Ohio History Journal

  • 1
  •  
  • 2
  •  
  • 3
  •  
  • 4
  •  

FURTHER NOTES ON GRANVILLE'S ANTI-

FURTHER NOTES ON GRANVILLE'S ANTI-

ABOLITION DISTURBANCES OF 1836

 

By ROBERT PRICE

 

The American Colonization Society may have had as its chief

objective the return of American Negroes to their native Africa,

but it also afforded a ready means of organized opposition for the

enemies of abolition. Anyhow, such was the case in Granville,

Ohio, during the years 1835-36 when the fires of anti-slavery con-

troversy were burning brightly in that particular neighborhood.

No doubt Granville's famous "riot" attending the Ohio Anti-

Slavery Convention held there in 1836 was largely due to the or-

ganized discussion which had been going on for several months at

"colonization" meetings.

Shortly after the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical

Society published its recent account of the 1836 convention at

Granville and the hostilities which ensued,1 Mr. Fitch C. Bryant

of New York City discovered in a collection of family papers

stored for many years at Deposit, New York, the original records

of the anti-abolition faction which had been organized at Gran-

ville during 1835. Bryant's great-grandfather, General Augus-

tine Munson, had presided at the first of the "colonization"

meetings. To him, no doubt, is due the preservation of these in-

teresting records.2

Munson and his Granville associates who were active in anti-

abolition discussion were by no means southern "sympathizers."

They were New Englanders, mainly Whigs, by their very nature

bitter against such an institution as slavery. But they were even

more concerned about the state of the Union and were highly

suspicious of any radical group, such as the abolitionists seemed to

be, whose activities would inevitably aggravate sectional feeling.

They should be thought of as typical, better class, thinking con-

 

1 Robert Price, "The Ohio Anti-slavery Convention of 1836" in Ohio State

Archaeological and Historical Society, Quarterly (Columbus, 1887-), XLV (1986), 178-188.

2 Now in the Granville Historical Archives, Mrs. Clara S. White, custodian.

(365)