The white workers at the Navy Yard feared and resented the enslaved and hated free blacks as competitors who would drag down the wage scale.

"[11] During Commodore Thomas Tingey's tenure from 1801 to 1829, his correspondence with the Board of Navy Commissioners reflects, that after wage demands; racially-based complaints were the most frequent issue needing resolution.

[15] Labor trouble and racial tension broke out periodically as the restive and volatile workforce sought higher wages and better conditions.

They therefore remonstrated but were informed it could not then be altered - A few days afterward (in the first week of August), they unanimously withdrew from work and deputized 3 or 4 of their numbers, who came to the yard presented a written paper to Captain Cassin, who offered it to me, I refused to receive or peruse it. ...

[21] These job actions represent a period when federal workers, though not unionized, could strike—an option later denied to government employees with the passage of the 1947 Taft–Hartley Act.

In the United States during the first decades of the nineteenth century, "strikes constituted illegal conspiracies under common law, exposing labor to criminal prosecution".

While not representing workers' economic interests, the society did provide members with a nominal sum of fifty cents per pay period, the assurance of a decent funeral, and financial assistance to their spouse and minor children.

[28][29] In the summer of 1835 Philadelphia Navy Yard, shipwrights, joiners, and other workers became leaders in this effort when they chose to combine direct action, a threatened strike, with political pressure to the executive branch.

After first requesting the secretary of the Navy via shipyard Commandant Commodore James Barron, on August 29, 1835, they appealed directly to President Andrew Jackson.

[30] Commodore Barron endorsed his workers' request with the following acknowledgment "I would respectfully observe – Seems to be inevitable, sooner or later, for as the working man are seconded by all the Master workmen, city councils etc.

Hull's tenure as commandant at Boston was marred and hindered by a lack of familiarity with the administration of a large shore installation, the management of the civilian workforce, and by the moves to dislodge him by some of his own senior and junior naval officers.

Nevertheless, the court cautioned Hull regarding placing his personal property in public stores and employing navy yard mechanics and laborers for private purposes.

At Washington Navy Yard, Hull's acrimony toward mechanics and his changes to the established shipyard routine brought similar problems with the labor force.

A watch was set up, and not long afterward, on 27 July 1835, Anthony Sumners, a blacksmith striker in the anchor shop, was found hiding a copper spike in his lunch basket.

The most substantial group of holdouts remained the ship carpenters and their young apprentices, urged on by the inimitable William Doughty and his steadfast antipathy toward Hull.

"[43] The three elected leaders, followed by 150 of their fellow strikers, immediately carried their petition directly to the office of Secretary of the Navy Mahlon Dickerson, located just a mile and half away on Capitol Hill, "to pray for redress of grievances.

On 1 August 1835, Hull replied with a copy of his original order and an explanation of what in his judgment incited the workers' action: "The regulation has met with disapprobation of the workmen generally and without stating their objections and without assigning their reasons for doing so have left the yard and ended their work.

Hull, like other shipyard commandants, was mindful of the ten-hour day movement and the Board of Navy Commissioner's resistance to reducing the workweek.

[49] The strike and the subsequent Snow Riot in the District exacerbated long-standing white fears of black workers on the Navy Yard.

"[53] As one historian has noted, Dickerson chose to throw the black caulkers to the mob as he promptly replied, "In answer to your letter of this date, I have to observe that for the present should think it not best to admit the colored people in the Navy Yard at night."

[54] The strike, which began over regulations and work hours, had "quickly morphed into a race riot" as now angry unemployed white mechanics and laborers took out their resentment on the black population.

This action inflamed an already volatile situation and was an important reason why the mechanics threatened to attack the Navy Yard and Commodore Hull.

At about the same time, a rumor rapidly circulated that a free black man named Beverly Snow, the owner of Epicurean Eating House, known for serving sophisticated and luxurious food, had insulted the wives of the Navy Yard mechanics.

Unfortunately, several hundred mechanics of the navy yard are out of employment, who, aided and abetted by their sympathizers, create the mob, — the first I have ever seen, not recollecting those of Sheffield, and it is truly alarming.

When they began to menace the homes of wealthy whites... the city government called out the militia"[61] As their economic situation deteriorated and stung by public criticism of their actions, the Navy Yard mechanics and laborers sought to end the strike.

[63] President Andrew Jackson met with the rioters and vowed to protect their happiness" by cracking down on free Blacks who violated restrictions on their lives."

Most of all, the strike revealed the corrosive effects of racism on the workforce as white workers sought to blame their precarious economic situation on free and enslaved African Americans.

[71][72] Historical understanding of the strike has improved with the transcription and publication of important documents such as the correspondence of Isaac Hull and the Diary of Michael Shiner.

President Martin Van Buren, on 31 March 1840, finally mandated a ten-hour workday for all mechanics and laborers employed on public works.

Michael Shiner fully understood the significance and spoke for thousands when he declared this event "ought to be recorded in every working man's heart.