The History of Catholic America
Of Poison Pens and Politics

"Not only do they assail us and our institutions in a style of vituperation and offense, misrepresent our tenets, vilify our practices, repeat the hundred-times-refuted calumnies of the days of angry and bitter contention in other lands, but they have even denounced you and us as enemies to the liberties of the republic, and have openly proclaimed the fancied necessity of obstructing our progress, and of using their best efforts to extirpate our religion."

In issuing this warning regarding the Protestant press in 1829, the bishops of the First Provincial Council of Baltimore were not exaggerating. Unfortunately, Chicago's ecumenism was not typical of the nation and violence and bloodshed would soon erupt. In fact, the anti-Catholicism that already existed, spawned and nurtured on the English homesoil, was aggravated by some of this Council's decrees. In addition to their condemnation of the press, the bishops castigated the King James Bible and urged all parishes to organize parochial schools. To the Protestants, these were more proofs of the papists' "subjection to a foreign power." Even some highly respected luminaries, such as Samuel F.B. Morse, artist and inventor of the telegraph, espoused the belief that there was a papal plot to subvert our democracy. In 1834 he wrote Foreign Conspiracy Against the Liberties of the United States, a collection of his anonymous letters first published in the New York Observer.

On August 11, 1834, the mounting tension between Yankees and Irish, Congregationalists and Catholics, in Charlestown, Massachusetts, fanned by the impassioned preaching of Reverend Lyman Beecher, climaxed in the mob-burning of an Ursuline convent and girls' school. The men who were later tried for arson were acquitted and even considered by many as local heroes.

And from the January, 1836, publication of Maria Monk's Awful Disclosures of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery of Montreal, through the end of the decade, by which time this inside look at a Catholic convent was generally considered a lucrative hoax, hatred and bigotry were well fueled.

Within the next two decades, a number of publications were founded, many by Protestant ministers, aligning Protestantism with Americanism. Public debates about the scope of religious tolerance - a few ending in riots - kept both sides constantly inflamed.

When ninety-four Protestant ministers organized the American Protestant Association in Philadelphia, the constitution included these declarations:

"The objects of its formation, and for the attainment of which its efforts shall be directed, are:

"The union and encouragement of Protestant ministers of the gospel, to give to their several congregations instruction on the differences between Protestantism and Popery."

"The circulation of books and tracts adapted to give information on the various errors of Popery in their history, tendency, and design."

"To awaken the attention of the community to the dangers which threaten the liberties, and the public and domestic institutions, of these United States from the assaults of Romanism."

Although many other factors had pitted Americans against "aliens" for several years, the A.P.A.-tainted sermons that rang from Philadelphia pulpits and friction over Protestant-oriented public schools contributed to the violence that tore apart the City of Brotherly Love in 1844.

The riots began in early May when a member of the anti-Catholic faction lost his life in a Kensington confrontation. Subsequently, two Catholic churches were burned to the ground by cheering mobs, as were dozens of Irish Catholic homes, and the city was placed under martial law. A week of murder and destruction left hundreds of homeless refugees and a scar that would take years to heal.

The wound was reopened with a Fourth of July parade that ended with a cannon attack on men guarding St. Philip Neri Church and an invasion by the militia, five thousand strong, some of whom barged into crowds with their guns blazing. This time, thirteen lives were wasted and at least fifty were injured.

When New York anti-Catholics threatened similar action a few days later, Bishop John Hughes stationed fully-armed men around each of his churches, which proved a successful deterrent.

In that same year, a Nativist political party, composed of anti-Catholic and anti-immigrants forces, won the New York elections. The following year, Nativists took control of the Massachusetts legislature. As crimes by native-born Americans grew, however, many members of the party, horrified at the violence by their fellow citizens, began to withdraw their support. By 1847 the Nativists had disappeared from the national scene.

The lull was short-lived. In 1849, the Order of the Star-Spangled Banner was founded in New York by Charles B. Allen. Within half a decade, this originally inconsequential group had been reorganized by James W. Barker, also of New York, and a local, district, state, and national framework was erected that was both elaborate and effective. When the "foreign vote" put Franklin Pierce in the White House, members of the Order vigorously renewed their vows:

"The object of this organization shall be to protect every American citizen in the legal and proper exercise of all his civil and religious rights and privileges; to resist the insidious policy of the Church of Rome, and all other foreign influence against our republican institutions in all lawful ways; to place in all offices of honor, trust, or profit, in the gift of the people, or by appointment, none but native-born Protestant citizens, and to protect, preserve and uphold the Union of these states and the Constitution of the same."

Members were pledged to secrecy about their meetings, rituals, and purposes. Their cover-up answers of "I don't know" led to their being dubbed the "Know-Nothings," though officially they became the American party.

By 1854 they were ready to launch a full-fledged surprise attack. In that year's elections, dumbfounded pollworkers found numerous votegetters, many winning electoral seats, whose names were not even on the ballot. The greatest victory came in Massachusetts, where the governor, all state officers, and the entire state Senate were of the American party. The state House of Representatives was composed of one Whig, one Free-Soiler, and 376 Know-Nothings. In the next year, these Nativists equalled, and in some areas topped, their previous victories.

In western regions, where populations were more scattered and the people were mostly hard-working farmers, Americans had become accustomed to the few "foreigners" in their midst and had no fears of a papal invasion. But there were many reasons for the success of the American party in the more densely populated and immigrant-choked East.

The many years' long exodus from famine- stricken and politically-pressured Ireland to the welcoming shores of America had caused a proliferation of "shanty-towns" in and around our coastal cities. Most of the Irish chose to remain where they landed, in the commuter communities rather than again risk the terrible disasters inflicted on them by the farmlands of their mother country. While on one hand they were filling the almshouses and costing the taxpayers money, immigrants were willing to take less for their labors than native-born Americans and so posed threats to their livelihoods.

By 1850, the number of Roman Catholics had increased mainly through immigration to numbers exceeding that of any other denomination, 1.75 million. Then, in the ensuing decade, that figure doubled. "Armies of the Vatican!" was the fearful cry among non-Catholics.

Added to this was Pope Pius IX's unfortunate timing in a move to quell trusteeism, an internal problem that the Know-Nothings also tried to turn to their advantage. Monsignor Gaetano Bedini was sent from Rome in 1853 as a papal representative to tour the country and help restore peace to troubled parishes. Everywhere he went, this symbol of foreign intervention sparked controversy and riots, actually contributing to the Nativists' cause.

The Know-Nothings felt confident of a presidential victory in 1856 and seemed to be imbued with political insanity as the hot and heavy campaigns built to a crescendo. On Election Day, 1855, in Louisville, Kentucky, they attacked and set ablaze Catholic residences. As families fled from their burning homes they were shot. Various newspaper estimates counted twenty-five to one hundred dead.

The presidential contest evoked other fistfights and shootings, but the newly organized Republican party and the growing concerns of a new threat - the slavery issue - helped to divide and weaken the Nativists. The election of James Buchanan did not quell the struggle, but it soon would be eclipsed by the rumblings of secession threats.

Happily, these outbursts of bigotry and intolerance on the part of some Americans did not seriously impede the progress of the Mother Church in the New World, and there were still communities where Protestants and Catholics lived in harmony.