High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Anti-abolitionist riots of 1834, also known simplistically as the Farren Riots, occurred in New York City over a series of four nights, beginning on July 7, 1834. Their deeper origins lay in the combination of anti-Catholic nativism and Abolitionism among the genteel evangelical Protestants who had controlled the booming city since the Revolution and the fear and resentment of blacks among the growing underclass of Irish and other immigrants crowded together in the Five Points district, rigorously segregated house by house.