5fish
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Jul 28, 2019
- Messages
- 10,625
- Reaction score
- 4,544
The were race riots in Cincinnati in 1862, the white Irish drove the Blacks workers off the priers along the river and even attack their neighborhoods in the city...
Snip... it seem Morgan raid cause the opportunity...
Morgan's dash through the Union lines had placed the defenseless city of Lexington, Kentucky, in danger of attack. Troops from the camps around Cincinnati were immediately sent to Lexington, and the city council, recognizing the danger, added 120 policemen to the military units moving south on Sunday, July thirteenth. In retrospect, it is difficult to imagine just why the council made such an ill-advised, albeit well-meaning, decision. Cincinnati policemen were incapable of effective resistance to Morgan's veteran cavalry on their own, and their numbers were too few to provide adequate reinforcements to the military defenders of Lexington. In addition, their departure left only forty policemen to cope with the "evil spirits" which were left in the city.9 Thus the city council itself was partly responsible for the violence which followed.
Snip...
The Catholic Telegraph and the Daily Enquirer came closest to the truth in stating the riot had been caused by Negroes underbidding white labor on the levee. The whites, jobless and hungry, sought to retain their jobs by driving the Negroes from the levee and the city.24 Neither newspaper attempted to explain why, after years of fairly peaceful co-existence between levee workers, there was a breakdown in relations which led to violence. The Telegraph did not, however, try to explain the violence in Bucktown as labor strife. To its editors these disturbances were two distinct affairs: the one being labor strife and the other a continuation of an old problem — Irish efforts to drive Negro sinners from their midst (thus the destruction of two Negro brothels). Although the Telegraph had an interesting point, it is doubtful that two simultaneous riots should have taken place for different reasons. While it may have been that different groups took part in each phase of the riot, there was a basic underlying economic motive for the violence: the decline of river commerce.
snip...
As an overall attempt to frighten the Negroes from Cincinnati, the riot failed, for the Negroes returned after the violence subsided. As well as can be discerned, however, the riot was successful in eliminating the Negro stevedore as a major competitive factor on the levee. A comparison of job statistics gathered from the 1860 and 1870 census returns for Cincinnati shows that total Negro employment in the steamboat industry fell approximately 48 percent from 1860 to 1870, yet the industry as a whole did not suffer a similar decline. Negro levee workers, the original targets of the rioters, fell from a total of 196 in 1860 to only twenty-four in 1870 — a decrease of 87.8 percent. Negro wealth was also affected in that property derived from employment in river commerce in 1870 was less than it had been in 1860 — accounting for 5.6 percent of the total Negro wealth in 1870 as against 18.7 percent in 1860.28 The real tragedy of the riot was that prior to 1862, the Negroes of Cincinnati had been an integral part of the steamboat trade, and it, in turn, represented the only means of major Negro penetration of the white industrial-commercial economy. With little more than half as many Negroes employed in river commerce in 1870 as there had been in 1860, and with the railroad supplanting the steamboat as the major vehicle of commerce, the Negroes of Cincinnati lost one opportunity, at least, to break into the mainstream of economic life.
Get the whole story at the link above...
Snip... it seem Morgan raid cause the opportunity...
Morgan's dash through the Union lines had placed the defenseless city of Lexington, Kentucky, in danger of attack. Troops from the camps around Cincinnati were immediately sent to Lexington, and the city council, recognizing the danger, added 120 policemen to the military units moving south on Sunday, July thirteenth. In retrospect, it is difficult to imagine just why the council made such an ill-advised, albeit well-meaning, decision. Cincinnati policemen were incapable of effective resistance to Morgan's veteran cavalry on their own, and their numbers were too few to provide adequate reinforcements to the military defenders of Lexington. In addition, their departure left only forty policemen to cope with the "evil spirits" which were left in the city.9 Thus the city council itself was partly responsible for the violence which followed.
Snip...
The Catholic Telegraph and the Daily Enquirer came closest to the truth in stating the riot had been caused by Negroes underbidding white labor on the levee. The whites, jobless and hungry, sought to retain their jobs by driving the Negroes from the levee and the city.24 Neither newspaper attempted to explain why, after years of fairly peaceful co-existence between levee workers, there was a breakdown in relations which led to violence. The Telegraph did not, however, try to explain the violence in Bucktown as labor strife. To its editors these disturbances were two distinct affairs: the one being labor strife and the other a continuation of an old problem — Irish efforts to drive Negro sinners from their midst (thus the destruction of two Negro brothels). Although the Telegraph had an interesting point, it is doubtful that two simultaneous riots should have taken place for different reasons. While it may have been that different groups took part in each phase of the riot, there was a basic underlying economic motive for the violence: the decline of river commerce.
snip...
As an overall attempt to frighten the Negroes from Cincinnati, the riot failed, for the Negroes returned after the violence subsided. As well as can be discerned, however, the riot was successful in eliminating the Negro stevedore as a major competitive factor on the levee. A comparison of job statistics gathered from the 1860 and 1870 census returns for Cincinnati shows that total Negro employment in the steamboat industry fell approximately 48 percent from 1860 to 1870, yet the industry as a whole did not suffer a similar decline. Negro levee workers, the original targets of the rioters, fell from a total of 196 in 1860 to only twenty-four in 1870 — a decrease of 87.8 percent. Negro wealth was also affected in that property derived from employment in river commerce in 1870 was less than it had been in 1860 — accounting for 5.6 percent of the total Negro wealth in 1870 as against 18.7 percent in 1860.28 The real tragedy of the riot was that prior to 1862, the Negroes of Cincinnati had been an integral part of the steamboat trade, and it, in turn, represented the only means of major Negro penetration of the white industrial-commercial economy. With little more than half as many Negroes employed in river commerce in 1870 as there had been in 1860, and with the railroad supplanting the steamboat as the major vehicle of commerce, the Negroes of Cincinnati lost one opportunity, at least, to break into the mainstream of economic life.
Get the whole story at the link above...