Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2

by George Frisbie Hoar

On the other hand, you may be quite sure I should be unwilling to do injustice to any of my fellow citizens. They will hardly need be assured that I would not lightly or unnecessarily incur their disapprobation. But you may perhaps think it pardonable that I should not be thoroughly informed as to the principles, motives or conduct of a secret society. As you have undertaken the duty of giving me information, will you kindly answer for me the following questions:

1st. Is the organization to which you refer a secret organization? Are its discussions in the face of day? Do the persons whose political errors they especially oppose have an opportunity to know their purposes and to be convinced by their arguments? If the organization be in any respect secret, why is it deemed necessary to maintain such secrecy in the United States of America and at the close of the nineteenth century?

2d. Is it the custom of many persons who belong to it to deny, when inquired of, that they are members of such an association? And if this be true, does such a falsehood cost them the respect and friendship of their associates or diminish their influence in the order?

3d. Do members of the association, after joining it, retain their membership in other political parties? Do they agree together upon candidates for office or delegates to conventions to nominate officers and then go into their party caucuses to support such delegates agreed upon in secret, without consultation with their political brethren? If that be true, does it seem to you that that course is honest?

4th. Do you understand that any considerable number of Catholic laymen, in this country, accept the interpretation which you put upon the fifteen articles which you quote as principles of the Roman Catholic Church? Is it not true that the interpretation is absolutely rejected by the Catholic laity in general, and that they affirm for themselves as absolute independence of the Pope or of the clergy in all secular matters as you or I claim for ourselves in regard to Protestant clergymen?

5th. Are not Italy and France, two Catholic countries, to- day as absolutely free from any temporal power or influence of the Pope or the Catholic clergy as is Massachusetts?

6th. I have had sent me a little leaflet, purporting to be the principles of the American Protective Association, which you doubtless have seen. When you say, in your third article, that the American Protective Association is "opposed to the holding of offices in the National, State or municipal Government, by any subject or supporter of such ecclesiastical power," and in your fifth article, that you "protest against the employment of the subjects of any un-American ecclesiastical power as officers or teachers of our public schools," do you mean, or no, that no Catholic shall hold such National or State or municipal office, and that no Catholic shall be a teacher in a public school? You don't answer this question by quoting the language of church officials in by-gone days or the intemperate language of some priests in recent times. It is a practical question. Do you or don't you mean to exclude from such office and from such employment as teachers the bulk of the Catholic population of Massachusetts?

7th. Is it you opinion that General Philip H. Sheridan, were he living, would be unfit to hold civil or military office in this country? Or that his daughter, if she entertained the religious belief of her father, should be disqualified from being a teacher in a public school?

I have no pride of opinion. I shall be very glad to revise any opinion of mine and, as you state it, I shall be very glad to "know better in the future," if you will kindly enlighten me.

You and I, as I have said, have the same object at heart. We desire, above all things, the maintenance of the principles of civil and religious liberty; and above all other instrumentalities to that end, the maintenance of our common school system, at the public charge, open to all the children and free from partisan or sectarian control. If you and I differ, it is only as to what is the best means of accomplishing these ends. If you think that they are best accomplished by secret societies, by hiding from the face of day, by men who will not acknowledge what they are doing, and by refusing public employment to men and women who think on these subjects exactly as we do, but whose religious faith differs from ours, then I don't agree with you. I think your method will result in driving and compacting together, in solid mass, persons who will soon number nearly or quite fifty per cent. of the voting population of Massachusetts. Nothing strengthens men, nothing makes them so hard to hear reason, nothing so drives them to extremity in opinion or in action as persecution or proscription.