MAY 3, 1844: THE OPENING ACT
Setting the Stage: Kensington’s Third Ward
By early May, the American Republican Party set out to hold a public rally in Kensington’s Third Ward, a densely Irish district that had resisted Nativist organizing. Sources describe this decision as intentional. Michael Feldberg writes unequivocally that the party “knew” its plan was provocative. Historian Zachary Schrag notes that Nativists were “not triumphing” in this ward and that the rally was planned directly in the area affected by the earlier school dispute.
The site chosen was 2nd and Master Streets, near the Washington Market, widely known as the Nanny Goat Market. This market was not simply a commercial space. It was an important communal gathering point for Irish laborers and had served as a meeting place for weavers during the January 1843 strike. Its destruction the following week would become one of the signal events of the riots.
Although the exact number of attendees on May 3 varies across accounts, all sources agree that it was a large gathering and that Irish residents viewed it as a direct incursion into their neighborhood.
May 3rd: The First Confrontation
On May 3, Nativist organizers erected a stand and began delivering speeches attacking Catholic political influence. The rally quickly drew Irish residents from the surrounding blocks. According to multiple accounts, the Irish began heckling the speakers. As tensions escalated, objects were thrown. The temporary platform was knocked down.
Different newspapers framed the event differently. Some Nativist accounts portrayed the Irish as aggressors who attacked a peaceful meeting. Irish and neutral accounts described the Nativists as the provocateurs who had intentionally brought an inflammatory rally into their neighborhood.
Modern historians resolve the discrepancy by contextualizing the act itself. The deliberate decision to stage a political rally that denounced Irish Catholics in the center of an Irish neighborhood was widely understood as a provocation. One scholar summarized the day by noting that “the defiant American Republicans were going to organize a chapter under the very noses of the volatile Irish weavers.”
Once the platform collapsed, the rally dissolved into a chaotic scuffle around the Nanny Goat Market. Eyewitness accounts describe shouting, pushing, and brief clashes before the Nativist speakers were forced to withdraw.
Although the violence on May 3 was limited compared with what was to follow, the day marked the beginning of the crisis. The Public Ledger would later write that Nativist leadership “must bear much of the blame for inciting the second day of violence,” because they used the confrontation on May 3 to mobilize a far larger return to Kensington.
The departure of the Nativists that afternoon did not end the matter. It set the next stage. As Feldberg records, their attempts to “capitalize politically on Monday’s shooting” (referring to May 6) would directly fuel the multi-day conflict that followed.
With the stand destroyed and insults fresh, Nativist organizers regrouped. Instead of abandoning the effort, they intensified it. Preparations began for a larger meeting. The party treated May 3 not as a cautionary moment but as an opportunity to rally supporters. The stage was now set for what would become one of the deadliest urban conflicts of the 19th century.