The life and times of John Kelly, tribune of the people

by J. Fairfax McLaughlin

[5] Clarke’s Lives of the Deceased Bishops, vol. ii., pp. 111-112.

CHAPTER III.

THE GREAT COMMONER OF GEORGIA—SPEECH OF A. H. STEPHENS—HENRY A. WISE OF ACCOMAC—HENRY WINTER DAVIS—HIS CHARACTER—JOHN KELLY MEETS HIM IN DEBATE—KELLY’S STANDING IN CONGRESS—HIS CHARACTER DESCRIBED BY LEWIS CASS, BY A. H. STEPHENS, AND JAMES GORDON BENNETT—THE ERA OF KNOW-NOTHINGISM—KELLY’S PART IN ITS OVERTHROW.

The future historian of the United States, when he comes to treat of that extraordinary movement in American politics called Know-Nothingism, will not do justice to the subject unless he assigns the post of honor in the work of its overthrow as a national organization to Stephens of Georgia, Wise of Virginia, and Kelly of New York. A glance at the great work accomplished by these three men is all that can be attempted in this memoir.

“True Americanism,” said Alexander H. Stephens in his memorable Anti-Know-Nothing contest in Georgia in 1855, “as I have learned it, is like true Christianity—disciples in neither are confined to any nation, clime or soil whatever. Americanism is not the product of the soil; it springs not from the land or the ground; it is not of the earth, or earthy; it emanates from the head and the heart; it looks upward, and onward and outward; its life and soul are those grand ideas of government which characterize our institutions, and distinguish us from all other people; and there are no two features in our system which so signally distinguish us from all other nations as free toleration of religion and the doctrine of expatriation—the right of a man to throw off his allegiance to any and every other State, prince or potentate whatsoever, and by naturalization to be incorporated as a citizen into our body politic. Both these principles are specially provided for and firmly established in our Constitution. But these American ideas which were proclaimed in 1789 by our ‘sires of ’76’ are by their ‘sons’ at this day derided and scoffed at. We are now told that ‘naturalization’ is a ‘humbug,’ and that it is an impossibility. So did not our fathers think. This ‘humbug’ and ‘impossibility’ they planted in the Constitution; and a vindication of the same principle was one of the causes of our second war of independence. Let no man, then, barely because he was born in America, presume to be imbued with real and true ‘Americanism,’ who either ignores the direct and positive obligations of the Constitution, or ignores this, one of its most striking characteristics. An Irishman, a Frenchman, a German, or Russian, can be as thoroughly American as if he had been born within the walls of the old Independence Hall itself. Which was the ‘true American,’ Arnold or Hamilton? The one was a native, the other an adopted son.”[6]

Mr. Stephens had declined to be a candidate for Congress in 1855, and the Know-Nothings taunted him with cowardice, because, they said, if he should run he knew he was doomed to defeat. His letter on Know-Nothingism to Judge Thomas, from which the preceding extract is quoted, was denounced furiously by the Know-Nothings, who loudly predicted that the letter would prove to be his political winding-sheet. These taunts were published throughout the country, and induced Mr. Stephens to change his mind, and re-enter the field as a candidate for the Thirty-fourth Congress. In a speech at Augusta, Georgia, in which he announced this purpose, he said: “I have heard that it has been said that I declined being a candidate, because a majority of the district were Know-Nothings, and I was afraid of being beaten. Now, to all men who entertain any such opinion of me, I wish to say that I was influenced by no such motive. I am afraid of nothing on earth, or above the earth, or under the earth, except to do wrong—the path of duty I shall ever endeavor to travel, ‘fearing no evil,’ and dreading no consequences. Let time-servers, and those whose whole object is to see and find out which way the popular current for the day and hour runs, that they may float upon it, fear or dread defeat if they please. I would rather be defeated in a good cause than to triumph in a bad one. I would not give a fig for a man who would shrink from the discharge of duty for fear of defeat. All is not gold that glitters, and there is no telling the pure from the base until it is submitted to the fiery ordeal of the crucible and the furnace. The best test of a man’s integrity and the soundness of his principles is the furnace of popular opinion, and the hotter the furnace the better the test. I have traveled from a distant part of the State, where I first heard these floating taunts of fear—as coming from this district—for the sole and express purpose of announcing to you, one and all, and in this most public way to announce to the other counties, without distinction of party, that I am again a candidate for Congress in this district. The announcement I now make. My name is hereby presented to the district; not by any convention under a majority or a two-third rule—but by myself.

“I know, fellow-citizens, that many of you differ with me upon those exciting questions which are now dividing—and most unhappily, too, as I conceive—dividing our people. It is easy to join the shouts of the multitude, but it is hard to say to a multitude that they are wrong. I would be willing to go into one of your Know-Nothing lodges or councils, where every man would be against me, if I could be admitted without first having to put myself under obligations never to tell what occurred therein, and there speak the same sentiments that I shall utter here this night. Bear with me, then, while I proceed.[7] It is to exhibit and hold up even to yourselves the great evils and dangers to be apprehended from this ‘new,’ and, I think, most vicious political ‘monster,’ that I would address you; and against the influences of which I would warn and guard you, as well as the rest of our people. While the specious outside title of the party is that ‘Americans shall rule America,’ when we come to look at its secret objects as they leak out, we find that one of its main purposes is, not that ‘Americans shall rule America,’ but that those of a particular religious faith, though as good Americans as any others, shall be ruled by the rest.

“But it is said the ‘proscription’ is not against a religious but a political enemy, and the Roman Church is a political party, dangerous and powerful. Was a bolder assertion, without one fact to rest upon, ever attempted to be palmed off upon a confiding people? The Roman Church a political party! Where are its candidates? How many do they number in our State Legislatures or in Congress? What dangers are they threatening, or what have they ever plotted? Let them be named. Was it when Lord Baltimore, a Catholic, established the colony of Maryland, and for the first time on this continent established the principle of free toleration in religious worship? Was it when Charles Carroll, a Catholic, signed the Declaration of Independence? But it is said that great danger is to be apprehended from the Catholics because of a ‘secret order’ amongst them, known as Jesuits. ‘No one,’ says a Know-Nothing writer, ‘knows, or possibly can know, the extent of their influence in this country. One of them may eat at your table, instruct your children, and profess to be a good Protestant, and you never suspect him. Their great aim is to make their mark in America. Perjury to them is no sin, if the object of it be to spread Catholicism or acquire political influence in the country.’ Whether this be true of the Jesuits or not I cannot say. But I submit it to the consideration of candid minds how far it is true of the new order of Know-Nothings, which is now so strenuously endeavoring to make its mark in America, and to gain political influence in the country, not only by putting down all foreigners, and all native-born citizens who may be of Catholic faith, but also all other native-born citizens who will not take upon their necks the yoke of their power. Do not hundreds and thousands of them go about daily and hourly, denying that they belong to the order, or that they know anything about it? May they not, and do they not ‘eat at your table,’ attend your sick, and some of them preach from your pulpits, and yet deny that they know anything about that ‘order’ which they are making such efforts to spread in the land? I do not say all of them do this; but is it not common with the ‘order,’ thus by some sort of equivocation and slippery construction, to mislead and deceive those with whom they converse? There is nothing worse that can be said of any man or any people indicating a destruction of morals or personal degradation, than that ‘the truth is not in him.’ It is the life and soul of all the virtues, human or divine. Tell me not that any party will effect reformation of any sort, bad as we now are in this land, which brings into disrepute this principle upon which rests all our hopes on earth, and all our hopes for immortality. And my opinion is that the Protestant ministers of the Gospel in this country, instead of joining in this New England, puritanical, proscriptive crusade against Catholics, could not render a better service to their churches, as well as the State, in the present condition of morals amongst us, than to appoint a day for everyone of them to preach to their respective congregations from this text, ‘What is truth?’ Let it also be a day set aside for fasting, humiliation and prayer—for repentance in sackcloth and ashes—on account of the alarming prevalence of the enormous sin of lying! Was there ever such a state of general distrust between man and man before? Could it ever have been said of a Georgia gentleman, until within a few months past, that he says so and so, but I don’t know whether to believe him or not? Is it not bringing Protestantism, and Christianity itself, into disgrace when such remarks are daily made, and not without just cause, about Church communicants of all our Protestant denominations—and by one church member even about his fellow-member? Where is this state of things to lead to, or end, but in general deception, hypocrisy, knavery, and universal treachery?

“Was ever such tyranny heard of in any old party in this country as that which this new ‘order’ sets up? Every one of them knows, and whether they deny it or not, there is a secret monitor within that tells them that they have pledged themselves never to vote for any Roman Catholic to any office of profit or trust. They have thus pledged themselves to set up a religious test in qualifications for office against the express words of the Constitution of the United States. Their very organization is not only anti-American, anti-republican, but at war with the fundamental law of the Union, and, therefore, revolutionary in its character, thus silently and secretly to effect for all practical purposes a change in our form of government. And what is this but revolution? Not an open and manly rebellion, but a secret and covert attempt to undermine the very corner-stone of the temple of our liberties.

“Whenever any government denies to any class of its citizens an equal participation in the privileges, immunities, and honors enjoyed by all others, it parts with all just claim to their allegiance. Allegiance is due only so long as protection is extended; and protection necessarily implies an equality of right to stand or fall, according to merit, amongst all the members of society, or the citizens of the commonwealth. The best of men, after all, have enough of the old leaven of human nature left about them to fight when they feel aggrieved, outraged and trampled upon; and strange to say, where men get to fighting about religion they fight harder, and longer and more exterminatingly than upon any other subject. The history of the world teaches this. Already we see the spirit abroad which is to enkindle the fires and set the fagots a blazing—not by the Catholics, they are comparatively few and weak; their only safety is in the shield of the constitutional guarantee; minorities seldom assail majorities; and persecutions always begin with the larger numbers against the smaller. But this spirit is evinced by one of the numerous replies to my letter. The writer says: ‘We call upon the children of the Puritans of the North, and the Huguenots of the South, by the remembrance of the fires of Smithfield, and the bloody St. Bartholomew, to lay down for once all sectional difficulties,’ etc., and to join in this great American movement of proscribing Catholics. What is this but the tocsin of intestine strife? Why call up the remembrance of the fires of Smithfield but to whet the Protestant appetite for vengeance? Why stir up the quiet ashes of bloody St. Bartholomew, but for the hope, perhaps, of finding therein a slumbering spark from which new fires may be started? Why exhume the atrocities, cruelties, and barbarities of ages gone by from the repose in which they have been buried for hundreds of years, unless it be to reproduce the seed, and spread amongst us the same moral infection and loathsome contagion?—just as it is said the plague is sometimes occasioned in London by disentombing and exposing to the atmosphere the latent virus of the fell disease still lingering in the dusty bones of those who died of it centuries ago. Fellow citizens, Fellow Protestants, Fellow Americans—all who reverence the constitution of your country—I entreat you, and I envoke you to give no listening ear to such fanatical appeals.