Anti-Irish Riots and Urban Nativism

By the 1830s and 1840s, large numbers of Irish Catholics had arrived, and big cities were tense places. Native-born Protestants worried that Catholic immigrants would be more loyal to the Pope than to the U.S. In New York City in 1831, a mob of Protestants burned down the newly built St. Mary’s Catholic Church. Throughout the 1840s, political leaders played up rumors that Catholics were attacking American schools or politics. In fact, when Philadelphia’s Catholic bishop Frank Kenrick asked that Catholic children be allowed to read their own Bible translation in schools, nativist agitators twisted this into a claim that Catholics wanted to remove the Bible altogether.

The anger turned deadly in 1844 during the Philadelphia Bible Riots. Protestant mobs in the Irish neighborhoods of Kensington and Southwark clashed with Catholic working people over Bible-reading in schools. Over two days in May and again in July 1844, nativist gangs attacked Irish-American homes and Catholic churches. They burned the convent of the Sisters of Charity and two churches (St. Augustine’s and St. Michael’s) to the ground. Householders and militia exchanged gunfire, and at least thirteen people were killed. By July the Pennsylvania militia was sent in to stop the rioting, but only after many city blocks had been wrecked and Catholics had feared for their lives. The Encyclopedia of Philadelphia notes that these were “some of the bloodiest rioting of the antebellum period” – a dramatic sign of how vicious nativist xenophobia could be.

In Boston, anti-Catholic mobs burned a convent in 1834 (in an earlier episode of violence), and in Cincinnati, Baltimore, and Louisville the 1850s saw pitched battles between Know-Nothing gangs and police.

In New York, nativist activists formed clubs and even a political party in the 1830s (led by Samuel F. B. Morse, the inventor) to lengthen the naturalization period and bar “foreigners” from jobs. Morse blamed immigrants for urban poverty, calling them “filthy and ragged” and accusing them of filling “your streets with squalid beggary”. In response, immigrants often rallied together. Irish-Catholic voters formed their own political machines (like Tammany Hall) or elected Catholic officials. But the overall effect was that many poor white workers identified more with nativist slogans than with shared economic interests.

Anti-Chinese Racism and Western Restrictions

In the Far West, Chinese immigrants became targets of exclusion too. Large numbers of Chinese men came to California after 1848 to dig for Gold or work on railroads. At first, white Americans tolerated them because they did the hardest work. But as surface gold ran out and competition rose, animosity grew. In the early 1850s California passed a series of hostile laws against Chinese laborers. For example, the state imposed Foreign Miners’ Taxes requiring non-U.S. citizens to pay up to $4 per month to mine. Though this law was phrased neutrally, tax collectors mainly extorted money from Chinese miners. A contemporary Californian newspaper warned that the foreign-miner tax was “iniquitous” and drove Mexican and South American miners out of California. In practice it also punished Chinese workers, who became easy targets for fraud and abuse by revenue agents.

In 1858 California went further. The legislature passed a statute barring any “Chinese or Mongolian” person from entering the state at all. That law (later struck down by the courts) explicitly named the Chinese as a group outside the rights of immigration. Unlike Mexicans (who were U.S. residents after the Mexican War) or Europeans, Chinese immigrants had no political or social allies. Local ordinances soon excluded them from jury service or owning land. Chinese settled into segregated communities (the first Chinatown in San Francisco was already forming by 1850) and they took up jobs like laundry, railroad labor, or domestic service. Occasionally small riots broke out (for example in parts of California, British Columbia, and the Colorado goldfields), but the mass lynchings in Los Angeles and elsewhere came later, after 1860. What mattered in this earlier era is that racial prejudice was written into law.

Cities and the Politics of Nativism

Northern American cities in the mid-1800s, though legally free soil, saw their new police forces enforcing racial hierarchies inherited from slavery. Big-city police departments like those in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago routinely targeted marginalized groups, reflecting both racial prejudice and class biases.

Early policing was shaped by nativism – an anti-immigrant ideology – as well as by the imperative to uphold slavery-era racial order. Northern officers not only harassed immigrant communities and the urban poor, but they also often acted as agents of the slave system: capturing alleged fugitive slaves and even colluding in the kidnapping of free Black residents.

Nativism and the Police

Nativist movements strongly influenced early urban police forces. Nativism refers to the prejudice against foreigners that was widespread among native-born Protestants in this era. Fearing the growing Irish and German Catholic populations, nativist politicians in Northern cities imposed new voting rules and even used violence to curb immigrant influence.

For example, Philadelphia’s city government under Mayor Robert Conrad (1854–58) was controlled by native-born Know-Nothings. Conrad packed the police and city jobs with Protestant nativists. In effect, the city was turned into a tool to “surveil and police” immigrant communities. The result was that foreign-born people (especially poor Irish or German laborers) were heavily policed, while wealthier U.S.-born whites (natives) lived in more secure districts.

At the same time, Conrad’s police cooperated with federal marshals to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act, raiding Black neighborhoods and aiding the capture of alleged fugitives. In this way, Philadelphia’s new police system extended the racial order of slavery northward, using law and surveillance to protect white privilege in a so-called “free” city.

Targeting Immigrants and Class Divisions

Early police enforcement also reinforced class divisions while targeting immigrant groups. City authorities viewed poor immigrant neighborhoods as hotbeds of disorder and vice, needing strict control. This attitude was stark in Chicago. In 1855 the nativist mayor Levi Boone took office on a Know-Nothing (anti-immigrant) platform and immediately “reformed” the police force – tripling its size but pointedly refusing to hire any immigrant officers.

Police shut down saloons in immigrant districts for Sunday violations, even as some “American” (native-born) establishments were left alone. These provocations led to an uprising known as the Lager Beer Riot of 1855, when German and Irish Chicagoans protested the unfair crackdown. Boone responded with mass arrests and armed force, illustrating how policing was used to impose “American” cultural norms on immigrant communities. Similar patterns appeared in New York and Boston, where police closely monitored immigrant slums and broke up working-class gatherings.

Enforcing the Fugitive Slave Law

Northern police forces also became enforcers of pro-slavery laws, blurring the line between free states and slave states. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 compelled law enforcement in free states to assist in capturing people escaping from slavery. Under this federal law, local officers and even private citizens were required to help seize alleged fugitive slaves, and accused runaways were denied a jury trial. Many Northern police departments dutifully, sometimes zealously, carried out these duties, effectively acting as slave catchers in free cities.

In Boston – a center of abolitionist sentiment – the arrest of Anthony Burns in 1854 showed how the law overrode local liberty. Boston police apprehended Burns, a young escaped slave from Virginia, and put him on trial as a fugitive. When a court ordered Burns’s return to slavery, authorities mustered over 2,000 armed guards (including local police, federal marshals, and soldiers) to escort him through the streets of Boston to a waiting ship bound for Virginia. Throngs of horrified Bostonians watched as Burns, in chains, was marched under heavy guard – an infamous spectacle of a free city enforcing the slave system.

Kidnappers and Slave Catchers in “Free” Cities

Beyond enforcing formal laws, some Northern police colluded in the outright kidnapping of free Black people. Nowhere was this more evident than in New York City, where corrupt officials operated what abolitionist David Ruggles exposed as the “New York Kidnapping Club.” This was a loosely organized network of police officers, city magistrates, sheriffs, and professional slave hunters who, throughout the 1830s and 1840s, indiscriminately snatched Black men, women, and children – whether escaped slaves or legally free citizens – and sold them into the Southern slave markethazlitt.net. These kidnappers acted out of profit and racial animus. Southern enslavers offered lucrative rewards for the return of runaways, and the Kidnapping Club members found they could make money by claiming any Black person as a fugitive. Policemen like Tobias Boudinot and Daniel Nash, notorious members of the club, would arrest Black New Yorkers on baseless charges, knowing that judges friendly to the South would accept a white claimant’s word with little scrutinyhazlitt.net. Victims had little chance to defend themselves; in one notorious case, a child named Henry Scott was dragged from a New York school on a false claim of fugitive status. One especially harrowing example of kidnapping was the ordeal of Solomon Northup. Northup was a free Black man from upstate New York who in 1841 was lured to Washington, D.C. (then a slave territory), where he was drugged, kidnapped, and sold to a Louisiana planter. He spent twelve years enslaved on Southern plantations before he was able to prove his identity and regain freedom. Northup was one of the few to successfully return. Those who had abducted and sold him received no punishment in court.

Countless other free Black Northerners were less fortunate, disappearing into slavery via abduction. Black Americans could be legally or illegally deprived of liberty with police participation.

Surveillance of Black Communities among Exploited Hierarchies

Free Black communities in the North lived under intense police surveillance and were often treated as suspect populations. In cities like New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, Black residents faced discriminatory scrutiny, harassment, and violence from law enforcement. Police officers commonly assumed that any Black person on the street might be an escaped slave or involved in crime, leading to frequent unjust detentions. The legal system offered scant protection: with little more than the word of a white accuser, a Black person could be seized as a fugitive, and authorities showed little concern whether the individual was actually free-born or not. Northern judges and police typically sided with slave catchers in these summary proceedings. As a result, Black families lived in a state of vigilance.

In New York, the constant threat of kidnapping meant parents warned their children never to trust strangers – the city was “a dangerous place for Black children,” where even a friendly approach could be a trap. Rather than receiving protection from police, Black neighborhoods were often patrolled as if their residents were criminals. White mobs in Northern cities at times attacked Black citizens (as in the 1863 New York Draft Riot and earlier racial riots), and police forces either struggled to protect Black residents or were indifferent to their plight.

City elites exploited economic tensions through a strategy of divide and conquer, turning poor and working-class whites—especially recent Irish and German immigrants—against their Black neighbors. Competing for the lowest-paid jobs and crowded housing, these groups were told that Black advancement threatened their own survival. Politicians and newspaper editors inflamed prejudice, portraying Black workers as rivals and scapegoats for economic hardship. In Philadelphia and New York, white mobs—often led by Irish laborers—attacked Black communities, burning homes, churches, and abolitionist meeting halls. Police responses ranged from passive to complicit, allowing racist violence to reinforce racial boundaries.

By channeling white resentment downward, the ruling class preserved social order and deflected anger away from economic inequality. Northern freedom, in practice, rested on this fragile hierarchy: poor whites were offered privilege instead of justice. Black citizens bore the brunt of both racial terror and state neglect.

Black Resistance and Mutual Protection

Amid constant danger from police raids, slave catchers, and kidnappers, free Black Northerners built networks of protection, resistance, and political organization. In New York, David Ruggles emerged as one of the most daring leaders of this early movement. Through the New York Committee of Vigilance, which he co-founded in 1835, Ruggles helped expose and resist the “Kidnapping Club” of corrupt police and judges who sold free Black people back into slavery. His home became a refuge for fugitives—he personally sheltered Frederick Douglass after Douglass escaped from bondage in 1838—and he used his printing press to publicize kidnappings and warn the community.

Ruggles and his allies insisted that self-defense was a moral duty: they met slave catchers at docks and courtrooms, sometimes using direct confrontation to rescue captives.

Ruggle’s example spread. Black Philadelphians under leaders like Robert Purvis and Hetty Reckless, and Bostonians in the Boston Vigilance Committee, formed similar networks that combined legal defense, community watch, and physical resistance. These movements turned northern cities into contested spaces where Black people fought daily to define what freedom actually meant.

References: Secondary and primary sources on this topic include scholarly entries and documents from this era. Key references are the Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia (articles “Nativism” and “Nativist Riots of 1844” by Zachary Schrag), documents from the Maryland State Archives on African Americans in the War of 1812, materials from the American Battlefield Trust on the outcomes of that war, contemporary California accounts of the 1850s foreign miners’ taxes, the Lumen Learning U.S. history module on cotton and slavery, and the Museum of the City of New York’s exhibition “Nativists and Immigrants.” (Online access to these and related sources was used to inform this chapter.)