A Dilemma of Civil Liberties: Cincinnati's Black Community, 1862-1863

On a Sunday afternoon in April 1863, white ruffians pelted a group of black men "walking quietly down Walnut street" in Cincinnati, Ohio. A fight ensued. The black men fled, but a group of boys "spread the report through the city that 'negroes were killing the whites.'" A crowd, reportedly one thousand strong, gathered on Fifth Street to march to the home of one of the black men "intending to 'lynch' him." Members of the police force heard the tumult and arrested Charles Kite and Norman Spiers, the targeted men, "to save them from the violence." The mob found the policemen but failed to apprehend its intended victims. Another black man, Charles Graham, walked onto the scene, when he was immediately seized and beaten "most unmercifully." In the final days of his tenure, in an effort to maintain order, Mayor George Hatch and his chief of police walked the riotous portion of the city deploying extra policemen. Policemen arrested Irishman Pat Quinlan, a man "very prominent in the mob," before detailing extra police. No further mayhem occurred.¹

This story and others like it punctuated a turbulent year during the American Civil War, in which the violent actions committed by whites against the black community in Cincinnati went unchecked under the Democratic mayor and police force. Though the mayor sometimes did dispatch the police force, the help often appeared only after the fact. Sometimes the law enforcement never arrived. The frequency and severity of events between March 1862 and April 1863 indicate the inability of blacks in this border city to live free from assault. This violence illustrates the local government's denial of black liberties.

In 1863, as free blacks began fighting for the Union Army, stories of their bravery and loyalty reached northern civilians, leading many whites to soften their racist views toward blacks. Increased economic opportunities at the hands of the federal government also decreased tension in the city. Upset with Hatch's corrupt nature, Cincinnatians ousted the Democratic mayor, replacing him in March 1863 with the Republican Cincinnati native and Civil War veteran Col. Leonard A. Harris. Harris quickly reorganized the police force, removing Democratic sympathizers from roles of authority. In April, the new commander of the Department of Ohio, Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside, published General Orders No. 38, calling for the arrest and potential execution of individuals voicing Confederate sympathies or aiding the enemy. Under this order, the famed Peace Democrat Clement Vallandigham was arrested and exiled south. Although a variety of factors play a role in this time of change, it was these two men who ultimately brought the city's unrest under control.

Harris and General Orders No. 38 represent the broader efforts of President Abraham Lincoln and Republican leaders to maintain national security during the war. At times, the quashing of Confederate sympathy tipped the balance toward the nation's safety rather than the preservation of American civil liberties. While these political overhauls restricted whites, they opened avenues for black communities to express more of their own freedom. In Cincinnati, this included the ability to protect their lives and property from attack, the establishment of the city's first black newspaper, and noticeable growth in educational and religious institutions. The story of Cincinnati demonstrates how an instance identified as denying civil liberties only denied them for some Americans.

The tale of the expansion of black liberties in Cincinnati during the Civil War provides historians a few key insights to the period. First, community studies of the Civil War rarely include the history of blacks, let alone free blacks.² Second, texts on American civil liberties during the war, most notably the works of historians Frank Klement and Mark Neely, do not discuss how limitations of American freedoms played out in the daily lives of Americans.³ Absent too are the effects of these limitations on nonwhite persons. This story begins to fill such gaps in the literature. In a much broader context, this tale expands on historian Eric Foner's notion of "American irony," that in American history, white liberty expanded...