Citizens or Papists?: The Politics of Anti-Catholicism in New York, 1685-1821

Notes

Notes Introduction 1. The most important recent work is John McGreevy’s masterful Catholicism and American Freedom: A History (New York, 2003) in which he traces the changing and yet enduring tension between Catholics and mainstream American political culture from the middle of the nineteenth century to the present. 2. The long affiliation of most Catholic voters with the Democratic Party, which arguably lasted from the Jacksonian period until the late twentieth century, has eroded in recent decades. For a view that emphasizes a drift among Catholics to the Republicans, see William B. Prendergast, The Catholic Voter in American Politics: The Passing of the Democratic Monolith (Washington, D.C., 1999). 3. See Ronald Formisano, The Transformation of Political Culture: Massachusetts Parties, 1790s–1840 (New York, 1983), 297, 334–35. Michael F. Holt, Forging a Majority: The Formation of the Republican Party in Pittsburgh, 1848–1860 (New Haven, 1969), 215–17. Harry Watson, Liberty and Power: The Politics of Jacksonian America (New York, 1990), 194. 4. Robert Kelley, The Cultural Pattern in American Politics: The First Century (New York, 1979), 173. 5. Lee Benson, in his pioneering study, The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy : New York as a Test Case (Princeton, 1961), describes French Catholic support for the Democrats in the 1840s as the continuation of a tradition first begun by Catholic Irish and Germans who had been ‘‘long mustered under Tammany banners,’’ 175. Kerby Miller claims that Thomas Jefferson was elected in 1800 with ‘‘overwhelming IrishAmerican support’’ (Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus 197 198 Notes to North America [New York, 1985]), 189. William Shannon also made this assertion without providing much in the way of evidence in The American Irish (London, 1963), 7. Patrick Carey has cautioned, however , that ‘‘the political allegiances of Catholics in New York are difficult to determine’’ in People, Priests, Prelates: Ecclesiastical Democracy and the Tensions of Trusteeism (Notre Dame, 1987), 137. Shannon and others may have possessed an eagerness born of filiopiety to associate Irish Catholics with the Republicans, who have a more favorable historical reputation than do the Federalists. 6. Robert Kelley, in The Cultural Pattern in American Politics (126–27), relied on the work of Alfred F. Young in The Democratic Republicans of New York (Chapel Hill, 1967), for evidence that Catholics favored the Jeffersonians in the early republic. Young himself, however, admitted that in regard to New York, ‘‘There is very little scholarship on important nationality and religious groups, let alone what role they might have played in politics’’ (615). 7. Simon P. Newman, in Parades and the Politics of the Street: Festive Culture in the Early American Republic (Philadelphia, 1997), focuses on how ordinary Americans created their own politics quite apart from the world of Jefferson and Hamilton. David Waldstreicher (In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism, 1776–1820 [Chapel Hill, 1997]), emphasizes the role of print and newspapers in creating a national political culture that was designed to celebrate national unity at the expense of engaging issues that might have divided the country. Jeffrey L. Pasley, in ‘‘The Tyranny of the Printers’’: Newspaper Politics in the Early Republic (Charlottesville, Virginia, 2001), illustrates how newspaper editors, many of whom were radicals, played a crucial role in the development of American politics. Joanne B. Freeman focuses on political culture among the upper echelons of leadership in Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the Early Republic (New Haven, 2001). For the initial efforts of women to become full citizens, see Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill, 1980). 8. Charles and Mary Beard describe Catholics in the United States as entering the country in significant numbers ‘‘at the beginning of the middle period’’; see Rise of American Civilization (New York, 1935), 2: 409. Perhaps even more typical is this account: ‘‘the number of Catholics grew dramatically during the 1840s as a result of the huge immigration of Irish’’; see Bruce Levine, et al., Who Built America: Working People and the Nation’s Economy, Politics, Culture and Society (New York, 1989), 1: 308. Also see Bernard Baiyln, et al., The Great Republic: A History of the American People (Lexington, 1985), 315. For a textbook that does mention widespread discrimination against Catholics in colonial America, see Pauline Maier, et al., Inventing America: A History Notes 199 of the United States (New York, 2003), 61, 206, 428...