Editing Dead Rabbits (section)

==History==
Herbert Asbury's influential 1928 popular history describes the Dead Rabbits as a faction that split from the Irish-American [[Roach Guards]] after an internal dispute. In his telling, a dead rabbit thrown into a meeting was taken as an omen by the departing faction, which adopted the name and a red trouser stripe.<ref name="Asbury">Herbert Asbury, [https://archive.org/details/the-gangs-of-new-york-herbert-asbury ''The Gangs of New York''] (Alfred A. Knopf, 1928), chapters 1–3.</ref> This colorful origin story is a later account, not firmly established by contemporary evidence.

The name became especially prominent during the [[Dead Rabbits riot]] of July 4–5, 1857. Fighting around Bayard Street and the Bowery grew from gang confrontations into a broader disturbance while New York's rival Municipal and Metropolitan police forces were in conflict. State militia units eventually restored order.<ref>Nate Hendley, [https://books.google.com/books?id=yQqSToDPO5sC&pg=PA65 ''American Gangsters, Then and Now''] (ABC-CLIO, 2009), pp. 65–66.</ref>