The Northern United States and the Genesis of Racial Lynching: The Lynching of African Americans in the Civil War Era

• Published in: The Journal of American history (Bloomington, Ind.) Ind.), 2010-12, Vol.97 (3), p.621-635
• Main Author: Pfeifer, Michael J.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: African American studies; African Americans; American Civil War; Civil wars; Equal rights; Ideology; Irish Americans; Irish culture; Irish immigration; Irish politics; Lynchings; Occupations; Political parties; Politics; Racial violence; Riots; Slogans; Social classes; United States history; Urban riots; War; White supremacy; Whites
• ISSN: 0021-8723; 1936-0967; 1945-2314
• DOI: 10.1093/jahist/97.3.621

Yet collective violence in response to the war's social and legal alterations emerged soon after the 1861 Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, and it transcended regional boundaries throughout the war and Reconstruction, occurring in the South and the North.1 Historians have charted the rise of racial ideologies among working-class whites - particularly Irish Catholics - in tandem with class and political formation in the antebellum North, and their participation in large-scale racial violence in the 1863 New York City draft riots. Competing with African Americans for social status and jobs on the lowest rungs of northern society and influenced by the racial slogans and ideology with which the Democratic party sought to link southern planters and northern workers in defense of white supremacy, Irish Catholic communities in the North enacted homicidal collective violence that sought to avenge Irish kinfolk victimized by alleged African American criminality.