Draft Wheel Magnet

The Wheel of MisfortuneThe New York draft lottery of July 13, 1863, part of the nation's first conscription act, touched off the worst urban riots in American history. Four days of rioting left more than one hundred dead, at least eleven black men brutally murdered, and the Colored Orphan Asylum burned to the ground. Union Army troops, just off the battlefield at Gettysburg, rushed north to quell the violence and restore order. This draft wheel, the only one known to have survived the violent event, was used in the 7th Congressional District, (the East Side below 14th Street and above Rivington Street), to randomly select those who would have to serve in the war. Still in the wheel's drum upon its donation to the Society in 1865 were hundreds of handwritten cards bearing the names of those eligible for the draft.