“To Destroy Popery and Everything Appertinent Thereto”: William Chaney, the Jesuit John Bapst, and the Know-Nothings in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Maine

For the Jesuit priest John Bapst and newspaper editor William Chaney, the populist impulse that marked American politics in the turbulent decade of the 1850s offered opportunities. For Bapst, it meant engaging Catholics and Protestants throughout Maine in an effort to spread the Catholic faith. For Chaney, it meant riding the wave of Know-Nothing politics to secure a place for himself in coastal Maine society. The efforts of both men would collide in a moment of violence that ultimately marked an end to Chaney’s time in Maine and strengthened Bapst’s missionary resolve.