05/14/2026
The Manhattan Orange Riots are often mistaken for the Manhattan Draft Riots. The riots took place in Manhattan in New York City, in 1870 and again in 1871. Oddly enough the rioters consisted of (But were not limited to) Irish Protestants (Who were members in good standing of the Orange Order) and the city’s considerable Irish Catholics population. Some 60 people….mostly working class laborers and three members of the New York State National Guard died as a result of the upheavals.
The problem started on July 12, 1870, when Irish Protestants held a parade in midtown Manhattan celebrating the victory at the Battle of the Boyne (1689) of King William III (also Prince of Orange), over the former King James II of England (a Catholic, who had been deposed by William III).
The Orangemen marched into the overwhelmingly Irish-Catholic Hell's Kitchen neighborhood. The residents, about 200 strong, gathered and formed their own parade behind the Orangemen. When the parade came to a park, where the Catholics were joined by another group of 300 Irish-Catholic laborers working in the neighborhood, and the parade erupted into violence. Eight people were killed that date.
The following year, the Loyal Order of Orange requested police permission to march through the Irish neighborhood again but City Police Commissioner James J. Kelso, with the support of William M. Tweed, the head of Tammany Hall, the Democratic Party political machine, refused the permit. Archbishop John McCloskey, a strong and vocal advocate of the Catholic Irish, applauded the decision.
The newspapers, which were very influential in those days, sided with the Orangemen. Pressure from Wall Street and the city's powerful elite, had Tammany reverse their decision and the Orangemen were allowed to march.
Governor John T. Hoffman, a Tammany creation, rescinded the police commissioner's ban and ordered that the Orangemen be protected by the city police and the state militia, including its cavalry unit..
On Wednesday July 12, 1871, the parade proceeded with protection from 1,500 policemen and 5 regiment of the National Guard, about 5,000 strong. Just past noon, the parade approached Lamartine Hall, at the corner of Eighth Avenue and 29th Street where the Catholics were waiting and began pelting the Orangemen with stones, bricks and glass bottles. The Militiamen fired on the Catholics and some of the the Catholics, armed with pistols, fired back.. The police managed to get the parade moving again by charging the crowd with their clubs. The parade made it another block before an all out riot broke out. The militia charged with their bayonets and were met by a hail of rocks pelted down on them from the rooftops along the avenue. The troops, without orders, started firing volleys into the crowd, and the police followed up with mounted charges.
The Orangemen regrouped and managed to march to 23rd Street, where it turned left and proceeded to Fifth Avenue, where the crowds were supportive of the Orangemen were waiting. However, when the parade reached the entertainment district below 14th Street. In total that day, at least 60 civilians were killed, 150 were wounded, including 22 militiamen, around 20 policemen injured by thrown rocks tossed at them and 4 who were shot, but not fatally.
The following day, on July 13, 20,000 mourners paid their respects to the dead outside the morgue at Bellevue Hospital, and funeral processions made their way to Calvary Cemetery in Queens by way of ferries. Governor Hoffman was hanged in effigy by Irish Catholics in Brooklyn, and the events began to be referred to as the "Slaughter on Eighth Avenue."
