culated through Protestant Ireland, and every heart
vibrated in tones of thunder ! Five-sixths of the Penn-
sylvanian volunteers enrolled at the first note of warn-
ing, and their House of Commons steadily refused, to
vote any supplies for that war! whilst an Lish
166 THE GREAT AMERICAN BATTLE.
Burke, a Bare, and Slieridan spoke and wrote in
England effectually for our cause ! I remember well,"
slie continued, " when our Congxess in seventeen hun-
dred and seventy-six addressed the Irish people, who
had been to our cause as the morning star of hope,
when England was striving to keep her armed heel
upon your young forehead, America !"
"I thank God," said many, "that we once more realize
the greatness of dear Erin of old !"
" Yes, my children, she has been polluted and cor-
roded by the accursed power of Popery, and when I have
more fully explained to you its evil on that once great
and noble nation, you will feel more and more I trust
in God why you should never allow its ascendency
over American liberty ! My children, do you know
that Ireland was originally Protestant to the core I
and resisted Kome long after the British and Saxon
churches had yielded to her delusion ? Yes, my friends,
it was five centuries after England was wrapped in the
mysteries of Popery, before Ireland was clutched by
the Papal supremacy, and was the very last country
in all Europe to submit to its sword !"
" Why," said many in great ecstasy, " seven-tenths of
our population deride the idea that Ireland was ever else
than an oppressed, down-trodden country !"
" I know it, my children, and we their descendants,
who have enjoyed the first fruits of their toil, should
rise like true Americans, and repel this delusion Avith
our whole strength, if our whole strength be neces-
sary ! Ireland always degraded — Ireland the evan-
gelist of all Europe ! A whole hemisphere in light,
FOREIGNERS, PROTESTANT AND CATHOLIC. 167
gifted to an extreme beyond all others ! Ko, my cliil-
dren, until Henry the Second of England and Pope
Adrian of Eome, resolved by force of arms to annex
Ireland, in order to extend the bounds of the Church,
she had been for centuries a fiery light for Europe, in
science and learning, as well as Christianity."
"How then did England rise under this degraded
servility and superstition?"
" She threw it off indeed, bef :)re she attempted to
stand upon her feet ! The glorious light of the Eefor-
mation snatched her to its embrace under the House
of Orange, and healed her wounds, before they had
run too deep under the skin, my son; and when timely
succored, she rose, stronger than before, and essayed to
hope for peace and honor and length of days ! This
great Kevolution made her wax fat and kick, so that
when the same celestial light shed its halo over us,
nearly a century later, she sought to gall and hamper
your fathers, my children, to prescribe them a course
and a goal, as she had done old Ireland, when they
put her into a circuitous route, and taught her the fatal
error ! That brought to our aid these Protestant Irish
spirits, who like St. Paul and his apostles, dwelt as
political slaves. And it makes my heart ache to know,
that the land which had sent legions to Britain and Gaul
to repel Imperial Eome ; the land,which had shed rivers
of blood to save us and our rights, my friends, should
now bear upon her green sward a gangrene, which
takes all the sunlight from her soul and can be seen but
through a paltry chink! And thus, my friends, our
young people see Ireland in America now, as she
168 THE GKEAT AMEEICAN BATTLE.
migrates for bread! under tlie dict"am of the same
Eomisli Hierarcliy, whicli cruslied her glory, and made
her downs, but a great slaughter-house for Eome I
''Grreat God! when we see the mighty death-days
of that beautiful and once famed isle ; when we see
how the dusky, glaring torch of Popery has shaken its
serpent hair into terror of terrors, and danced to its
neck in Protestant blood, until hidden in some formless
depth, all that had head, heart, soul, body and spirit,
seemed prostrated for ever ! Should we not strive and
pray, that Papal Ireland may not now be a tar-barrel,
to light our highways to ruin and death!"
"Mother," said America, "3^ou have mirrored this
truth, so rapidly, gracefully and promptly, our friends
will be gratified to have more information of our Irish
ancestors who nursed me, when a little infant, in the
cradle !"
" My children," said the old lady smilingly, "you seem
to remember I am a grey -haired, all- experienced w^oman ;
but withal, I trust I may not be a drj'-nurse to you."
" No, no," said many, "you have sent a glitter of sun-
light to our souls, made more bottomless, by every
word you utter!"
" My friends, it w^as to enthrone the Bible on your
soil, and to deliver your national education from that
idolatry, from which Ireland perished, that their Pro-
testant sons came burning for your deliverance from
tyranny and oppression ! I have heard the venerable
Dr. Franklin," said she, "contrast open-hearted Ireland
with bl\int, curled-nosed England ! and allude to his
warm reception in their House of Commons^ in seven-
FOREIGXERS, PROTESTANT AND CATHOLIC. 169
teen hundred and seventy-three^ when they nnani-
mously voted him the right within their Bar, which
an Englishman, then, would have denied him ! My
children, it was by an Irishman that the first daily
paper was published in your country ! and in which
the first notice of your birth, America, appeared ! He
afterwards was the first printer to Congress, and in his
columns the declaration first was published! The
Secretary to the first Congress, was also an Irishman,
who wrote o-ut this great document of your life from
Mr. Jefferson's draft; he it was, who delivered to
Franklin his instructions, and to Washington the fact,
that the nation had made him their ruler 1 The gun-
powder, cannon, and guns which unfolded the spirit
of freedom, on Bunker Hill, and made it a germ of
irrepressible force, was in part furnished from the fort
of Newcastle, which Irishmen had stormed I"
As these words were uttered, all present seemed
to sparkle nature's fire, the mercury ran high, and all
vowed that the American Party had come in God's
providence to take away all false eyeglasses, green or
yellow, convex or concave, and significantly show, that
the foreign Protestant element was now, as it was in
the days of America's infancy, wholly in sympathy
with us, in heart and soul, and action !
" Two brigade generals, and at least one-third of the
active chiefs in the first council of war, under "Wash-
ington, my friends, were Irishmen ! But," added she,
" how could I attempt to name the myriads of this na-
tionality who have aided us not only in settling the tree
of Independence, but in extending and strengthening all
170 THE GREAT AMERICAN BATTLE.
its fibres and radicles ! The brave Montgomery, who
fell gloriously at Quebec, and your own Jackson, the
hero of ISTew Orleans, were Irishmen, though the latter
was born soon after the arrival of his parents in our
dear country, and by this fact became eligible to the chief
magistracy of the nation, which was twice conferred upon
him by the elective franchise ! And, you remember,"
said the speaker, " what that Irish patriot said about
this present Papal rush to our shores ! The Colony of
Pennsylvania, under Penn, was for two years governed
by Logan, who gave to Philadelphia her first Pubhc
Library ! And Pulton, who invented your Steamboat,
was of the same nationality ! Americans I speak as
I do know, and testify to what I have seen; and I
should as soon think of cutting our sphere into halves,
and then join them together, by a sticking plaster, as
to take out the active Irish patriotism of our war of
Independence, and call it any Eevolution at all ! Why
sugar infuses its sweetness into your tea ! But when
Irish and German social democratic associations, in
the very land and home of our Washington — Virginia
— demand reforms under our general government, as
well as the States, for abolishing the presidency — abol-
ishing the Senate — reducing the term for acquiring
citizenship — and requiring a separate department of
government to protect immigration ; it is time to con-
sider the foreigners' idea of our American liberty ; it
is time for Americans to inquire how far this arrogant,
impudent audacity shall be allowed, to demand that
liberty of conscience which insists upon the abolition of
all laws for the observance of the Sabbath, abolishing
FOKEIGNEKS — PROTESTANT AND CATHOLIC. 171
prayers in Congress — abolishing oaths upon the Bible !
Great God, what a country for Americans, with no
permanent constitution — no Sabbath — no oaths upon
the Bible — no neutrality — -no Christian punishment —
no national executive to administer American laws
and protect our rights against this foreign Jesuit
machinery."
The conversation now became general, and so spirited
that it seemed like a powder magazine, ready to flame
at the first spark I The wife, sister, or daughter pres-
ent, shared equally in this, for the question being for
right and country, it revived all that had been devised,
discovered, done, felt, or imagined by their revolution-
ary mothers^ and awakened and kindled, purified, and
enforced it, as their first grand problem, to follow that
example !
America's mother looked all the more holy and
lovely, when she discoursed to her friends. And no
sound in nature was to them like that melodious melt-
ing softness, that came in full volume from her warm,
stout heart.
"Americans, I desire to show you that nations,
like individuals, become purer from errors, by suffer-
ing from them, as gold is purified by fire I There
has been too much improper cult are in our tough
American soil. The manure has been too fat, there
has been entirely too much gardening, and too little
digging and ploughing, for the good of your own na-
tionality ! And what is the consequence ? Why, your
character, America, has been distorted abroad, and in
place of your sturdy oaks, which germ from American
acorns, they are sending seed and planting artichokes
172 THE GREAT AMEEICA:N' BATTLE.
all over your dear country! Why, countrymen,
do you mean to make a great potato hole of your
American soil ? Do you mean, in the face of all the
degradation, that Popery and Jesuitism has done for
Ireland, to sit in your provision carts, unwatchfully,
stay away from the battle, until all pregnant with life
is gone, and your foundation stone tilted right over,
and Kome, in wild dinning tumult, re-enacting upon
you, her fierce hate and carnage I"
"I now understand one thing, truly, ' ' said America,
"that, if ever this foreign Hierarchy has the power, it
will set about delivering our dear country from heresy,
just as it did Ireland — by deliberately taking the
blood of every human soul out of the pale of their
church, to the last drop I"
" Did England suffer," inquired many, ''from the
interference of Popery in her government?"
" Suffer, Americans '/ It w^as a devouring chaos to
her, until God sent the House of Orange by her Pevolu-
tion,in sixteen hundred and eighty-eight, who hooked
its shark of prey and crushed its abominations I Be-
fore, she was as poor old Ireland, and but for this act,
my friends, would have been no more the great and
haughty empire she is to-day, than your own country
would be a nation, had your fathers bowed like dogs
and cowards, to her tyranny and grasp! And, just
as England rose to greatness, by her deliverance from
the dominion of a Papal Hierarchy, has Ireland sunk
to wretchedness, by its victory over her !"
"It is time," said America, "that all our sons and
daughters should know the truth of this!"
PKOTESTANT AND CATHOLIC. 173
" Yes," said many, " the popular idea is, that Ireland's
low condition — the poverty of her people, come from
English oppression !"
"My children, it is no such thing/' said the mother,
with an independent impatience! "It comes from
that Jesuit hunt over her lands, for so many centuries !
Give them but the gift of Protestantism, which is the
very instinct of freedom, and soon will she rend from
her soil any other exaction or encroachment, upon her
civil rights! And of late, it seems as though God
was going to take that dear isle from the penal fires,
and recal the spirit of freedom and nationality, which
fired the souls of her noble patriots, and sent them to
breathe it in our dear native land !"
"It would seem," said America, " that England could
not forget that it was Protestant Ireland, who sent her
the first glad tidings of salvation, through a divine
Eedeemer !
"Oh," said America, "mother, I believe in your
prayers." "And so do all of us," responded from every
voice," " and now pray earnestly that Ireland shall wor-
ship once more in the faith of our fathers ! and may
once more be dotted with her churches and school-
houses, to live and learn for our God !" For some
moments there was the stillness of death, for there are
mysteries in the soul which are incommunicable !
Tliere was an ornament on the mantel of this American
parlor, representing Eve, with her hand on the fatal
apple ! And the mother, directing the attention of her
young friends to it, inquiringly said, "Are you willing,
my children — are you ready, America, to barter your
174 THE GREAT AMERICAN BATTLE.
paradise, for a similar consideration ? K you are not, in
God's name, decide that question now ! You are no
longer impregnable to danger. That fatal influence
which has made ruin and havoc in the old world, has got
into your latitudes and longitudes ! It has offered its
golden apple with such winning grace and sociable
good-humored politeness, that your ballot-box, bartered
with it, on its own terms, which were neither more nor
lesSjthan a governmental copartnercy between Washing-
ton and Rome ! And now, Americans, I would as soon
send any of you to gather blackberries, when the- snow is
on the ground, or to catch larks by throwing fresh salt
on their tails, as to send you, glowing in all the ele-
ments of your great nationality, to sue for favor from
this foreign, priestly power ! My friends, this is no
canvas-picture, but a life-picture, that I have now drawn
out before your eyes ! And can you longer doubt the
necessity for which the American Part}^ has risen,
when the true-hearted, noble Americans, who descended
from Irish and other Protestant emigrants, are being
put in a gap, by this foreign Papal priesthood and laitj,
who shout loudest with their throats, and bow lowest
in their hearts, to every scratch of that Despot's pen,
that tends to hitch danger and death to the American
name !"
CHAPTER Xn.
AMERICAN PARTY AGAINST RELIGIOITS
INTOLERANCE.
CATHOLICS— FOREIGN AND NATIVE.
" A rock in the wilderness welcomed our sires,
From bondage far over the dark rolling sea;
On that holy altar they kindled the fires,
Jehovah, which glow in our bosoms for thee !
In church and cathedral we kneel one in prayer
Their temple and chapel were valley and hill-
But God is the same in the aisle or the air,
And He is the Eock that we lean upon still !''
"Americans, shall we look to God? He is our
only hope in trial, let us pray ! Almighty Father, the
Creator and everlasting Kuler, the only living and true
God, give unto us in our national and in our individual
character the same hearts and the same spirit which
sent our fathers here to seek and serve thee ! and re-
lying upon the merits of Jesus Christ, our Divine
Eedeemer, as our great High Priest and only Interces-
sor, we ask that thy name may be hallowed through-
out the length and breadth of this land, until the glad
tidings of thy salvatiosi shall come up from every altar
and be felt at every fireside."
" My dear mother," said America, "I no longer
wonder why religious blessings protect our civil free-
(175)
.,6 THE GREAT AMERICAN BATTLE.
dom, and every citizen, as well as Christian, slionld be
unwilling to bow to the yoke of spiritual oppression."
"There is a word in the Anglo-Saxon tongue called
availability, which I beg you, Americans, to eschew
from all your vocabularies. It means, and has meant
for years, an outward prestige of a man to secure the
vote of the Roman Catholic Church in the United
States of America. If it was made evident the Romish
Bishops endorsed him, he became, defado^ the man,
my friends. If he lacked this influence, he was un-
done ; so that the political more than the spiritual con-
dition of our dear America has devolved upon this
foreign Potentate, who acts through his machinery as
though he Vv-ere personally present! Citizenship of
America can't be changed like a garment, dear friends,
put on for interest by the foreigner, who, unaltered by
the oath of allegiance, the breach and violation of our
sacred laws, remains still at heart a foreigner ! Oh,
America! what shall be said of your native sons who
bring this horde to the ballot-box, in spite of your
nationality ? Your greatness and glory is in remain-
ing as you are. Born for eternity as well as to-da}^,
the one cheerful, steadfast hope, which lights the shrine
of freedom, and makes it divinely ardent in every
American heart ! The moral conviction that the hap-
piness and interest of the American people needs a
political change, is from their veneration for liberty,
its agents, oracles, order, and law which dictated and
governed its original life. And separates the Ameri-
can Part}^ to-day as completely from all other parties,
as is the Caspian from all other seas. The strictness with
CATHOLICS— FOEEIGN AKD NATIVE. 177
whicli your fathers judged themselves, and tlie liberal
ity with which they judged others, that they showed
their highest virtue, in their most prosperous fortune !
I knew them well, and their was nothing in their his-
tory upon which we cannot look with pride and plea-
sure 1 It was not by high heads and swelling chests,
that their majesty appeared; and dragged out of their
coffins and cemeteries to-day, they would measure
their original height, before the eyes of all the people !
I told you yesterday, how the Irish Protestant emi-
grants brought to our shores that irradicable longing
for the true principles of our Liberty, which they
assisted us to achieve ; and in looking over the many-
colored stream of your national life, it is wise to dwell
upon this as the great turning point in its current!"
" Mother, we are desirous to know," said America,
" if Popery ever has exhibited the national spirit which
belongs to us, and is the trumpet, the war-horse, the
standard-bearer, in all our triumphs !"
"That noble sense of truth," my son, "gives a rigid
intensity to that question, and I feel it too vital to us
all, to give you a counterfeit feature of this matter now.
I say then, it is barren mockery even to speak of it
in this connection! and the sight of your sunlight
excited its old spring of bitterness with new floods of
hate, which nothing, nothing but your blood can wash
out, Americans. But God is with us!" said she,
as all glad thought seemed for the moment to have
deserted the assemblage. " God is with us !" she re-
peated, and in prayers and tears they poured forth their
sorrow.
8-
178 THE GKEAT AMEKICAN BATTLE.
"• Mother," said America, these foreign Jesuits come
to our dear country with shining professions and a
whining good will !"
" Yes, damning you in their hearts," said she; " and
planning your murder, with a weapon so keen, that
dark night would overtake you at mid-day ! And, it
is an atrocious outrage, against which the true Ameri-
can sentiment protests and waxes hot, to identify in
anything the intelligent and patriotic Roman Catholic,
born on American soil, with those timid, servile ser-
pents, those irresponsible obstructions in our political
road, which the Pope of Rome and his priesthood have
placed upon our national track ! Believe me, the
native Roman Catholic feels himself as free to choose
the civil government to which he professes allegiance,
as the Protestant! and he no more submits to that
political dictation, from the See of Rome, than he does
to the divinity of Mahomet!"
" My friends," said America, beginning to cast aside
reserve, " our American Party has as much heartfelt,
indestructible sympath}^ for the native Catholic as the
Protestant ! And it is nothing but a political horse-
race — a mule-race attempt, to force their hatred against
us. Thank God, our American men can't run as sheep
like idolaters, because others have done so ! ISTo plush
and gilded tackle can hang itself around their hearts,
or stand as a glass lantern between them and the gov-
ernment of their own beloved country."
" America, you are but expressing what the truly
American doctrine has always been, and the American
Party's procedure outward and inward, in its whole
CATHOLICS — FOREIGN AND XATIVE. 179
structure and aspect, has been to grind out from our
political action every sediment of religious intolerance
wliicli has served to feed deceitful magpies, but cannot
nourish your own native eagle !
" My children, Avhat gives circulation to your bank-
bills in your streets, but the confidence that they are
backed by coffers overflowing with gold? And so
would bankruptcy soon overtake your great American
nation, but for the confidence that the Constitution is
an inexhaustible mine, able and powerful to honor
every draft, of true American sentiment, which may
.be made upon it."
" And w^hat," inquired many, " does our great Civil
Code say on the subject of religion ?"
" It never but once^ Americans, referred to it at all,
and that was in relation to the oaths or affirmations to
support it. And in the first amendment, so all-impor-
tant did your fathers regard this, to the strength of
your civil edifice, obtained by musket- volleys and can-
non-thunder, that they expressly forbade Congress ever
to legislate upon the subject ! So that, the religious
creed of the man has no interference with his right to
hold any civil office under the government of his
country, or the oath, by which he binds himself to its
allegiance. And I shall always regret, my friends,
that our Constitution had not, in the same peremptory
manner, prohibited the States, also, from intermeddling
with religious matters. That Constitution is tough
and tenacious, and its wise provisions for the religious
liberty secured the sacred right of every citizen of your
dear country, to adopt any form of doctrine, or to con-
ISO THE GREAT AMERICAN BATTLE.
form to an}^ mode of worsliipping God, he miglit clioose,
without being abridged in one single civil or political
right. And when this great and grand feature in that
Constitution is galled and manacled, defaced and thun-
der-riven in the broad light of day, is it strange that
the principles of the American Party, which based and
rooted it, shoLild revive to unfold its original strength,
before your country shall become a mere hunting field
for that insatiable Demon of Intolerance."
There was an unornamented force and massiveness
in all this great woman said, and sleeplessly and un-
weariedly these great souls would merge into to-day
what might be given to-morrow. And no motion from
her, therefore, was easily carried for adjournment.
" "Will you tell us, to-day, how the temporal power
of the Pope of Eome is most dangerously manifested
in our country ?"
" In its control over the property of American citi-
zens, America. This has aroused the fire of the native
Catholics, who, in many instances, have made a strong,
dead pull against this insolent enemy to their peace,
and riddled its influence, by the power of American
law.
"The American Catholic, my friends, is a portion
of our national sovereignt}', and the preservation of
our liberties is as dear to him, and his descendants, as
to the Protestant."
" That is true, that is true/' exclaimed all ; for in
tliis American gathering were many Catholics who,
though regarding the Pope as their spiritual shepherd
and king, believed his temporal authority a curse and
CATHOLICS— FOREIGN AND NATIVE. 181
poison in our land, and would die rather tlian discredit
the lap of then' own mother earth.
At this moment there was a spontaneous call upon
one of these American Catholics. And the mother of
America, drawing a chair near herself, that a new
interest might be impressed on all, with peculiar
earnestness, requested her 3^oung friend to accept it.
"Every truly American heart," said he, "will ap-