Bloody Monday | |||
---|---|---|---|
Date | August 6, 1855 | ||
Location | |||
Caused by | Anti-immigrant rhetoric | ||
Methods | Rioting, marauding, pogrom, arson | ||
Parties | |||
Casualties | |||
Death(s) | 22+ | ||
Arrested | 5 | ||
Detained | 5 | ||
Charged | 5 |
Bloody Monday was a series of riots on August 6, 1855, in Louisville, Kentucky, an election day, when Protestant mobs attacked Irish and German Catholic neighborhoods. These riots grew out of the bitter rivalry between the Democrats and the Nativist Know-Nothing Party. Multiple street fights raged, leaving twenty-two people dead, scores injured, and much property destroyed by fire. Five people were later indicted, but none were convicted, and the victims were not compensated.
Bloody Monday was sparked by the Know Nothing political party (officially known as the American Party), fed in large part by the radical, inflammatory anti-immigrant writings, especially those of the editor of the Louisville Journal , George D. Prentice. [1] Irish and Germans were recent arrivals and now comprised a third of the city's population. [2]
Like other major cities on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, Louisville grew rapidly in the previous two decades because of heavy immigration from Ireland and Germany. There were 11,000 immigrants out of a white population of 36,000. Most were Roman Catholics, but there was also a large German Lutheran element. The vast majority were Democrats. [3] [4]
According to the Louisville Daily Journal by Monday morning the city was "...in possession of an armed mob, the base passions of which were infuriated to the highest pitch by the incendiary appeals of the newspaper organ and the popular leaders of the Know Nothing party." [5] The Know-Nothings formed armed groups to guard the polls on election day. Hundreds were deterred from voting by direct acts of intimidation, others through fear of consequences. In the Sixth Ward William Thomasson, a former Congressman from the district, while appealing to the maddened crowd to cease their acts of disorder and violence was struck from behind and beaten.
In the afternoon a general row occurred on Shelby street, extending from Main to Broadway. Some fourteen or fifteen men were shot, including Officer Williams, Joe Selvage and others. Two or three were killed, and a number of houses, chiefly German coffee houses, broken into and pillaged. About 4 o'clock, a vast crowd armed with shotguns, muskets and rifles were proceeding to attack the new German parish of St. Martin of Tours on Shelby street. Mayor Barbee, himself a Know-Nothing, assuaged them and the mob returned to the First Ward polls. An hour afterwards the large brewery on Jefferson street, near the junction of Green, was set on fire. [5] Rev. Karl Boeswald was fatally injured by a hail of flying stones while on his way to visit a dying parishioner.
Late in the afternoon three Irishmen going down Main street, near Eleventh, were attacked, and one knocked down. Irish in the neighborhood responded by firing repeated volleys from the windows of their houses on Main street. Mr. Rodes, a river-man, was shot and killed by one in the upper story, and a Mr. Graham met with a similar fate. An Irishman who discharged a pistol at the back of a man's head was shot and then hung but survived. After dusk, a row of frame houses on Main street between Tenth and Eleventh, the property of Mr. Quinn, a well known Irishman, were set on fire. The flames extended across the street and twelve buildings were destroyed. These houses were chiefly tenanted by Irish, and upon any of the tenants venturing out to escape the flames, they were immediately shot down. Those badly wounded by gun shot could not escape from the burning buildings. [5]
Only by Louisville Mayor John Barbee's intervention, despite being a Know-Nothing, was the bloodshed and the property destruction brought to an end, including his personal intervention that saved the Cathedral of the Assumption from destruction by the mob. Immediately after Bloody Monday Louisville Bishop Martin Spalding and Protestant leaders called for calm rather than revenge. [6]
By the time it was over, more than 100 businesses, private homes and tenements had been vandalized, looted and/or burned, including a block long row of houses known as Quinn's Row. [7] Historians estimate the death toll at 19–22, [8] while Catholics (including Bishop Martin John Spalding of Louisville) set the death toll at well over 100, with entire families consumed in the fires.
Weapons, arms and later bodies of the dead, were stored in Louisville Metro Hall (the old Jefferson County Courthouse, now the Mayor's Office), a Know-Nothing stronghold at the time. Sporadic violence and attacks had occurred in the year and months leading up to August 6, continuing for some time afterward. [9]
No one was ever prosecuted in connection with the riots. [7] The elected Whig mayor, James S. Speed, had been ousted in June by a court order. Speed, who upon his marriage, had converted to Catholicism, left Louisville for Chicago, never to return. [9]
The riots had a profound impact on emigration from Louisville, causing more than ten thousand citizens to pack and leave for good, most to St. Louis, Chicago and Milwaukee, and a large group who left in 1856 for Prairie City, Kansas. Only the Civil War, with the trade and commerce it represented, halted this trend. The loss of population caused dozens of local businesses to close, affecting arts, education, and charitable causes with the loss of members and money. Empty storefronts were the norm on once-bustling commercial corridors and many of the destroyed and charred ruins lay untouched for years afterward, as a silent reminder of that terrible day. According to journalist Peter Smith, some scholars consider the exodus of immigrants fleeing or avoiding Louisville as having weakened the city economically causing it to be eclipsed by St. Louis and Cincinnati, although others disagree. [6]
That year also saw scattered violence in Chicago, St. Louis, Columbus, Cincinnati and New Orleans. However, within ten years, Louisville elected a German born-man, Philip Tomppert as Mayor. [10]
A series of commemorations was held to mark the 150th anniversary of Bloody Monday. According to one of the organizers, Vicky Ullrich, whose German-speaking Swiss ancestors fled to Indiana, "...with another influx of immigrants increasing the diversity of Louisville, it's important that Bloody Monday be remembered so that a similar event does not happen again." [6] In 2006, the Louisville Ancient Order of Hibernians, and the German-American Club raised the funds to erect an historic marker at the site of Quinn's Row, [11] which was the site of a small commemoration on March 17, 2015. [12]
The history of Louisville, Kentucky spans nearly two-and-a-half centuries since its founding in the late 18th century. The geology of the Ohio River, with but a single series of rapids midway in its length from the confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers to its union with the Mississippi, made it inevitable that a town would grow on the site. The town of Louisville, Kentucky was chartered there in 1780. From its early days on the frontier, it quickly grew to be a major trading and distribution center in the mid-19th century and an important industrial city in the early 20th. The city declined in the mid-20th century, but by the late 20th, it was revitalized as a culturally-focused mid-sized American city.
Butchertown is a neighborhood just east of downtown Louisville, Kentucky, United States, bounded by I-65, Main Street, I-71, Beargrass Creek and Mellwood Avenue.
Fontaine Ferry Park was an amusement park in Louisville, Kentucky that operated from 1905 to 1969. Located on 64 acres (26 ha) in western Louisville at the Ohio River, it offered over 50 rides and attractions, as well as a swimming pool, skating rink and theatre. The most popular attraction were its wooden roller coasters, of which 4 were built over the years.
The Southern Exposition was a five-year series of world's fairs held in Louisville, Kentucky, from 1883 to 1887 in what is now Louisville's Old Louisville neighborhood. The exposition, held for 100 days each year on 45 acres (180,000 m2) immediately south of Central Park, which is now the St. James-Belgravia Historic District, was essentially an industrial and mercantile show. At the time, the exposition was larger than any previous American exhibition with the exception of the Centennial Exposition held in Philadelphia in 1876. U.S. President Chester A. Arthur opened the first annual exposition on August 1, 1883.
Charles Slaughter Morehead was a U.S. Representative from Kentucky, and served as the 20th Governor of Kentucky. Though a member of the Whig Party for most of his political service, he joined the Know Nothing, or American, Party in 1855, and was the only governor of Kentucky ever elected from that party.
Louisville in the American Civil War was a major stronghold of Union forces, which kept Kentucky firmly in the Union. It was the center of planning, supplies, recruiting and transportation for numerous campaigns, especially in the Western Theater. By the end of the war, Louisville had not been attacked once, although skirmishes and battles, including the battles of Perryville and Corydon, Indiana, took place nearby.
Fort Nelson, built in 1781 by troops under George Rogers Clark including Captain Richard Chenoweth, was the second on-shore fort on the Ohio River in the area of what is now downtown Louisville, Kentucky. Fort-on-Shore, the downriver and first on-shore fort, had proved to be insufficient barely three years after it was established. In response to continuing attacks from Native Americans and the threat of British attacks during the Revolutionary War, Fort Nelson was constructed between what is currently Main Street and the river, with its main gate near Seventh Street. It was named after Thomas Nelson Jr., then the governor of Virginia.
The 800 Tower, formerly The 800 Apartments, is a 29-story residential skyscraper in Louisville, Kentucky, located in the city's SoBro neighborhood, nestled between Old Louisville and downtown. At the time construction was complete in 1963, The 800 was the tallest building in Louisville, a record it maintained for nearly a decade.
Oxmoor Farm is an estate in Louisville, Kentucky located 8 miles (13 km) east of downtown. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. It has also been termed Oxmoor or the Bullitt Estate.
John Barbee was the tenth Mayor of Louisville, Kentucky from 1855 to 1857 and chiefly remembered for his part in the anti-immigrant riots known as "Bloody Monday".
Philip Tomppert was the sixteenth and eighteenth Mayor of Louisville, Kentucky in 1865 and 1867 to 1868.
The Louisville Metro Hall is the center of Louisville, Kentucky's government. It currently houses the Mayor's Office and the Jefferson County Clerk's Office for marriage licensing, delinquent tax filings, and the deeds room. The building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. Construction began in 1836, and both the City of Louisville and Jefferson County governments starting using it in 1842.
George Dennison Prentice was an American newspaper editor, writer and poet who built the Louisville Journal into a major newspaper in Louisville, Kentucky, and the Ohio River Valley, in part by the virulence and satire in its editorials, which some blamed for a bloody election day riot in 1855. A slaveholder, Prentice initially supported Unionist candidate John Bell in the 1860 U.S. presidential election, and after the American Civil War, he urged Kentucky to remain neutral. Both of his sons joined the Confederate States Army, one dying in 1862, and Prentice's editorials lampooned Kentucky's military governor, Union General Stephen G. Burbridge. Prentice later opposed Congressional Reconstruction. He wrote a biography of Henry Clay published in 1831, an 1836 poem published in the McGuffey Readers, and a collection of his humorous essays was published in 1859 and revised after his death.
George Weissinger Smith (1864–1931) was mayor of Louisville, Kentucky from 1917 to 1921. His maternal grandfather, George Weissinger, published the Louisville Journal during the controversial tenure of George D. Prentice.
The history of Germans in Louisville began in 1817. In that year, a man named August David Ehrich, a master shoe maker born in Königsberg, arrived in Louisville. Ehrich was the first native-born German in Louisville, but as early as 1787, Pennsylvania Dutch (Deutsch) settlers arrived in Jefferson County from Pennsylvania. While they maintained German customs from their ancestors who came to Pennsylvania several generations before, they were not native Germans. The Blankenbaker, Bruner, and Funk families came to the Louisville region following the American Revolutionary War, and in 1797 they founded the town Brunerstown, which would later become Jeffersontown, Kentucky. Further early immigration of Germans took place as they slowly followed the Ohio River after arriving in the United States at New Orleans, and settled in the various river towns, which included not only Louisville, but Cincinnati, Ohio, and St. Louis, Missouri, as well.
The Jeffersonian was a weekly newspaper published on Thursdays, in Jeffersontown, Jefferson County, Kentucky. The Jeffersonian was first published on June 13, 1907, and was last published in 1965.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Louisville, Kentucky, USA.
Reuben Thomas Durrett was a lawyer, jurist, linguist, poet, editor, journalist, history writer, and Kentucky bibliographer. In 1871, Durrett founded the failed The Public Library of Kentucky. In 1884, Durrett founded the Filson Club, now the Filson Historical Society.
St. Martin of Tours Catholic Church is a Roman Catholic parish church in Louisville, Kentucky. It is the fourth parish in the city and one of the oldest in the Archdiocese of Louisville. Founded as a church for German immigrants on the east side of Louisville in 1853, the church building was completed and dedicated on August 20, 1854. Expanded in the 1860s and renovated in the 1890s, the church building remains one of the oldest large structures and one of the few remaining antebellum public buildings in Louisville.
The term Know-Nothing Riot has been used to refer to a number of political uprisings of the Know Nothing Party in the United States of the mid-19th century. These anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic protests culminated into riots in Philadelphia in 1844; St. Louis in 1854, Cincinnati and Louisville in 1855; Baltimore in 1856; Washington, D.C., and New York City in 1857; and New Orleans in 1858.