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Bloody Monday

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This article is about the 1855 riots in Louisville, Kentucky. For the massacre of Polish and Jewish civilians by the Wehrmacht in 1939, see Częstochowa massacre. For the unrelated Claudy bombing, see Claudy bombing. For the unrelated manga series, see Bloody Monday (manga). For the 1761 riots in Britain, see Hexham.


Bloody Monday was August 6, 1855, in Louisville, Kentucky, an election day, when Protestant mobs attacked Irish 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 were injured and much property was destroyed by fire. Five people were later indicted but none were convicted, and the victims were not compensated.[1] The Know-Nothings won the election but ten years later a German was elected mayor.[2]

Causes

Bloody Monday was sparked by the Know-Nothing political party (officially known as the American Party), an off shoot of the shattered Whig Party and fed in large part by the radical, inflammatory anti-immigrant writings of the editor of the Louisville Journal, George D. Prentice and others.[3] Irish and Germans were recent arrivals and now comprised a third of the city's population.[4]

Riots

The Know-Nothings formed armed groups to guard the polls on election day, but the riots took place after the polls closed as the armed groups moved into Catholic neighborhoods. Germans (primarily Catholics) were also caught up in the melee. By the time it was over, more than one-hundred businesses, private homes and tenements had been vandalized, looted and/or burned, including a block long row of houses known as Quinn's Row. Historians estimate the death toll at 19-22[5], while Catholics including Bishop Martin Spalding of Louisville, said the death toll at well over 100 with entire families consumed in the fires. Citizens were dragged from their homes, attacked on the streets and in their place of work. 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 and continued for some time afterward.[6]

Only by Louisville Mayor John Barbee's intervention — himself a Know-Nothing — was the bloodshed and property destruction brought to an end, including his personal intervention that saved two Catholic churches, the new German parish of St. Martin of Tours and the Cathedral of the Assumption from destruction by the mob. No one was ever prosecuted in connection with the riots. 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.[7]

Legacy

The riots had a profound impact on immigration to 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. This reverse immigration caused dozens upon dozens of businesses to close, affecting the arts, education and charitable causes with the loss of members, money and brain-power (primarily from the German '48ers). Empty storefronts were the norm on once bustling commercial corridors and much of the destroyed and charred ruins lay untouched for years afterward as a silent reminder of that terrible day.

1855 also saw scattered violence in Chicago, St. Louis, Columbus, Cincinnati and New Orleans. Within ten years, though, much had changed in the United States and Louisville. Immigrants brought new cultures and customs leaving their mark in this new land, and Louisville, site of the nation's worst anti-immigrant violence, elected a German born man, Philip Tomppert as Mayor.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Emmet V. Mittlebeeler, "The Aftermath of Louisville's Bloody Monday Election Riot of 1855," Filson Club History Quarterly, 1992, Vol. 66 Issue 2, pp 197-219
  2. ^ Yater, 2001, p 97
  3. ^ Betty Congleton, "George D. Prentice and Bloody Monday: A Reappraisal," Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, 65 (1965) pp 220-39
  4. ^ Agnes G. McGann, Nativism in Kentucky to 1860 (1944)
  5. ^ Wallace S. Hutcheon, Jr., "The Louisville Riots of August, 1855," Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, 69 (1971), pp 150-72
  6. ^ Charles E. Deusner, "The Know Nothing Riots in Louisville," Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, 61 (1963), pp 122-47
  7. ^ Deusner, "The Know Nothing Riots in Louisville"

References

  • Congleton, Betty. "George D. Prentice and Bloody Monday: A Reappraisal," Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, 65 (1965) pp 220-39
  • Deusner, Charles E. "The Know Nothing Riots in Louisville," Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, 61 (1963), pp 122-47
  • McGann, Agnes G. Nativism in Kentucky to 1860 (Washington, 1944)
  • Hutcheon, Jr., Wallace S. "The Louisville Riots of August, 1855," Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, 69 (1971), pp 150-72
  • Yater, George H. "Bloody Monday" in The Encyclopedia of Louisville (2001) online

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