With its influential newspapers, banks, and public figures of the caliber of Henry Ward Beecher, Thomas Nast, Matthew Brady, and others, New York City was crucial to Lincoln’s election as president as well as to his mobilization of support to fight the Southern secessionists. In fact, New York raised more money, men, and materiel for the Union war effort than any other city. At the same time, however, New York’s economy was deeply bound up with that of the Southern cotton-producing states. Anti-Lincoln sentiments ran strong, and the metropolis, a haven for draft dodgers, became the site of an anti-war riot. In this detailed narrative of New York’s complicated role in the Civil War, Strausbaugh, author of The Village and a noted expert on Gotham history, presents the city as a microcosm of the many political, social, and economic tensions that divided the nation.

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