Of Rainbow Shamrocks and Protestant Parades

Great parade yesterday up Fifth Avenue and past Saint Patrick’s Cathedral.  Cardinal Dolan was the Grand Marshal.  Previous Grand Marshals include Governor Al Smith, (first Catholic to run for President of the United States)1925; Mayor Jimmy Walker (1932); Mayor Robert Wagner (1954); Governor Hugh Carey (1976); Cardinal John J. O’Connor (1996); Maureen O’Hara (1999); and Cardinal Edward Egan (2002).   There was some controversy because for the first time in parade history a LGBT group, Out@NBCUniversal marched under their own banner.   (It would be naïve—at the least—to think this was the first time gays marched in the parade.)   While openly gay participation in the past has been blocked, Grand Marshal Cardinal Dolan made a point of saying that he thought it a wise decision to make the parade more “inclusive” and that he welcomed everyone.  The Krazies, of course, are furious but then anger is their mother’s milk. 

I only watched the first half hour or so of the parade, but one curious factoid I heard implied it (wasn’t actually said) that this parade has always been a Catholic celebration.  The panel of NBC commentators were remarking on the history of the parade which originally was in lower Manhattan.  (In the eighteenth century today’s midtown site of the parade was nothing more than open fields and “truck gardens” that supplied the city with food.)  One of the commentators, admittedly I don’t remember who, remarked that this was because the Old Saint Patrick’s Cathedral was in Greenwich Village.  Two problems.  The Old Saint Pat’s is not in the Village but on Mulberry Street in what would become Little Italy and is now Chinatown.  But the more egregious mistake is that while the parade dates back to 1762, the Cathedral was built only in 1809-1815.  You see, despite the implication—and the common historical misperception—the parade was not originally a Catholic sponsored event.  To the contrary: those who marched in the first parade of 1762 were all Protestants.  And such would have been the case for the first twenty or more years—it was a Protestant event.  In fact it was at least predominately a Protestant event well into the 19^th century.

The first Saint Patrick’s Day parade in New York was comprised of Irish soldiers in the British Army.  Until 1778 Catholics were prohibited from joining the army (and their commissioning as officers was even later).  In fact, while all other churches and religions, even Judaism, were legally tolerated, it was illegal to be a Catholic in New York until the 1777 State Constitution that marked independence from Great Britain. 

The 1737 Boston Saint Patrick’s Day Parade, generally considered the first in the colonies—and thus the oldest American Parade to honor Ireland’s national saint, was also comprised of Irish Protestants who had immigrated to Massachusetts.  Irish nationalism in the 18^th century—and the Saint Patrick Day Parades were celebrations of Irish Identity and Nationalism within the British Empire—was not a Catholic phenomenon but a Protestant one.  The Catholics had been so beaten down by the Penal Laws, and especially so in Ireland after the 1688 victory of William of Orange over the Catholic James II, in the British Empire that they were a political non-entity.  The principal advocates of Irish Nationalism from William Molyneaux to Jonathan Swift to Henry Grattan to Samuel Nielson to Wolfe Tone to Robert Emmet were all Protestants as would later be Charles Stewart Parnell, and literary figures W.B Yeats, Lady Gregory, and Seán O’Casey.  And the artist and indomitable Irish revolutionary, Baroness Markievicz, who advised her female admirers to: “Dress suitably in short skirts and strong boots, leave your jewels in the bank and buy a revolver,” was Protestant until she was in her 50’s when she was received into the Catholic Church. 

 Two of the first four Presidents of Ireland, Douglas Hyde and Erskine Childers were Protestants.  By no means has Irish Nationalism been a exclusively—or even predominately—Catholic phenomenon.

In those pre-Revolutionary (and Protestant) days in America, Saint Patrick’s Day was marked by the Irish in the larger colonial cities such as New York by dinners in the more elegant taverns such as Bolton and Sigel’s, now known as Fraunces Tavern.  For a day such as St. Patrick’s Day they would feast on oysters, lobster, turtle soup, cod, duck, goose, venison, and smoked hams.  Meats would be eaten roasted, or potted, or cooked in pasties—pies and hot-pockets.  Winter vegetables would include turnip, parsnips, carrots, squashes and winter cabbage.   Apples and pears conserved from the previous autumn would be pricey but available and a wide variety of summer fruits would have been put up into jams that might be served as is or used as fillings for pies.  Hard cider was the most common drink, but ales and beers would be common enough as well as rum imported from Jamaica and home-distilled whiskies.  Alcoholic beverages were drunk with no thought of moderation, especially for celebrations like today’s feast.  Desserts would include a variety of pies, sweetmeats (candied fruits), nuts, and boiled puddings such as whitepot, figgy pudding, or plum duff.  There were also such puddings as flummery, syllabub, and blancmange.  Celebrants would sit down to dinner midafternoon and the feast would last into the night or as long as the alcohol held out. 

It was only in the 1820’s that Catholic Irish began to migrate to New York in significant numbers and the floodgates opened with the Great Famine after 1846.  The second half of the nineteenth century and the first three decades of the twentieth were the high-water mark of Catholic Irish immigration.  The “established Irish,” Protestant and Catholic, did not particularly welcome the immigrants who were of much lower social and educational status.  The Catholics were embarrassed by their immigrant co-religionists and the Protestants disowned them completely thinking them to be superstitious savages. But the immigrants were quick to organize themselves in an effort to better themselves by mutual help.  Among their first acts was to organize a separate Saint Patrick’s Day Parade which they had done by 1858.  Immigrant Irish participation in the Northern cause of the American Civil War not only united the Irish among themselves but gave them a certain political clout in New York and other Northern cities.  By the end of the Civil War the New York Parade was firmly under the control of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, an immigrant association formed to fight the prejudices against (Irish) immigrants that had been strong in the decade immediately before the Civil War. From that time on the New York Saint Patrick’s Day Parade has been firmly in the hands of Irish Catholics, yet it has always been a civic parade and not a religious procession.  Never in its history has it been a religious procession and while there was an active policy of excluding groups identified with the LGBT movement these forty years and more since the gay liberation movement has appeared, the exclusion of LGBT marchers or groups certainly can’t be argued on religious grounds.  

The Plug-Uglies take their show on the road

Philadelphia was not the only city to see anti-Catholicism and anti-immigrant prejudice break out into nativist violence. In 1854 runners for a Baltimore Hook and Ladder company formed an associate called the Plug-Uglies that were associated with the Know-Nothing movement. Know-Nothings, like Today’s Tea Partiers, were not so much a nationally organized party as much as a movement consisting of a network of local associations, clubs, and societies. Like the Tea Party they had a common agenda on which they were united—in this case Anti-Catholicism and Anti-Immigrant—and points on which they could not reach consensus, most importantly, slavery. The Plug Uglies were one local group in Baltimore associated with this agenda; another was a gang called the Rip-Raps.
Despite its Catholic roots, Maryland was a stronghold of the Know-Nothings. They were the only State in the 1856 presidential election to go for the Know-Nothing ticked of Millard Fillmore and Andrew Jackson Donelson. But that was not the first election that the Plug Uglies disrupted. Baltimore had election riots in both 1855 and 1856 as Know-Nothings tried to control the polls in the municipal electins and insure that only nativist candidates received votes and the Plug Uglies played a prominent role in both disturbances. Then in June 1857, a Know-Nothing contingent comprised of Plug Uglies and Rip-Raps from Baltimore and the Shiffler Fire Company from Philadelphia descended on the National Capital in Washington to disrupt municipal elections there. President Buchanan called out the Marines who fired on the crowd. While the Plug Uglies and other out-of-town Know-Nothings were at the heart of the riot the majority of rioters were DC Residents. Nine of the ten civilians killed in the skirmish were White Washington nativists.
Know-Nothings also organized an attempt to disrupt elections in New Orleans in 1858. Historically there was a strong Catholic Presence in New Orleans—it had always been a French Catholic city—and while the riots there were anti-immigrant, the Know-Nothing success was more limited and they seemed not to have the ability to recruit as wide a selection of the population for their mob, Nevertheless, the Know-Nothing candidate was elected. Catholics may not have appreciated the Know-Nothing anti-Catholicisnm, but these old time French families may not have liked the immigrants any more than their Protestant counterparts up north.
Bishop John Hughes of New York took a very pro-active response the nativist threat. A native of what is today Northern Ireland, Hughes was never one to mince words, back down from a fight, or resort to diplomacy when he could hammer a point (or an opponent) ino the ground. After the Philadelphia riots in which two churches, a convent, a school and hundreds of Catholic homes were burned, it was rumored that the ringleaders of the Philadelphia riot were coming to New York to incite anti-Catholic riots there. Hughes called out Catholic volunteers to protect Church property and informed the Mayor that if there was any anti-Catholic rioting in New York the city would “become a second Moscow.” This was a reference to the residents of Moscow burning their own city to prevent Napoleon taking it in 1812. (Remember Tchaikovsky’s famous overture?) The threat was taken seriously—as it was meant to be--and the city government made sure there was no trouble in New York. It will be fun to do some blogs on Hughes but I think tomorrow we will go back to the conclusion of the the story about the burning of the Charlestown Convent. Then i want to go back to the saga of the American nuns (You know, the ones whom the Vatica is hell-bent on "investigating") for a day or two—and then something on Rome. When we come back to this topic, we will deal with the Know-Nothings and the “Pope’s Stone.” No—it wasn’t a kidney stone or a gall stone—but it was just as painful and far more embarrassing.

The image today is John Hughes, 1797-1864, fourth bishop and later first Archbishop of New York.

When the City of Brotherly Love didn't live up to its name part I

I mentioned yesterday that the Know-Nothing Party, known also as the Native American Party and the American Party, bore in several respects a great resemblance to today’s Tea Party. It appealed primarily to working class whites who felt that their livelihood was being threatened by the massive immigration of the time. Like today’s Tea Party it was, at least in its formative years, not a political party as such but a loose coalition of local groups who had reached a consensus on many, but not all, issues. It was unable, for example, to reach a consensus on slavery—a crucial question of the time. It did reach a consensus on immigrants and on Catholicism. It was opposed to rights for both.
The 1840’s and 1850’s were a tumultuous time for Catholics and Nativists alike. Philadelphia suffered particularly badly in the conflict that erupted over the petition of the Catholic Bishop, Francis Kenrick to the School Board that Catholic Children either be excused from the daily bible reading—where the King James Version was read—or permitted to read from the Douai version which was used by Catholics. He also insisted that Catholic children be excused from religious (Protestant) education in the public schools. The School board concurred but this decision started rumors that the bishop and his flock—at the instigation of the pope—were trying to ban the bible from public schools.
Philadelphia, much like Charlestown and Boston, was a field of conflict between its native born working class—mostly Protestant—and the large number of immigrant workers—mostly Irish and Catholic—who were willing to work more cheaply and thus threatening the livelihood of the native-born American workmen. As in Boston demagoguery played on the tension between immigrants and native-born Americans and anti-Catholicism regularly appeared in the pulpit and in print. This was the atmosphere that the Know-Nothings thrived in and in May 1844 the American Republican Party—a local group o f Know-Nothings—organized a rally in the heart of the Kensington District, a stronghold of Irish Catholics. It was obviously meant to be provocative and a good lesson is never provoke an Irishman. The Irish love a fight. Local residents attacked the speakers’ podium and the Know-Nothings fled. They returned two days later in greater numbers. This time the meeting turned violent with several of the Know-Nothing party killed. The mob then attacked a convent of the Sisters of Charity and several Catholic homes. The violence continued the next day and it was beyond the power of the local authorities to stop. The Know-Nothings rallied the nativist forces with the call to deliver America “from the bloody hand of the pope.” Buildings were burned, people were killed until the State militia came in and put the riot down. Bishop Kenrick issued a directive for Catholics to avoid confrontation and violence.
Nonetheless, the violence continued. The Know-Nothings returned the next day and burned down two Catholic Churches—one in the Kensington district and the other in Philadelphia itself, cheering as the steeple of the Philadelphia church tottered and fell. A school and more homes were destroyed, In the final analysis fourteen people were killed, fifty injured and, several hundred at lost their homes, moreover two churches, a convent, and a school were burned to the ground.
The Mayor ordered protection for Catholic churches and Bishop Kenrick closed the churches on the following Sunday to avoid any organized retribution as well as to prevent an attack on the Catholics while at mass. by the Know-Nothings. The Bishop told his flock that they should wait until the legal processes dealt with the rioters. In the end, however, a grand jury decided that the riots were due to “the efforts of a portion of the community (the Catholics) to exclude the Bible form the public schools” and the immigrants having disrupted legitimate public meetings.

More to come on the Philadelphia riots of 1844.

The image today is Old Saint Jospeh's--the oldest Catholic Church in Pennsylvania. Located in Philadelphia. The parish goes back to 1733!

The Know-Nothings and Anti-Catholicism

We mentioned in previous posts that the Whig party was the anti-immigrant/anti-Catholic party. The Whigs were the liberal party and the heirs of the Enlightenment democratic heritage that valued reason about Tradition—a position that would put them into opposition with Catholicism, especially the European variety of Catholicism that had been closely tied to monarchism and absolutism in opposition to democracy. The “old-school” American Catholics of the Archbishop John Carroll variety had long ago, at the time of the American Revolution, accommodated themselves quite comfortably to the democratic ideals of the new nation, but the “new school” Catholics emigrating from Europe and brining European ideas with them were more reserved not only about American political structures but about American society in general and the American Church in particular. We start to see here in the 1830’s a fork in the path of the American Church, a fork which will allow two Catholic Churches to develop side by side with each other, a Church which will usually be broad enough to accommodate both branches in its communion but at two periods—in the final decades of the nineteenth and early decades of the twentieth and again at the final decades of the twentieth and the opening decade of the twenty-first centuries will find that communion stretched close to its point of fracture. But that is the topic for a future series of blogs. We want to stay on the topic of anti-Catholicism.
The Whig distrust of Catholics and immigrants drove the waves of Catholic immigrants into the Democratic party. At the same time, the Whig inability to achieve its political goal of preserving the ascendency of WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) political and economic power led the decline of the party. As the Whigs lost power, it was natural for another party to rise in its place to preserve the same set of ideals in opposition to the Jacksonian Democrats. Two parties would fill that vacuum. The first would fail, the second would endure.
Eventually the Republican party would emerge to balance the Democrats, but the time was not yet ripe for the Republicans. As the Whigs faded, their banner was taken up by a short-lived political alliance (it becomes a party in the 1850's) called the “Know-Nothings,” Originally not a national party but a loose-knit alliance of various local groups, in many respects like today’s Tea Party, the Know-Nothings began in New York State in 1843 as the American Republican Party. Within two years it had spread to other states and became a national organization known as the Native American Party. Ten years later it changed its name to the American party. It was only when it took on this name that it evolved from what might be called a movement into a formal political party. Its genius and its success was in organizing on the local and grass-roots level. It tended to do well in local elections, and to some extent in state elections, but was never effective in electing a President—though it did try.
Before we go further, an incident in Europe fueled the anti-Catholicism in America. In 1848 there was a revolution against the Papal Government in Central Italy—the Papal States. American Catholics often forget that for centuries the Popes had not only been spiritual leaders but also ruled a nation in central Italy. Italy, as we know it, only became a nation in 1870 when the King of Savoy, his Prime Minister Cavour, and his great General, Garibaldi, overthrew a variety of Kings, princes, Grand Dukes, and Dukes, uniting their various independent principalities into a single nation. One of the Kings overthrown and deprived of his temporal crown was the Pope—but this is some 22 years later. In 1848 a group of Italian Nationalists, drove the Pope—the newly elected Pius IX—from Rome where he fled to Gaeta outside Naples and prepared for a possible flight from Italy. (The British—strange friends (Well, not so strange when you know your history)—had a warship waiting to take him to refuge/exile should he so need. He didn’t need, as it turned out.) With the help of French troops, the rebellion was squashed and the Pope was restored. Pius had been a political liberal to this point favoring Democratic reforms. When he saw what Democratic Reforms led to—well, he wasn’t to sure about Democracy any more. The Americans saw the crushing of the Roman Revolution of 1848 as a blow to Democratic government. It reinforced their stereotype of Catholicism as monarchist and absolutist. And it made the American Nativist Party very successful. Rumor flew that the Pope planned an invasion of America to destroy our freedom even as he had destroyed the liberties of the Roman people. Today it sounds pretty silly that a papal army with the intent to invade would attack America (remember the old Peter Sellers' movie, The Mouse That Roared?) but in the 19th century many believed it. As late as the election of John Kennedy in 1960 many were convinced that the Pope had designs on this country.
The Know-Nothing Party platform was
• Severe limits on immigration, especially from Catholic countries
• Balancing what immigration there was in favor of English, Welch, Scots, and Protestant Irish
• Restricting political office to native-born Americans
• Mandating a wait of 21 years before an immigrant could gain citizenship
• Restricting public school teachers to Protestants
• Mandating daily Bible readings in public schools
• Restricting the sale of liquor
The Know-Nothings—and by the way they were called that, because when questioned about their political organization they would answer, like Sergeant Shultz “I know nothing.” Of course they didn’t have Shultz’s accent; they didn’t like Germans, or Irish, or anybody except those of British extraction. There was a secrecy to their organization and how these various local groups coordinated their efforts which actually led to their being particularly effective. In the spring of 1854 they won elections in Boston, Salem and other New England towns. That autumn they swept the state elections. (Gone was the moderation of Mayor Lyman and Edward Cutter and the Charlestown Selectmen of 1834) In Philadelphia their candidate, Robert Conrad, promised to crack-down on crime, close Saloons on Sundays, and appoint only native-born Americans to city posts. In Washington DC the Know-Nothing candidates won in a landslide. They were unsuccessful in New York—with its large immigrant population—but won a credible 26% of the vote in a four-way election. They did manage to elect both the Mayor of San Francisco and the Governor of California.
The following year they carried Chicago and the Know-Nothing Mayor, Levi Boone, barred all immigrants from city jobs, The success of the Know- Nothings led them to coalesce into a national party in 1854 as the American Party. One of the voices raised against the Know-Nothings was Abraham Lincoln who said—and given the political atmpsphere in Illinois said courageously-- As a nation, we began by declaring that “all men are created equal.” We now practically read it “all men are created equal, except negroes.” When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read “all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics” When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty—to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.
Lincoln was no particular friend of Catholicism—few politicians could afford to be at this period—but he was committed to democracy and the ideals of the Republic and he saw how the Know-Nothings threatened to undermine the basic values on which this nation was founded

I'm not sure where the image today comes from; i found it in my photo file but it is not one of my pictures. (I am pretty handy with Photoshop, but not that fancy)