NY Times: a Long History of anti-Catholicism

The Times refuses to acknowledge and apologize for it's long history of anti-Catholic Nativism, starting with its role in founding a Republican party which incorporated Know Nothing Nativism.  Here's a sampling from the early days until now.

Times published "No Catholic Need Apply"  job ads
http://hidden-civil-war.blogspot.com/2014/09/ny-times-no-catholics-need-apply.html

Times egregiously stalks General Sherman's deathbed hoping to shock New York by discovering a Catholic priest.
http://hidden-civil-war.blogspot.com/2013/11/stalking-general-sherman.html

Times says New York not an American city:  too many Irish.
http://hidden-civil-war.blogspot.com/2014/10/ny-times-no-irish-need-vote-nyc-not.html

Times Book Review covers up Nativism of prominent historian who claimed, even though the Union army never recorded the religion of its soldiers, that Catholics refused to fight to free slaves.
http://hidden-civil-war.blogspot.com/2014/10/cronysim-times-covers-up-mcphersons.html

The Times ongoing role in covering up deaths of civilians killed by army and police during the 1863 draft riots.
http://hidden-civil-war.blogspot.com/2013/08/new-york-citys-passion-play.html

Times shamelessly debating the Irish character while covering up deaths of civilians killed by militia during the "Orange and Green" riots.
http://hidden-civil-war.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-new-york-times-and-irish-character.html

Times celebrates the King James Bible, failing to note its controversial role in the city's history
http://hidden-civil-war.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-king-james-bible-and-story-of.html

Times features Anglo-German exceptionalism
http://hidden-civil-war.blogspot.com/2014/01/anglo-german-exceptionalism.html

Emancipation 1829

Daneil O'Connell
The Liberator
1775-1847

"Catholic emancipation or Catholic relief was a process in the Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in the late 18th century and early 19th century that involved reducing and removing many of the restrictions on Roman Catholics introduced by the Act of Uniformity, the Test Acts and the penal laws."

Relief from the proto-Apartheid penal laws that oppressed the Irish.

Frederick Douglass Family and Douglass Ireland Project Board to Join Dedication of Frederick Douglass Square at University of Maryland

The Frederick Douglass Ireland Project Founded in 2011 as the Frederick Douglass/Daniel O'Connell Project, the Frederick Douglass Ireland Project highlights the inspirational role that Ireland and the Irish people played in Frederick Douglass’s life. In 1845, as Ireland was descending into the despair of the great famine, Douglass arrived for a four-month lecture tour of the island. Douglass had escaped slavery in Maryland seven years earlier and had recently published his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself. He was shocked and appalled by the living conditions of the Irish peasantry and likened them to conditions endured by slaves on American plantations. Douglass was greeted in cities and towns including Dublin, Belfast, and Cork by swells of enthusiastic crowds. Although Douglass continued his speaking tour in Scotland and England, it was his experience in Ireland that he described as “transformative. " Douglass often recalled that his time in “Dear Old Ireland” - the first country outside of the U.S. to publish his autobiography- had given him “a new life.”

http://douglassoconnellmemorial.org/_pdfs/pr_FDIP_11-18-2015.pdf

We Cannot Own Slaves

Ellen Boyle Ewing and her husband William Tecumseh Sherman had eight children.  Ellen and her husband spent much of their life apart.  In part due to Sherman's military campaigns during America's Civil War.   But even before, they would separate.   When Sherman accepted the post of superintendent of the Louisiana Military Academy just prior to the Civil War,  his wife did not accompany him.  Ellen Ewing was a devout Catholic.  She stayed behind in the North in part because of the unhealthy Louisiana climate and in part because it would be impossible to find help to care for her eight children: "We cannot own slaves."

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IN SUPREMO APOSTOLATUS

Pope Gregory XVI - 1839

In our time Pius VII, moved by the same religious and charitable spirit as his Predecessors, intervened zealously with those in possession of power to secure that the slave trade should at least cease amongst the Christians. The penalties imposed and the care given by Our Predecessors contributed in no small measure, with the help of God, to protect the Indians and the other people mentioned against the cruelty of the invaders or the cupidity of Christian merchants, without however carrying success to such a point that the Holy See could rejoice over the complete success of its efforts in this direction; for the slave trade, although it has diminished in more than one district, is still practiced by numerous Christians. This is why, desiring to remove such a shame from all the Christian nations, having fully reflected over the whole question and having taken the advice of many of Our Venerable Brothers the Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church, and walking in the footsteps of Our Predecessors,
We warn and adjure earnestly in the Lord faithful Christians of every condition that no one in the future dare to vex anyone, despoil him of his possessions, reduce to servitude, or lend aid and favour to those who give themselves up to these practices, or exercise that inhuman traffic by which the Blacks, as if they were not men but rather animals, having been brought into servitude, in no matter what way, are, without any distinction, in contempt of the rights of justice and humanity, bought, sold, and devoted sometimes to the hardest labour. Further, in the hope of gain, propositions of purchase being made to the first owners of the Blacks, dissensions and almost perpetual conflicts are aroused in these regions.

We reprove, then, by virtue of Our Apostolic Authority, all the practices above mentioned as absolutely unworthy of the Christian name. By the same Authority We prohibit and strictly forbid any Ecclesiastic or lay person from presuming to defend as permissible this traffic in Blacks under no matter what pretext or excuse, or from publishing or teaching in any manner whatsoever, in public or privately, opinions contrary to what We have set forth in this Apostolic Letter.

Father Joseph O'Hagan, SJ

President Holy Cross College, 1873-78

“Over four hundred voted for a Catholic priest, one hundred and fifty-four, for any kind of a Protestant minister; eleven, for a Mormon elder; and three hundred and thirty-five said they could find their way to hell without the assistance of clergy.”

-- O'Hagan on being elected chaplain of the 73rd Regiment, Excelsior Brigade

http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2011/04/1861-at-150-chaplains-i-father-joseph-b.html

The World's Biggest Civil War

Yet another reason to celebrate America's Independence. Depicted here, British ship destroying a Chinese junk during the Opium Wars. Who'd have thought Queen Victoria was a drug lord. The Opium Wars set the stage for the Taiping Rebellion against corrupt Imperial China. The Taipings outlawed slavery, concubinage, foot binding and opium. 20,000,000 died in the war to defeat the Taipings waged by Imperial Chinese forces and their European-British allies. If you think America's Civil War was the epitome of total war or the biggest deal in its day, guess again.

*  *  *  *  *

 

General Charles "Chinese" Gordon, Companion of the Bath, led the Anglo-Chinese army that defeated the Taipings.  Gordon was killed at Khartoum, Sudan, in 1885 during the British colonial expansion in Africa.

 

The Society for the Diffusion of Political Knowledge

The Peace Democrats were appalled when President Lincoln carried through on his promise and issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, which they denounced in viciously racist language. On February 6, they organized the Society for the Diffusion of Political Knowledge, which published antiwar and anti-emancipation pamphlets.
-- Robert C. Kennedy, Harpers Week

After Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, they founded, with Morse as first president, the Society for the Diffusion of Political Knowledge.
http://www.yaleslavery.org/WhoYaleHonors/morse.html

Horatio Seymour, who was elected governor in 1862 as an antiwar and anti-emancipation candidate, was committed to restoring the union through concessions to the South.  Along with financier August Belmont [agent for the Rothschild's], corporate lawyer Samuel Tilden, and Samuel Morse, a leading nativist, he was a member of the Society for the Diffusion of Political Knowledge.  The society demanded the repeal of the Emancipation Proclamation because, they believed, an end to slavery undermined the economies of both the North and South.  At a July 4th mass rally a little more than a week before the 1863 Draft Riots, Seymour declared that "the bloody and treasonable and revolutionary doctrine of public necessity can be proclaimed by a mob as well as by a government."
-- Alan J. Singer, New York and Slavery

Belmont was also anxious to help the Democrats win the elections of 1862. He did this in part through part-ownership of the New York World edited by colleague Manton Marble.  After Democrats won the governorship in 1862, Belmont organized the Society for the Diffusion of Political Knowledge to disseminate propaganda against Emancipation and the Lincoln Administration. 
http://www.mrlincolnandnewyork.org/inside.asp

Samuel F. B. Morse, President
Manton Marble, Secretary
C. Mason, Corresponding Secretary
13 Park Row, New York

Contributors
Hon. Robert C. Winthrop
Hon. George F. Comstock
Hon. Amasa J. Parker

Medal for Cushing, O'Rorke Snubbed‏

Alonzo Cushing is finally honored, "Civil War Hero Is Awarded the Medal of Honor at Last" (NY Times, 11/6/14).   If we're correcting long ago slights, then why hasn't Colonel Patrick Henry O'Rorke another forgotten Gettysburg hero who sacrificed his life for the Union been similarly honored.  The criteria for awarding the Medal of Honor shouldn't be that you have avid fans and  powerful political sponsors,  in Cushing's case Senator William Proxmire and Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin.

Patrick Henry O'Rorke graduated first in the West Point class of 1861, the one from which George Armstrong Custer graduated last.  O'Rorke was  born in County Cavan, Ireland, which also gave America General Phil Sheridan,  and came to America when his father immigrated to Rochester, NY, the Erie Canal hub.  In 1863 he was appointed Colonel of the 140th New York Infantry Regiment.

O'Rorke's moment of valor occurred during the defense of Little Round Top on the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg.  Although Joshua Chamberlain is credited with the heroic charge that saved the important position on the left flank of the Union army, the actual crisis occurred an hour before Chamberlain's storied charge, which took place after reinforcements had secured the top of the hill.   As detailed in Oliver Norton's eye-witness account in Attack and Defense of Little Round Top,  a strong Confederate attack hit the center of the Union line that had been quickly established by Strong Vincent's Brigade.   During the heavy fighting Vincent was killed and the center regiments collapsed.   O'Rorke had rushed his regiment to Little Round Top to reinforce Vincent and arrived just as the Union line gave way.   Colonel O'Rorke grabbed his regimental flag, rallied his men and personally led the counterattack that drove off the Confederates, holding the position until the rest of O'Rorke's brigade and their artillery took control of the top of the hill.   Colonel O'Rorke was shot and instantly killed leading the charge.

That O'Rorke is little remembered today has something to do with him and Vincent being killed during the battle.  They couldn't tout their own horns afterwards like Chamberlain was able to do.   Undoubtedly his Irish Catholic heritage has something to do with it, too, for a nation that preferred its heroes to be Puritans and college professors.