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I don't mean in terms of individual people. But as far as massive gangs fighting in the streets for control of areas. Did anything like that ever actually happen?
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This is a bit better than the wiki link. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/03/0320_030320_oscars_gangs.html
The book nails all of the people and gangs down to the "tee". However, a lot of the story had been played up to a hollywood audience. For example, at the end of the film Bill Cuttingham is slain by Amsterdam during the Draft Riots. That draft riot takes place in history after Cuttingham's actual death.
I recommend the book Gangs of New York by Herbert Asbury. It tells the tale of how the 5 Points was built by the various racial groups that immigrated to New York during the 1850s.
From what I recall, the time period and many of the supporting characters were generally rendered with painstaking realism, like Boss Tweed. Some of the main inaccuracies are the main characters, who were either fictionalized or an amalgamation of several real people, and some of the events in the world of the film taking place too early or late to fit them into the film (i.e. the draft riots). I'm pretty sure New York was never bombarded by the Navy during the draft riots, either.
However, the biggest inaccuracy is that the gangs fought mainly with guns, not knives. The idea of close combat battles was a romantic choice on Scorsese's part, but it was anachronistic; melee combat had become obsolete.
It's an exaggeration with a lot of time shifting of the events on which it is based and glossing over of uncomfortable realities that would have called into question the good looking blond kid's own morality far deeper than it did. You can get the general flavor of some aspects of the period, but you will also find many things omitted or simply wrong.
Richard Oestreicher, who does work on social and labor history, pointed out that the film makes clear the racialized nature of the society but then utterly fails to portray the black perspective or why the Irish were so violently reacted to their own circumstances by lashing out against blacks. I'm not sure I entirely agree with this, but he has a point. The portrayal of Civil War causation in the film takes on something close to the neo-Confederate line of thought.
That said, there are some things that it did fairly well, as long as you don't want to look too deeply.
From the link pvtjenkinsmc gives:
As U.S. political history is my main area of study, this is the thing I highlight about the movie. When I see or hear people discussing how dirty our political system is today or complain about "voter fraud," I will sometimes use this as a point of illustration to show that such notions are off the raft.
It seems almost no one these days is aware of how sordid our political system could be in the 19th century, particularly in cities like New York where political machines controlled government more than the individuals occupying the offices. The Koch brothers had nothing on Tammany Hall. Fraud didn't just happen. It was a part of a candidate's campaign strategy.
This also shows how seriously many people took politics and elections during this period of history. The gangs, as political clubs, didn't sit around talking over the fine points of economic policy or coming up with clever insults for the opposition. They got out there and, sometimes literally, bashed heads. This was the case in places like Chicago and New York well into the 20th Century.
Again, it is exaggerated, but gives you a better idea of how things worked than you'll get from a high school textbook and even some college textbooks.
Not even in the cities. It happened in the country. In Missouri the first reaction against the Mormons wasn't for religion but politics, because they tended to be against slavery and also tended to vote together. There's an account of a brawl between non-Mormon Missourians and Mormons over being allowed to vote.
Quite true. I worded that poorly.
I don't know what causes this precisely, but I regularly encounter the perception that voter suppression and fraud was something that in the late 19th and early 20th centuries only happened in the rural South and that cosmopolitan cities like New York didn't do such things.
I just hate to only leave you with Wikipedia, but you made me curious, and this is the best collection of information I could find.
If you can find it on DVD, a few of the special features talk about that time period. I found it very interesting.
The civilian clothing, material culture, and military uniforms and accouterments were all wrong. I've only been able to sit through the whole thing once, when I've tried to watch it since everything is so poorly researched that I give up and storm out of the room, my head a blazing ball of fury. But I'm a Civil War material culture historian, which is why I notice things like this. It makes movies about that time period difficult for me to watch...
Pretty accurate afaik but i'm not a historian. If you are interested this is a cracking read.