Charles Ives – Study no. 9: The Anti-Abolitionist Riots in the 1830s and 40s (probably composed 1912-13)

There is a lot of newly stoked discussion surrounding abolitionism today, but here we return to an older meaning. Starting this day, July 7, one hundred eighty-six years ago, the anti-abolitionist riots of 1834, also known as the Farren Riots, which likely informed the title of this contemplative-turned-downright-nasty-turned-transcendent work, occurred in New York City over a series of four nights. More would continue into October.

“Their deeper origins lay in the combination of nativism and abolitionism among the Protestants who had controlled the booming city since the American Revolutionary War, and fear and resentment of blacks among the growing underclass of Irish Immigrants and their kin…

“The American Anti-Slavery Society, less than a year old, gathered in New York City in 1834 to celebrate the Fourth of July. While the rest of the still-young nation was marking Independence Day with the pride of nationalism, however, the Anti-Slavery Society was taking part in what was a rather different celebration among the city’s black population: the anniversary of the abolition, in 1827, of slavery in the state of New York…[Note: In 1799, New York passed a Gradual Emancipation act that freed slave children born after July 4, 1799, but indentured them until they were young adults. It was not until March 31, 1817 that the New York legislature would free slaves born before 1799, but still not before July 4, 1827 as the date of final emancipation. This made New York the first state to pass a law for the total abolition of legal slavery.]

“The organization’s fond hopes for a few days of services of thanksgiving and speeches of exhortation to continued labor, however, were thwarted by what was the worst eruption of violence the city had ever seen. The anti-abolitionist riots of 1834 were ten days of wanton brutality and destruction. Incited by newspaper accounts that listed the where and when of every upcoming abolitionist meeting, mobs drove the Anti-Slavery Society out the back door of the Chatham Street Chapel and disrupted the society’s every effort to gather for celebration. Yet these disruptions turned out to be only a prelude. More brazenly, the mobs assaulted and beat every African American and Englishman (because of their recent abolition of slavery, apparently) they encountered, caused great damage to the homes and stores of the Tappan [Brothers, who had help launch the abolitionist newspaper The Emancipator], and literally tore apart the houses and business of African Americans in the vicinity of the Five Points slum district, shattering windows and furniture and ripping apart roofs and walls…

“…It is apparent from an analysis of the targets that the mobs were particularly focused on attacking symbols of African-American economic self-sufficiency: while many of the worst tenements housing African Americans were ignored, businesses and homes owned by black New Yorkers were ransacked and vandalized.”

[Craig D. Townsend, Faith in Their Own Color]

Ives states in his original preface to this piece that his grandfather George White Ives was a committed abolitionist, and would use almost the whole study in one of his “centrifugal” cadenzas of his “Emerson Overture.” The passage at 0:37 also appears in the opening lines of the Concord Sonata. This performance is based on the 1949 Cowell edition (not the Keith Ward Ives Society critical ed., though I took whatever cues I could not having access to that score).