Bloody Monday

Bloody Monday was August 6, 1855, in Louisville, Kentucky, an election day, when Protestant mobs attacked German and Irish Catholic neighborhoods. These riots grew out of the bitter rivalry between the Democrats and the nativist Know-Nothing Party. Multiple street fights raged, leaving twenty-two people dead, scores were injured, and much property was destroyed by fire. Five people were later indicted, but none were convicted, and the victims were not compensated.

Bloody Monday was sparked by the Know Nothing political party (officially known as the American Party), an offshoot of the shattered Whig Party, fed in large part by the radical, inflammatory anti-immigrant writings, especially those of the editor of the Louisville Journal, George D. Prentice. Irish and Germans were recent arrivals and now comprised a third of the city's population.

According to the Louisville Daily Journal by Monday morning the city was "...in possession of an armed mob, the base passions of which were infuriated to the highest pitch by the incendiary appeals of the newspaper organ and the popular leaders of the Know Nothing party." The Know-Nothings formed armed groups to guard the polls on election day. Hundreds were deterred from voting by direct acts of intimidation, others through fear of consequences. In the Sixth Ward William Thomasson, a former Congressman from the district, while appealing to the maddened crowd to cease their acts of disorder and violence was struck from behind and beaten.

In the afternoon a general row occurred on Shelby street, extending from Main to Broadway. Some fourteen or fifteen men were shot, including Officer Williams, Joe Selvage and others. Two or three were killed, and a number of houses, chiefly German coffee houses, broken into and pillaged. About 4 o'clock, a vast crowd armed with shotguns, muskets and rifles were proceeding to attack the new German parish of St. Martin of Tours on Shelby street. Mayor Barbee, himself a Know-Nothing, dissuaded them with and the mob returned to the First Ward polls. An hour afterwards the large brewery on Jefferson street, near the junction of Green, was set on fire. Rev. Karl Boeswald was fatally injured by a hail of flying Stones while on his way to visit a dying parishioner.

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