Meanwhile, Massachusetts was completely controlled by the Know-nothings. Their governor, Gardiner, had not been well in the chair of state when he disbanded all the Irish military companies within his jurisdiction. These were the Columbian, Webster, Shields, and Sarsfield Guards of Boston, the Jackson Musketeers of Lowell, the Union Guard of Lawrence, and the Jackson Guard of Worcester. The General Court, too, not to be outdone in bigotry by the executive, passed a law for the inspection of nunneries, convents, and schools, and appointed a committee to carry out its provisions. The first—and last—domiciliary visit of this body was made to the school of the Sisters of Notre Dame in Roxbury. It is thus graphically described by the Boston Advertiser, an eminently Protestant authority: “The gentlemen—we presume we must call members of the legislature by this name—roamed over the whole house from attic to cellar. No chamber, no passage, no closet, no cupboard, escaped their vigilant search. No part of the house was enough protected by respect for the common courtesies of civilized life to be spared in the examination. The ladies’ dresses hanging in their wardrobes were tossed over. The party invaded the chapel, and showed their respect—as Protestants, we presume—for the One God whom all Christians worship by talking loudly with their hats on; while the ladies shrank in terror at the desecration of a spot which they believed hallowed.”
Still, the work of proscription and outrage went on in other directions. Fifteen school-teachers had been dismissed in Philadelphia because they were Catholics; the Rev. F. Nachon, of Mobile, was assaulted and nearly killed while pursuing his sacred avocations; a military company in Cincinnati, and another in Milwaukee, composed of adopted citizens, were disbanded, and on the 6th and 7th of August, 1855, the streets of Louisville ran red with the blood of adopted citizens. In this last and culminating Know-nothing outrage eleven hundred voters were driven from the polls, numbers of men, and even women, were shot down in the public thoroughfares, houses were sacked and burned, and at least five persons are known to have been literally roasted alive.
A reaction, however, had already set in. Men of moderate views and unbiassed judgments began to tire of the scenes of strife, murder, and rapine that accompanied the victories of the Know-nothings. The first to deal it a deadly blow, as a political body, was Henry A. Wise, of Virginia, in his noble canvass of that State against the combined Whig and Nativist elements in 1855; and to the late Archbishop of New York, in his utter discomfiture of State Senator Brooks, is justly due the merit of having first convinced the American people that the so-called American party was actually the most dangerous enemy of American laws and institutions, the advocate of spoliation and persecution under the guise of patriotism and reform.
The decline of Nativism, though not so rapid as its growth, was equally significant, and its history as instructive. In 1856 a national convention was called by the wreck of the party to nominate Fillmore for the presidency, after overtures had been made in vain to the Republicans and Democrats. Fillmore was so badly defeated that he retired into private life and lost whatever little fame he had acquired in national affairs as Taylor’s successor. Four years later Bell and Everett appeared on the Know-nothing ticket, but so far behind were they in the race with their presidential competitors that very few persons cared to remember the paucity of their votes. Gradually, silently, but steadily, like vermin from a sinking ship, the leaders slunk away from the already doomed faction, and, by a hypocritical display of zeal, endeavored to obtain recognition in one or other of the great parties, but generally without success. Disappointed ambition, impotent rage, and, let us hope, remorse of conscience occasionally seized upon them, and the charity of silence became to them the most desired of blessings. Perhaps if the late civil war had not occurred, to swallow in the immensity of its operations all minor interests, we might have beheld in 1864 the spectre of Nativism arising from its uneasy slumber, to be again subjected to its periodical blights and curses.
From present appearances many far-seeing persons apprehend the recurrence in this year of the wild exhibitions of anti-Catholic and anti-American fanaticism which have so often blotted and blurred the otherwise stainless pages of our short history; that the centennial year of American independence and republican liberty is to be signalized by a more concerted, better organized, and more ramified attack on the great principles of civil and religious freedom which underlie and sustain the fabric of our government. We trust, sincerely hope, that these men are mistaken. But if such is to be the case; if we Catholics are doomed once more to be subjected to the abuse of the vile, the slander of the hireling, and the violence of an armed mob, the sooner we are prepared for the contingency the better. If the scenes which have indelibly disgraced Boston and Philadelphia, Ellsworth and Louisville, are to be again rehearsed by the half-dozen sworn secret societies whose cabalistic letters disfigure the columns of so many of our newspapers, we must be prepared to meet the danger with firmness and composure. As Catholics, demanding nothing but what is justly our due under the laws, our position will ever be one of forbearance, charity, and conciliation; but as American citizens, proud of our country and zealous for the maintenance of her institutions, our place shall be beside the executors of those grand enactments which have made this republic the paragon and exemplar of all civil and natural virtues, no matter how imminent the danger or how great the sacrifice. In lands less favored Catholic rights may be violated by prince or mob with impunity, but we would be unworthy of our country and of its founders were we to shrink for a moment from the performance of our trust as the custodians of the fundamental ordinance which guarantees full and absolute religious liberty to all citizens of the republic.
LOUISE LATEAU BEFORE THE BELGIAN ROYAL ACADEMY OF MEDICINE.[260]
I.
How is the name of Louise Lateau to be mentioned without immediately calling up all the tumulta which that name has provoked? Books of science and philosophy, official reports, academic discourses, reports of visits, feuilletons, conferences, pamphlets, articles in journals, every kind of literary production has been placed under contribution to keep the public informed about the stigmatisée of Bois d’Haine. For a year, however, these studies have betaken themselves to a region that might be called exclusively scientific, and have even received a kind of official consecration from the recent vote of the Royal Academy of Medicine.