Episode 1 of 3
Counter-Meeting and Rumors
- When
- June-July 1834
- Where
- New York City
After abolitionists failed to appear, a crowd held a counter-meeting with mock preaching and calls for deportation. This followed rumors spread by James Watson Webb about interracial marriage.
By June, lurid rumors were circulated by James Watson Webb through his newspaper Courier and Enquirer, alleging abolitionists encouraged interracial marriage. When the abolitionists, alerted, did not appear, the crowd broke in and held a counter-meeting, with preaching in mock-Negro style and calling for deportation of blacks to Africa.
Sources
- 1834 New York anti-abolitionist riots Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-28
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.