Gladstone, Religion, Politics and America: Perceptions in the Press, 1868 – 1900 Stephen J. Peterson Department of History and Politics School of Arts and Humanities University of Stirling A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Supervised by Professor David W. Bebbington 28 March 2013 ii I, Stephen J. Peterson, declare that this thesis has been composed by me and that the work which it embodies is my work and has not been included in another thesis. iii Acknowledgements Grateful acknowledgement is extended first to the University of Stirling for its flexibility and accommodation of foreign graduate research students. I also wish to recognise the University of Oklahoma for providing public access to visiting scholars, a benefit which has allowed me to access the abundant electronic resources that made this project possible. My heartfelt thanks are extended to Professor David Bebbington, my supervising professor, who has been infinitely patient in mentoring me. His wisdom and attention to detail have been of inestimable value in guiding my research. Finally, my utmost thanks and appreciation is reserved for my wife Debbie, who has been a constant source of encouragement and support throughout the project. The completion of this thesis would not have been possible without her. iv Abstract This thesis examines American perceptions of William Ewart Gladstone in the religious and secular press from 1868 to 1900. The scope of the study encompasses his role as a Christian apologist and his engagement in public affairs where religion and politics converged. The opinions of Americans are examined in the general categories of evangelicals, Roman Catholics, secular news organs and to a lesser extent Unitarians and agnostics. Gladstone’s reputation in the United States is followed through much of the latter half of the nineteenth century, beginning shortly after the close of the Civil War when Americans in the North held him in disrepute for his impolitic acknowledgement of Southern nationhood. This thesis demonstrates that American opinions of Gladstone were transformed as they increasingly perceived him to be a champion of Liberal reform and religious liberty and, especially for conservative evangelicals, a stalwart defender of Christian truth and civilisation against the rising tide of modern secularism. It also suggests that a pervasive anti-Catholicism inspired many in the United States to support Gladstone’s political causes. Finally, this study demonstrates that Americans projected their own values and myths on to the statesman. For many, he came to embody their progressive worldview with respect to the spread of religious and political liberty. v Table of Contents List of Abbreviations………………………………………………………vi Chapter One: Introduction………………………………………………….1 Chapter Two: The Irish Church Act……………………………………….42 Chapter Three: The Vatican Decrees ……………………………………...73 Chapter Four: Charles Bradlaugh ………………………………………..125 Chapter Five: T. H. Huxley………………………………………………152 Chapter Six: Robert Ingersoll and Robert Elsmere ……………………...191 Chapter Seven: Bishop Butler and Remembrance…………………….…222 Chapter Eight: Conclusion………………………………………………263 Bibliography…………………………………………………………….282 vi List of Abbreviations Primary Source Publications ACQR – American Catholic Quarterly Review AR – Andover Review BQR – Baptist Quarterly Review CW – Catholic World CT – Chicago Tribune CA – Christian Advocate CO – Christian Observer CU – Christian Union CON – Congregationalist HW – Harper’s Weekly IND – Independent MQR – Methodist Quarterly Review TN – The Nation NAR – North American Review NYE – New York Evangelist NYO – New York Observer NYH – New York Herald NYT – New York Times NY.Trib – New York Tribune SR – Springfield Republican UR – Unitarian Review ZH – Zion's Herald Individuals and Books DWB-MoG – David W. Bebbington, The Mind of Gladstone: Religion, Homer and Politics WEG – William Ewart Gladstone GWS – George Washburn Smalley 1 CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898) acquired prominence and fame that extended far beyond the borders of his own country. By the mid-1870s a cult of personality began to form around him throughout the English-speaking world.1 In Great Britain, North America, Australia and New Zealand, countless towns, parks and streets were eventually named in honour of the most eminent of eminent Victorians, with no fewer than six cities called ‘Gladstone’ in the United States despite the fact that he had never set foot upon its shores. Upon news of his passing in 1898, United States Vice President Garret Hobart sent a cable to the London Daily Chronicle declaring: ‘Not even in his own land was Mr. Gladstone more highly esteemed and venerated than in the United States.’2 Churches across the land held memorial services and eulogists compared him to Lincoln. They also hailed him as the great forerunner of the period’s growing sentiment for Anglo-American rapprochement. He was celebrated by many for his liberal reforms and for his voluminous writings on Homer, politics and religion. Moreover, his devotion to religion—including his apologetic work in its defence—was widely declared to be his life’s foundational impulse. At his passing, the Congregationalist Independent proclaimed: ‘His creed was his life; his life was Christianity incarnate, the best, the newest, the most convincing Christian evidence that can be offered to a keenly observant world.’3 For many Americans, Gladstone had died as the exemplar of how one should live the Christian life as a man, a 1 See pp. 48, 49 in D.A. Hamer, ‘Gladstone: The Making of a Political Myth’, Victorian Studies, 22 (1978), pp. 29-50. Hamer suggests that cult Gladstone began to emerge around 1875. 2 NYT, 29 May 1898, p. 7. 3IND, 26 May 1898, p. 12. 2 statesman and intellectual. It is perhaps only slightly over-stated to say that for many he was their ‘People’s William’ as well as Britain’s. Yet it had not always been so and the path to such lofty status had not necessarily been an easy or straight course. The expressions of approbation at his life’s end belie the fact that Gladstone’s reputation in America had actually been one of villainy in the minds of many its citizens during the Civil War era. Although he had gained a measure of admiration from Americans who followed British politics closely prior to that time, the notorious episode that catapulted him to infamy came with his speech delivered at Newcastle on 7 October 1862. In it he had declared that Jefferson Davis and the Confederacy had ‘made a nation’, a position which, delivered in his post as Palmerston’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, violated the spirit if not the letter of British neutrality.4 Although Gladstone later took pains to distance himself from the remarks, it was interpreted at the time as hostile by the Lincoln administration and by Americans throughout the North. An article of 2 November 1862 in the New York Times entitled ‘A Rebuke to Mr. Gladstone’ brought the issue to national attention. It contained several reprinted articles from various British papers critical of the speech. One of them, a piece from the Daily News, contended that the Cabinet should either acknowledge Gladstone’s statement as true or remove him from his position as Chancellor.5 Moreover, the speech had come just months after relations between Britain and the Union government had been strained after an incident involving the British mail carrier HMS Trent had raised the spectre of war between the two nations. In November 1861 the vessel was intercepted by the USS San Jacinto in international waters and two 4 Peter J. Parish in Peter John Jagger, ed, Gladstone (London: Hambledon Press, 1998), p. 96. 5 ‘Seven Days Later from Europe’, NYT, 2 November 1862, p.1. 3 Confederate diplomats aboard the Trent were taken into custody. The incident was at last resolved when the Lincoln administration agreed to release them.6 A second source of Anglo-American tension during the Civil War was the dispute over British-built Confederate ships which had wreaked havoc on Union merchant marine vessels. The issue at stake concerned the extent to which the British should pay for damages inflicted by vessels like the Confederate Alabama. The lengthy controversy was eventually resolved through international arbitration at Geneva in 1872, an event brought about in large part through the efforts of Gladstone.7 Yet as late as 1869, the memory of Gladstone’s offence of 1862 could still be found in America’s most respected newspaper, the New York Tribune. Its London correspondent George Washburn Smalley suggested that the statesman’s regard for America was greater than during the war, but ‘his acquaintance with the American question is imperfect, and he still betrays occasionally a disposition to protect or palliate the offenses of the Government which let loose the Proclamation and the Alabama’.8 ‘It must be remembered’, Smalley continued, ‘that Mr. Gladstone has hitherto shown a singular want of tact on American questions.’9 By the end of the Civil War, and for some time thereafter, it was not clear if Americans in the North would take kindly to any British politician, let alone Gladstone. Certainly the New York Tribune and many of its readers did not. This thesis centres on how the American religious and secular press represented Gladstone beginning shortly after the nadir of his reputation during the Civil War until his 6 Duncan Andrew Campbell, Unlikely Allies: Britain, America and the Victorian Origins of the Special Relationship (London: Hambledon Continuum, 2007), pp. 145-150. 7 See Charles S. Campbell, From Revolution to Rapprochement: The United States and Great Britain,1783-1900 (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1974), pp. 111-135. 8 GWS, NY.Trib, 29 June 1869, p. 1. 9 Ibid. 4 death in 1898 when he was greatly admired and nationally mourned. To account for the evolution of his reputation it follows their perceptions of and reactions to the statesman from his first premiership in 1868 until approximately 1900.