ECONOMIC TENSIONS
"[They] say that they are sold for $300 whilst they pay $1000 for Negroes."
- Maria Lydig Daly
Issued by Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation declared "all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free."
The freedom that was promised through the Emancipation Proclamation depended wholly upon Union military victory. During the time of the Civil War, the Union Army strove to destroy racial slavery in order for the South's economy to diminish. These African-Americans were determined to end slavery even if it meant they had to sacrifice their lives for the cause. Thus, the Union Army, which had only white soldiers at the beginning of the Civil War, began to recruit African-American soldiers by the summer of 1863 to strengthen itself as a whole.
The Emancipation Proclamation brought about competition for jobs between the Irish immigrants and the newly-freed African-Americans, which added to the economic frustrations.
- Irish immigrants were against the Emancipation Proclamation because they didn't want to compete for jobs with the newly-freed African-Americans, whom they believed to be a threat to their job security.
- James Gordon Bennett warned working-class immigrant workers that if Lincoln were to be elected, "you will have to compete with the labor of four million emancipated Negroes."
- It was extremely difficult for these immigrants to find jobs, especially in a city where competition for jobs among the lower classes was already common. The African-Americans were willing to work for lower wages, thereby making it easier for them to steal desirable jobs away from the Irish.
- Labor tensions created a distrust and hatred among the different ethnic groups of New York.
Many resented the war effort, which brought economic hardship and increasing unemployment to the city's working-class neighborhoods, especially following a sharp economic downturn in the war's first year.