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 exercised by the discussions of abolitionists and by their close social contact with the Negroes.

The clash came on the seventeenth of May when Pennsylvania Hall, the center of abolition agitation, was burned.

Fighting between the blacks and whites ensued the following night when the Colored Orphan Asylum was attacked and a Negro church burned.

Order was finally restored for the good of all concerned, but that a majority of the people sympathized with the rioters was evidenced by the fact that the committee charged with investigating the disturbance reported that the mob was composed of strangers who could not be recognized.[21] It is well to note here that this riot occurred the year the Negroes in Pennsylvania were disfranchised.
Following the example of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh had a riot in 1839 resulting in the maltreatment of a number of Negroes and the demolishing of some of their houses.