and conspiracy has since run their swords to the hilt
to get at the Protestant free spirit, which will finally
uncrown them all and make firewood of their thrones.
They keep their souls in their heads, Americans ; and
heads, eyes, mouth, nose, and teeth right on your
American nation. Every fresh action under the influ-
ence of our constitutional government is anticipated by
each steamer, and with spectacles already on their
eyes, they snatch open your news budget, hoping to
find that some popular insurrection has occurred which
may hasten you down to the bottomless pit. Austria
has run to the most insane excess for the destruction
of your American freedom. It flashed its lightning
at Republican liberty, which it ascribed to the Pro-
testant Reformation; and in the black depths of its
mind, and its merciless malignity to us and our institu-
roiiEiGX cox;sriiiAcr. 231
tions, your coimtr j is denounced as ' the great nursery
of these destructive principles, (our democratic liber-
ty). The great Eevolutionary school for France and
the rest of Europe is ISTorth America.' Thus un-
bridled in their speech, they set about by their acts send-
ing death to struggle with our nation's vitality ; and
Popery already here got a sly, keen, shrewd lift b}^ a
grand consolidated union, ostensibly 'to promote the
greater activity of Catholic missions in America,'
but really to use Popery more effectively in the des-
truction of our Eepubhcan Government. And this is
the St. Leopold's Society, organized twenty-five years
since expressly to send money, Jesuits, and Eoman
Catholic emigrants to chuckle at and exult over, to
thwart and destroy your God-created nation. And this
same ' St. Leopold Society,' embraces not only the great
Austrian Empire, but Hungary, Italy, Piedmont, Sa-
voy," and Catholic France. These foreign rulers are
men actively interfering against your government, and
by money and agents are nourishing within your borders
a system, which, if not speedily arrested, v\dll as cer-
tainly make your nation's grave as that the Almighty
made you."
Self-devotion, self-sacrifice, the desire to forget all
but country was earnestly demonstrated. But so much
was to be said, and time was marching so steadily on-
ward, that the mother was entreated to lose not a
moment.
" Americans, are you to allow this burst and thrill
of foreign interference in anything and in any way ?
232 TIII^ GEE AT AMERICAN BATTLE.
Are you to be deterred from instant hostile resistance
because thej slanderously call it religion? Tlieir head-
quarters are at A^ienna, in Austria ; their emissaries,
the Jesuits, are in our midst, who, from their extraordi-
nary vows of fidelity to the Papal Supremacy, are
styled 'the Pope's body-guard.' It was this same
Austrian influence which elected the present Pope of
Kome ; and imagine the thrill of joy with which these
same Jesuits made the President of your American
States. And who are these Jesuits ? ' They are edu-
cated men, prepared and sworn to start at any moment,
in any direction, and for any service, commanded by
the general of their order, bound to no family, com-
munity, or country by the ordinary ties which bind
men, and sold for life to the cause of the Eoman Pon-
tiif.' This Jesuitism is and alwaj^s was a political
organization, Avhose dogma is, 'that the mass of
the human famity are born not to govern, but to
be governed;' that has been confided 'to the privi-
Isdged classes to which the multitude cannot rise.'
With these doctrines they speciously affect to spread
the Roman Catholic religion here, and as such, claim
protection and toleration from our American laws.
The American sentiment revolts at the spiritual and
temporal union in government, but with an adaman-
tine will, it insists upon the right to discuss the politi-
cal tendency of every religious creed. Christian or
Mahommedan. It was in the Roman Catholic that the
Jesuit has mixed and mingled, because it opposed
from its very nature every element of religious or
FOKEIGN CONSPIRACY. 233
political liberty ; and that their action in our country
may be swift, sharp, and sure, they use the foreign
Eoman Catholic to penetrate our high and pure
American nature through their myriads of churches,
schools, colleges, convents, and nunneries, supported
by the Emperor of Austria, Prince Metternich, and all
other despots in their ' society ;' who send often in their
own vessels Roman Catholic emigrants, as poisonous
masses to weaken and disease, by falsehood, the
strong native American minds, ever eager for action
and thirsty for truth. Let me show^ you another
significant fact, that among all the varieties of for-
eigners, the Roman Catholic creed is one trained un-
der the Despot of Despots, who assumes to be their
Lord God, and made to feel but his machinery, who
can bind or loose their souls ; they come set on fire of
hell against your freedom, and bearing this stamp and
seal of their own nationality.
"Kow, what in the name of reason is naturaliz-
ation to them? Does it make them any less blindly
subservient to their Bishops, Priests, or Yicar-Gen-
erals ? My children, they are your cofiin-makers ;
without knowing a word of the mystery of will, or
the intelligent love of God or country. We came
fresh and plastic from the hand of God. Oh, let
us remember the glad morning of your existence,
America, and continue to mould your country beauti-
ful, brave, generous, joyous, and free as your fathers
left it. That patriot son," said she, pointing to the
picture of Jefferson, "when you were only five years
234 THE GREAT AMERICAN BATTLE.
old, America; predicted tliat this ' foreign importation
would be a hoof-print to mar and disfigure you.' ' They
will bring with them,' said he, ' the principles of govern-
ment imbibed in their early youth, or if able to throw
it off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licen-
tiousness. In proportion to their numbers they will
share with us the legislation, tliey will infuse into it
their spirit, warp and bias its direction, and render it
a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass.' And
could his foot-prints now track our enemies, he would
see their giant strength, and realize the power of that
life-giving thought which truth now exalts and conse-
crates."
'''What would France do,' said he, Svith twenty
millions of Americans suddenly imported into their
empire ?' And what can America now do, if upwards
of ten millions are added in a single census count,
three-fourths of whom are Roman Catholics, distributed
as the Despots of Europe direct, under the Jesuit
government they have ordained in America ?"
"And now, my children, strengthen every vein,
bone, niuscle, and sinew, before your nation gets a
hemorrhage in its lungs, and is sent by the Pope to a
Jesuit Infirmary. Why is the American Party, which
baptized you, America, and enrolled around you that
glorious army of martyrs there on that canvas to have
a storm of popguns aimed at its head? Because it has
come to attend to the bodily health of your nation,
which has grown pale and sickly from a foreign gastric
juice which is stopping the digestion of its civil and
FOREIGN CONSPIRACY. 235
religious liberty. Our party has notliing to do, I re-
jDeat, my cliildren, with any religious creed, as religion.
But when this foreign political conspiracy against the
government of our country took hold on the foreign
Roman Catholic church, and planted its root in our
soil, to stifle and kill us, the American Party asserts
the true American feeling, to scrutinize, discuss, and
expose its political action upon the liberties of Ameri-
can freemen, which it is burning to subvert. And had
the same union which exists between foreign despots
and the Church of Rome been made with any Protes-
tant sect in this country, with the same sleepless
devotion to our national greatness and glory, the
American Party would have risen to rally the patriot-
ism of every Protestant element in the land, to crush
out this invasion upon our constitutional liberty and
our dearest political rights. This world-wide sym-
pathy of Protestantism for right and free-will s, and
free-hearts, has made the throne of St. Peter to feel
its invincibility only by the most entire unity of the
body, and annihilation of the mind. My friends, these
Jesait emissaries sent here by the Holy Alliance are
the fierce, firm enemies of the emigrant ; they instil
the idea of superiority to the native sons of the soil,
and the very name ' American' is regarded as an here-
ditary disease, to be pitied and loathed like the scrofula
or consumption. They take up your Declaration of
Independence, that hallowed symbol of our precious
freedom, and tell these misgoverned emigrants that
they are thus made free, as WasliingtoD, who led the
236 THE GREAT AMERICAN BATTLE.
battles of his country, and wlio, they teach in tlieir
schools, died a Eoman Catholic, and is a candidate for
beatification from the Pope of Eome. But thank God,
the instructive sagacity of our dear American mind
has seized all the people, and the American Party
has rushed in for this emergency. Oh, what shall we
not give for country, what would your lives be with
your liberty gone ?"
There was a pause for some moments, and a hot
frenzy of tears came like a river to the relief of all.
" What makes the peaks and mountains of your
danger higher, Americans, is the course of native
traitors; they conspire with naturalized foreigners,
not naturalized citizens, but foreign Eoman Catholics
for our democratic liberty. And I tell you, that
question, whether foreigners, not yet out of the ships,
are longer to control our ballot-box, in the face of
what we all see and know, is the vital question to be
decided now. This emigrant accession is weakening
you, America, every day, filling your country with
self-distrust by the priest-ridden troops of the Holy
Alliance, who are now organized in military compa-
nies, Avith the costume of their country, controlled by
Jesuit tricksters, in the Austrian service, against us.
Oh, my children, look at the vastness of this St. Leopold
foundation of despots and tyrants, embracing twenty-
three millions of people, helping their Jesuit agents
night and day. And there are not less than three
other similar societies for the same end; in Italy,
France, and Ireland which exist and co-operate, ail
FOREIGN CONSPIRACY. 237
around our press, in our scliools, our property/, and
at the ballot-box, until the tones of our Independence
bell again tolls, ' do the people wish to be saved, do
the people wish to be saved !' and the American Party,
true to its Eevolutionary spirit, responded the only
American sentiment, and cried out, like true Ameri-
cans, ' We do, we do !' "
CHAPTER XVI.
AMERICA BAPTIZED IN PROTESTANT
BLOOD BY JESUIT PAPISTS.
" They never fail who die
In a great cause ; the ground may soak their gore,
Their heads may sodden in the sun ; their limbs
Be strung to city gates or castle walls ; —
But still their spirits walk abroad. Though years
Elapse, and others ehare as dark a doom,
They but augment the deep and sweeping thoughts
"Which overspread all others, and conduct
The world at last to freedom."
To fill a void in nature, to impart dignity to the for-
tunes of mankind, to give deep significance to tlie occur-
rences of the world, our Divine Creator saw fit to dignify
woman by the name of "Mother," when he gave her
to the companionship and comfort of man. It was in
this sense that she became the Eve to the American fa-
mily, to impart these salutary lessons of her melancholy
experience, and to vindicate the injured character of her
own beloved country. And, having awakened a gene-
rous sympathy in the truly American heart, by an in-
sight into the craft and guile by which our liberties have
been attacked and lacerated ; Ave leave her to sublime
repose, while with grasping, bleeding hands, we hold on
to our title-deed, and cUng still to our own native land.
The heroic magnitude of the American mind sus-
(238)
AMEEICA BAPTIZED IX PKOTESTAXT BLOOD. 239
tained by nerves wliicli never shrank from endurance
and a courage whicli rose on difficulty, and exulted
in tlie sight of danger, woman first illustrated upon
American soil, with an inflexible understanding of her
own conclusion of right, and a native energy of will,
which defied the quiver of the keenest and most en-
venomed shafts. Pocahontas, at the tender age of
twelve years, threw her arms around the neck of the
first Christian adventurer into this American nation,
and cast her body upon the stone between the victim
and the executioner, as the first sacrifice of Anglo-
Saxon liberty ! Two hundred and fifty years ago, Cap-
tain Smith came in sight of the American coast the
natives fell prostrate before his cannon thunder, and
taking their idol image ca23ti\'e, he soon treated with
them upon his own terms. But mists gathered round
him, and the leer betokened by the loud laugh-storm
of the Indians Avas at hand, when lovely and full of
love, this American girl in tears and groans, engraved
on her father's stern soul, by looks, by words, by ges-
tures, you cannot tear me from this thought ; he was
not born to die ! That gaze shot a cross-bow to the
chieftain's heart, and his gentle, dutiful daughter, in
wild rapture made vocal music, which first melted into
emotion that devotion to liberty which ayc, as a nation,
have never ceased to expose. Unlike the fable of JEsop,
where the dog left in charge of the butcher's tray, and
unable to defend it from other curs, concluded he might
as well have his share of the meat — this American
heroine, the child of the barbarian, who understood
the thorny cuffs of her own formulas, still hovered in
240 THE GREAT AMERICAN BATTLE.
love and mercy over tlie colony of Virginia, and
became again and again, the chains and the iron door
to keep it from the entrenchments of her father and
to save its founder from becoming the fagot for his fire.
She was thus the prize by which that colony's salva-
tion was attained, and in love, humihty, and gran-
deur, singularly blended in this American spirit, Vir-
ginia became the magnificent acqueduct to slake the
thirst of Anglo-Saxon liberty. And thus disembar-
rassing that majestic desert, and linking her noble race
with the children of God, the bosom of this American
woman became the first sanctuary of American liber-
ty — the first ornament and pride of the American
name. And if, through the bravery of one gentle
spirit, a hostile wilderness was encountered and subdued,
hoAV strong and shrill ought now to be, that American
voice which must command the tempest, and battle
with the present roar of contending elements ! Forty
years before the advent of Virginia's colony, the city
of St. Augustine, in Florida, had been reared in pros-
trate submission to the See of Kome ; excluded from
light, and debarred from all exercise of its mental
limbs, it was taunted by a humiliation which it dared
not reject. Pedro Melendez was the desperate vehicle
to Avin new glory for the Spanish government, who
took it into formal bondage, in the name of Phillip the
II., as Idng of Korth America, and sealed his claim b}^
solemn services for the Eomish faith. This Satanic
representative had been so scourging, tearing and tor-
menting in the wars against protestant Holland, that
his scandalous and astounding vices had brought upon
AMEKICA BAPTIZED IN PKOTESTAXT BLOOD. 241
hiiii the frown of the Spanish king — when to recover
his fallen fortunes, he offered to extend the pithy creed
of papacy, by carrying its faith in full caparison into
the province of Florida. And to expiate his former
crimes and minister to the depraved appetite of the
king, five hundred slaves were to be imported to has-
ten the deliverance from Protestantism. Kindled by
the desire and earnest in the purpose to seek " freedom
to worship God," a French Huguenot band had already
fled to the American wilds, and vainly thought they
felt the sunshine upon their little colony near the
banks of the St. Johns. When, like a brood of hard-
drinking ducks, Melendez appeared, with a "collected
force of more than twenty-five hundred soldiers, sail-
ors, priests, Jesuits, married men, laborers and me
chanics," who drank the puddle of liberty to the last
spoonful. He had no sooner dedicated his city to its
patron. Saint Augustine, than these Huguenots were
sought out through intelligence from the natives,
and found at Fort Caroline, which they had built under
Landonnier, near the mouth of the St. Johns river.
The sight of the Spanish flag was a sombre mystery,
a mute dream of evil and disaster, and servitude
seemed at hand. With beating hearts they inquired the
occasion of the mission, when the brute-man sank into
the beast — replied : "I am Melendez, of Spain, sent
with orders from my king to gibbet and behead all
the Protestants in this region. Frenchmen, who are
Catholics, I will spare — every heretic shall die!"
Having declared his intention to mat the Florida set-
tlers into one Jesuit feather, he entered his new city
11
242 THE GREAT AMERICAN BATTLE.
fres]i from the blessing of priests and moist in tiie holy
water of Rome, and screvred together tightly his chosen
forces with which he set out on his wilderness march
of eight days, for the banks of St. Johns near the
Protestant colony of Fort Caroline ! The struggle to
these people \Yas between wakefulness and sleep;
their eyes swam in the void, and the dawn of their fu-
ture glimmered in the t^Yilight of death. I\Ielendez,
without truce or cessation, looked diabolically at this
weeping colony, while hell seemed to say, deliver up
God's Yforshippers. Silence reigned at this moment,
which betokened terror even to the beasts of the for-
est, and the stag affrighted, ceased to stalk it. The
lowing herd stood mute, while ^Tlelendez "kneel-
ing and praying for success," that he might open a new
sphere to the death pain of Protestants, rose in fierce
hate to his work of carnage, which merged into slug-
gishness all other tides that ever ebbed and flowed
with human blood. And the new-born hope to vror-
ship God was here prostrated and perished in its im-
movable faith forever 1 Citizen and soldier, the old
on their crutches, the young in their cradles and in the
arms of their mothers, were all reaped by the scythe
of death, and left to welter in gore upon the sod which
they had dressed for the strong life of Liberty which
boiled in their souls.
This earthquake and wind touched as it swept, and
eighty-six warm-hearted champions for the glory of
God were walled into one common tomb, for yielding
that submission to Him, which Popery, drunk with
the power of the throne, the sceptre and the keys, had
AMERICA BAPTIZED IX PEOTESTANT BLOOD. 243
arrogated to its own supremacy tlirougliout the world !
A few of these great spirits shrank into holes and cor-
ners, but only to be dragged out and die upon the
gibbet, and, suspended by their necks on the nearest
tree, they were left as booty for carrion eaters. This
popish emissary, glowing in the faithful performance of
dut}^, and secure in the reward of his monarch, raised
high a tablet to his fame upon the spot, carved with
the inscription — " Kot as Frenchmen but heretics."
"When he again reached St. Augustine, he was
hailed as a conqueror by priests and people who Avent
out to meet him. Te Deum was solemnly chanted.
The holy work which crowned his mission had been
fully done. The Protestant light was all extinguished,
except a few, who, jaded and enervated hj shipwreck,
had fled to the sands and the beach, and finally
found a resting place in the inlet of Matanzas. The
blood now spilt, was the wine of new malignancy to-
wards Protestants, and it created a new thirst for the
last drop ! Like the ferocious shark, which swallows
with the same eagerness iron or stone, delicacy, inno-
cence, feebleness and grace, were now but pile-heaps
for the budding splendor of the royalties of St. Peter,
in the colony of Florida.
"Angry," says Bancroft, "that any should have es-
caped, the Spaniards insulted the corpses of the dead
with wanton barbarity." And, to strengthen the force
of his machinery, it was needful to fire and overwhelm
them with fanaticism. So, amid the thick fogs which
arose from the ground where their hot blood still
lay unabsorbed, the ensign of Popery was set up wdth
244 THE GREAT AMERICAN BATTLE.
the desecrated cross, and the scene of execution made
the foundation for a new church edifice. And to enter
aUve into damnation, as Melendez thought, the sur-
viving remnant of the French Protestants of East
Florida, he jumped streams and took cross-roads to
their retreat — and moving gently, that he might en-
snare more easily, he inspired the majority with
confidence, who, without suspicion or distrust in his
integrity, were immediately thrown into boats and
sent across the river to the Spaniards. To bend
their souls, they corded their liiiibs, and clutched
their hands in iron bands behind them, and, as a beast-
like drove, they were marched towards the city of St.
Augustine. When in sight of the fort a signal was
made, with military energy and cowardly recklessness,
and ^\dthout deliberation or discussion, the throats of
these unsuspecting Protestants were all cut, and under
the blast of thundering artillery, the strong sap of
Liberty again Avashed in gore American soil ! "Not as
Frenchmen but heretics," Avas also engraved on this
monument, so that all might see and bear witness to
this special light in the western Avorld, which, in faith-
fulness to the Popish creed, that "no faith shall be
kept with heretics," had been the first to drench with
the blood of Protestant victims the land which we hal-
low, as baptized and sanctified by the only true princi-
ples of freedom which have ever blest universal man.
In God's providence, some few Protestants, suspi-
cious of this amalgamation of audacity, assumption,
and cruelty, escaped, while the French nation looked
pitilessly, like hard statuary, at the dying blow
AMERICA BAPTIZED IN PROTESTANT BLOOD. 245
whicli liad fiillen upon tlieir luiprovokiiig subjects.
"History has been more faithful,' in the language
of our American Bancroft, "and has assisted human-
ity, by giving to the crime of Melendez an infamous
notoriety." This dear occasion of suffering opened
now a new whirlwind of pain. De Gourgas, a
Eoman Catholic and a Frenchman, inspired hj the
fiery vices of Spanish bigotry, arose from privacy
and retirement, which he had sought after a loug
and illustrious public service, and dofiing the citizen's
coat, he took the sabre and musket, the uniform and
colors of his country, at his private cost, and with
well-assorted comrades, sailed for the mouth of the St.
Johns, in Florida. Between 1569 and 1574, he gained
the coast, stormed several out- works, and urging on his
forces, entrenched Fort Caroline, now a Spanish colony.
The spectacle he first beheld was not a fancy
painting — a mere canvas scene of the violence and
brutality of the assault upon his murdered friends, but
there, free from the concealment of the grave, the trees
had become their charnel-houses — there decayed and
dried, their bones driven and riven by the tempest's
power, were still mouldering and swinging before his
eyes. And there, to invite the attention of the stranger,
still stood-Melendez's monument to tell the tale ! With
bleeding hearts, all that was left of these broken frag-
ments were reverently gathered together and interred.
AYhen De Gourgas, ordering his battery to " charge,"
it shook the death-rattle over the heads of these
Spaniards, and amidst shrieks and bowlings, hung al-
most every one on the same trees upon which his cap-
246 THE GREAT AMEEICAN BATTLE.
tive coiintiymen had been found dissolving. And
having obtained the redress and indemnity which out*
raged humanity demanded, he inscribed, in defiance of
arrogant sovereignty, "Not as Spaniards but mur-
derers!" when, strong in his confidence of right, he
hastened back to France.
Thus Protestantism had its first birth and growth in
the southern section of these United States by the Hu-
guenots of France. And in the romance of forests and
the singular beauty of wild landscapes, this little fold
of God, free from cupidity and ambition, had- matured
on the far-ofi" coast of Florida that affectionate home
which the fierce Spaniard soon delivered to the lion
paw of Eome. This thrashing-flail was pushed with