Untitled - Digitizing America

of
Poison Pens And Politics
6t
ot only do they assail us and
our institutions in a style of vituperation and offense,
misrepresent our tenets, vilify our practices,
repeat the hundredtimes-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
etforts to extirpate our religion."
ln issuing this warning, in 1829, regarding the
Protestant press, 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. ln fact, the anti-Catholicism that
already existed, spawned and nurtured on the
English homesoil, was aggravated by some of this
Council's decrees. ln 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. ln 1834 he
wrole Foreign Conspiracy Against The Liberties
of The United Sfafes, a collection of his anonymous
letters first published in The New York
Obseruer.
20
On August 11, 1834, the mounting tension between
Yankees and lrish, 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'sAwful Disclosures Of The Hotel Dieu Nunnery
of Montreal, through the end of the decade,
by which time the book was generally considered
a lucrative hoax, hatred and bigotry were wellfueled.
Within the next two decades, a number of publications
were founded, many by Protestant ministers,
aligning Protestantism with Americanism. Public
debates-a few ending in riots-kept both sides
constantly informed and 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 dlfferences between Protestantism
and Popery.