In the month of June, 1803, he wrote to his mother, in apology for a long silence; telling her that he is seriously contemplating seeing her once more, but that he is trammelled in his desire by the want of a priest to take his place;—indeed, that his work has so grown under his hands, that he doubts whether he will ever again be privileged to clasp his mother in his arms. "I may not think of it," he adds; "my heart is fraught with affection for you, and it seems to me that I should absolutely see you once more, so as to borrow courage to follow the path which is marked out for me in this perverse world." The letters from Overberg are witnesses of the tears shed by the mother, so anxious again to look upon her son, as well as of the unmurmuring mournfulness of her resignation.
The announcement of his father's death again brought up the subject of his visit to Europe. Indeed, his presence was required in the settlement of his inheritance; but now, as before, the joy of once more treading his native soil, and the happiness of embracing his mother, had to yield to what he considered his duty to his infant colony. The just and plausible reasons which he alleges to his mother for his course, allow us at the same time fairly to appreciate the extent of his work, and the hopes built upon its success. Hence he suggests the consideration due to those families that his advice had influenced, for the greater honor of religion, to follow him in the wilderness;—the money obligations, contracted with various friends, who had trusted him with large sums to speed the development of his scheme, and whose confidence, therefore, might be seriously wronged by his departure;—the interests of so many others, who had committed all their worldly hopes into his hands and whom his absence might leave an easy prey to heartless speculators;—and, finally, the pending questions, started by the scheme of erecting into a county the territory to which the lands of the colony belonged. All these motives, to which others were added, were sufficiently weighty to press on the conscience of Demetrius the duty Of remaining at his post. This final resolution his mother learned with the firmness of Christian heroism. She wrote to the prince: "Whatever sorrow may have panged my motherly heart at the idea of renouncing a hope that a while seemed within reach, I owe it to truth to tell thee that thy letter has afforded me the greatest consolation that I can look for upon earth." It is a touching picture to behold, in the sequel, this zealous mother continuing her interest in the mission founded by the prince, and providing for its success in keeping with the inspirations of her heart. Thus it was that, through the channel of the Bishop of Baltimore, she transmitted to her son a bill of exchange for a considerable amount, a box of books—a treasure in those days—rosaries for the settlers, linen for himself and friends, garments, and even baby-clothes, for the poorer members of the settlement, sacerdotal vestments, embroidered by the princess herself, by her daughter, and by Countess de Stolberg, and, lastly, a magnificent present, which the missionary during his life valued beyond all price, and with which, in accordance with his wishes, he was laid to slumber in the tomb.
In the meantime Gallitzin's colony, settled in the midst of those wild wastes, had expanded and become a town, to which he gave the name of Loretto, the beginning of which are [{151}] thus described by our missionary's successor: "The colony was composed of individuals who generally purchased considerable tracts, varying from one to four hundred acres in extent, which they cleared and converted to cultivation. In proportion as the population increased, they gradually emerged from the savagery of the earlier periods, and soon experienced the wants of a growing civilization. The indication of those wants suggested to Gallitzin's mind the necessity of converting the humble settlement into a town. Mechanics, of every useful trade, rapidly gathered around the nucleus—blacksmiths, millers, carpenters, shoemakers, with even storekeepers, and Loretto soon assumed the position which its founder had designed.
"Here, then, stands the town; but, with its new dignity, came a host of vexations. It marked for Gallitzin a period of struggle against every imaginable difficulty, which brought his firmness to the sorest trials, and which indeed might have jeoparded the very existence of his work. In fact, the means of reducing, under the control of a single hand, the heterogeneous components of such a colony was no easy problem to be solved. Gallitzin efforts to bring it under a normal organization had to meet many an antagonizing element, whilst the peculiar American spirit, which had even then permeated those solitudes, reared up obstacles to his scheme. Gallitzin, however, proved unshakable, and exhibited an unbending energy of character. At one time there was an actual crisis in the prospects of the colony. A member of the community, with a fair allotment of the goods of this world, with the excitable American brain and a marked tendency to speculation, suddenly conceived the idea to set up a competition with the growing colony and to lay the foundations of a rival one in the neighborhood. He went to work accordingly, and, with the assistance of a few Irishmen, actually laid the foundations of village, which he named Munster, after one of the provinces of Ireland. This rival of Loretto immediately became the headquarters of the propagators of light, in other words, of those who had little relish for the zeal of Gallitzin and the inconvenient discipline of the Church. Satisfied not only with putting the prosperity of Loretto in evident peril, the seceders also assailed the character of Gallitzin, and through these means derived an unexpected help. It happened fitly for their purposes that at the time two German vagabonds—one a priest of most questionable character, and the other a nobleman, whom the crime of forgery had driven from the Old World—presented themselves to Gallitzin, and anything but pleased, no doubt, with the welcome which they received, resolved to swell the party of malcontents. With cunning malice, they soon disseminated reports injurious to their countryman, gave a pretended substance to unfounded suspicions, feeding the animosities of the common herd. The fact, also, of Gallitzin's having assumed a borrowed name was a means of shaking the settlers and sowing distrust in their minds. Things went on from bad to worse, and a catastrophe seemed to be imminent, when came the upshot, so much the more ludicrous because the less expected. The Gordian knot, after the expeditious American fashion, was cut by an Alexander who rejoiced in the name of John Wakeland. He was an Irishman, a giant in stature and strength, famed in the settlement as a wolf and bear killer; and in reality one of the kindest men in the world, and one of the hardest to stir from his natural proprieties. These miserable intrigues and base machinations aroused his indignation, and he immediately came to the conclusion to put an end to them by the interposition of the logic of the strong hand. The agitators had concocted a plan, which was devised to extort from Gallitzin some sort of an assent, and the [{152}] prince could hardly have escaped their intended violence had he not sought sanctuary in the chapel of Loretto. But the mob had merely adjourned their intended excesses; and they were preparing for extreme means to achieve their ends when John Wakeland, brandishing a sturdy hickory in the midst of the infatuated mob, declared that, he would "settle," on the spot, any one who durst threaten the good priest. There was a magical spell in the hickory. The timidly good men, who there, as everywhere else, had shrunk into a circle of impassive inaction, feeling the influence of a sturdy support, borrowed courage from the hour; and had it not been for the interference of Gallitzin, his detractors, to use an American phrase, would have had 'a rough time of it' From that moment, a complete revulsion of feeling took place in behalf of the missionary; while the bishop succeeded in ultimately restoring order and peace in the little parish. He carefully inquired into all the facts, and then addressed to the parishioners a letter which was posted at the church door, and recalled the faithful to the regular order of things.
"Difficulties, however, of another kind, and of a more serious import, waited on Gallitzin. From the death of his father, he had been suddenly cut off from the pecuniary assistance which he had periodically received from Europe. He himself, as a Catholic priest, had been, by the laws of Russia, excluded from his paternal heritage; while his mother, who had exhausted her means in litigations, was compelled to forego the assistance which, from time to time, she had extended to her son. In satisfying his boundless charities, and in the achievements of his plans, the founder of Loretto had somewhat relied on this inheritance, which thus passed away from his hands. This disappointment, therefore, brought upon him a new burden of anxiety and cares. Destitution and poverty might have been easily borne by him; but he could not make up his mind to give up the idea of founding an imposing Catholic colony—to abandon the undertaking which he had initiated—to be compelled to relinquish lands which had been reclaimed by so much toil and so much care—and, especially, to face impatient creditors, who might accuse him of thoughtlessly going into debt, and from such an accusation justify their expression of contempt."
As a crowning development to all of these tribulations, the European mail brought to Gallitzin the news of his beloved mother's death. On the 17th of April, 1806, in the city of Münster, the excellent princess had closed her eyes for ever, comforting her disappointment that she had not been permitted to see her son on earth by the hope that she would surely meet him in heaven. The narrative of the last moments of the Princess Gallitzin, received, by the stout-hearted missionary, through the letters of his sister, of Overberg, and of Count de Stolberg, supplied a fund of inexpressible comfort; but from that hour the temporal claims and requirements of his position bore terribly on his endurance. It required unheard-of efforts to save his undertaking from the burden of indebtedness, and if, at the hour of his death, he quit-claimed the property of the Church and left it free from all and every charge, the blessed consummation came with the sunset of life only, and that, too, after miracles of constant energy. And here, especially, looms up the secondary phase of Gallitzin's character, which had not escaped his father's more searching eye. In fact, and in answer to a letter of his wife, in which she bitterly complained of the inertness of their son, then sixteen years of age, he wrote to her that "deep waters run still; that, to his mind, she misconceives the disposition of Demetrius, and that he is ever running against wind and tide." And indeed, to struggle against the torrent of time and of events was the whole work of his life. And against this torrent he heaved up the bulk of [{153}] his writings that have come down to us. It is easy to conceive that it required no common reason to induce a man of his temper of mind to write. We have the motive of this reason in the fact that a Presbyterian preacher of Huntington had thought fit to assail and calumniate the Catholic Church as an institution dangerous to the country and to its liberties. Gallitzin immediately took up the pen in answer, and the necessities of the controversy turned him into a polemica writer.
There are in America, no less than in other countries, fanatical sectarians who follow their congenial instincts in sounding the alarm-cry whenever the Catholic Church marks out new limits of lawful conquest. In this instance, the state was declared to be in peril; but Gallitzin lost no time in confounding the slanderers of Catholicity by the publication of his "Defense of Catholic Principles," which appeared in Pittsburgh in the year 1816. This work, written in English—for the author wielded the English with as much facility as he did the German language, his mother tongue—was, on both shores of the ocean, greeted with success. Father Lemcke made a German translation of the "Defense of Catholic Principles," of which two editions were published in Ireland and four in the United States, ranking "in popularity with 'Cobbett's History of the Reformation,' to which it bears a resemblance in putting a probing finger on the plague-spot of Protestantism."
The start being once made, Gallitzin followed up his first work with other publications of an entirely practical character, directed against certain prevalent moral diseases of the day, which mark an epoch in the monography of American ideas. Gallitzin was perfectly familiar with the mode of treatment of the feverish exuberance of American notions, and he handled them with all the cautious skill of a prudent practitioner. Everything which he published on these matters, both in elucidation of his views and as a muniment against the evils which he denounced, is written in the winning and popular style which was familiar to his pen. Hence his works were crowned with success, even amongst the higher classes of society. "Gallitzin's publications," says his biographer, "exerted an immense influence in the period when he lived, but especially so among the humbler members of the community, for whom they were destined. They were found, and they may still be found, in the form of unpretending pamphlets, in the hotels and steamboats of the West, for he had them printed at his own expense and distributed as the Protestant colporteurs disseminate their Bibles and tracts. The curiosity of the readers enlarged their circulation everywhere; and I myself have found them as perfectly thumbed as any spelling-book in spots where I never dreamed of meeting with them."
In the meantime, Gallitzin, who had hitherto labored under the protecting shadow of his humility, had begun to attract the attention of the American world around him. The manner in which he had marked his entrance in social life—not so much by the power of genius as by that integrity of character which commanded the respect of public opinion—had carried his reputation far beyond the limits of the frontiers, and secured for him an esteem, the proofs of which came back to him in numerous testimonials gathering from all sides. It was at this time that he published various pamphlets signed with his real name: "Demetrius Augustin Gallitzin, Catholic curate of Loretto."
It was natural, when the question of creating a new bishopric came up, that all eyes should turn to such a man as Gallitzin. There was a desire, therefore, more than once expressed to see him called to the episcopal chair; but he persistently repelled the intended dignity, and exerted his every power to counteract the efforts of [{154}] those who were anxious to have it conferred upon him. He asked for one favor only—that of remaining at Loretto; and, with this view, he consented to accept the functions of vicar-general to the Bishop of Philadelphia, which had been recently raised into a diocese.