYMAN
July 16, 2013 12:16 pm July 16, 2013 12:16 pm 1

Disunion follows the Civil War as it unfolded.
Maj. Stephen Cabot must have expected the worst when he assumed command of the Massachusetts militia unit stationed at the Cooper Street Armory, in Boston’s North End, on the evening of July 14, 1863. Earlier that afternoon, federal officials trudging through neighborhoods around the city had delivered the first round of conscription notices to the homes of drafted men. Cabot, like many in Boston, was probably aware that rampaging crowds of draft resisters had stormed across New York City the previous day, looting, burning and killing along the way. There was a good chance, he knew, that Bostonians might greet their nation’s call to service in the same way.
Looking out from his fortified position within the walls of the armory, the major set his jaw and resolved to maintain control of his city, whatever the cost. His heart must have stopped when, around dusk, Gov. John A. Andrew informed him that a “mob” was “beating the police” and “there was every appearance of serious trouble during the coming night.”
Major Cabot and his detachment of 166 militiamen watched through shuttered windows and cracks in barred doors as a mob of between 500 and 1,000 people gathered on Cooper Street, outside the armory. Young men tore up bricks from the sidewalks beneath their feet and hurled them at the building, breaking windows and splintering fragments from the armory’s massive double doors.
A reporter from The Boston Herald remembered “one Amazonian woman, shouting and screaming, and urging the assailants on in their desperate work. A dozen men were trying to get her away from the scene, but she tore herself from their arms, and with hair streaming, arms swinging, and her face the picture of phrenzy, she rushed again and again to the assault.” A young girl watching nearby recalled that “women came out in large numbers, some of them holding their babies up in their arms and daring the soldiers to fire at them.” As furious rioters wielding firearms, clubs and other homemade weapons pressed up against the failing wooden doors, Major Cabot finally gave the order he’d been hoping to avoid.
SLIDE SHOW
Seeing the New York Draft Riots

A group of uncredited artists employed by the weekly pictorial newspapers followed New York’s bloody draft riots that erupted in July 1863.
• View slide show »
One of the armory’s two cannons was loaded with grape shot and rolled into position near the entrance, aimed directly at the closed doors and the protesters on the other side. A single shot was all it took. The cannon discharged with a flash of light and a thunderous report, spraying a barrage of lead balls through the double doors and into the heart of the crowd beyond. “Dead and wounded lay on every side and the havoc was appalling;” one 12-year-old boy died instantly, shot through the heart. A middle-aged man fell nearby, “eleven shot taking effect in his head and body” and “his arm nearly shot off.”
The crowd wavered, fell back, and finally dispersed as soldiers burst through the doorway and into the streets with bayonets fixed. Major Cabot’s initial sense of relief probably darkened as he surveyed the smoke-filled square and saw that “nothing was to be seen of the mob, except those who had paid the penalty for lawlessness.”
The Boston draft riots have never received as much scholarly or popular attention as their more well-known counterparts in New York City. The Boston riots were shorter and less destructive, and they resulted in fewer deaths (while the exact number of people killed in Boston is unclear, the final death toll was certainly far lower than the 120 or more souls who lost their lives in New York).
But we also hear less about the Boston draft riots today because the overwhelming majority of written documents about them came from the city’s elites: newspaper editors, concerned politicians, the chief of police and even Major Cabot himself. In Civil War Boston, these men tended to be wealthier and more educated. They were staunch Republicans, ardent supporters of Lincoln and his draft, and wholeheartedly committed to the cause of the Union. As such, they had good reason to deny the legitimacy of draft protests in their city. If word spread that common people were to taking to the streets to resist the draft in Boston – the ostensible heart of antislavery, the supposed stronghold of the Union – how could the North ever hope to win the war?
Unsurprisingly, the written records left behind by literate Bostonians downplayed the ultimate significance of draft resistance in the city. One writer dismissed the disturbance as “a chance mob” and an “accidental gathering without object.” City officials, said another, had “nervously imagined … an opposition to the government draft, because some women and children collected in one of our streets, and had been allowed to remain there unmolested for several hours.” Boston’s Republican leaders refused to believe (or at least refused to acknowledge publicly) that anything important had happened in their city.
So how can we rediscover the other side of the story? How can we recapture the voices of the men, women, and children who gathered on Cooper Street to stare down the rifle barrels of their neighbors and countrymen stationed within the Armory walls? What did they want? How much were they willing to risk in order to achieve their goals?
The people in the streets did not publish lists of grievances in Boston newspapers; they did not write their own accounts of the riots for historians to find years later. What we know about them, then, is only as much as we can infer from a biased documentary record. Since they did not (or could not) tell us what they were thinking, we must focus instead on their actions.
First of all, who were the people involved in the riots? Boston draft rioters tended to be recent immigrants or children of immigrants. They tended to be Irish, many of them descendants of the wave of refugees that flooded into Boston during the Irish potato famine of the 1840s. A journalist on the scene in the North End reported that an “Irishwoman was conspicuous in the crowd”; another stated that the mob contained “a goodly number of Irishwomen” and a group of “boys and young men, many of them foreigners.” The police arrested suspected rioters with common Irish surnames like Shea, Sullivan, Sheehan and McGrath.
We know that most of the rioters came from the working class. The Boston Journal identified one victim at Cooper Street – an unfortunate man with “at least a dozen balls” in his chest and legs – as a “laboring man, middle-aged and of medium stature.” The city’s very first draft notices were delivered to squalid “tenement houses” huddled behind Endicott Street, not far from the scene of the events at the armory.
From the wealth of news reports and other accounts, we can safely assume that the mob at Cooper Street contained a substantial proportion of women and children. From inside his North End apartment, Patrick Gould recalled that the “crowd was composed mostly of women and boys.” George Talbot testified he noticed a “little girl, ten or twelve years old, throwing bricks and stones” – many of the children were “so small as to be unable to reach the object they were throwing at.”
More than a few contemporary commentators interpreted the presence of women and children as evidence of a lack of legitimacy or sincerity on the part of protesters. They were happy to dismiss some mild unruliness on the part of irrational women and their bored children as mere passing excitement. But in Civil War Boston, the truth was often the opposite. Women played central roles in voicing grievances and expressing frustration on behalf of their families and neighbors, especially in immigrant and Irish communities. When wartime shortages, inflationary prices and the absence of male wage-earners endangered family welfare, women became responsible for dealing with public authorities and finding solutions. Margaret Leahy of South Boston addressed her requests for aid directly to the mayor, writing, “I had an only son who was my only support, until last April, when he enlisted in the Ninth Mass. Regiment. Now I am in a destitute condition and am obliged to appeal to you.” Similarly, Anne Henry asked the governor if she could “draw pay since [my husband] enlisted three months ago” and “I have two children and no support.” The prevalence of women and children among protesters was not, as many observers suggested, evidence of a lack of seriousness or commitment. Rather, the disproportionate involvement of women and children in the riots is best interpreted as an indication of substantial unrest within the immigrant community.
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Disunion Highlights

Explore multimedia from the series and navigate through past posts, as well as photos and articles from the Times archive.
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Finally, and most important, we know that Boston’s rioters were deeply committed to resisting the 1863 draft and the new Union agenda it had come to represent. Early in the war, Irish immigrants throughout the country jumped at the opportunity to demonstrate their “Americanness” by volunteering to fight to preserve the Union. They served admirably in battle-hardened units like the Massachusetts 9th Regiment or New York’s 69th Infantry, the so-called “Irish Brigade.”
By 1863, however, after years of suffering and anguish, Boston Irish saw the war very differently. They refused to be drafted to fight for the emancipation of African-American slaves or the enrichment and advancement of Union leaders. The editors of The Pilot, Boston’s Catholic newspaper, affirmed that “not one volunteer in a hundred has gone forth … to liberate the slaves.” “At one time we did support Lincoln,” they wrote bitterly, “but he changed, and so have we.”
The riots at Cooper Street began as a direct result of official attempts at conscription and targeted specific symbols associated with the draft and with local institutions thought to be collaborating in the effort. The initial outbreak of violence in Boston was directly precipitated by the arrival of draft agents in lower-class neighborhoods. One of the first reported confrontations occurred between a draft official and the wife of a draftee. After they argued, as the agent fled the scene, the Irish woman was said to lean from her window and call “to her husband ‘to protect himself from the draft.’”
Once in the streets, protesters continued to voice objections to the forcible conscription of poor Irish men. According to The Boston Journal, “an Irishwoman was conspicuous in the crowd on Haymarket Square, showing a photograph of her boy who she said was killed in battle and praying that ‘Yankees, Irishmen, and Dutchmen might all be killed.’” The federal marshal in Boston quickly cleared his office of draft-related materials – his “books and papers, including the names of the enrolled, the record of the draft, & etc.” – and moved to a safer location. He clearly understood that protesters were primarily concerned with compromising the government’s ability to execute the draft.
With the physical apparatus of the draft out of reach, rioters targeted other symbols of authority associated with coercive government power. They accosted police officers and draft agents throughout the North End. As militia units began to arrive in affected neighborhoods, protesters focused their attention on marching troops and military structures. On Cooper Street, “the Regulars had hardly reached the [armory], when a perfect shower of missiles were hurled at them and the building. Sidewalks were torn up by the rod by women and children, and carried forward to men and boys in front, and the mob commenced a siege in good earnest.”
The Irish men and women who gathered at Cooper Square that July day realized that their lives and livelihoods were quite literally in jeopardy. If they submitted to the draft, the men would march south to stare down Confederate guns on the battlefields of the Civil War, while women and children might succumb to poverty and starvation at home in Boston. If they resisted, men, women and children alike would face rifles and cannons manned by soldiers and police in their own neighborhoods. Each of Boston’s rioters understood that death – whether at war or at home – was a distinct possibility. They took to the streets in 1863 to have a say in where, how and for what purpose.
Follow Disunion at twitter.com/NYTcivilwar or join us on Facebook.
________________________________________

Brett M. Palfreyman is a graduate student in American history at Binghamton University.
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AI Overview



+2
The Boston Draft Riot of July 1863 was
a violent, brief outburst of civil unrest led largely by Irish immigrants in the North End, protesting the Civil War Enrollment Act's $300 substitution fee. Rioting, which occurred shortly after the major New York City riots, involved attacks on federal agents and military armories, leading to clashes with troops.
New England Historical Society +1
Key Details of the 1863 Boston Draft Riot
• Context: Similar to New York, Bostonian laborers, particularly in the North End, viewed the new federal conscription law as "a rich man's war but a poor man's fight" because wealthy individuals could buy exemptions.
• Trigger: On July 14, 1863, a day after the NYC riots began, agents trying to deliver draft notices on Prince Street were attacked by an angry mob.
• The Conflict: Crowds, comprising many women and laborers, targeted federal officials, surrounded the armory on Cooper Street, and threw missiles at authorities.
• Response: Militia units were deployed to restore order, leading to confrontations.
• Impact: While less deadly than the New York City riots, the Boston riot left the city under severe tension with reports of injuries and deaths.
New York Times / Archive +2
Key Differences from NYC
• The Boston riot was much smaller in scale and duration compared to the multi-day, massive riots in New York.
• While NYC saw widespread racial violence against Black residents, the Boston riots focused more directly on the agents of the draft and military infrastructure.
New England Historical Society +3
AI Overview
During the American Civil War,
the United Kingdom officially remained neutral and never formally recognized the Confederacy. However, Britain provided significant private support, with merchants and shipbuilders supplying munitions and building warships like the CSS Alabama to break the Union blockade, driven by economic interests and a desire for cotton.
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Key Aspects of British Involvement:
• Official Stance: In May 1861, Britain issued a Declaration of Neutrality, acknowledging the Confederacy as a belligerent, but not a sovereign nation.
• Private Trade & Support: Despite official neutrality, private British interests heavily supported the Confederacy, sending supplies and funding blockade runners.
• Naval Support: British shipyards built and sold warships to the Confederacy, which were used to attack Northern commercial vessels.
• Economic Motivation: British support was largely motivated by the textile industry's need for Southern cotton, though this dependency lessened as the war continued and Britain found new suppliers.
• Political Divisions: While some in the British elite, such as those in the textile industry, favored the Confederacy, there was strong anti-slavery sentiment in Britain that opposed the South.
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For a detailed look at why British support was not formal, see the discussion in this Quora post.
Why Official Recognition Never Happened:
• Slavery Opposition: The British public, especially after Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, generally opposed supporting a nation founded on slavery.
• Risk of War with the US: Britain did not want to risk a direct, costly war with the United States.
• Alternatives Found: Britain increased cotton imports from India and Egypt, reducing the need for Southern cotton.
• United Kingdom and the American Civil War
• From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland remained officially neutral throughout the American Civil War (1861–1865). It legally recognized the belligerent status of the Confederate States of America (CSA) but never recognized it as a nation and neither signed a treaty with it nor ever exchanged ambassadors. Over 90 percent of Confederate trade with Britain ended, causing a severe shortage of cotton by 1862.[1] Private British blockade runners sent munitions and luxuries to Confederate ports in return for cotton and tobacco



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by Andy Freedman
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by Andy Freedman
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Eleanor Roosevelt with John Kennedy was the hat being sarcastic
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