By Monday, July 20, one week after New York’s draft riot merchants began collecting relief measures for that city’s Negro victims.
Poor white laborers who did not wish to be drafted and risk their lives on the battlefield for the purpose of ending the institution of slavery had taken out their frustrations on the city’s blacks. Many innocent Negroes had been beaten or lynched, and the city’s Colored Orphan Asylum had been sacked and burned. Black owned or operated businesses also had been looted.
Charles Nordhoff, managing editor of the New York Evening Post, estimated that 400 to 500 lives were lost. In truth, many had suffered, but significant claims of injury would come later after the city offered reimbursement to the families and those who had suffered during the rioting.