Patrick N. Lynch, 1817–1882: Third Catholic Bishop of Charleston by David C. R. Heisser and Stephen J. White Sr. (review)

This work is the first published biography of Patrick Nelson Lynch, who served as the third bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Charleston from 1858 to 1882. It draws on nearly three decades of research by the late David C. R. Heisser, who taught history and served as a reference librarian at the Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina, before his death in 2010. Stephen J. White Sr., the executive director of the Karpeles Manuscript Museum and founder of the Charleston Historical Society, finished his friend Heisser’s project. The authors chronicle the life and times of Lynch, an Irish immigrant, from his promising boyhood in upcountry South Carolina through his varied careers as priest, geologist, and diplomat.

Before the Civil War, Lynch was considered a rising star in the American Catholic Church, destined for an archbishop’s mitre or even a cardinal’s hat. Cosmopolitan and intellectual, Lynch joined numerous scientific and literary societies in Charleston and moved easily among the city’s social and cultural elite, who “tended to reinforce one another’s views on Southern identity, states’ rights, and defense of Southern institutions, including slavery” (p. 185). A reluctant secessionist, Lynch, like most Catholics in the South, enthusiastically supported the Confederacy after Fort Sumter. In 1864 Jefferson Davis appointed Lynch as commissioner to Rome to seek diplomatic recognition for the Confederacy from the Vatican. Although this mission failed, Lynch sought to sway European leaders by publishing one of the last defenses of slavery before its destruction. Because of his diplomatic efforts on behalf of the Confederacy, Lynch needed a presidential pardon before he could return to America. After the war, Lynch performed an important role at Baltimore’s Second Plenary Council of the American hierarchy in 1866, developing plans to address the spiritual and temporal needs of the freedpeople. Memory of his Confederate service and defense of slavery, however, likely made Lynch too controversial in the eyes of Vatican officials, and he was denied promotion to archbishop. He spent his remaining tenure giving frequent lectures to earn money to reduce the staggering debt incurred by his diocese during the war.

Heisser and White’s study of Lynch tends to reinforce recent scholarship that finds greater acceptance and cooperation between the Catholic minority and Protestant majority in the Old South than was true in the antebellum North. The greatest strength of this book is the research in archival sources discovered both in Rome and in multiple diocesan repositories in America. Especially valuable and illuminating are the chapters that examine Lynch’s roles as an episcopal slaveholder and Confederate propagandist. The authors also include more than twenty illustrations that significantly enhance the narrative.

In the end, however, this book is more effective as an institutional history of the Diocese of Charleston in the nineteenth century than as biography. Lynch as a public figure is well documented, but Lynch the private man remains elusive, appearing only in glimpses. Although Heisser and White clearly admire Lynch, they do acknowledge his personal shortcomings and inconsistencies. “Lynch was a man of his times,” they conclude, “with all the flaws and accomplishments of his era” (p. 191). One wishes the authors had probed Lynch’s personality more deeply; nevertheless, they succeed in establishing the importance of this cleric who served the Catholic Church and the Confederate government with equal ardor and devotion but differing results. This volume is a valuable addition to the literature in both Catholic and Confederate history.