It was in fact a brighter day for the colored people.  In 1840 an observer said that they had improved faster than any other people in the city.  The Cincinnati Gazette after characterizing certain Negroes as being imprudent and vicious, said of others:  “Many of these are peaceable and industrious, raising respectable families and acquiring property."[36] Mr. James H. Perkins, a respectable citizen of the city, asserted that the day school which the colored children attended had shown by examination that it was as good as any other in the city.  He said further:  “There is no question, I presume, that the colored population of Cincinnati, oppressed as it has been by our state laws as well as by prejudice, has risen more rapidly than almost any other people in any part of the world."[37] Within three or four years their property had more than doubled; their schools had become firmly established, and their churches and Sunday Schools had grown as rapidly as any other religious institutions in the city.  Trusting to good conduct and character, they had risen to a prosperous position in the eyes of those whose prejudices would “allow them to look through the skin to the soul."[38]

The colored people had had too many enemies in Cincinnati, however, to expect that they had overcome all opposition.  The prejudice of certain labor groups against the Negroes increased in proportion to the prosperity of the latter.  That they had been able to do as well as they had was due to the lack of strength on the part of the labor organizations then forming to counteract the sentiment of fair play for the Negroes.  Their labor competed directly with that of the whites and began again to excite “jealousy and heart burning."[39] The Germans, who were generally toiling up from poverty, seemed to exhibit less prejudice; but the unfortunate Irish bore it grievously that even a few Negroes should outstrip some of their race in the economic struggle.

In 1841 there followed several clashes which aggravated the situation.  In the month of June one Burnett referred to as “a mischievous and swaggering Englishman running a cake shop,” had harbored a runaway slave.  When a man named McCalla, his reputed master, came with an officer to reclaim the fugitive, Burnett and his family resisted them.  The Burnetts were committed to answer for this infraction of the law and finally were adequately punished.  The proslavery mob which had gathered undertook to destroy their home but the officials prevented them.  Besides, early in August according to a report, a German citizen defending his blackberry patch near the city was attacked by two Negroes and stabbed so severely that he died.  Then about three weeks thereafter, according to another rumor, a very respectable lady was insultingly accosted by two colored men, and when she began to flee two others rudely thrust themselves before her on the sidewalk.  But in this case, as in most others growing out of rumors, no one could ever say who the lady or her so-called assailants were.  At the same time, too, the situation was further aggravated by an almost sudden influx of irresponsible Negroes from various parts, increasing the number of those engaged in noisy frolics which had become a nuisance to certain white neighbors.[40]