The Pope's Stone

Our next story about the development of anti-Catholicism in the United States concerns—of all things—the Washington Monument. There was a huge debate about the idea of a monument to George Washington that began while he was still alive—indeed while he was still in the White House. Well, wait a minute—not exactly. George Washington was never in the White House. The first president to set foot (and live) in the White House was John Adams. By the time the White House—which, by the way, has a Catholic connection in as that its architect James Hoban was a devout Catholic—was ready for occupancy, our first president had been in his tomb just short of a year. During Washington’s term of office the national capital and site of the presidential residences was New York (from 1789-90) and Philadelphia (1790-1797. That was when Washington went out of office; Philadelphia remained the national capital until 1800 when Congress and President Adams both moved to the new capital of Washington DC). Even before there was a presidency of the United States—as early as 1783 when we were still governed by the Articles of Confederation—there had been a congressional resolution that a statue of Washington on horseback (traditional tribute to a military leader) be erected in front of the building where Congress would meet. Various other proposals were made in Washington’s lifetime but as the new national capital city was in the planning and construction phase and there were “bigger fish to fry” as we say—the need for a building for Congress, a residence for the president, a navy-yard to defend the city from enemy ships coming up the Potomac (a real threat in the 18th century) and practical details like drainage of the swampy land we call Foggy Bottom and laying out some streets and avenues and building homes for the officials and workers coming to the new city—nothing happened with the monument. When Washington died, Congress got shaken into action and ordered the construction of a vault under the dome of the Capitol building rising on what had been called “Jenkins Hill” (owned, incidentally by the Catholic Daniel Carroll of the famous and extensive Carroll family of Maryland) where the first president could be entombed. The Washington family, however, declined to allow the body to be moved from its tomb on the family estate at Mount Vernon where the most illustrious of the founding fathers had been buried after his death on December 14, 1799.
The following year, 1800, the Federalist party was voted out of power and Jefferson and his Republicans (who are today’s Democrats) were voted in. They were not keen on a monument to Washington for two reasons. First, they were quite a radical party and didn’t believe that any one individual—even Washington (First in War, First in Peace, First in the Hearts of his Countrymen)—should be honored by anything so monarchical as a monument. They saw it a bit like we might see Lenin’s tomb today: an excessive display for an individual and therefore not in “revolutionary” taste. Remember too that they were opposed to any sort of thing that hinted of aristocracy or inequality, slavery excepted of course. Slavery suited their purposes. The Republicans (aka Democrats) also had a grudge against Washington. Washington had opposed any sort of party-system and felt that government officials should seek only the good of the nation and not become partisan. (Well, Washington was a liberal, rather hopelessly so.) When—to his dismay—parties formed, he not so much joined, as just fell into, the Federalist Party. He was actually sort of shoved into the Federalists by Jefferson whose extremist views regarding the French Revolution were more than Washington could agree with. Washington’s Vice President, John Adams, was less abashed about his Federalism and their subsequent alliance alienated them from Jefferson who openly disagreed with Adams. A lot of this had to do with Adam’s pro-England policies and Jefferson’s pro-France agenda, England and France being at war during much of Washington’s (and Adam’s and Jefferson’s and Madison’s) presidencies. Adams and Washington were appalled at the excesses of the French Revolution (just the excesses, not the revolution itself) while Jefferson applauded them excusing the bloodshed with the claim that “the tree of liberty must be watered from time to time…” Pardon me, I am getting too far afield and by this time you are probably wondering how this fits into Catholic history. You’ll see; I am never one to take a short-cut.
By the 1830’s, as the city of Washington was taking shape as something more sophisticated than government buildings in the middle of a cow pasture, the idea surfaced again of a monument to the first President. By this point the Republicans (now more commonly known as the Democrats) had calmed down a bit and actually were, in most respects, the more conservative party. Andrew Jackson was president and he identified with Washington. Like Washington he was a military hero in a war against England. Unlike Washington he was fashioning the Presidency as a far more powerful office, expanding the powers of the President, and willing to use the image of George Washington to do something that Washington would probably never approve of. (This is what the modern Republican Party would do in refashioning Lincoln to meet their ideology and perhaps even what some claim that President Obama is doing with the heritage of President Reagan. This is why history is so fascinating.) By 1832 $28,000.00 had been raised for a monument to Washington. That may not sound like much but in modern value it is worth about six hundred thousand dollars. It was still not enough however for any sort of a fitting tribute. A prominent architect, Robert Mills, came up with the design of a tall obelisk surrounded on its base with a round “temple” which in turn would hold statues honoring 30 other heroes of the Revolution and be surmounted by a statue of George Washington in a Roman Chariot. George, at least as far as I know, never drove a chariot, but hey don’t let details of history get in the way of art. He probably had never stood up in the boat crossing the Delaware either. Hold on, we are coming to the Catholic part.
Mill’s design would cost one million dollars –twenty-one million in today’s money. The money wasn’t there but then this was federal government so when has that been a problem? Construction started in 1848 and Congress invited the States, public associations, and foreign governments to contribute stones to be placed as tributes on the inner walls of the monument. OK, here is where the anti-Catholicism thing comes in.
1848 is an important year for many reasons. Not only was it the year that construction started on the Washington Monument, but it was a year that revolutions swept a number of European nations. France, Denmark, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Greater Poland, Austria, Bavaria, Prussia, Moldavia, Belgium and several other countries or regions all had uprisings demanding governmental change, generally in favor of more democratic government. In the Italian peninsula there were revolutions in The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (Naples), the Papal States, and the duchies of Tuscany, Modena, and Parma. The Pope, Pius IX (the former Giovanni Mastai-Ferretti) had been a liberal, in favor of democratic reform, but there is nothing like a revolution against you to move a man from being a liberal to a conservative. Pius was forced to flee Rome to Gaeta, near Naples, where a British Warship was ready to bring him into exile for his own safety. He never went aboard however. The French came to his help and put down the Revolution and he returned to Rome. Believe me, the days of democracy in Rome were now officially ended. The Papal Prime Minister, Cardinal Antonelli—one of the last cardinals not to be at least a priest—cracked down imprisoning hundreds of pro-democracy Romans, reinstituting the Jewish Ghetto which Pius had dissolved before the revolutions, and establishing a papal autocracy in which he, Antonelli, controlled all communication to and from Pius.
The suppression of the 1848 Revolution and the Roman Republic it had created made not only Pius but the papacy itself a symbol of everything America and its republican tradition was opposed to. The American Whigs, opposed to Jackson and a strong presidency, had a particular hatred for the papacy and the Know-Nothings claimed it demonstrated clearly that Catholicism and Americanism were incompatible, that immigration from Catholic countries should be cut off, and that Catholics in the United States should be barred from political office and public service as they held allegiance to a foreign tyrant.
In 1853 Pius, like many other national leaders (he was at the time still King of the Papal States) sent a stone from the old Temple of Concord in the Roman Forum to be included in the monument to George Washington. One night the following March, before the stone could be placed into the monument, a band of Know-Nothings broke into the work site, stole the stone, and allegedly threw it into the Potomac. (In 1982 a replacement stone was sent by John Paul II and included in the monument.) That same year the Know-Nothing engineered a takeover of the committee overseeing the monument to make sure that no such stone, indeed any stone that wasn’t “American,” be included in the monument. They retained control of the monument for four years, during which time funds dried up and construction came to a halt. It was only after the Civil War (1861-65) that construction would continue on the monument. Next time we will look at the role Catholics played in the Civil War.

Today's image is Pope Pius IX

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.

A lull in Anti-Catholic America

Continuing with the theme of a history of Anti-Catholicism in America, Catholics in the newly independent nation fared quite well. While society in general and political power in particular remained in the hands of the old English-now-American gentry who were, with the exception of the Marylanders, all but universally Protestants of the Congregationalist or Unitarian types in New England or Episcopalians (New York, Virginia and the Southern States), Catholics had at least been given the freedom to build churches and openly practice their faith. Catholic communities sprang up in Boston, New York, and Charleston. Philadelphia had a Catholic community even before the Revolution and indeed the Continental Congress had, on at least one occasion, repaired to Old St. Joseph’s Church for public prayer. Catholicism was long accustomed to being publically acknowledged in Maryland. Moreover many Marylanders were among the most avid settlers pouring through the Cumberland Gap into the Ohio Valley settlements in what is now Kentucky. Indeed within eighteen years of John Carroll’s being named first Archbishop of Baltimore, his See would be named an archdiocese with four suffragens—Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Bardstown Kentucky. A few years later dioceses were created in Charleston, Richmond, and Cincinnati.
John Carroll, the first Catholic bishop, was well known to the leading figures in American politics. He was a Carroll, of the Maryland Carrols. His cousin Charles had signed the Declaration of Independence. Another member of the family was Daniel Carroll who served in Congress. Several Carrolls, including the Bishop’s Mother, Elizabeth Carroll, and the aforementioned Daniel Carroll, were among the landowners whose estates were purchased for the establishment of the new national Capital, Washington City, on the banks of the Potomac. Daniel Carroll was the owner of Jenkin’s Hill—the site that was picked for the new national Capitol and is now called Capitol Hil. John Carroll had served on a diplomatic mission to Canada with Benjamin Franklin and Franklin was among those who urged the Pope, Pius VI, to confirm Carroll’s election as first bishop in the nascent nation.
That is not to say, however, that Franklin or others—despite their regard for Carroll personally—held Catholicism in high esteem. Many of these founders including George Washington (though not Franklin) were free-masons and free-masonry was ardently opposed to traditional Christianity which they saw as intellectually incompatible with their enlightenment consecration to rationalism. Washington was a nominal Episcopalian—indeed a vestryman in his parish—but he attended church primarily to please his wife, and his participation in Christian worship was limited to attendance at Morning Prayer. Martha would stay for Holy Communion, but the General would leave church before the Communion Service began. From various comments he made, verbally or in writing, it is clear that Washington was not committed to the doctrine of Christ’s divinity and he saw religion’s main purpose as encouraging moral behavior among the less educated populace. This view was shared by Thomas Jefferson who himself might best be described as an Agnostic and who, while baptized an Anglican in infancy and buried according to the Anglican (or technically, Episcopalian) rites, saw Jesus as a great moral teacher and nothing else. Indeed, Jefferson went through his bible and sliced out all the miracle stories (including the Virgin Birth and Resurrection) and claims to Christ's divinity, leaving only the parables and moral teachings of Jesus. Jefferson did make several contributions towards the building of Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterian churches because he saw them a offering good moral training to the yeoman farmers of Virginia whose political cause he championed. There is no record of him ever making a contribution towards the building of a Catholic church. (Washington, on the other hand, did make a contribution towards the building of Old Saint Mary’s in Alexandria, mostly because his much favored equerry, a Colonel John Fitzgerald, was among the sponsoring parishioners.) Jefferson and Franklin had served as envoys to the French Court and saw the unattractive side of European Catholicism with the great prelates of France living in lordly splendor at the expense of the underclasses and exerting great (and usually self-interested) influence over the King and his decisions. It did not leave them as admirers of Catholicism.
In the new republic Catholics tended to be Federalists—the party opposed to Jefferson and his “Republicans.” (This will get confusing, but the “Republican Party" of Jefferson is not related to today’s Republicans—indeed, to the contrary, they are the first generation of the modern Democrat party.)
Catholics in the new republic tended to be conservative and in favor of a strong central government. They were, for the most part, Maryland slave-holding gentry farmers. Also, after 1789 Jefferson and his followers were enamored—blindly so—of the French Revolution. The Revolution’s anti-Church fervor was very off-putting to Catholics who, though they might want to see a more democratic France did not think it worth the bloodshed of its king, so many priests and religious, and its many devout laity. Men like Jefferson, Franklin, and Washington were Gentlemen, however, and it was required of gentlemen to show tolerance if not respect; while there may not have been an enthusiasm for the Catholic Church there was no hint that Catholics should not take a full role in American public life.
Catholics for their part were making a contribution to the new republic. Elizabeth Ann Seton’s Sisterhood, the Sisters of Charity, was growing and its women undertook ministries both of education and nursing—needed services in the new nation that had not yet developed much of an infrastructure for these services to be provided at public expense. Only a few years after Elizabeth Seton’s Sisterhood, Catherine Spalding, a nineteen-year-old woman from an old Maryland family—and a family that would prove very prominent in the history of Catholic America—established the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth in 1812. A laywomen, Teresa Lalor, opened a girl’s school on the campus of Georgetown College in 1799. The school drew young women from the best families—Catholic and Protestant—of the national capital. It was a tradition in the school's first two decades that the President of the United States attended the commencement and gave the girls their diplomas. Lalor and her companions had developed into a community of Visitation nuns by 1816. Ursuline nuns had come from Quebec and opened a convent and school in Charlestown, outside Boston. Like the Visitation in Georgetown, it drew young women from the best families and more Protestants than Catholics. This was an age of peace for the Church—but a peace that was not to last. Catholics had successfully integrated themselves into American society. They proved their loyalty to the Republic and their usefulness to the larger society. Their bishops and clergy showed themselves interested not in political clout but in building a Church that was anxious to show its gratitude for its freedom under the laws of the Republic by being the best and most loyal of citizens and making its contribution to a nation that was neither Catholic or Protestant, but granted freedom to all.

The image today is the Cathedral of Saint Joseph, Bardstown