Leslie M. Harris
From In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863
“In the month preceding the July 1863 lottery, in a pattern similar to the 1834 anti-abolition riots, antiwar newspaper editors published inflammatory attacks on the draft law aimed at inciting the white working class… Democratic Party leaders raised the specter of a New York deluged with southern blacks in the aftermath of the Emancipation Proclamation. White workers compared their value unfavorably to that of southern slaves, stating that ‘[we] are sold for $300 [the price of exemption from war service] whilst they pay $1000 for negroes.'”