I thank Patricia Hills, whose patient guidance has helped me to refine this essay and my thinking more generally. I also thank Danielle, who has set the bar at a height I hope one day to reach.

1. There are few mentions of The Attack on the “Home Guard” in scholarship on Nast, Currier and Ives, or Civil War visual culture generally. For the only substantial mention of the lithograph, see Neely, Mark and Holzer, Harold, The Union Image: Popular Prints of the Civil War North (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 88–90Google Scholar. For the best treatment of Nast's career and work, see Paine, Albert Bigelow, Thomas Nast, His Period and His Pictures (New York: Macmillan, 1904)Google Scholar; and also Keller, Morton, The Art and Politics of Thomas Nast (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968)Google Scholar; Knauff, Ernest, “Thomas Nast,” American Review of Reviews 27 (01 1903): 31–35Google Scholar; Maurice, Arthur B., “Thomas Nast and His Cartoons,” Bookman 15 (1902): 19–25Google Scholar; Murrel, William, “Nast, Gladiator of the Pencil,” American Scholar 5 (1936): 472–85Google Scholar; and Vinson, J. Chalmers, “Thomas Nast and the American Political Scene,” American Quarterly 9 (Fall 1957): 337–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The best treatment of Currier and Ives work is Le Beau, Bryan, Currier & lues, America Imagined (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001)Google Scholar; and see also Crouse, Russel, Mr. Currier and Mr. Ives: A Note on Their Lives and Times (New York: Garden City, 1937)Google Scholar; Currier and Ives: Chronicles of America, ed. Pratt, John L. (New York: Promontory, 1968)Google Scholar; and Peters, Harry T., Currier & Ives: Printmakers to the American People (New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1942)Google Scholar.

2. Neely and Holzer, for example, note that Attack on the “Home Guard” is a “rather confused scene.” Unsure as to the exact meaning of the lithograph, they conclude that the print's final significance lies in its elaboration of the profound effect of the war on American life, as suggested by the militarization of children's play (Union Image, 88–90).

3. For the best treatment of the draft riots, see Bernstein, Iver, The New York City Draft Riots (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; and also Cook, Adrian, The Armies of the Streets: The New York City Draft Riots of 1863 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1974)Google Scholar; Headley, Joel Tyler, The Great Riots of New York 1712–1873 (New York: E. B. Treat, 1873)Google Scholar; and Barnes, David, The Draft Riots in New York, July 1863 (New York: Baker and Godwin, 1863)Google Scholar. For a mention of the dominant class's efforts to reframe riotous upheaval, see Leach, Eugene, “Unchaining the Tiger: The Mob Stigma and the Working Class 1863–1894,” Labor History 35 (Spring 1994): 193–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4. Keller, , Art and Politics, 7Google Scholar.

5. Paine describes Nast as “mingling with the mob” during the riots and wit nessing several of the event's crucial developments, including Horatio Seymour's speech on Tuesday, July 14 (Paine, , Thomas Nast, 92–94Google Scholar). Keller mentions offhandedly that Nast produced sketches of the riots for Harper's Weekly, without any reference to an issue in which these sketches appeared; it is possible that Nast produced the designs for the centerfold of the August 1st edition, but this two-page montage is unsigned — and Nast made a habit of signing his illustrations prominently (Keller, , Art and Politics, 12Google Scholar).

6. Nast's relation to the middle classes overlaps the relation of class and cultural producer proposed by Marx, Karl in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (New York: International, 1998), 50–51Google Scholar.

7. Bernstein, , New York City Draft Riots, 9–10Google Scholar.

8. Ibid., passim.

9. Ibid., 40–41.

10. The burning of the asylum came to function as a sort of pictorial shorthand for the riots in Nast's illustration of the late 19th century. For a contemporaneous illustration of the catastrophe, see the two-page center montage in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper for July 25, 1863.

11. Leach, , “Unchaining the Tiger,” 192–93Google Scholar.

12. “The Riots Yesterday,” New York Times, 07 14, 1863, 4Google Scholar.

13. “The Riot,” New York Tribune, 07 14, 1863, 4Google Scholar.

14. “The Spirit of the Mob and Its Promoters,” New York Times, 07 17, 1863, 4Google Scholar.

15. “The Draft,” Harper's Weekly, 07 25, 1863, 466Google Scholar. For another attempt to explain the upheaval in New York in terms of foreign riots, see “Riots and Mob Law,” Scientific American 9 (08 1863): 74Google Scholar.

16. These include the Abolition riots, the Five Points riot, the Stonecutters' riot, and the Broadway Hall riots of 1835–36; the Flour riot of 1837; the Loco-Foco riot of 1840; the Astor Place riot of 1849; and the Bread riot of 1857. For an extensive listing of the riots between 1800 and 1863, see Thomas Rose and James Rodgers's bibliographic note to a newer edition of Headley, Joel Tyler's The Great Riots of New York: 1712–1873, ed. Rose, Thomas and Rodgers, James (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970), 307–11Google Scholar.

17. For a treatment of the Astor Place riot in the context of theatrical history, see Moody, Richard, The Astor Place Riot (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1958)Google Scholar. See also Bernstein, , New York City Draft Riots, 148–50Google Scholar.

18. On the former account, see Moody, Astor Place Riot, passim; and Bernstein, , New York City Draft Riots, 149–50Google Scholar.

19. Bernstein, , New York City Draft Riots, 149Google Scholar.

20. Ibid., 150.

21. “Another Shameful Riot,” New York Daily Tribune, 05 11, 1849, 2Google Scholar.

22. See, for example, “Another Shameful Riot,” New York Daily Tribune, 05 11, 1849, 3Google Scholar; “The Riots!” New York Daily Tribune, 05 12, 1849, 2Google Scholar; “Dreadful Riot and Bloodshed at the Astor Place Theater,” New York Herald, 05 11, 1849, 3 (pages unnumbered)Google Scholar; “Additional Particulars of the Dreadful Riot,” New York Herald, 05 12, 1849, 3 (unnumbered)Google Scholar; “Great Riot, Bloodshed, and Loss of Life!” York Morning Courier and Enquirer, 05 11, 1849, 3Google Scholar; and “The Riot of Thursday Night,” New York Morning Courier and Enquirer, 05 12, 1849, 3Google Scholar. See also “Incidents &c., of the Riot,” New York Morning Courier and Enquirer, 05 14, 1849, 3Google Scholar; and “Law and Order Have Triumphed … ” New York Morning Courier and Enquirer, 05 16, 1849, 3Google Scholar.

23. “The Late Riot,” New York Daily Tribune, 05 12, 1849, 2Google Scholar.

24. “The Moral of the Riot,” New York Daily Tribune, 05 15, 1849, 3Google Scholar.

25. I have found different dates for Henry Hoff's Views of New York and View of Astor Place Theater; the Museum of the City of New York owns a copy of this print, which it dates, along with the book, to 1850. There was also an edition of the book published in 1852; it seems likely that Hoff produced two editions in 1850 and 1852. Whatever its exact date, View of Astor Place Theater was published after the Astor Place Riot, and presents a thoroughly reworked vision of the site of upheaval.

26. Of course, between the Astor Place riot and the draft riots, a number of violent uprisings occurred in New York, including the Bread riot of 1857. The visual culture of these uprisings has yet to be studied. Leach has suggested, however, that by the time of the draft riots a tradition existed of discounting the potential for further class conflict (“Unchaining the Tiger,” 192–93).

27. See “The Riots at New York,” Harper's Weekly, 08 1, 1863, 484–85Google Scholar.

28. Bernstein, , New York City Draft Riots, 37–38Google Scholar.

29. Ibid., 35.

30. Though both papers often sprinkled cartoons throughout their text, the last page of Harper's Weekly and Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper issues typically included a cartoon spoofing current events; nonhumorous pictorial accounts of the same appeared at various points in the text. Renderings of the most spectacular events or calamities were depicted in a two-page layout at the center of the magazines.

31. It should be noted that Harper's Weekly had a lengthy lag between its report of an event and the event's actual occurrence; the August 1st issue was thus the first to deal substantively with the riots. It is not particularly surprising, therefore, that the cartoon of that issue was so ambiguous in tone.

32. See “Don't You See the Point?” Harper's Weekly, 08 22, 1863, 560Google Scholar.

33. “How to Enforce the Draft,” New York Daily Tribune, 07 18, 1863, 4Google Scholar. For another claim of conspiracy, see “The Enforcement of the Draft,” New York Times, 07 20, 1863, 4Google Scholar; and also “The Left Wing of Lee's Army,” New York Times, 07 16, 1863, 4Google Scholar. Leach also mentions this strategy (“Unchaining the Tiger,” 192).

34. Leach, , “Unchaining the Tiger,” 193Google Scholar.

35. “Riots and Mob Law,” Scientific American 9 (08 1863): 73–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36. “How to Deal with Mobs,” New York Times, 07 21, 1863, 4Google Scholar. For another view of the riots as “class-less” struggle, see “The Conservation of New York,” New York Daily Tribune, 07 21, 1863, 4Google Scholar. Leach also describes the nullification of class conflict in dominant-class accounts of the riots (“Unchaining the Tiger,” 193–94).

37. See “How to Deal with Mobs.”

38. Barnes, David, The Draft Riots in New York, July 1863 (New York: Baker and Godwin, 1863)Google Scholar. The subtitle of Barnes's work was The Metropolitan Police: Their Services During Riot Week, Their Honorable Record.

39. See, for example, “The Laws and the Mob,” New York Times, 07 18, 1863, 4Google Scholar.

40. “Liberty and Property in New York,” New York Times, 07 28, 1863, 4Google Scholar. The New York Daily Tribune published a particularly resolute declaration on July 21: “We can now no more afford to concede to the illegal demands of skulking murderers than when they were rushing through our streets almost resistless. We have won a victory for law — now let us have its resolute enforcement. Firmness alone will save us from future terrors (“The Conservation of New York,” New York Daily Tribune, 07 21, 1863, 4Google Scholar).

41. Melville, Herman's poem “The House-Top: A Night Piece,” which he wrote in 1863 and published in his 1866 collection Battle Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866; rept. New York: Da Capo, 1995)Google Scholar, can be considered a reframing of the violent spectacle of the riots. Of course, Melville's poem is dense and complex, with whole networks of complicated allusions. I would note simply that the poem reestablishes the distance between elite reader and violence, by opposing the “hushed nearby” and the “Atheist roar of riot” that is “from far.” In the poem, the riots are mere whispers and “low dull” rumblings, a red glow of arson in the sky; the elite reader and violence, which were so recently brought together in the flow of the riots, are separated again. The rioters themselves are figured as atavistic, savages even: “And man rebounds whole aeons back in nature.” Though the poem notes the “grimy slur” on the national “faith” left by the riots, and that the warning of the riots will not be heeded, it thus nevertheless reaffirms the psychic distance of reader from that grimy slur — from the horrible spectacle of riot — with a sort of pleasurable national self-pitying (80–81).

42. Le Beau, , Currier & lues, 181Google Scholar.

43. Neely, and Holzer, , Union Image, 88–89Google Scholar. Patricia Hills (personal communication) has observed that such a soldier's return, if indeed a component of the print, could have been understood by 19th-century viewers as a humorous allusion to the story of Odysseus, who, having returned to Ithaca a destitute man after ten years of adventure, was recognized only by his dog.

44. Neely and Holzer accept this meaning of the phrase as the meaning intended by Nast, (Union Image, 89)Google Scholar. Patricia Hills (personal communication) has noted that the placement of the little doghouse next to the larger home supports the conflation of dog/rioter, in that the little structure alludes to the servants' quarters often affixed to the back of an elite home, and thus the dog's revolt alludes to the rising of the subordinate classes.

45. “Home Guards,” New York Daily Tribune, 07 16, 1863, 4Google Scholar.

46. “Home Guards,” New York Times, 07 18, 1863, 4Google Scholar.

47. Bernstein notes that the clash of religious ideologies in New York, and the sociopolitical domination of the Catholic immigrant community at its core, motivated the many riotous attacks against prominent Protestant individuals and institutions (New York City Draft Riots, 32–33).

48. “How to Deal with Mobs,” 4.

49. “The Rioters,” American Phrenological Journal 38 (09, 1863): 86, 88Google Scholar.

50. Le Beau, , Currier & lues, 255–56Google Scholar.

51. I am indebted to Patricia Hills for this observation.

52. See, for example, the Nast cartoons in the May 8, May 15, May 22, May 29, and June 5 issues of Harper's Weekly.

53. On the sensational wedding, see Merish, Lori, “Cuteness and Commodity Aesthetics,” in Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body, ed. Thomson, Rosemarie (New York: New York University Press, 1996), 188–203Google Scholar.

54. Ibid., 194.

55. Ibid., 190–91.

56. Ibid., 191.

57. O'Leary, Elizabeth has noted the conflict in the picture, but in a note suggests that the thrust of the print might be related to the naval blockade (At Beck and Call: The Representation of Domestic Servants in Nineteenth-Century America Painting [Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996], 116–17, 282 n. 28)Google Scholar.

58. For an account of the early development of baseball, and its flourishing in the first years of the Civil War, see Adelman, Melvin, A Sporting Time: New York City and the Rise of Modern Athletics, 1820–70 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 121–37Google Scholar.

59. Holzer, and Neely, , Union Image, plates insertGoogle Scholar.

60. Jarves, James Jackson, The Art-Idea (1864; rept. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1960), 197Google Scholar.