What might have been the scenes in New York in 1844, when murder ran riot in Philadelphia! The Natives had just elected a mayor; the city would in a few days be in their hands; a public meeting was called in the park, and all seemed to promise a repetition of the scenes in the sister city. A bold, stern extra issued from the office of The Freeman's Journal that actually sent terror into the hearts of the would-be rioters. It was known at once that the Catholics would defend their churches to the last gasp. The firm character of the archbishop was well known, and with that to animate the people the struggle would not be a trifling one.
The call for the meeting was countermanded and New York was saved; few knew from what.
To return to the earlier days of the century. If attacks were made, inquiry was stimulated. Conversions to the truth were neither few nor unimportant. Bishop Bayley mentions briefly the reception into the church of one nearly related to himself, Mrs. Eliza Ann Seton, daughter of the celebrated Doctor Bayley, and widow of William Seton, a distinguished New York merchant. Born on Staten Island, and long resident in New York, gracing a high social position by her charming and noble character, she made her first communion in St. Peter's church on the 25th of March, 1805, and in a few years, giving herself wholly to God, became, under him, the foundress in the United States of the Sisters of Charity, whose quiet labors of love, and charity, and devotedness in the cause of humanity and education in every city in the land seek no herald here below, but are written deep in the hearts of grateful millions.
Several Protestant clergymen in those days returned to the bosom of unity, such as the Rev. Mr. Kewley, of St. George's church, New York; Rev. Calvin White, ancestor of the Shakespeare scholar, Richard Grant White; and Mr. Ironsides. Strange, too, was the conversion of the Rev. Mr. Richards, sent from New York as a Methodist preacher to Western New York and Canada. We follow him, by his diary, through the sparse settlements which then dotted that region, whence he extended his labors to Montreal. There, good man, in the zeal of his heart he thought to conquer Canadian Catholicity by storming the Sulpitian seminary at Montreal, converting all there, and so triumphantly closing the campaign. His diary of travel goes no further. Mr. Richards died a few years since, a zealous and devoted Sulpitian priest of the seminary at Montreal.
New York was too far from Baltimore to be easily superintended by the bishop of that see. His vast diocese was now to be divided, and this city was erected into an episcopal see in 1808, by Pope Pius VII. The choice for the bishop who was to give form to the new diocese, fell upon the Rev. Luke Concanen, a learned and zealous Dominican, long connected with the affairs of his order at Rome. Bishop Bayley gives a characteristic letter of his. He had persistently declined a see in Ireland with its comparative comforts and consolations among a zealous people; but the call to a position of toil, the establishment of a new diocese in a new land, where all was to be created, was not an appeal that he could disregard. He submitted to the charge imposed upon him, and after receiving episcopal consecration at Rome, prepared to reach his see, wholly ignorant of what he should find on his arrival in New York. It was, however, no easy matter then to secure passage. Failing to find a ship at Leghorn, he proceeded to Naples; but the French, who had overrun Italy, detained him as a British subject, and while thus thwarted and harassed, he suddenly fell sick and died. Thus New York never beheld its first bishop.
Then followed a long vacancy, highly prejudicial to the progress of the church, but a vacancy that European affairs caused. The successor of St. Peter was torn from Rome, and held a prisoner in France. The Catholic world knew not under what influence acts might be issued as his, that were really the inventions of his enemies. The bishops in Ireland addressed a letter to the bishops of the United States to propose some settled line of action in all cases where there was not evidence that the pope was a free agent. The reply of the bishops in the United States is given in the volume before us.
Meanwhile, the Archbishop of Baltimore extended his care to the diocese of New York. When Father O'Brien at last sank under his increasing years, New York would have seen its Catholic population in a manner destitute, had not the Jesuit fathers of Maryland come to their assistance. Rev. Anthony Kohlmann, a man of sound theological learning and great zeal, who died many years after at Rome, honored by the sovereign pontiffs, was the administrator of the diocese. With him were Rev. Benedict Fenwick, subsequently Bishop of Boston, and Rev. Peter Malou, whose romantic life would form an interesting volume; for few who recollect this venerable priest, in his day such a favorite with the young, knew that he had figured in great political events, and in the struggle of Belgium for freedom had led her armies.
Under the impulse of these fathers a collegiate institution was opened, and continued for some years on the spot where the new magnificent cathedral is rising; and old New York Catholics smiled when a recent scribbler asserted that the site of that noble edifice was a gift from the city. Trinity, the Old Brick church, and some other churches we could name were built on land given by the ruling powers, but no Catholic church figures in the list. The college was finally closed, from the fact that difficulties in Maryland prevented the order from supplying necessary professors to maintain its high position.
To secure to young ladies similar advantages for superior education, some Ursuline nuns were induced to cross the Atlantic. They were hailed with joy, and their academy was wonderfully successful. The superior was a lady whose appearance was remarkably striking, and whose cultivation and ability impressed all. Unfortunately they came under restrictions which soon deprived New York of them. Unless novices joined them within a certain number of years, they were to return to Ireland.
In a new country vocations could be only a matter of time, and as the Ursuline order required a dowry, the vocations of all but wealthy young ladies were excluded, and even of these when subject to a guardian.