Interconnected anti-abolitionist riots erupt in New York…
July 1834 CE
Several thousand whites gather at the Chatham Street Chapel; their object is to break up a planned anti-slavery meeting.
When the abolitionists, alerted, do not appear, the crowd breaks in and holds a counter-meeting, with preaching in mock-Negro style and calling for deportation of blacks to Africa.
Violence escalates over the next two days, apparently fueled by provocative handbills.
The mob targeted homes, businesses, churches, and other buildings associated with the abolitionists and African Americans.
More than seven churches and a dozen houses are damaged, many of them belonging to African Americans.
Thee riots are finally quelled when the New York First Division (swelled by volunteers) is called out by the Mayor on July 11 to support the police.
Also on July 12 the American Anti-Slavery Society issues a disclaimer, signed by Tappan and Rankin, denying any wish on the society's part to promote intermarriage between the races; repudiating and disapproving a handbill previously circulated through the city "the tendency of which is thought to be to incite resistance to the law"; and denying any wish to dissolve the union or to ask Congress to exceed its constitutional powers by imposing abolition on unwilling states.
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