Virtual New York
“Though Union forces would ultimately prevail at Gettysburg, driving the Confederate army back to the South, tensions remained high in New York City, largely as a result of the imminent enforcement by the federal government of the National Conscription Act. Passed in March 1863, the act made all single men aged twenty to forty-five and married men up to thirty-five subject to a draft lottery. In addition, the act allowed drafted men to avoid conscription entirely by supplying someone to take their place or to pay the government a three hundred-dollar exemption fee. Not surprisingly, only the wealthy could afford by buy their way out of the draft.