Catholics, Slaveholders, and the Dilemma of American Evangelicalism, 1835-1860

Chapter Four

C H A P T E R F O U R Southern Evangelical Dilemmas That the northern evangelical press incessantly portrayed Catholicism and slavery as irreconcilable with democracy had little to do with the reality of either Catholicism or slavery in the American South. Southern Catholics retained the political commitments of their region, and this alone indicted them by evangelical abolitionist standards. But Catholics also reflected the political diversity between the upper and lower South as well as differences between the coastal and inland states. If the northern evangelical press wished to prove a conspiracy of slaveholders and Catholics, demographics were not on their side. Between 1820 and 1860, there were simply more Catholics in the North than in the South, and there were many more Protestants in Dixie than Catholics. Still, the South was far from devoid of Catholic influence, and Protestant and Catholic southerners shared at least one common conviction: northern evangelical political agitation was the result of a defective Protestant political theology. Southern Catholicism The actual relationship between Catholicism, slavery, and the South was complicated. Just as there was no monolithic “southern identity” embracing the regional diversity among Protestants, so too there was no homogenous “southern Catholic” identity. As far as the region itself was — 89 — concerned, Catholics were a distinct minority, yet prior to the 1830s and 1840s, the majority of bishops in the United States lived below the Mason-Dixon Line. The flagship diocese of the country was in Baltimore where John Carroll labored as the first American bishop from 1789 until his death in 1815. By the middle decades of the nineteenth century , in addition to the three archdioceses of New Orleans, St. Louis, and Baltimore, twelve other dioceses were scattered across both the upper and the lower South. In the 1830s and 1840s, immigration shifted Catholic power toward the large cities of the Northeast and the growing cities of the Midwest, but the southern church remained strong.1 Antebellum Catholics had deep roots in the American South. Early French and Spanish settlements along the Gulf Coast and the Atlantic Coast created pockets of Catholic influence stretching from Texas to Florida. Throughout the nineteenth century, the cultural and social in- fluence of the Catholic Church thrived in cities such as Galveston, New Orleans, Mobile, and Pensacola.2 In the upper South, a Catholic legacy emerged out of the English tradition of the Calvert family and Maryland Catholicism. Maryland produced a class of Catholic planting families whose descendents combined with newer immigrants to gradually populate Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri. Apart from the Gulf Coast and the border states, a strong Catholic presence could be found in Charleston and Savannah. By 1860 the only southern state that did not have a diocese or vicariate apostolic was North Carolina. This was primarily because there was no concentrated Catholic populace around which a diocese could organize. Hence, the bishops of Charleston oversaw Catholic needs in North Carolina.3 North Carolina is characteristic of how despite a scant Catholic presence the southern states often produced accomplished Catholic political and social thinkers. The state was home to William Gaston, one of the more astute juridical minds of the early nineteenth century. A close friend of Bishop John England of Charleston, Gaston served in the state senate, the United States House of Representatives, and the supreme court of North Carolina. A lawyer and a jurist, Gaston maintained the disposition of a Federalist and yet early in his career expressed concerns about the power of majorities over minorities, similar concerns of which John C. Catholics, Slaveholders, and the Dilemma of American Evangelicalism, 1835–1860 — 90 — Calhoun would later articulate in his political works. A Catholic in a state dominated by proslavery Protestants, Gaston not only took the unpopular position of criticizing the slave system, but also worked to ensure that religious minorities had protection from state interference.4 Other southern Catholics exercised political and social influence in their states as well. Roger Taney, a lawyer and the scion of a wealthy Maryland planting family, served five years in the state senate as a Federalist but abandoned the Federalists in 1824 to support Andrew Jackson and the Democrats. For his loyalty and his talents, Jackson appointed him Attorney General in 1831, where he served two years before assuming the position of Secretary of the Treasury in 1833. Refused appointment to the Supreme Court by the Senate...