Dead Streets: The Dead Rabbits Riot and the Birth of American Urban Violence

On the night of July 4, 1857, a column of Irish immigrant men marched out of New York City's Five Points slum and the most consequential city in the Western Hemisphere lit itself on fire. What followed — two days of urban insurrection that paralysed Lower Manhattan, drove the Metropolitan Police from the streets, and required military suppression — has been remembered ever since under a name that ...