At the height of the Civil War, 145 years ago this week, the streets of New York City suddenly became a battleground. The Lincoln administration tried to implement a new draft to fill the ranks, and furious New Yorkers attacked federal buildings to prevent the authorities from selecting names.

The violence escalated with shocking speed, as mobs burned federal buildings, beat and lynched black New Yorkers, and skirmished with the New York Police and even the US Army.

It was said Lincoln shuddered when he heard the appalling news from New York. And by the time order was restored, hundreds of people had been injured or killed.

A gallery of vintage images tells the story of New York City's hellish week, the 1863 Draft Riots.

Image: detail from "Conflict Between the Military and Rioters in First Avenue," courtesy New York Public Library Digital Collections.

In the 1800s, people often wanted something more personal than an autograph from those they admired. They wanted their hair.

Collecting locks of hair from great men and women is a largely forgotten fad, but an amusing and fascinating article in today's New York Times reminds us that hair collecting had a respectable past.

John Reznikoff, the collector the Times profiles, owns samples of hair from both Abraham Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth. And he obtained much of his collection by purchasing locks collected by Margaretta Pierrepont, whose husband was the attorney general in the administration of President Ulysses S. Grant.

People today consider hair collecting to be pretty weird, but an official with the Smithsonian quoted in the article notes that in the 19th century it was considered "a sign of affection" for a notable person to give someone a lock of hair.

That made me curious to look up locks of hair in the Smithsonian collection, and I came across an artifact that must have made a lot more sense in the 1800s: a framed display containing locks of hair from the first 14 American presidents.