“Gentlemen of Property and Standing”: Anti-Abolition Mobs in Jacksonian America

This book identifies the anti-abolitionists in the northern states and examines what motivated them. In the 1830’s riots flared up in many northern cities. In Utica, NY; New York City, Boston, and Cincinnati mobs broke up anti-slavery meetings, tormented free blacks, and razed the Negro quarters. In Illinois, Presbyterian minister and editor of the Alton Observer, Elijah Lovejoy, was killed.