Within the Haunting Bedrock | Part 11-1. Prelude to the Anti-Abolition Riot of 1834

Rapid population growth of over 50% in the 1830s increased competition for jobs, especially white lower- and working-class jobs. Free Black New Yorkers were becoming more visible in trades, domestic service, waterfront work, and small businesses. These white workers felt threatened by Black workers’ access to jobs. Another factor was the 1832 Cholera Epidemic, which produced an economic disruption that fostered fear, anxiety, and mistrust of the political leaders. This was just one more step toward the Anti-Abolition Riot of 1834.

A small, noticeable Black middle class developed in New York. Some owned businesses and property. Black churches and mutual aid organizations grew stronger. This success raised the tension between races, because it challenged the whites’ assumptions about racial inferiority. A growing abolitionist movement contributed to these contradictions. Rumors spread that abolitionists wanted racial equality, interracial marriage, and political power for Black Americans. Many white New Yorkers who opposed slavery still opposed racial equality.

In the early 1830s, politicians focused their voting efforts on working-class white voters. The best way to get their attention was the use of race. White identity became a unifying force among working-class voters.

In 1826, wealthy New Yorkers funded and built the Bowery Theatre to present European high culture. But by the 1830s, theatre manager Thomas Hamblin shifted the theater’s focus to working-class immigrants and the Bowery B’hoys, a racist, xenophobic criminal gang. They held extreme, hostile views toward both Black Americans and Irish immigrants. They rooted their identity in a militant, white, native-born, working-class nationalism.

In an 1834 show, George P. Farren, a British-born actor, said, “Damn the Yankees; they are a damn set of jackasses and fit to be gulled.” He had also fired an American actor and supported the abolitionist movement. Farren’s reported speech sparked the 1834 Anti-Abolition Riot.

An interesting sideline: the Bowery Theatre seated 3,000 and burned down four times in seventeen years (1828, 1836, 1838, 1845). The Bowery B’hoys worked as firefighters.