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.
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