[1] To date, it is still considered the worst mob in United States history as it comprised a total of 10,000 persons marching from Cincinnati Music Hall to the jail and Hamilton County Courthouse.

Cincinnati in the 1880s was an industrial city with a rising crime rate, due partly to general dissatisfaction with labor conditions.

[2] Corruption was a serious problem in Cincinnati at that time, with local leaders notorious for controlling elections and manipulating judges and juries.

[5] A full-page article published in The Cincinnati Enquirer on March 9, 1884, said: "Laxity of laws gives the Queen City of the West its crimson record.

Preeminence in art, science, and industry avail nothing where murder is rampant and the lives of citizens are unsafe even in broad daylight.

After a prolonged trial, on March 26, 1884, the jury returned a manslaughter verdict despite the testimony of seven different people to whom Berner had admitted his premeditation and execution of the murder.

An article in The New York Times, dated March 27, 1884, reported that James Bourne, one of the jurors, had spent the previous night at Bremen Street police station after being threatened by a mob.

Hunt, commanding the First Regiment of the Ohio Militia with 400 men, prepared for trouble, ordering sections from each company to stay on guard at their armory on Court Street, half a block from the courthouse.

By the time the situation became temporarily under control late on Friday night, five people had died, including one police officer,[15] and many more were wounded.

[13] The Cincinnati Enquirer supported the rioters in its Saturday morning edition, with a headline saying "At Last The People Are Aroused And Take The Law Into Their Own Hands, Enraged Community Rises In Its Might".

[16] Although the Governor of Ohio, George Hoadly, was asked to call for reinforcements, he moved slowly and did not order the deployment of additional militia units until 5:00 pm on March 29.

[17] The out-of-town soldiers, who did obey orders, were unable to reach Cincinnati in time to prevent escalating violence by rioters who had been paid that day, and had spent their money in the bars.

[4] During the day, the defenders of the jail erected barriers in the surrounding streets, improvised from vehicles, construction materials, grindstones and barrels of salt.

Two to three hundred policemen were present, although they refused to play an active role in the fighting, as well as 117 local militiamen and the criminals resident in the jail.

A more resolute force of 425 militiamen from Columbus arrived at around 11:00 pm armed with a Gatling gun, and managed to clear the streets around the jail and courthouse.

We have killed 45 innocent men and wounded or maimed 45 more, all to save our jailful of murderers..." The editorial went on to describe the riots as a "just, popular impulse against the prostration of laws before criminals".

The French author Victor Hugo even compared the riot to the storming of the Bastille, calling the rioters champions of justice and heroes.

[19] The Dayton Daily Democrat made the same comparison as Hugo, but not in a flattering sense, when it called the mob a "Commune" and Cincinnati "the Paris of America".

The paper called for stronger laws with "swift, sure and solemn" execution, and said that if middle-class Americans were running government instead of corrupt special interests, incidents like the riots would not occur.