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107 ChAPter 9 the tar and feathers Agenda Public Meeting—A meeting of the citizens of Cincinnati opposed to the course now pursuing by those individuals composing Abolition and Anti-Slavery societies. Jan. 22, 1836, at the Court House. —BRoADsiDe puBlisHeD AND DistRiButeD iN CiNCiNNAti A grim-faced delegation banged on the door of Birney’s home on Race street in Cincinnati. Birney opened to find Mayor samuel W. Davies, City Marshal James saffin, and Charles Hammond, the editor of the Cincinnati Gazette, staring him down. the vicious glares and stiffly folded arms told Birney this was not a welcoming committee. Birney’s plans to publish an antislavery newspaper had instantly aroused the ire of the proslavery citizens of Cincinnati, and the delegation of officials was responding to their concerns. Cincinnati’s ties with the south were strong because of commercial ties, personal friendships, and family connections. slave-bound Kentucky was just across the ohio River, and Cincinnati residents had learned to be wary of escaped slaves using the underground Railroad to traverse ohio and slip into Canada through Detroit. Cincinnati, settled mainly by Revolutionary War veterans who were granted lands, was a town used to dealing strictly with lawbreakers and mavericks . A local historian, Rev. Charles f. Goss, observed, “At first the [court] sessions were held in the barrooms of the various taverns, of which there were, from the first, a plenty. in front of one of them (that of George Avery) stood the instruments of justice—a pillory, stocks, whipping post and, at times, a gallows.”1 some of Kentucky’s slave laws had been adopted in Cincinnati as well. perhaps some of Birney’s opponents wished the equipment of discipline and punishment still remained so that they could use them on 108| Chapter 9 him. Reverend Goss explained the state of public mind in the city and noted that only five years before Birney had arrived, the outright murder of black men and women by mob violence was accepted practice: Cincinnati lay so near to the south [of which it was and is the natural gateway ] that slaves were forever escaping into it for refuge, and free blacks found it a convenient place to make their homes. As early as 1829 it was discovered with apprehension that there were 2,258 colored people residing within the city limits. so great was the antipathy felt toward what seemed at the time an undesirable element that mobs formed and assailed the negroes whenever they could be attacked with impunity. so many were killed or wounded in these melees that more than half the number of these unfortunate creatures fled from a situation so full of peril, and those who remained were naturally the lowest and worst. saffin, who had just succeeded the aptly named Jesse Justice in the marshal ’s post, was no ordinary hired policeman. fees for arrests and successful prosecutions enriched him up to $25,000 a year.2 the hostile trio quickly and directly made known its purpose. they complained of the “incendiary” nature of a broadside titled “Declaration of sentiment of the Cincinnati Anti-slavery society” and warned Birney that violence was imminent because of his plans, stated in the handbill, to publish a newspaper promoting the abolitionist cause. Birney stated his firm intention to assert his rights and politely turned the tables, stressing that the city authorities could, and should, suppress any threatened mob action. the Cincinnati Whig headlined an article on 21 December 1835 “abolition paper,” which read: “We perceive by a notice in the Christian Journal that James G. Birney is about to commence his abolition paper at New Richmond, Clermont County. finding that his fanatical project would not be tolerated at Danville, Ky., nor in this city, he has at length settled himself on the border of Kentucky and so near Cincinnati as to make the pestiferous breath of his paper spread contagion among our citizens. We deem this new effort an insult to our slaveholding neighbors and an attempt to browbeat public opinion in this quarter. We do therefore hope, not withstanding the alleged respectability of the editor, that he will find the public so inexorably averse to his mad scheme that he will deem it his interest to abandon it.” His father was not a nonresistant, William noted in his biography of his father. Birney locked the doors, and he and his sons placed about forty muskets and double-barreled shotguns at strategic places in the house for protection...

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