Cincinnati riots of 1836
The Cincinnati riots of 1836 were caused by racial tensions at a time when African Americans, some of whom had escaped from slavery in the Southern United States, were competing with whites for jobs.
The racial riots occurred in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States in April and July 1836 by a mob of whites against black residents.
In 1819 a citizen asked for relief "from the hordes of idle runaway blacks of both sexes, who are sauntering about the streets at all hours of the day".
[3] On 11 April 1836, a mob entered a black community, attacked people, burned buildings, and forced many of the occupants to leave their homes.
[5] The anti-abolitionist paper the Daily Cincinnati Republican described the tenement that was burned as "notorious as a place of resort of rogues, thieves, and prostitutes - black and white".
[7] Following the press smashing, placards appeared saying "The Citizens of Cincinnati ... satisfied that the business of the place is receiving a vital stab from the wicked and misguided operations of the abolitionists, are resolved to arrest their course.
[7] Harriet Beecher Stowe, a resident of Cincinnati who later wrote the classic novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, described the events.
[10] When the press had been destroyed, she said, The mayor was a silent spectator of these proceedings, and was heard to say, 'Well, lads, you have done well, so far; go home now before you disgrace yourselves;' but the 'lads' spent the rest of the night and a greater part of the next day (Sunday) in pulling down the houses of inoffensive and respectable blacks.
A regular corps of volunteers was organized, who for three nights patrolled the streets with firearms and with legal warrant from the mayor, who by this time was glad to give it, to put down the mob even by bloodshed.
Among these, they noted that while the black people of the city were preparing for their procession on the fifth of July (that being their custom), they were approached by a white citizen of "standing" who began to violently abuse them.
[8] An 1888 biography of Stowe said:[12] During the riots in 1836, when … free negroes were hunted like wild beasts through the streets of Cincinnati, only the distance from the city and the depths of mud saved Lane seminary and the Yankee Abolitionists at Walnut Hills from a similar fate.The experience may well have influenced her subsequent views on civil rights.
Later he helped with a damage suit that resulting in compensation of $1,500 for the owners, printer, and editor of the Philanthropist, and went on to become prominent in the abolitionist movement.
She condemned them for violating the principle of freedom of speech, and described them as "more guilty in this tremendous question of Human Wrongs than even the slave-holders of the south".
[3] William Ellery Channing echoed this sentiment in a letter to James Birney, saying, "The abolitionists then not only appear in the character of champions of the colored race ...
