The Athens of America: Boston, 1825-1845

6 Progress and Popery

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 [First [126], Lines: —— 0.0pt ——— Normal PgEnds: [126], chapter 6 }Progress & Popery In the enthusiasm of Bostonians to raise their city to such an elevated level of intellectual achievement and human accomplishment that it would be universally recognized as the Athens of America, the emergence of the Roman Catholic Church as a recognizable influence was the source of considerable anxiety. Most Protestants regarded the city’s growing Irish Catholic immigrant community as one of the most serious obstacles to almost every single aspect of their humanitarian reforms as well as to their idealistic endeavors to improve the lives of individual citizens and establish the moral vigor of a Christian and decidedly Protestant Republic. Anti-Catholicism had been a constant theme in Boston history, going back to earliest colonial times. Five centuries of mutual hatred and almost uninterrupted warfare between the English and the Irish accounted for the cold, even violent, reception faced by the first Irish emigrants who came ashore on the Shawmut Peninsula, where John Winthrop and his Puritan followers, in 1630, had established the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Despite the fact that most of the Irish settlers who arrived during the seventeenth century were Presbyterians from the northern counties of Ireland, their strong Protestant convictions did little to make them acceptable to the Puritans, who regarded the Irish universally as a barbaric, inferior, and unmanageable race of people. Despite a cool reception and early difficulties, however, the Ulster Irish (often referred to as the “Scotch-Irish”), who spoke English, demonstrated an admirable work ethic and eventually supported the colonial rebellion, were gradually accepted into the general Puritan community by the end of the century. No such receptive attitude was ever held toward those Irish people who emigrated from the southern counties and followed the Roman Catholic religion. To Anglo-Saxons in general, but to the Puritans in particular, Irish Catholics were not only from an inferior race, but they were also members of a detested religion that was blasphemous and heretical, and one whose members had also conspired with foreigner enemies like the Spaniards and Progress & Popery { 127 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 [127], Lines: ——— 0.0pt ——— Normal PgEnds: [127], the French to overthrow the English monarchy. The unsuccessful attempt in 1605 by a group of disgruntled Catholics, among them Guy Fawkes, to blow up the leaders of the government—the so-called Gunpowder Plot— only made the English more certain than ever that Catholics were engaged in a Papist conspiracy of cosmic proportions. Under these circumstances, Puritan authorities took every measure to see that no Irish Catholics (“St. Patrick’s Vermin”) were allowed into the Bay Colony, especially when they were also seen as potential allies of the French, who were in the process of colonizing neighboring Canada during the eighteenth century. In a further attempt to discourage Catholic immigration , in June 1700, the Massachusetts General Court passed a law forbidding any Catholic priest from coming into Massachusetts territory, under the penalty of life imprisonment or—if he escaped and was recaptured— death. In the absence of priests, it was assumed that Catholics would not turn up anywhere they could not hear Mass, receive the sacraments, or make their annual Easter duty. The spectre of the pope and the stereotype of every Catholic as a potential subversive agent continued to inflame the Puritan imagination, and for generations on Guy Fawkes Day, every November 5, the Protestants of Boston took part in an elaborate anti-Catholic demonstration called “Pope’s Night” that always ended with the pope being burned in effigy. Even when England defeated France in the Seven Years’ War in 1763, and ordered a relaxation of its official anti-Catholic policies in order to accommodate its newly acquired French Catholic population in Canada, the Puritans of Massachusetts showed no signs of easing their fiercely antiPapist attitudes. Regardless of what the British government said, young John Adams still viewed “popery” as incompatible with liberty. Catholicism was a “Roman system” that had kept humanity in chains “for ages,” he said, and therefore had no right...