f arson.

In 1820 there occurred so many conflagrations that a vigilance committee
was organized.[16] Whether or not the Negroes were guilty of the crime is
not known but numbers of them left either on account of the fear of
punishment or because of the indignities to which they were subjected.
Numerous petitions, therefore, came before the legislature to stop the
immigration of Negroes. It was proposed in 1840 to tax all free Negroes to
assist them in getting out of the State for colonization.[17] The citizens
of Lehigh County asked the authorities in 1830 to expel all Negroes and
persons of color found in the State.[18] Another petition prayed that they
be deprived of the freedom of movement. Bills embodying these ideas were
frequently considered but they were never passed.

Stronger opposition than this, however, was manifested in the form of
actual outbreaks on a large scale in Philadelphia. The immediate cause of
this first real clash was the abolition agitation in the city in 1834
following the exciting news of other such disturbances a few months prior
to this date in several northern cities. A group of boys started the riot
by destroying a Negro resort. A mob then proceeded to the Negro district,
where white and colored men engaged in a fight with clubs and stones.

The next day the mob ruined the African Presbyterian Church and attacked
some Negroes, destroying their property and beating them mercilessly. This
riot continued for three days. A committee appointed to inquire into the
causes of the riot reported that the aim of the rioters had been to make
the Negroes go away because it was believed that their labor was depriving
them of work and because the blacks had shielded criminals and had made
such noise and disorder in their churches as to make them a nuisance. It
seemed that the most intelligent and well-to-do people of Philadelphia
keenly felt it that the city had thus been disgraced, but the mob spirit
continued.[19]

The very next year was marked by the same sort of disorder. Because a
half-witted Negro attempted to murder a white man, a large mob stirred up
the city again. There was a repetition of the beating of Negroes and of
the destruction of property while the police, as the year before, were so
inactive as to give rise to the charge that they were accessories to the
riot.[20] In 1838 there occurred another outbreak which developed into an
anti-abolition riot, as the public mind had been much e