The citizens of this frontier community, in registering their protest against the settling of Negroes there, adopted the following resolutions: _Resolved_, That we will not live among Negroes, as we have settled here first, we have fully determined that we will resist the settlement of blacks and mulattoes in this county to the full extent of our means, the bayonet not excepted.
_Resolved_, That the blacks of this county be, and they are hereby respectfully requested to leave the county on or before the first day of March, 1847; and in the case of their neglect or refusal to comply with this request, we pledge ourselves to _remove them, peacefully if we can, forcibly if we must._ _Resolved_, That we who are here assembled, pledge ourselves not to employ or trade with any black or mulatto person, in any manner whatever, or permit them to have any grinding done at our mills, after the first day of January next.[39] In 1827 there arose a storm of protest on the occasion of the settling of seventy freedmen in Lawrence County, Ohio, by a philanthropic master of Pittsylvania County, Virginia.[40] On _Black Friday_, January 1, 1830, eighty Negroes were driven out of Portsmouth, Ohio, at the request of one or two hundred white citizens set forth in an urgent memorial.[41] So many Negroes during these years concentrated at Cincinnati that the laboring element forced the execution of the almost dead law requiring free Negroes to produce certificates and give bonds for their behavior and support.[42] A mob attacked the homes of the blacks, killed a number of them, and forced twelve hundred others to leave for Canada West, where they established the settlement known as Wilberforce.
In 1836 another mob attacked and destroyed there the press of James G.
Birney, the editor of the _Philanthropist_, because of the encouragement his abolitionist organ gave to the immigrating Negroes.[43] But in 1841 came a decidedly systematic effort on the part of foreigners and proslavery sympathizers to kill off and drive out the Negroes who were becoming too well established in that city and who were giving offense to white men who desired to deal with them as Negroes were treated in the South.

The city continued in this excited state for about a week.

There were brought into play in the upheaval the police of the city and the State militia before the shooting of the Negroes and burning of their homes could be checked.

So far as is known, no white men were punished, although a few of them were arrested.

Some Negroes were committed to prison during the fray.