The Brief Sketch gives his portrait, as well as that of his predecessor.
After an episcopate of nearly ten years, the bishop was taken ill on his return from the funeral of his first ordained priest, and soon followed him to the grave. He died at No. 512 Broadway, on the 5th of February, 1825, and was buried under the cathedral, after having been exposed for two days in St. Peter's church. The ceremonial was imposing and attracted general attention, and the remarks of the papers of the day show the respect entertained for him by all classes of citizens.
The next bishop of New York was one well known in the country by his labors, especially by his successful exertions in giving the church in our republic a college and theological seminary suited to its wants—Mount St. Mary's College at Emmettsburg, Maryland. The life of the Rev. John Du Bois had been varied. Born in Paris, he was in college a fellow-student of Robespierre and Camille Desmoulins; but actuated by far different thoughts from those which filled the brains of such men, he devoted himself to the service of God. The revolution found him a laborious priest at Paris. Escaping in disguise from France during the Reign of Terror, through the connivance of his old fellow-collegian, Robespierre, he came to America, bearing letters of introduction from La Fayette to eminent personages in the United States.
"Having received faculties from Bishop Carroll, he exercised the holy ministry in various parts of Virginia and Maryland. He lived for some time with Mr. Monroe, afterward President of the United States, and in the family of Gov. Lee, of Maryland. After the death of Father Frambach, he took charge of the mission of Frederick in Maryland, of which mission he may be said in reality to have been the founder. When he arrived there, he celebrated mass in a large room which served as a chapel, and afterward built the first church. But though Frederick was his headquarters, he did not confine himself to it, but made stations throughout all the surrounding country, at Montgomery, Winchester, Hagerstown, and Emmettsburg, everywhere manifesting the same earnest zeal and indomitable perseverance. Bishop Bruté relates, as an instance of his activity and zeal, that once, after hearing confessions on Saturday evening, he rode during the night to near Montgomery, a distance of thirty-five to forty miles, to administer the last sacraments to a dying woman, and was back hearing confessions in the morning, at the Mountain, singing high mass and preaching, without scarcely any one knowing that he had been absent at all.
"In 1808, the Rev. Mr. Du Bois, having previously become a member of the Society of St. Sulpice, in Baltimore, went to reside at Emmettsburg, and laid the foundation of Mount St. Mary's College, which was afterward destined to be the means of so much usefulness to the Catholic Church in America. From this point, now surrounded by so many hallowed associations in the minds of American Catholics, by the sound religious education imparted to so many young men from various parts of the United States, 'by the many fervent and holy priests, trained under his direction,' and by the prudent care with which he cherished the rising institute of the Sisters of Charity at St. Joseph's, he became the benefactor, not of any particular locality, but of the whole Catholic body throughout the United States."
On coming to his diocese after his consecration in Baltimore in October, 1826, he found three churches and four or six priests in New York City; a church and one priest at Brooklyn, Albany, and a few stations elsewhere. But the trustee system fettered the progress of Catholicity.
Long devoted to the cause of education for secular life or the service of the altar, Bishop Du Bois's fondest desire was to endow his diocese with another Mount St. Mary's, but all his efforts failed. A hospital was also one of his early projects; but these and other good works could spring up only when the way had been prepared by his trials, struggles, and sufferings.
During his administration the number of Catholics increased greatly, and new churches sprang up in the city and other parts of the diocese. Of these various foundations and the zealous priests of that day many interesting details are given, to which we can but refer—the erection of St. Mary's, Christ church, Transfiguration, St. Joseph's, St. Nicholas's, St. Paul's at Harlem. The services of the Very Rev. Doctor Power, of Rev. Felix Varela, of Rev. Messrs. Levins and Schueller, and other clergymen of that day are not yet forgotten.
The excitement caused by the Act of Catholic Emancipation in England had its counterpart here, stimulated too by jealousy at the influx of foreign labor. The church had had her day of penal laws and wild excitement; now war was to be made through the press. About 1835 it began in New York. The use of falsehood against Catholicity seems to be considered by some one of the higher virtues. Certainly there is a strange perversion of conscience on the point. The anti-Catholic literature of that period is a curiosity that must cause some cheeks to tingle if there is any manhood left. They took up Fulkes's Confutation of the Rhemish Testament, reprinted the text from it, and affixed to it a certificate of several clergymen that it was a reprint from the original published at Rheims. It was not. They caught up a poor creature from a Magdalen asylum in Montreal, and concocted a book, laying the scene in the Hôtel Dieu, commonly called the Convent of the Black Nuns, at Montreal. The book was so infamous that the Harpers issued it under the name of Howe & Bates. It was published daily in The Sun newspaper, and had an immense circulation. Colonel William L. Stone, a zealous Protestant, went to the spot, and, there convinced of the fraud, published an exposure of the vile slanders. He was assailed in a satire called The Vision of Rubeta, and the pious Protestant community swallowed the filthy details. At last there arose a quarrel over the spoils. A triangular lawsuit between the Harpers, the Rev. Mr. Slocum, and Maria Monk in the court of chancery gave some strange disclosures, more startling than the fictitious ones of the book. Vice-Chancellor McCoun in disgust turned them out of his court, and told them to go before a jury; but none of them dared to face twelve honest men.
A paper called The Downfall of Babylon flourished for a time on this anti-Catholic feeling, reeking with lewdness and impurity. At last their heroine and tool, Maria Monk, cast off and scouted, ended her days on Blackwell's Island.
Among the curiosities of this period was a work of S. F. B. Morse, (we used in our younger days to think the initials stood for Savage Furious Bigot,) entitled Brutus, or a Foreign Conspiracy against the Liberties of the United States. The queen of France had given the Bishop of St. Louis some altar paintings, and herein was the conspiracy. We saw a picture the other day of Mr. Morse with the stars of several foreign orders of knighthood on his breast; he has received many, some from Catholic sovereigns, and, we believe, one from the pope. Brutus should certainly take him in hand; for some of these orders require knights to swear to things that would be rather awkward for a zealous Protestant to undertake. Et tu Brute!