“A POPISH ARMY IN OUR MIDST”: THE RISE OF ANTI-CATHOLIC CONSPIRACY THEORIES, 1830-1839

A Senior Thesis submitted to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts in American Studies

By

Andrew J. Wallender

Washington, D.C. April 25, 2018

Copyright © 2018 Andrew J. Wallender All rights reserved

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“A POPISH ARMY IN OUR MIDST”: THE RISE OF ANTI-CATHOLIC CONSPIRACY THEORIES, 1830-1839

Andrew J. Wallender

Thesis Adviser: Mark Gray, Ph.D.

ABSTRACT

This thesis investigates why conspiracy theories have been a constant fixture of American society since the founding of the United States, specifically why they come about and what purpose they serve. By isolating a period in the 1830s when anti-Catholic conspiracy theories ran rampant and analyzing prominent texts that fueled such radical ideas, this thesis challenges the notion that conspiracies only exist on the fringes of society or for entertainment’s sake. It argues that conspiracies actually serve as a means of voicing deeper anxieties about identity and national progress. Despite the range of conspiracy theories—ranging from belief in the Illuminati orchestrating the French Revolution to the conviction that former President Barack Obama secretly practices Islam—the same principles drive the creation of any conspiracy that exists on a national level.

In the case of anti-Catholic conspiracies in the 1830s, dramatically shifting population demographics and rapidly expanding western borders in the United States fueled concerns that the country would not be able to sustain such tumultuous transitions. These concerns compounded with other national worries about the long-term stability of a democratic republic as a form of government and the capacity of the country to educate the fast-growing population.

Rather than address such uncertainties head-on, these concerns found a voice in the anti-Catholic conspiracy theories that community leaders and the working poor propagated in communities across the country as a means of re-affirming their identities.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank:

My adviser, Professor Mark Gray, for his insight and constant reassurance throughout this thesis

writing process. Thank you for taking me on as an advisee and being with me every step of the

journey this past academic year.

Professor Erika Seamon, who helped me find true passion in American Studies and challenged

me to be a better scholar. Thank you for your constant care and dedication.

Colva Weissenstein, who has been an ever-present calming force throughout the thesis process and always more than willing to answer questions, no matter how tedious. Thank you for putting

up with so many anxious American Studies students.

My American Studies classmates, who have been by my side since I joined the American Studies

program in 2015. Your intellectual curiosity, work ethic, and personal drive have been nothing but inspiring. You’ve made this journey a fun one. I couldn’t ask for a better group of classmates

or friends to be by my side during this process. A special thank you to my apartment-mate and

friend, Ryan Wolfe, for the many late nights spent talking about our theses. It may have taken some convincing to get you to stick with American Studies but so happy I was able to go through

this process with you. You made it not only bearable but fun.

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My friends and family, who have been with me every step of my research journey. Thank you

for helping me choose a topic and supporting me through many late nights of work. A special thank you to my sister and mom, whose fascination with conspiracy theories helped give birth to

this project.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract ...... iii

Acknowledgments ...... iv

Introduction...... 1

Chapter One ...... 12

Chapter Two...... 18

Chapter Three ...... 26

Chapter Four ...... 32

Conclusion ...... 37

Bibliography ...... 41

Appendix ...... 43

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INTRODUCTION

The first murmurs of an angry mob headed for the Ursuline Convent in Charlestown,

Massachusetts, reached Catholic Bishop Benedict Fenwick at around eight in the evening.

Despite the threatening news, he trusted authorities to quell the crowd and made no attempt to barricade the convent.1 After all, this wasn’t the first time stories had circulated about the institution.

It was Thursday, August 14, 1834, and for years the Catholic convent had been a source of animosity and suspicion among the working class Protestants in Charlestown.2 In 1830, a false story appeared in a Boston newspaper alleging the convent had swindled an orphan into giving her fortune to the institution. Not long after that, a former convert who had entered the nunnery and left after disliking it, roamed the Boston area for two years and spread rumors that the sisters at the convent had tried to kidnap her.3

And now, on this summer night in 1834, rumors of kidnapping were again pulsating through the community of Charlestown. This time, the nun was Mary John, and she had fled the religious community a couple weeks prior following a nervous breakdown or some sort of illness, scholars believe. Mary John was persuaded to rejoin the convent by the bishop and told she could leave the convent in a short while if her doubts about a religious life remained the same. Once the nun returned to the convent, rumors popped up that she was kidnapped and being tortured for her disloyalty. Fears of forced Protestant conversions overtook the suburban Boston community.4

1 Jeanne Hamilton, “The Nunnery As Menace: The Burning of the Charlestown Convent, 1834,” Our Catholic Visitor, Winter 1996, accessed February 27, http://www.ewtn.com/library/HUMANITY/BURNING.TXT. 2 Jack Tager, Boston Riots: Three Centuries of Social Violence (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2001), 111. 3 Jack Tager, Boston Riots: Three Centuries of Social Violence (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2001), 111. 4 Jack Tager, Boston Riots: Three Centuries of Social Violence (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2001), 111- 112.

These fears that Catholics would steal away Protestant faithful through conversions were fresh on the minds of the angry crowd marching through Charlestown on that August 1834 night.

By the time the mob reached the convent, most of the building’s inhabitants—nuns and their students—were asleep. Dozens of rioters, armed with burning tar barrels and anti-Catholic banners, gathered outside the convent and shouted phrases like “Down with the cross” and “no

Popery.” They disguised themselves with masks and American Indian face paint. About 2,000 onlookers, including the Charlestown volunteer fire departments, joined the rioters and provided them encouragement. Once at the convent, the mob demanded to see Sister Mary Jean and refused to listen when the mother superior turned the rioters away. The mother superior threatened that the Bishop would send 30,000 Irish men to burn down the rioters’ houses.

Tensions only worsened. Bricks and other objects were thrown at the windows. As the rioters broke through the front door, the nuns and children escaped through a rear entrance. The convent was vandalized and then burned to the ground. None of the volunteer firemen in the crowd attempted to quell the flames. If anything, they likely aided the rioters, according to historians.5

The riot and the convent’s years of friction with the Charlestown community were a sign of deepening discomfort over the growing presence of Catholicism in the United States. As the late historian Jack Tager summarized, “The destruction of a Catholic convent and school for girls reflected the lower classes’ outrage that they felt against Catholics, their animosity to Irish immigrants as working-class competitors, their long-held dislike of the gentry, and their fear of loosening religious and moral standards.”6 It wasn’t the religious ideas of Catholicism that caused friction in Charlestown. It was all the societal anxieties that Catholicism simply exposed: the increasing population of immigrants; the lack of sufficient Protestant education systems; the

5 Jack Tager, Boston Riots: Three Centuries of Social Violence (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2001), 113. 6 Jack Tager, Boston Riots: Three Centuries of Social Violence (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2001), 108. 2 rise of uncompromising, brash women who demanded respect; and the influence of Catholic clergy among immigrants. These were community-wide anxieties that zealots stirred up and converted into rumors followed by action.

The burning of the Charlestown convent is a microcosm of anti-Catholic rhetoric that spread throughout the United States in the 1830s. During that decade, three writers—Samuel

Morse, Lyman Beecher, and Maria Monk—published influential works that alleged a vast

Catholic conspiracy underfoot in the United States. The allegations ranged from the well- documented to the certifiably absurd. Despite the varying veracity of the claims made against

Catholics in the 1830s, they found a sympathetic audience in Americans all too ready to convert fears about society into anger and violence toward a minority. The cycle of societal anxiety, fear mongering, and targeted conspiracy theories that surfaced is part of an ageless response loop that emerges constantly in American history. Tensions over social change or shifting population demographics are vocalized through vilification of a minority group. In this case, that group was

Catholics.

In this thesis, I argue that the anxieties surrounding the instability of the young United

States with its new system of a democratic republic led to the development of extremely reactive conspiracy theories in the 1830s that zeroed in on Catholicism as a danger to the new nation.

LITERATURE REVIEW

The conclusions brought forth in this thesis build on existing scholarship documenting the rise of nativist actions in the 1830s by combining such existing work with a close reading of three books filled with anti-Catholic conspiracy: Samuel Morse’s Foreign Conspiracy Against the Liberties of the United States (1834), Lyman Beecher’s Plea for the West (1835), and Maria

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Monk’s Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk and the Hotel Dieu Monastery of Montreal (1836).

This thesis takes on a similar scope as historian Ray Allen Billington’s 1938 work The

Protestant Crusade 1800-1860: A Study of the Origins of American Nativism in isolating how

Americans interacted with nativist literature, historically speaking. But this work goes a step beyond a simple historical recounting by analyzing the material in the nativist publications that resonated with Americans and led to a response.

Much scholarly work has been done on the hundreds of nativist newspapers, sermons, speeches, pamphlets, and books that were published in the 1800s. But little has been written that attempts to specifically fit the work of Morse, Beecher, and Monk into a larger theme of

American nativism that increased in popularity throughout the 19th century. The portrayal of

Catholics as outsiders helped reinforce the identity of insiders. Ira M. Leonard and Robert D.

Parmet’s American Nativism, 1830-1860 (1971) summarizes the nativist attitudes of the mid-

1800s and explains the societal anxieties that led to nativist thought.

Scholars have written extensively on the topic of conspiracy theories, but again, few critical anthologies specifically address Catholic conspiracy theories, let alone the nativist

Catholic conspiracy theories of the 1830s. Richard Hofstadter’s seminal essay “The Paranoid

Style in American Politics” not only brought cultural analysis of conspiracies into academic discourse but is also one of the few works that directly addressed Catholic conspiracy theories.

Hofstadter very briefly touches on the writings of Morse, Beecher, and Monk to show how they pushed fringe anxieties into mainstream political discourse. Before Hofstadter analyzed such conspiracies, Northwestern University historian Ray Allen Billington’s Protestant Crusade was one of the pieces that documented the nativist turmoil of the 1830s. Paul T. Coughlin’s critical anthology of conspiracy theories, Secrets, Plots & Hidden Agendas, also mentions the Catholic

4 conspiracy theories of the 1830s. However, Coughlin’s work provides more of a summary of writings than an analysis like Hofstadter supplies.

Despite the lack of scholarly focus on Catholic conspiracy theories, there is a wide body of historical scholarship on the evolution of the Catholic Church in the United States. There are especially detailed accounts that trace the gradual ostracization of Catholics in the American colonies. Robert Emmet Curran’s Papist Devils: Catholics in British America 1574-1783 (2014) and John Tracy Ellis’ American Catholicism (1956) both are examples of such works. A thesis entitled “‘Papists and Indians Joyned Together’: Anti-Catholicism and Fears of a Catholic-Indian

Conspiracy in Seventeenth Century Maryland” by Jennifer Rebecca Hammond also touches on how and why fears of Catholics manifested in colonial America. An understanding of how

Catholics were treated in early America is important to understanding how Catholics could become the subject of conspiracy theories in the 1830s.

Conspiracy theories not only inform on identity but also are utilized in politics to stoke fears and influence voting behavior. Michael William Pfau’s The Political Style of Conspiracy

(2005) evaluates the use of conspiracy theories by political parties in order to manipulate votes.

Pfau’s work shows how the Republican Party had to convince the electorate that a Slave Power conspiracy to control the American government was more of a threat than a Papist conspiracy to overthrow the United States. The study American Conspiracy Theories (2014) by Joseph E.

Uscinski and Joseph M. Parent goes beyond strictly political behavior to analyze why certain conspiracy theories resonate in different eras. Matthew R. X. Dentith takes a philosophical approach to understanding the why of conspiracies in The Philosophy of Conspiracy Theories

(2014). Dentith pushes the boundaries of critical analysis on conspiracy theories, arguing that belief in conspiracy theories can actually be rational at times. This field of literature on the

5 political and philosophical elements of conspiracy theories will allow me to critically judge how

Morse, Beecher, and Monk benefitted from casting Catholics as a threat to the United States.

METHODOLOGY

In considering topics for this thesis, I was drawn to the subject of conspiracies. I had always viewed them as mildly entertaining but was growing concerned with the mainstream appeal conspiracy theories seemed to be gaining in the modern political climate. My initial survey of literature that dealt with conspiracies led me to Richard Hofstadter’s seminal work The

Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays in which Hofstadter briefly touches on the anti-Catholic conspiracy theories of the 1830s in saying that “Anti-Catholicism has always been the pornography of the Puritan.”7 I was intrigued. I’m a Catholic who has attended Catholic school in all stages of my life, yet I had never heard of the Catholic conspiracy theories that dominated the 1830s. Armed with curiosity and newfound ignorance, I decided to embark on a very narrow study of 1830s Catholic conspiracy theories that I hoped would unveil deeper, universal truths about the functions of conspiracies.

My research this semester was thus guided by the question, "What are similarities and differences in motives and reactions to Catholic conspiracy theories derived by Samuel Morse,

Lyman Beecher, and Maria Monk in the 1830s and what does this reveal about American identity?" To begin tackling this question, I began with a survey of various secondary source material that touched on topics ranging from the psychological motivations of conspiracy theories to American nativism in the first half of the 19th century to the early history of

Catholicism in the British colonies and United States. I visited Georgetown University’s library

7 Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964), 21. 6 and checked out any relevant books relating to the history of Catholicism in America, the history of conspiracy theories in America, and the social/political goals conspiracy theories serve. My goal was to build up a base frame of reference and understanding of the larger historical context that surrounds the primary texts I would be exploring later in the semester. I also wanted to gain some exposure to the social utility of conspiracy theories. Because my research focuses so much on three book-length primary sources, I sought to recognize that the works I would be exploring were not written in a vacuum.

This early survey of secondary sources revealed a rich history of Catholic mistrust and discrimination in America, largely rooted in the colonial Catholic experience in Maryland. I also discovered that anti-Catholic sentiments in America often fit into a larger narrative of British-

French and British-Spanish rivalries unfolding in Europe. Finally, I gained an appreciation for the role of anxieties over immigration in fueling mistrust of Catholics.

But the overwhelming majority of my research involved closely reading two primary sources: Samuel Morse’s 1834 book entitled Foreign Conspiracies Against the Liberties of the

United States and Lyman Beecher’s 1835 book entitled Plea for the West. For both books, I analyzed original printings of the books from the 19th century that had been digitized and published online by the New York Public Library. Accessing original publications of my primary sources allowed me to experience the works of anti-Catholic conspiracy theories as readers in the

19th century would have experienced them. This proved especially useful with Samuel Morse’s work because it included in it several testimonials and reviews that offered great context as to what resonated with contemporary audiences in the book. I was able to see the importance readers of Morse’s book placed on his having traveled to Europe just a couple years prior.

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My second phase of research involved a close reading of Morse’s work, followed by background research on Morse’s life and personal correspondence. Since Morse was my first primary source I analyzed, I simply sought to work my way through Morse’s text, taking notes and highlighting as I went along so I could summarize major themes and takeaways at the end. In taking notes, I took advantage of the fact that Morse’s book had been digitized and converted into a searchable PDF document. I was able to take notes as I read by commenting directly in the

PDF and directly highlighting text from the page. This method of research allowed me to easily search for previous comments I had made and group comments together through keywords.

When it comes time to actually start writing my thesis, my digital comments will enable me to easily search for common themes and group together different pieces of evidence I found. This will enable me to back up the claims in my writing with the best pieces of evidence rather than simply the first or second piece of evidence I come back across in flipping through Morse’s book that vaguely backs up my claim.

One of the biggest surprises that hit me during this phase of research was recognizing some assumptions I was making that were hindering my proper analysis of the text. In speaking with my thesis adviser, I was surprised when he admitted that Morse’s fears of Catholicism were not completely unfounded. After all, no democratic country had yet set a precedent for interweaving the workings of a centralized church authority to the workings of a democratic society. This was a breakthrough moment, of sorts, because I also was forced to recognize the assumptions I unconsciously was making as I sorted through my research. I came into my project making no attempt to emphasize with the authors I was studying. Instead, I came in with an implicit bias as a Catholic that the fears of the authors I would be studying were completely

8 unwarranted and rooted in nothing but fear. This experience with my advisor made me much more cognizant of my level of openness in studying my primary sources.

With this new mindset, a surprising central theme emerged. It became apparent to me that

Morse’s fears of the Catholic Church were more a manifestation of a deeper anxiety over

European systems of government creeping into the United States. Morse exhibited significant doubts about the ability of the Catholic Church to be an independent institution in the United

States, uninvolved in political affairs. Morse was troubled by the close relationships the Catholic

Church harbored with European governments, regularly becoming involved in European politics.

As I read through Morse’s text, I was continually haunted by the question of why he decided to write his anti-Catholic book when he did. After all, this is the same Samuel Morse that would go on to become a primary inventor of the telegraph and who had spent his years before writing his Foreign Conspiracies Against the United States as a fairly well-known painter.

This question of motive led me back to Georgetown University’s library, where I checked out a number of books chronicling Morse’s life, as well as a collection of Morse’s personal correspondence and journals edited by Morse’s son. This additional foray to the library filled in a lot of missing holes and crucial context. For one, I discovered that when Morse traveled to

Europe prior to writing Foreign Conspiracies, he spent a lot of time attending Catholic ceremonies and visiting the Vatican. Morse was even present for the coronation of Pope Gregory

XVI. Morse didn’t just come into contact with Catholicism when he was in Europe, he intently sought it out. It was on the return trip from Europe to America in 1832 that Morse came up with the idea for the telegraph. But for the next four years, Morse any scientific ambitions on hold as he devoted his energy to pursuing a life in politics. It was in this context that Morse published his work of anti-Catholic conspiracy. With this additional research, I know had a motive and

9 framework through which to view Morse’s text. Knowing that Morse was running for elections on a largely anti-immigrant platform when he wrote Foreign Conspiracies introduces an entirely new and complex element of bias into the work.

The third phase of research I engaged in this semester involved a close reading of Lyman

Beecher’s Plea for the West, published the year after Morse’s work in 1835. As with Foreign

Conspiracies, I downloaded Beecher’s work from the online archives of the New York Public

Library and read the text on my computer, making digital comments and highlights as I progressed through the book.

I noticed a lot of similarities to Morse in the form of anxiety over the presence of Old

World European institutions. However, Beecher focused a great deal more on the western frontier and the necessity of education in the United States. And this makes sense since Beecher was the head of a new seminary school set up in Ohio (what was then considered still considered a part of the west). Beecher also utilized sweeping rhetoric about the United States, establishing the country as a beacon of freedom that would one day liberate the people held in bondage by despotic governments the world over.

After spending most of my time reading Morse and Beecher, I turned my attention to

Maria Monk’s 1836 memoir Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk and the Hotel Dieu Monastery of

Montreal. I approached this book at the beginning of the Spring 2018 semester and read it at a much faster rate than Morse and Beecher. This work was unlike Morse and Beecher, taking on a narrative, conversational tone that allowed for more rapid reading. There were few subtleties.

Maria Monk did not hide her purpose and blatantly said what she was thinking most of the time, leaving little room for deeper analysis or interpretation. Despite the much more overt nature of

Monk’s memoir, I was able to pick up on many of the same anxieties that I had spotted while

10 reading Morse and Beecher, especially fears over the education system. However, I had to continually keep in mind that Monk was a Canadian writing for an American audience. That simple fact made the nativist undertones more interesting since she herself was an immigrant.

Though Monk’s memoir was much more sensational and carried no pretense of scholarly discourse like the works of Morse and Beecher, it was useful in other ways. After reading Morse and Beecher, Monk’s writing offered a fantastic opportunity to show just what a culture of fear could produce. In many ways, it was the aftermath of Morse and Beecher’s works. As I read

Monk, I came to realize that many of the things she wrote about were only possible because of the hatred and distrust of Catholics that existed in the United States at the time. After all, there’s a reason that even though she was Canadian and supposedly experienced her horrors at the hands of the Catholic Church in Canada, she wrote for an American audience.

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CHAPTER ONE

Anxieties over Church-State Separation in Catholicism

American inventor Samuel Morse was enjoying a lecture on the purification of the Virgin

Mary one February day in Rome when a burst of cannon fire sounded in the distance. It came from a cannon in the Castle St. Angelo and its firing could only mean one thing: A new pope had been selected. Morse rushed out of the lecture to the Quirinal Palace located on one of Rome's famed seven hills, hoping to get a glimpse of the announcement. But he was too late. "The ceremony was over, the walled window was broken down and the cardinals had presented the new Pope on the balcony," Morse wrote in his notes recounting the day.8 Though he was physically present in Rome during the death of one Pope and the election of another one, he was a spectator on the periphery, unable to even witness the revealing of Pope Gregory XVI on

February 2, 1832.

And yet, when Morse wrote his Foreign Conspiracy Against the Liberties of the United

States a few years later, that narrative somehow changed. He now claimed to have an intimate knowledge of the papal election process. This first-hand knowledge supposedly exposed the bleak picture of the darker political forces that operated at Catholicism's core. In a footnote in

Foreign Conspiracy, Morse spells out the corrupt process that led to Pope Gregory XVI's election:

Lest the charge often made in these numbers should seem gratuitous of the Pope being the creature of Austria, and entirely subservient to the Imperial Cabinet, it may be as well to state that the writer was in Rome during the deliberations of the Conclave, respecting the election of the present Pontiff. It was interesting to him to hear the speculations of the Italians on the probability of this or that cardinal’s election. Couriers were daily arriving

8 Samuel F. B. Morse, Samuel F. B. Morse: His Letters and Journals, vol. 1, ed. Edward Lind Morse (1914; repr., New York: Klaus Reprint Company, 1972), 378.

from the various despotic powers, and intrigues were rife in the ante-chambers of the Quirinal palace; now it was said that Spain would carry her candidate, now Italy, and now Austria, and when Cardinal Capelani was proclaimed Pope, the universal cry, mixed, too, with low-muttered curses, was that Austria had succeeded. The new Pope had scarcely chosen his title of Gregory XVI. and passed through the ceremonies of coronation, before the revolution in his states gave him the opportunity of calling in Austria to take possession of the Patrimony of St. Peter, which his own troops could not keep for an hour, and at this moment Austrian soldiers hold the Roman Legations in submission to the cabinet of Vienna. Is not the Pope a creature of Austria?9

Morse suggests that the very foundational authority of the Catholic Church, the papacy, is corrupt and is but an extension of European political ambitions. But again, how could Morse know what was going on in the antechambers of the Quirinal Palace if he could barely reach the outside walls in time to catch a glimpse of the new pope? Such a claim of European interference in the papal election process speaks to a fundamental American fear that Catholicism is too tied up in regional politics to operate as a non-political force in the United States. It’s an idea the

Morse repeats over and over again: Catholicism is not a religious ideology; it is a political ideology.

Morse likely exaggerated his experience witnessing the papal election to tap into

American fears that European powers utilized Catholicism to achieve political aims. There is no direct mention of daily intrigues or a wider conspiracy in Rome throughout Morse's personal notes. Although Morse's notes were edited and selectively published by his son, Edward Lind

Morse, in 1914, it is almost certain that the younger Morse would have included incriminating material on Catholics had it existed. Instead the only personal notes from Morse between the dying of the pope in December 1831 and the election of a new pope in February 1832 involve rumors of a non-related revolution, the witnessing of an assassination at a church altar, and

9 Samuel Morse, Foreign Conspiracies Against the United States, 5th ed. (New York: H. A. Chapin & Co., 1841), 66-67, accessed October 20, 2017, https://archive.org/details/foreignconspiracy00mors. 13 mundane conversations that Morse had with other academics and gentlemen in Rome. There is no talk that “[c]ouriers were daily arriving from the various despotic powers.”10 Morse's son,

Edward, only includes the following note, "The ceremonies connected with the funeral of the dead Pope and with the choice of his successor are described at great length, and the eye of the artist was fascinated by the wealth of color and the pomp, while his Protestant soul was wearied and disgusted by the tediousness and mummery of the ceremonials."11 Even Edward Lind Morse does not claim that Morse witnessed anything out of the ordinary about the papal election process.

Despite its lacking evidence, Morse's claim that the election of Pope Gregory XVI was steeped in politics advances the notion that Catholicism is not just a religion but an instrument of

European governments. Both Morse and Lyman Beecher, in his Plea for the West, argue that

Catholicism is too steeped in politics to be judged on the same playing field as Protestantism.

Beecher writes that Catholicism "has always been, and still is, a political religion,—a religion of state."12 Indeed, the majority of the arguments by Beecher and Morse care nothing about the religious beliefs of Catholics.

The focus on Catholicism's intersection with politics strategically enables Morse and

Beecher to argue for discrimination against Catholics without appearing to hypocritically support ending freedom of religion in the United States. Both authors cannot bash Catholicism and in the same breath promote free institutions. Freedom of religion is at the heart of the free institutions that these men are defending. The solution is a workaround that acknowledges the right of

10 Samuel Morse, Foreign Conspiracies Against the United States, 5th ed. (New York: H. A. Chapin & Co., 1841), 67, accessed October 20, 2017, https://archive.org/details/foreignconspiracy00mors. 11 Samuel F. B. Morse, Samuel F. B. Morse: His Letters and Journals, vol. 1, ed. Edward Lind Morse (1914; repr., New York: Klaus Reprint Company, 1972), 376. 12 Lyman Beecher, Plea for the West (Cincinnati, OH: Truman & Smith, 1835), 151, accessed October 20, 2017, https://archive.org/details/pleaforwest00beec. 14

Catholics to freely worship in the United States so long as they do not mix politics with their religion. Yet despite this distinction, Morse takes a catch-all approach, writing that true Catholics cannot be true Americans. “If a Roman Catholic in the United States is a Democratic

Republican, he is so in spite of, and in opposition to, the system of his church, and not in accordance with it,” Morse writes.13

Pope Gregory XVI, the pope Morse argued was a proxy of the Austrian government, certainly did not do much to alleviate fears that Catholicism was incompatible with democracy.

If anything, he gave Morse and Beecher plenty of reason to be concerned about what an

American Catholic could look like. In his first encyclical Mirari Vos in August 1832, Pope

Gregory XVI spoke of the dangers of too much freedom. Encyclicals in the Catholic Church are important letters from the pope that define Church doctrine and are sent to churches around the world. Gregory XVI wrote, “Experience shows, even from earliest times, that cities renowned for wealth, dominion, and glory perished as a result of this single evil, namely immoderate freedom of opinion, license of free speech, and desire for novelty.”14 In other words, the leader of the Catholic Church suggested in an official Church document that freedom of speech—a linchpin of American society—was a destructive, evil force. The Pope’s talk of “unbridled lust for freedom” certainly would have hit a chord with Morse, Beecher, and thousands of everyday

Americans.

Morse uses Gregory XVI’s contentious views on liberalism to his advantage. He brings up this papal decree as evidence to argue throughout his book that Catholicism is a threat to

America's free institutions and democracy. "Foundations are attacked, fundamental principles are

13 Samuel Morse, Foreign Conspiracies Against the United States, 5th ed. (New York: H. A. Chapin & Co., 1841), 18, accessed October 20, 2017, https://archive.org/details/foreignconspiracy00mors. 14 Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos [Encyclical on Liberalism and Religious Indifferentism], EWTN, August 15, 1832, sec. 14, accessed February 24, 2018, http://www.ewtn.com/library/ENCYC/G16MIRAR.HTM. 15 threatened, interests are put in jeopardy, which throw all the questions which now agitate the councils of the country into the shade," Morse writes. "It is Liberty itself that is in danger, not the liberty of a single state, no, nor of the United States, but the liberty of the world."15 Morse thus uses Pope Gregory XVI’s writings as evidence that Catholicism is more politics than religion.

Again, Morse would be a hypocrite if he spoke in such dire terms about the dangers of

Catholicism and then suggested banning a religion in the United States. So claiming that

Catholicism is not a religion allows Morse to maintain his position of trumpeting America’s values of freedom while simultaneously being able to attack Catholics.

Beecher, in Plea for the West, is just as careful as Morse to clearly establish that he has no qualms with Catholicism as a religion. Where he takes issue with Catholicism is its political involvement, especially in Europe. “But before I proceed, to prevent misapprehension, I would say that I have no fear of the Catholics, considered simply as a religious denomination, and unallied to the church and state establishments of the European governments hostile to republican institutions,” Beecher writes.16 The author proactively attempts to exonerate himself of any accusations that he is attempting to limit religious expression in the United States.

But a few paragraphs after his decree of tolerance, Beecher loses any sense of impartiality when he lays out the terms for what Catholicism “simply as a religious denomination” would look like. Beecher writes,

But if Catholics are taught to believe that their church is the only church of Christ, out of whose inclosure none can be saved,—that none may read the Bible but by permission of the priesthood and no one be permitted to understand it and worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience,—that heresy is a capital offence not to be tolerated, but

15 Samuel Morse, Foreign Conspiracies Against the United States, 5th ed. (New York: H. A. Chapin & Co., 1841), 100, accessed October 20, 2017, https://archive.org/details/foreignconspiracy00mors. 16 Lyman Beecher, Plea for the West (Cincinnati, OH: Truman & Smith, 1835), 68, accessed October 20, 2017, https://archive.org/details/pleaforwest00beec. 16

punished by the civil power with disfranchisement, death and confiscation of goods,— that the pope and the councils of the church are infallible, and her rights of ecclesiastical jurisdiction universal and as far as possible and expedient may be of right, and ought to be as a matter of duty, enforced by the civil power,—that to the pope belongs the right of interference with the political concerns of nations, enforced by his authority over the consciences of Catholics, and his power to corroborate or cancel their oath of allegiance, and to sway them to obedience or insurrection by the power of life or death eternal…17

Those are a lot of conditions Beecher applies to Catholicism in order for it to be seen strictly as a religion and not a political ideology. One might say too many conditions. Those are some of the central theological claims of the Catholic Church that Beecher says Catholicism cannot keep if it wants to be an American religion. Belief that your church is the one true church is not a political matter. Nor are questions of who has eternal life. Additionally, Beecher misrepresents what is and is not Catholic Church doctrine. Nowhere does Catholicism mandate that religious belief be

“enforced by the civil power” nor that “no one be permitted to understand” the Bible.

Beecher later betrays that his true rationale in laying out the conditions for Catholicism to not be considered a political ideology is “SELF-PRESERVATION.”18 But the self-preservation of whom? The self-preservation of all Americans or the self-preservation of the Protestant faith?

Beecher than takes an extreme position by saying that anybody who does not side with him in condemning Catholicism is guilty of treason or delusion.19 There is no middle ground. Ironically,

Beecher resorts to a proclamation of infallibility to make his point that Catholicism has a political side. In doing so, Beecher not only undercuts his argument but betrays his deeper personal bias in discrediting Catholicism as a Protestant minister.

17 Lyman Beecher, Plea for the West (Cincinnati, OH: Truman & Smith, 1835), 70-71, accessed October 20, 2017, https://archive.org/details/pleaforwest00beec. 18 Lyman Beecher, Plea for the West (Cincinnati, OH: Truman & Smith, 1835), 71-72, accessed October 20, 2017, https://archive.org/details/pleaforwest00beec. 19 Lyman Beecher, Plea for the West (Cincinnati, OH: Truman & Smith, 1835), 72, accessed October 20, 2017, https://archive.org/details/pleaforwest00beec. 17

CHAPTER TWO

Anxieties Over the Fate of Western Lands

Thousands of miles away from Lyman Beecher’s home in Cincinnati, Ohio, powerful men hidden away in Rome and Austria were pouring over maps of the unsettled western lands of

North America. They were familiarizing themselves with every sort of statistic on geography, religious demographics, and civil authority they could gather. These Romans and Austrians knew more about the makeup of the American frontier than lawmakers in Washington. They could point out the areas where the soil was most fertile, tell you where the most strategic locations for settlements were, and offer a plan for how to get immigrants there to “civilize” the land. In fact, these plans were already in motion. Thousands and thousands of immigrants from the slums of

Europe were being sent to the great American wilderness as part of this vast conspiracy to begin the work of discreetly colonizing these lands for European rulers. Or were they?

According to Beecher, such facts of a European effort to disrupt the United States’ expansion were hard to deny. “These means of a stimulated expatriation are corroborated by the copious and rapidly increasing correspondence of those who have already arrived, and the increasing facilities of transportation,” Beecher wrote in his Plea for the West.20 In other words, the fact that so many immigrants were moving to the American frontier and that a network of transportation was developing between these frontier cities meant that European states were laying the groundwork for new territories. By the time American politicians took notice, the population and infrastructure of these locales would be so advanced that Europe would have the upper hand in maintaining its new possessions.

20 Lyman Beecher, Plea for the West (Cincinnati, OH: Truman & Smith, 1835), 56, accessed October 20, 2017, https://archive.org/details/pleaforwest00beec.

Beecher also asserted that travelers to Europe corroborated his claims of an underground

European land grab. “It is the testimony of American travelers, that the territorial, civil and ecclesiastical statistics of our country, and the action and bearing of political causes upon our institutions, are more familiar at Rome and Vienna, than with us,” Beecher writes.21 However, the author provides no further proof or direct quotations that give credence to such a claim.

Perhaps, Beecher is referring to the writings of Samuel Morse, who frequently mentions his travels to Europe throughout Foreign Conspiracies. But Beecher does not directly quote from

Morse anywhere in his book, let alone another traveler.

It’s important to remember that the United States in the 1830s was a very different place than it is today. The international travelers that Beecher mentions would have been exceptionally rare. And beyond that, the geographic makeup of the country was such that many western lands were yet to be settled or achieve organized territory status. [See Appendix Figure 1] After

Missouri became the 24th state in 1821, it would be a decade and a half until another state entered the union. Things were in flux and this constant change in America led to increased levels of anxiety at a national level.

As the United States fought to establish its credibility and strength in the 1830s, westward expansion loomed as an essential yet uncertain means of securing strong economic gains and international prestige. Beecher and Morse agreed that the West would be crucial to the future of the United States. Beecher, especially, makes this point, centering his entire Plea for the West around the premise that the western portion of North America would hold the key to the

United States' future success and riches. The growth of Catholicism out West, therefore was problematic. At best, Catholicism could slow or even halt the establishment of American

21 Lyman Beecher, Plea for the West (Cincinnati, OH: Truman & Smith, 1835), 55-56, accessed October 20, 2017, https://archive.org/details/pleaforwest00beec. 19 institutions and the growth of American identity in the West. At worst, Catholicism could mark an attempt by European governments to establish centers of influence and power in the United

States that could later result in a European take-over of American lands. Beecher went to great lengths to explain that even if Catholics were not attempting to enact the establishment of a separate European-controlled colony in western lands, extensive Catholic immigration would dilute the effectiveness of American government. He wrote that immigrants were an

"accumulating tide" that would have the same effect as "an army of soldiers, enlisted and officered, and spreading over the land."22 Only this time, the soldiers were priests and their weapons were rooted in the Catholic faith.

Much was at stake in the fight for the West. Beecher was certain of the future of the

Western Territories, despite the destiny of the United States’ unorganized territories being anything but manifest. He predicted that barring any national calamity, the population of the western United States would number 100 million people by 1900 and eventually become 300 million people when fully populated.23 "It is equally plain that the religious and political destiny of our nation is to be decided in the West," Beecher wrote. "There is the territory, and there soon will be the population, the wealth, and the political power."24 The United States was not even 60 years old when Beecher wrote Plea for the West and yet he was already predicting that the

American establishment was moving westward. And Beecher wasn't wrong. Each year, the

United States' center of population distribution creeped further and further west, according to information from the U.S. Census Bureau. [See Appendix Figure 2] In 1790, the mean center of

22 Lyman Beecher, Plea for the West (Cincinnati, OH: Truman & Smith, 1835), 56, accessed October 20, 2017, https://archive.org/details/pleaforwest00beec. 23 Lyman Beecher, Plea for the West (Cincinnati, OH: Truman & Smith, 1835), 36, accessed October 20, 2017, https://archive.org/details/pleaforwest00beec. 24 Lyman Beecher, Plea for the West (Cincinnati, OH: Truman & Smith, 1835), 11, accessed October 20, 2017, https://archive.org/details/pleaforwest00beec. 20 population in the United States was in eastern Maryland but by 1830, it had moved a couple hundred miles west to West Virginia.

Despite westward advancements, the fate of the United States' western territories was anything but certain in the 1830s. At the beginning of the decade, vast expanses of land from modern-day Minnesota to Oklahoma to Montana remained unorganized territory.25 Large portions of the Pacific Northwest were jointly occupied with Great Britain pending ongoing land disputes.26 And Mexico possessed the majority of the modern-day West from California to Utah to Texas. One historian concludes that “in 1824 the United States of Mexico, as the former

Spanish colony then named itself, and the United States of America were not dissimilar in size and population: the southern nation spanning 1.7 million square miles with a bit more than 6 million people, the northern comprising 1.8 million square miles and 9.6 million people.”27 The

United States' Western Hemisphere dominance had not yet materialized. The idea of the U.S. spanning from the Pacific to the Atlantic was not a political reality and Mexico remained, for a brief time in the 1820s and 1830s, a potential threat to American expansion. The deeply Catholic lineage of Mexico also would have made Americans, especially Beecher, uneasy. Although exact counts of the Catholic population in Mexico during the 1830s do not exist, the Catholic influence can even be felt in the modern day. According to a 2010 estimate, 82.7% of Mexico’s population is Catholic.28

25 Dixon Ryan Fox, Harper's Atlas of American History (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers , 1920), 38, in the Maps ETC online collection, accessed February 18, 2018, http://etc.usf.edu/maps/pages/3300/3303/3303.htm. 26 Dixon Ryan Fox, Harper's Atlas of American History (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers , 1920), 38, in the Maps ETC online collection, accessed February 18, 2018, http://etc.usf.edu/maps/pages/3300/3303/3303.htm. 27 Anders Stephanson, Manifest Destiny: American Expansionism and the Empire of Right (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995), 32-33. 28 Central Intelligence Agency, “Mexico” The World Factbook, 2017, accessed February 22, 2018, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/mx.html. 21

As Americans pushed further and further west, the settlement of Catholics in western territories complicated American land claims. Should a border dispute with Mexico arrive,

Catholics could be more likely to back Mexico due to the country's strong Catholic sympathies.

And that was only the beginning of the concerns for Beecher. Catholics would also be influenced by Catholic authorities based in Europe, a thought that terrified the minister because it meant that

American institutions would lack a degree of autonomy that would allow them to establish a unique identity as distinctly American. If Catholic institutions laid the groundwork for civilization in the West, the opportunity to develop uniquely American institutions and identities would be threatened.

It's important to keep in mind that lurking beneath Beecher and Morse's axieties over

Catholicism was a deep-seated fear that the United States would not be able to establish an identity separate from Europe, let alone superior to Europe. The United States was conceived by

European subjects who had relied on European institutions. The earliest Americans fought in wars funded by Europe, such as the French and Indian War. Once the United States became an independent country, it became essential for Americans to construct a narrative that recognized the "New World" as a place with political, cultural, and even artistic differences from "Old

World" Europe. Otherwise, the United States would continue living in the shadow of European dominance and agression. A national identity was also necessary to transition citizen's allegiances from European powers to the United States. Americans, in attempting to create a unique identity, began referring to the United States as the successor to Western thought and tradition. As Beecher put it, the United States "is, in the providence of God, destined to lead the way in the moral and political emancipation of the world."29 Though the United States was still

29 Lyman Beecher, Plea for the West (Cincinnati, OH: Truman & Smith, 1835), 11, accessed October 20, 2017, https://archive.org/details/pleaforwest00beec. 22 very much a developing country, Beecher and Morse sought to prove its superiority and potential to Europe.

Westward expansion may have been tenuous in 1830s America, but it was a major contributor to the creation of a new American identity. As Americans moved westward to unsettled territories, they shed themselves of past identities as New Yorkers, Virginians, or New

Englanders. No longer could Americans identify more with their state loyalties than their national sympathies, a problem that threatened to facture the early United States. As labels of place faded in resonance on the American frontier, the identity of an "American" rose in prominence. Beecher quotes at length from his friend Judge Hall of Illinois who wrote on the subject of identity in the West for an 1831 issue of Illinois Monthly. Hall writes that people on the Illinois frontier "care not from what point of the compass" laboring men come from, as long as they come "with the feelings, not of New-Englanders, or Pennsylvanians, but of Americans."30

With no well of historical state pride to tap into, frontiersmen were left to seek a national identity. It was for the glory of the United States that they were to build the Western Frontier into a vast expanse of civilized institutions and prospering cities.

But the settlement of foreign-born Catholic immigrants on America's frontiers greatly risked the ongoing growth of an American identity. Beecher's belief that Catholicism could not separate itself from European government influence (see Chapter One) meant that Catholics settling in the West would maintain their European allegiances and be unable to assimilate into

American culture and form a distinct American identity. Not only did Beecher think that

Catholics could not assimilate, he thought that the political nature of Catholicism meant it would always be opposed to free institutions. Beecher wrote, "The Catholic system is adverse to liberty,

30 Lyman Beecher, Plea for the West (Cincinnati, OH: Truman & Smith, 1835), 20, accessed October 20, 2017, https://archive.org/details/pleaforwest00beec. 23 and the clergy to a great extent are dependent on foreigners opposed to the principles of our government, for patronage and support."31 Catholicism would only stall and reverse any progress western expansion made in building up national sympathies. Given Pope Gregory XVI’s words decrying liberal institutions such as the free press, this wasn’t a far-fetched concern.32

Any substantial development of Catholicism in the West would also suppress the development of self-sufficient institutions and lifestyles that would allow the West to prosper, according to Beecher. Catholicism had its roots in Europe and took answers from the Pope in

Rome. Not to mention, it was heavily endorsed by several European governments. Such facts suggested that European governments could eventually exert political pressure on the United

States by threatening to pull back Catholic-run institutions or influencing Catholics from the pulpit. As Morse put it, “Austria is now acting in this country. She has devised a grand scheme.

She has organized a great plan for doing something here, which she, at least, deems important.

She has her Jesuit missionaries traveling through the land; she has supplied them with money, and she has furnished a fountain for a regular supply.”33

It wasn't just Catholics Morse was worried about. The Protestant leader also worried that the West would become too dependent on the eastern regions of the United States to supply financial capital and educated civic leaders to its developing communities. Beecher also implored that it should not "for a moment be supposed, that the schools of the West are to be sustained by the emigration of an army of instructors from the East."34 The West had to educate

31 Lyman Beecher, Plea for the West (Cincinnati, OH: Truman & Smith, 1835), 61, accessed October 20, 2017, https://archive.org/details/pleaforwest00beec. 32 Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos [Encyclical on Liberalism and Religious Indifferentism], EWTN, August 15, 1832, sec. 14, accessed February 24, 2018, http://www.ewtn.com/library/ENCYC/G16MIRAR.HTM. 33 Samuel Morse, Foreign Conspiracies Against the United States, 5th ed. (New York: H. A. Chapin & Co., 1841), 40, accessed October 20, 2017, https://archive.org/details/foreignconspiracy00mors. 34 Lyman Beecher, Plea for the West (Cincinnati, OH: Truman & Smith, 1835), 20-22, accessed October 20, 2017, https://archive.org/details/pleaforwest00beec. 24 its own future teachers so that systems of education might self-sustaining. After all, how could the western lands of the United States provide hope of freedom for those living under tyrannical governments in Europe if it couldn't even generate teachers to educate future generations?

25

CHAPTER THREE

Anxieties Over Education System

As a young girl at a Catholic school in Montreal, Canada, Maria Monk found herself abused and manipulated. The priests would tell the students at the Congregational Nunnery that priests could not sin and anything they did to students would sanctify them. “Indeed it was not long before such language was used to me, and I well remember how my views of right and wrong were shaken by it,” Monk later wrote.35 During the 1800s, Catholic convents not only housed nuns but also served as private schools for young children in North America. But in her

1836 book Awful Disclosures of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery of Montreal, Monk claimed, among many other more incendiary claims, that such Catholic education was a farce. Students barely learned anything other than prayers, Catholic catechism, and some needlework.36 The priests would routinely bash the Protestant faith, telling Monk and the other children that were it not for the Protestant Bible, “many a soul now condemned to hell, and suffering eternal punishment, might have been in happiness.”37 Once Monk became a nun herself, she discovered an even more sinister reality, one in which priests routinely raped nuns and killed any resulting children.38

Monk desperately wanted an education but instead found only abuse, deception, and even murder inside of Catholic convents.

35 Maria Monk, Awful Disclosures of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery of Montreal (New York: Hosington & Trow, 1836), 20, accessed February 14, 2018, https://books.google.com/books?id=y0BfAAAAcAAJ&pg. 36 Maria Monk, Awful Disclosures of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery of Montreal (New York: Hosington & Trow, 1836), 14, accessed February 14, 2018, https://books.google.com/books?id=y0BfAAAAcAAJ&pg. 37 Maria Monk, Awful Disclosures of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery of Montreal (New York: Hosington & Trow, 1836), 17, accessed February 14, 2018, https://books.google.com/books?id=y0BfAAAAcAAJ&pg. 38 Maria Monk, Awful Disclosures of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery of Montreal (New York: Hosington & Trow, 1836), 47-49, accessed February 14, 2018, https://books.google.com/books?id=y0BfAAAAcAAJ&pg.

It was a story that gripped a nation. Monk was a foreigner from Canada but Americans ate her story up. The book was likely “the most widely read contemporary book in the United

States before Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” according to 20th century historian Richard Hofstadter.39

(Ironically, it would be Lyman Beecher’s daughter—Harriet Beecher Stowe—who would go on to write Uncle Tom’s Cabin.) With the fear-mongering works of Samuel Morse and Lyman

Beecher stoking anti-Catholic sentiments in the years prior, Maria Monk’s book reached an audience ready to buy into a narrative that included baby strangling priests and nuns brainwashed by manipulative clergy members. At the center of these allegations was the Catholic education that nuns and priests were offering across the country. The centrality of Catholic education in anti-Catholic conspiracy theories, such as Maria Monk’s narrative, allowed fear to rapidly spread because there was little certainty about what actually went on behind the closed doors of

Catholic educational institutions.

Such was the case on an evening in 1834 when hundreds of concerned citizens arrived at the door of the Ursuline Convent in a suburb of Boston, demanding to see a nun they believed was being held captive in the basement (see Introduction).40 When the mob failed to find the

“missing” nun in the convent, they burned the building to the ground. None other than Lyman

Beecher had been riling up the people of the town prior to the formation of the violent mob.41

And in his inflammatory speeches leading up to the riot, he used Catholic education to stir up the crowd. Though Beecher claimed that the crowd who attended his lecture was made up of people

39 Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1965), 22. 40 Jeanne Hamilton, “The Nunnery As Menace: The Burning of the Charlestown Convent, 1834,” Our Catholic Visitor, Winter 1996, accessed February 27, http://www.ewtn.com/library/HUMANITY/BURNING.TXT. 41 Jeanne Hamilton, “The Nunnery As Menace: The Burning of the Charlestown Convent, 1834,” Our Catholic Visitor, Winter 1996, accessed February 27, http://www.ewtn.com/library/HUMANITY/BURNING.TXT.

27 other than the rioters, he most likely would have spoken at length about education, as it was a central concern of his.42

Catholic education was also a divisive issue because it fueled class segregation and diminished traditional conceptions of gender in the United States. Often, only elite, upper class parents could afford to send their daughters to convents to be educated.43 This meant that while upper class citizens might become apathetic, or at best sympathetic, toward Catholics in the

United States, the lower class fixated on it as an object of social discord. For most Americans,

Catholic education seemed to perpetuate class divisions in a way that seemed strictly anti-

American and anti-egalitarian. Because many Catholic families were working class immigrants, they could not always afford to send their children to Catholic school. Instead, wealthy

Protestants often ended up being the main beneficiaries of quality Catholic education, which in turn spurred fears that the Catholics were only using their schools to convert Protestant children to Catholicism.44

Additionally, Catholic education threatened traditional ideas of American womanhood in the 1830s. American women at this time were supposed to be good wives and good mothers. No other roles were possible.45 Catholic nuns at these educational convents, however, went against that. They operated independently of men and had autonomy. They operated successful institutions and lived private lives beyond the gaze of public scrutiny. Protestant women would soon go on to manipulate this fear of educated Catholic women for their own benefit. Prominent

42 Jeanne Hamilton, “The Nunnery As Menace: The Burning of the Charlestown Convent, 1834,” Our Catholic Visitor, Winter 1996, accessed February 27, http://www.ewtn.com/library/HUMANITY/BURNING.TXT. 43 Jeanne Hamilton, “The Nunnery As Menace: The Burning of the Charlestown Convent, 1834,” Our Catholic Visitor, Winter 1996, accessed February 27, http://www.ewtn.com/library/HUMANITY/BURNING.TXT. 44 Jack Tager, Boston Riots: Three Centuries of Social Violence (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2001), 110- 111. 45 “Religion and Reform,” American Yawp, accessed April 24, 2018, http://www.americanyawp.com/text/10- religion-and-reform/.

28 reformers such as Sarah Hale, Mary Lyon, and Catharine Beecher (ironically, she was another daughter of Lyman Beecher) argued that women needed to be educated in order to properly educate America’s youth and respond to the threat posed by nunneries.46 These women founded institutions such as Mount Holyoke Seminary and Hartford Female Seminary that copied the

Catholic nunnery as a model for Protestant education. Though Protestants viewed the Catholic convent as a threat, it ultimately became a model for female education that enabled increased female public engagement.47

The fact that Catholic education in the 1830s remained primarily for the wealthy did not sit well with Beecher. He saw this as an upheaval of social harmony and desired to make elite education for the few a remnant of the East Coast. Going forward, Beecher believed America needed a system of universal education that would lift the civic participation of generations to come. “We must educate the whole nation while we may,” Beecher writes in Plea for the West.

“All—all who would vote must be enlightened, and reached by the restraining and preserving energies of Heaven.”48 Education would be essential to the rise of the United States that Beecher envisioned. There was no room for class-segregated educational opportunities to stagnate such growth.

Beyond the accessibility of Catholic schools, Beecher took serious issue with the fact that they were operated by a foreign entity, the Catholic Church. If universal education was going to lift the United States to a new position of prominence on the world stage, that education had to

46 Joseph G. Mannard, “Protestant Mothers and Catholic Sisters: Gender Concerns in Anti-Catholic Conspiracy Theories, 1830-1860,” American Catholic Studies 111, no. ¼ (Spring-Winter 2000): 1, accessed September 18, 2017, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44194910. 47 Joseph G. Mannard, “Protestant Mothers and Catholic Sisters: Gender Concerns in Anti-Catholic Conspiracy Theories, 1830-1860,” American Catholic Studies 111, no. ¼ (Spring-Winter 2000): 21, accessed September 18, 2017, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44194910. 48 Lyman Beecher, Plea for the West (Cincinnati, OH: Truman & Smith, 1835), 48, accessed October 20, 2017, https://archive.org/details/pleaforwest00beec. 29 be sustainable and aligned with an American agenda. Beecher worried that if the United States became too dependent on Catholicism, foreign governments would be able to gain an upper hand on Americans. If no adequate public school system developed nationwide and Americans relied on Catholic institutions for education, the Catholic Church would always be able to threaten to pull funding for Catholic schools as leverage over the negotiations. Over the long-term, Catholic educators would also be able to instill a different set of values in students that put obedience to the Pope ahead of national priorities. Or even worse, Catholic instructors could instill subtle sympathies toward European governments that would compromise American national identity and a sense of national civic duty. Beecher writes in Plea for the West that even if Catholic education is limited in scope to just the Catholic community, it would still have adverse affects on Protestants around the country:

They [Catholics] cannot help interfering with the religion of their pupils. The known opinions and kind attentions of instructors sedulous to please, and a constant familiarity with their example and a religious instruction and the doctrines, prayers, ceremonies and worship of the church, cannot fail to affect the mind of Protestant youth—allaying apprehension, conciliating affection, inspiring confidence and undermining their Protestant education—until they became either sceptics, or devotee, or at least the friends and apologists and auxiliaries of Catholics. You may as well suspend the attraction of gravity, or intercept the connection between cause and effect, as to prevent the adverse action of a Catholic education on the minds of Protestant children.49

It did not matter the scope or isolation of Catholic education. For Beecher, Catholicism is like a cancer that will find a way to spread and infect even the most religious Protestant children.

Beecher had legitimate concerns about the state of education in the United States. Though he certainly was biased against Catholics, his main concern was self-sufficiency. The preacher

49 Lyman Beecher, Plea for the West (Cincinnati, OH: Truman & Smith, 1835), 97-98, accessed October 20, 2017, https://archive.org/details/pleaforwest00beec. 30 worried that communities on the Western frontier would not be able to sustain growth if teachers were always being sent in from afar and not trained from within the community. As the head of a

Protestant seminary school in Ohio, this was an issue that hit home for Beecher. His writing suggests that much of his time as an administrator was spent groveling for donations from wealthy East Coast families. “The day will assuredly come … when Illinois will remember

Massachusetts as a benefactor,” Beecher writes.50 But Beecher wants to be free of that reliance on outside forces that would stagnate growth out on the frontier. “[T]he ministry for the West must be educated at the West. The demands on the East, for herself and for pagan lands, forbid the East ever to supply our wants,” Beecher writes.51 Catholics were just one part of a larger problem of adequate funding and training for universal education.

Americans were intent listeners of Beecher’s warnings, as evidenced by their actions during the Ursuline Convent riots. But as suggested above, Beecher was far from a reliable source. In fact, had deep personal motives in writing Plea for the West. It was in 1832, three years prior to writing Plea for the West, that Beecher became head of the Lane Theological

Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio, a time when Ohio was still considered the West. Morse also established a local pastorate in Cincinnati.52 As the head of a Protestant educational institution, it becomes obvious why Catholic education would be such a fixture of fascination and vexation for

Beecher. It was competition to Protestant education and a threat to retention of Protestant religious practices in children.

50 Lyman Beecher, Plea for the West (Cincinnati, OH: Truman & Smith, 1835), 21, accessed October 20, 2017, https://archive.org/details/pleaforwest00beec. 51 Lyman Beecher, Plea for the West (Cincinnati, OH: Truman & Smith, 1835), 24-25, accessed October 20, 2017, https://archive.org/details/pleaforwest00beec. 52 Encyclopedia Britannica, s.v. “Lyman Beecher,” accessed February 24, 2018, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lyman-Beecher. 31

CHAPTER FOUR

Anxiety Over Increased Waves of Immigration to the United States

As Irish immigration picked up in the 1820s, it seemed to many Americans that Catholics were everywhere. No religious data was included in the 1830 census but various estimates put the number of Catholics in the United States in 1830 between 200,000 and 500,000.53 That equates to about 1.56 to 3.89 percent of the population. Overall, that’s not a significant number of Catholics. But the constant flow of immigrants made it feel like Catholicism was flooding the

U.S. Nowhere was this perhaps more apparent than in Boston. The city’s population stood at about 43,000 in 1820 with only 2,000 or so Irish present. Within 10 years, another 5,000 Irish had arrived in Boston, bringing the share of the Irish population to 11.4% of Boston’s 61,000 inhabitants.54 Tensions were high. Various skirmishes and lootings targeted at Catholics occurred in the 1820s. In 1833, about a year before the Ursuline Convent Riot, a mob of 500 white

Americans joined by volunteer firemen looted and burned an Irish neighborhood in the Boston suburb of Charlestown.55 It was in this same town that the Ursuline Convent would be burned to the ground in a matter of months.

Beecher and Morse were left terrified by the rapid influx of immigrants into the United

States. They believed that the immigrants settling in America were second-rate, unskilled criminals. These two men were beginning to not recognize the country they grew up in as

America became more than just a country of Anglo-lineage citizens and African slaves. For

53 Tom Frascella, “Early U.S. Catholics and Catholic Immigrants 1790-1850,” modified March 2014, accessed April 24, 2018, http://sanfelesesocietynj.org/History%20Articles/Early_US_Catholics_and_immigrants_1790-1850.htm; “Catholicism in the United States 1830-1900,” accessed April 24, 2018, http://uploads.weconnect.com/mce/f90a34bcd66e597a5d391005bf1e14a7c70f1d2c/FatherTobinsWritings/PART%2 017%20AMERICAN%20CHURCH%20HISTORY%20PART%20TWO%20DEC%202013%20tbp.pdf. 54 Jack Tager, Boston Riots: Three Centuries of Social Violence (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2001), 107. 55 Jack Tager, Boston Riots: Three Centuries of Social Violence (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2001), 108. 32

Beecher, such a population shift was an existential threat to the stability of the nation. Beecher described the situation as a biblical plague, “Clouds like the locusts of Egypt are rising from the hills and plains of Europe, and on the wings of every wind, are coming over to settle down upon our fair fields; while millions, moved by the noise of their rising and cheered by the news of their safe arrival and green pastures, are preparing for flight in an endless succession.”56 Beecher and

Morse conceded that a small number of the immigrants were “high minded and valuable citizens” but firmly believed that the excellence of a few did not make up for the “danger to be apprehended from the ignorant and vicious.”57

Journalist Paul Coughlin argues that such fears over immigration were warranted:

There was some merit to Beecher’s argument. Irish Catholic immigrants did tax the social structure. Wherever they landed, the Irish brought with them fatal communicable diseases and little skilled labor. Those Irish who became successful would send money back home so that their young children would be able to reunite with their parents. But often the parents did not know on which ship their children would arrive. Emergency social programs were exhausted as Irish children became needy street urchins who desperately needed Protestant help, not their conspiracy theories.58

A crisis of social services was unfolding wherever Catholic immigrants were settling. There were simply not enough resources to educate and assimilate immigrants to the United States due to their massive numbers. Such unfettered immigration was a threat to the very core of American identity. Beecher and Morse feared for a future in which immigrants did not adopt “American” customs but held onto their foreign identity, creating disparate communities within the Untied

States that did not coalesce into a broader national identity. Morse and Beecher did not have the

56 Lyman Beecher, Plea for the West (Cincinnati, OH: Truman & Smith, 1835), 72-73, accessed October 20, 2017, https://archive.org/details/pleaforwest00beec. 57 Lyman Beecher, Plea for the West (Cincinnati, OH: Truman & Smith, 1835), 52, accessed October 20, 2017, https://archive.org/details/pleaforwest00beec. 58 Paul T. Coughlin, Secrets, Plots & Hidden Agendas: What You Don’t Know About Conspiracy Theories (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1999). 33 benefit of hindsight to see that even though immigrant communities were forming in the United

States, they could still create a uniquely American identity. Beyond identity, Morse and Beecher also feared what an immigrant influx would do to the nation’s food supply and economy. Though

Irish Catholics were just one group of immigrants arriving in America, they became a symbol for the overall trends in immigration.

As the population of the United States rapidly increased, American society felt the effects of a transition from an agrarian to urban lifestyle. Cities became filthier, more crime-ridden, and more crowded. The number of impoverished individuals and working poor increased. Morse and

Beecher did not look to trends in urbanization as the cause for metropolitan woes, however. They believed the problems plaguing American cities were rooted in the character of the people living in them. “Bad” people were coming over from Europe and as a result, societal decorum was collapsing. “Foreign emigrants are flocking to our shores in increased numbers, two thirds at least are Roman Catholics, and of the most ignorant classes, and this pauperism and crime are alarmingly increased,” Morse wrote in the preface to Foreign Conspiracies.59 For Morse, “true”

Americans didn’t behave the way these immigrants were behaving. Their vast numbers were a threat to America’s existence.

Morse was reminded of this on the 55th birthday of the United States, when the artist- turned-scientist found himself in Venice, Italy. The holiday made him nostalgic for his American home after a year of travels through Europe. He found the Old World to be a wonderful place to view art and receive an education but a terrible place to live. He remarks in his notes on July 4,

1831, “When I think of the innumerable blessings we enjoy over every other country in the world, I am constrained to praise God who hath made us to differ, for ‘He hath not dealt so with

59 Samuel Morse, Foreign Conspiracies Against the United States, 5th ed. (New York: H. A. Chapin & Co., 1841), 24, accessed October 20, 2017, https://archive.org/details/foreignconspiracy00mors. 34 any nation, and as for his judgments, he have not them.’ While pestilence and famine and war surround me here in these devoted countries, I fix my thoughts on one bright spot on earth; truly

(if our too ungrateful countrymen would but see it), truly a terrestrial paradise.”60 Americans were different. They were smarter, cleaner, better than the rest of the world. But when Morse returned to the United States, he saw the state of American cities and feared that immigration threatened to transplant Europe’s problems and bring them to America.

Beecher referred to the situation in Europe as a volcano on the precipice of detonation that could affect the United States through immigration. “Until Europe, by universal education, is delivered from such masses of feudal ignorance and servitude,” Beecher writes, “she sits upon a volcano, and despotism and revolution will arbitrate her destiny.”61 Now those immigrants were spilling into the United States. And Beecher agreed with Morse that these Catholic immigrants were “generally of the class least enlightened.”62

It becomes apparent in Morse and Beecher’s texts that a larger fear permeates the idea of uneducated Catholic immigrants coming to the country. Though the two authors are largely blaming immigrants for America’s woes, a legitimate fear lurks beneath the scapegoating. The influence of parish priests scared Protestants who feared the structure of the Catholic Church would leave uneducated immigrants prone to manipulation. Unlike Protestants, Catholics told priests their most intimate life details inside the confessional, giving parish priests an extraordinary level of knowledge about the fears and hopes of the local community.

Additionally, Catholics were much more reliant on priests to understand Church teachings which

60 Samuel F. B. Morse, Samuel F. B. Morse: His Letters and Journals, vol. 1, ed. Edward Lind Morse (1914; repr., New York: Klaus Reprint Company, 1972), 395. 61 Lyman Beecher, Plea for the West (Cincinnati, OH: Truman & Smith, 1835), 39, accessed October 20, 2017, https://archive.org/details/pleaforwest00beec. 62 Lyman Beecher, Plea for the West (Cincinnati, OH: Truman & Smith, 1835), 138, accessed October 20, 2017, https://archive.org/details/pleaforwest00beec. 35 were largely communicated in Latin, a language few immigrants spoke. Finally, Catholics were not encouraged like Protestants to read the Bible and interpret scripture for themselves. Again,

Catholic priests were largely responsible for communicating how the Bible should be interpreted.

The fact that many Catholics—especially uneducated immigrants—relied on the Catholic

Church to tell them what to believe meant that Catholics could be duped into ideas of moral right and wrong. And this could have a profound effect on the country. Catholic Americans at the polls could be influenced by biased priests who tell them potentially false information about voting your conscience. Priests could even enter into deals with politicians to persuade parishioners to vote one way in return for favors from the newly elected official. Masses of uneducated immigrants threatened the integrity of America’s democratic republic system of government. Morse argued that most immigrants were “too ignorant to act at all for themselves, and expected to be guided wholly by others. These others are of course their priests.”63 A citizen unable to think critically couldn’t voted critically. And a democracy filled with people unable to properly vote threatened to collapse the system. Behind all the scapegoating, this fear hung heavy in the background.

63 Samuel Morse, Foreign Conspiracies Against the United States, 5th ed. (New York: H. A. Chapin & Co., 1841), 69-70, accessed October 20, 2017, https://archive.org/details/foreignconspiracy00mors. 36

CONCLUSION

The United States once again finds itself in a period of transformation and volatility, as it did in the 1830s. Automation threatens to upend hundreds of thousands of jobs, globalization is transforming America into a services-based economy, and continued urbanization and poor housing policies have resulted in affordable living crises across the country. Things are changing in the United States. And change inevitably means that people get left behind. Just as forces of change in the 1830s led to anxieties bubbling up in the form of conspiracy theories and scapegoating, so too today. Only this time, it’s not Catholics who are the subject of such conspiracies. And no longer are climates of fear created by mass-produced books. Internet, television, and radio allow for content distribution on a massive scale at the speed of light. Just imagine if Morse, Beecher, and Monk had that kind of reach.

Conspiracy theories in the modern era have also reached new levels of validation in the

United States. People in the highest political offices and in the most far-reaching media organizations are not only talking about unverified conspiracy theories but championing them as fact on a regular basis. The now-president of the United States, Donald Trump, told Fox News in

2011 that Obama “doesn't have a birth certificate. He may have one, but there's something on that, maybe religion, maybe it says he is a Muslim.”64 In January 2018, a number of Republican lawmakers said they had evidence that suggested two FBI officials were part of a secret society

64 Chris Moody and Kristen Holmes, “Donald Trump's History of Suggesting Obama is a Muslim,” CNN, September 18, 2015, accessed April 24, 2018, https://www.cnn.com/2015/09/18/politics/trump-obama-muslim- birther/index.html.

plotting against Donald Trump. When the texts were publicly released, lawmakers relented and agreed that the texts may have been made in jest.65

Despite the focus on political conspiracy theories in the modern-day, immigrants continue to suffer as scapegoats for societal problems, just as in the 1830s. Rhetoric that was used against Catholics continues to be used today against other minority groups such as

Hispanics and Muslims.

With the world watching, the soon-to-be president of the United States of America,

Donald Trump, announced his campaign by declaring that the world was making America its

“dumping ground” for problems. "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best,"

Trump said. "They're sending people that have lots of problems...they're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."66 These words bear a striking similarity to the rhetoric Morse and Beecher employed to suggest that Europe’s immigrants to the United States were the worst those foreign countries had to offer.

Two and a half years later, as president of the United States, Trump took the stage at the

Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and continued his distrust of migrants, comparing immigrants to a garden snake that is taken in by a woman and then fatally bitten once the snake regains health. “You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in,” Trump growled from the stage as the audience rose in standing ovation.67 The allegory of the snake

65 Kathryn Watson, “Top GOP Senator Switches Gears, Says FBI Secret Society Text Might Be A Joke,” CBS News, January 25, 2018, accessed April 24, 2018, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/top-gop-senator-switches-gears- says-fbi-secret-society-might-be-a-joke/. 66 Jake Miller, “Donald Trump Defends Calling Mexican Immigrants Rapists,” CBS News, July 2, 2015, accessed February 28, 2018, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/election-2016-donald-trump-defends-calling-mexican- immigrants-rapists/. 67 Eli Rosenberg, “‘The Snake:’ How Trump Appropriated a Radical Black Singer’s Lyrics for Immigration Fearmongering,” The Washington Post, February 24, 2018, accessed February 28, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/02/24/the-snake-how-trump-appropriated-a-radical-black- singers-lyrics-for-refugee-fearmongering/

38 comes from a 1960s song by Oscar Brown Jr. that Trump repeatedly used over the course of his campaign. The song has nothing to do with immigrants, according to the daughters of Brown, yet

Trump has adopted the piece for that purpose.68 Trump may have made the message of immigration as a danger to the United States a centerpiece of his message at CPAC but the idea is nothing new. In fact, 183 years prior, Samuel Morse passed off a message strikingly similar to one Trump delivered at CPAC:

We may then have reason to say that we are the dupes of our own hospitality; we have

sheltered in our well provided house a needy body of strangers, who, well filled with our

cheer, are encouraged, by the unaccustomed familiarity with which they are treated, first

to upset the regulations of the household, and then to turn their host and his family out of

doors.69

Just as Trump suggested that generosity toward immigrants could one day prove deadly, Morse also warns that immigrants will throw the host out of his own household.

In many ways, the United States of the 1830s is emblematic of the United States of the

2010s. Conspiracies abound and deeper problems that should be getting attention remain unsolved. The only difference between the two eras is that this time it isn’t Catholics who are bearing the grunt of conspiracy theories. Today it’s Muslims, Mexicans, Syrians. The subjects of conspiracies change but the motivations, mechanics, and effects largely remain the same.

Although I wish I could spend much more time with this project and carry out a modern- day case study analysis of modern-day conspiracy theories, I leave that torch for somebody else

68 li Rosenberg, “‘The Snake:’ How Trump Appropriated a Radical Black Singer’s Lyrics for Immigration Fearmongering,” The Washington Post, February 24, 2018, accessed February 28, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/02/24/the-snake-how-trump-appropriated-a-radical-black- singers-lyrics-for-refugee-fearmongering/ 69 Samuel Morse, Foreign Conspiracies Against the United States, 5th ed. (New York: H. A. Chapin & Co., 1841), 71, accessed October 20, 2017, https://archive.org/details/foreignconspiracy00mors. 39 to carry on. Perhaps only hindsight will afford us the ability to understand what deeper underlying fears are driving the conspiracy theories that are being talked about on a national level. More research needs to continue on this topic, research that strives to be apolitical and rooted in scholarly discourse rather than popular analysis that treats conspiracies more like entertainment than the serious threats that they are.

Conspiracies, though fun on the surface, only serve to distract from larger issues and root causes. So next time you hear about the deep state or underground sex rings run by politicians or an epidemic of Mexican rapists headed for the border, don’t laugh or roll your eyes. Stop and think. Ask what’s really going on.

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Coughlin, Paul T. Secrets, Plots & Hidden Agendas: What You Don’t Know About Conspiracy Theories. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1999.

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Hamilton, Jeanne. “The Nunnery As Menace: The Burning of the Charlestown Convent, 1834.” Our Catholic Visitor. Winter 1996. Accessed February 27. http://www.ewtn.com/library/ HUMANITY/BURNING.TXT.

Hammond, Jennifer Rebecca. “‘Papists and Indians Joyned Together’: Anti-Catholicism and Fears of a Catholic-Indian Conspiracy in Seventeenth Century Maryland.” Master’s thesis, George Washington, University, 2008.

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Hofstadter, Richard. The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965.

Leonard, Ira M. and Robert D. Parmet. American Nativism, 1830-1860. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1971.

Mabee, Carleton. The American Leonardo: A Life of Samuel F. B. Morse. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1943.

Mannard, Joseph G. “Protestant Mothers and Catholic Sisters: Gender Concerns in Anti-Catholic Conspiracy Theories, 1830-1860.” American Catholic Studies 111, no. ¼ (Spring-Winter 2000): 1-21. Accessed September 18, 2017. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44194910.

Morse, Samuel. Foreign Conspiracies Against the United States. 5th ed. New York: H. A. Chapin & Co., 1841. Accessed October 20, 2017. https://archive.org/details/foreignconspiracy 00mors.

Morse, Samuel F. B. Samuel F. B. Morse: His Letters and Journals. Edited by Edward Lind Morse. 2 vols. 1914. Reprint, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1972.

Monk, Maria. Awful Disclosures of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery of Montreal. New York: Hosington & Trow, 1836. Accessed February 14, 2018, https://books.google.com/books?id=y0BfAAAAcAAJ&pg.

Pfau, Michael William. The Political Style of Conspiracy: Chase, Sumner, and Lincoln. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2005.

Silverman, Kenneth. Lighting Man: The Accursed Life of Samuel F. B. Morse. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 2003.

Staiti, Paul J. Samuel F. B. Morse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

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Uscinski, Joseph E. and Joseph M. Parent. American Conspiracy Theories. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

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APPENDIX

FIGURE 1

Dixon Ryan Fox, Harper's Atlas of American History (New York, NY: Harper & Brothers Publishers , 1920) 38, accessed April 24, 2018, http://etc.usf.edu/maps/pages/3300/3303/3303.htm.

FIGURE 2

U.S. Department of Commerce, “Mean Center of Population for the United States: 1790 to 2010,” accessed February 23, 2018, https://www2.census.gov/geo/pdfs/reference/cenpop2010/centerpop_mean2010.pdf.

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