Introduction
Program 397
Grand Jury Whitewash
The Know-Nothing Party
Conclusion

Introduction

STREET FIGHTIN' BELIEVERS...

More on the "Battle of Philadelphia" and other religious strife

What follows is a verbatim transcript of a radio broadcast aired on the American Atheist Radio Series. That series began on June 3, 1968, when Madalyn Murray O'Hair took to the airwaves from KTBC Radio in Austin, Texas. It was nearly five years to the day when the U.S. Supreme Court decided the landmark case of Murray v. Curlett which helped to abolish the invasive and unconstitutional practice of mandatory prayer and bible verse recitation in public schools.

Needless to say, the program was a shocker! An ATHEIST was actually speaking out in public -- on the public airwaves, in fact. The newsmedia greeted the broadcast with headlines, such as "Atheist Mrs. O'Hair on Warpath Again", or "Atheist Radio Program Is A Shock". Religious groups protested, although there was a time-honored tradition of radio evangelism. The country -- at least the small portion exposed to the American Atheist Radio Series -- was getting the Atheist point of view.

The Radio Series was eventually superseded by other outreaches, including cable programming produced by the American Atheist TV Forum. Recordings of these historic broadcasts are today preserved in the largest collection of Atheist history and related materials. "What On Earth Is An Atheist" by Madalyn O'Hair remains an in-print best seller available through the American Atheist Press. First published in 1969, it features a selection of verbatim transcripts from the Radio Series, where subjects ranging from witchcraft to church wealth were discussed.

The transcript titled "Educational Riots Of Catholics and Protestants" is based upon program #397 of the series. It was reprinted in a 1980 edition of the American Atheist Magazine, Vol. 22., No. 8. And among the topics discussed in this broadcast was the "Bible Wars", when the true-believers of Philadelphia and elsewhere literally "took to the streets."

Program 397

The American Atheist Radio Series

Educational Riots of Catholics and Protestants

--- Program 397 ---

This is Madalyn Murray O'Hair, American Atheist, back to talk with you again.

Religious riots in the United States from 1844-1865, the beginning of the Civil War, centered over the school question.

Philadelphia became a dangerous place, then, because part of the school children's daily dose of instruction was reading form the King James version of the "holy" bible and the Roman Catholic bishop in that city took it into his head to petition the Board of Controllers of the Public Schools to grant Roman Catholic children the right to have the Douay Roman Catholic version of the bible read to them in lieu of the King James Protestant version. Instantly the shriek went up that the bishop wished to have the bible excluded from the schools. Meetings of the Protestant natives were held in hall and sandlot. A flock of orators descended on the city.

The bishop had made his request in March. On the 6th of May, an election month, the protestants held a great mass meeting. The fury of the orators was directed towards the Irish. Rain, however, began to fall and the crowd withdrew to the market-house. During this retreat the noses of several of the Irish were poked. A gun or two was fired into the air. Inside the market-house the proceedings went on until about ten in the evening. Then, suddenly the crowd flowed out and down to Second and Franklin streets. The Micks -- the Irish Catholics -- lived there in wretched shanties lining the streets. Seeing themselves outnumbered, they hastily departed -- leaving their poor, miserable homes to be wrecked and fired by the mob.

During the evening a few Irish had collected rifles and when the cry "To the nunnery!" went up, some volleys from the rifles scattered the mob.

The next night there was a meeting in the Statehouse yard, which moved from there to Kensington where the good Protestants destroyed the Hibernia fire station as a precaution, preliminary to firing twenty-nine more Irish houses and the public market of the district. Several companies of militia appeared and halted the mob's fun for the day, thus enabling the fire department to put out the flames, if it so desired. However, the department was mainly Protestant and declined to fight the flames.

On the third day of the riots (May 8, 1844), the Protestants turned up in force at St. Michael's church. Here, a Captain Fairlamp, at the head of a detachment of militia demanded the keys of the church from the priest. The militia then stood by while three members of the Protestant faction set fire to the church and the priest's residence.

St. Augustine's church next went up in smoke. The Mayor of Philadelphia needs to be given some credit here, for he attempted to save the church. He had heard of the planned attack on this edifice and stationed the city watch in front of it, taking up the rear himself with a posse of citizens. The Protestants arrived, took in the situation at a glance, and came on with bricks and clubs. The mayor was knocked senseless, the watchmen and the citizen guards were shooed away and the First City Troop rode by at a gallop with a loud cheer for the attackers.

Everybody roared in glee when the steeple of St. Augustine's caved in, taking the cross with it. The firemen present busied themselves with quenching any sparks that chanced to fall on churches of other sects -- Protestant sects -- nearby. The Roman Catholic Church's ancient practice of burning forbidden books was not forgotten: five thousand volumes in the Augustine Fathers' library, attached to the church, were set fire and watched until they burned themselves out.

Grand Jury Whitewash

To finish off the afternoon of pleasure, the Protestants returned to the Roman Catholic nunnery at Second and Phoenix Streets, from which they had been driven away two nights before, and burnt that down.

About this time the city authorities awoke to the fact that there was a disorder in town. Belatedly, troops were stationed to guard other Roman Catholic churches. The priests and parishioners smuggled vestments and sacred vessels to private residences and the bishop suspended all worship in all Roman Catholic churches in the city on May 10, 1844. A grand jury, convened specially to inquire into the riots, returned a bill whitewashing all parties concerned, without mentioning a name.

Two months later, war flared again for a day, on July 5, 1844. On this day, the Protestants wheeled a brace of cannon to St. Phillip Neri's church. This time, for unknown reasons, the militia actually defended the church. Several people were killed, and several Irish Catholics were indicted for murder and rioting. But, for a moment, the blood and fire were stopped in Philadelphia.

Meanwhile, in New York City there was an election for the office of the mayor in April, 1844. The night before it was to occur, 1,200 protestants carrying clubs, brickbats, an assortment of anti-Roman-Catholic and anti-Pope banners stormed through the Irish wards, the 6th and 14th. They wanted a fight, and said so with howls and catcalls. The rumor was flying around town that they meant to burn down St. Patrick's cathedral on Mulberry Street. The New York bishop, Irish and ready, assembled between 3,000 and 4,000 Catholic men armed with swords and derringer guns at the church, and instructed them to let no one lift a finger against the cathedral.

When the word reached New York of the battles in Philadelphia, the New York Roman Catholic bishop issued a statement to reporters that "...if a single Catholic church is burned in New York, the city will become a second Moscow." He was referring to Napoleon's mishaps in the flaming city. By way of establishing a firm front, the bishop stationed in every Catholic church in the city a garrison of not less than a thousand men, heavily armed and grimly "resolved, after taking as many lives as they could in defense of their property, to give up, if necessary, their own lives for the same cause."

It was a standoff. When the bishop and the mayor met in his office, the mayor asked, "Are you afraid that some of your churches will be burned?" The bishop replied, "No, sir, but I am afraid some of yours will be burned. We can protect our own." The mayor saw to it that no mass meeting was held and the fight returned to a simmer.

The Know-Nothing Party

The Irish famine of 1845 shovelled thousands of Irishmen into their graves, but it sent tens of thousands of them into the United States, along with their wives and children. The men made good Democrats as fast as they became citizens, while the women devoted themselves to the production of little Irish-American Roman Catholics, with true Genesis 9:1 zeal.

In order to combat the influx of these good Roman Catholics, a political party was formed. It came to be called the "Know-Nothing" Party because it was secretive and when anyone asked questions of its adherents they would say they knew nothing about that which was asked. One of the oaths of this party was to solemnly promise and swear in the presence of almighty god never to vote for any man for any office if he be a Roman Catholic. The party participated in the presidential elections of 1852 and in numerous local elections. At its height it had 1.5 million qualified voters in its ranks. The most notable victories for the party were in the municipal elections in Baltimore, Washington and Philadelphia. At least forty Congressmen from half a dozen states had at one time been associated with it.

In 1854, the party swung the state of Massachusetts with both houses of the legislature almost one hundred percent Know-Nothing in composition when the ballots had all been counted. In Delaware various of their candidates were elected to state offices. In Protestant New York they totalled 122,000 out of a total 435,000 votes polled.

In Louisville, Kentucky, a celebration was held in observance of election day on August 6, 1855. When the smoke cleared the Louisville Roman Catholic cathedral was found to have been entered by a roaring Know-Nothing mob and 25 Irish-Americans were killed in a running street war. The Roman Catholic Church charged that "city authorities, all Know-Nothings, looked calmly on, and they are now endeavoring to lay the blame on the Catholics."

But this was precluded by the presence of Archbishop Bedini in the United States for seven months during 1853. There was a question of legal title to some church property in Philadelphia and Buffalo and the Vatican had sent the archbishop to the United States to solve the problem. Bedini was the highest Catholic dignitary exhibited in person in the United States. Naturally a plot to assassinate him was hatched in New York. In Cincinnati, a howling mob collected outside the Roman Catholic cathedral desirous of making him a guest of honor at a lynching party. The police wounded several of the would-be lynchers. He finally left New York, in secret, to escape another Protestant mob there.

But from the Know-Nothing/Catholic engagements, we find that the following occurred on a year by year basis:

1853 -- Bedini riots in Boston, Baltimore, Wheeling, St. Louis and Cincinnati.

1854 -- A gang of Know-Nothings and Ulstermen from New York City raided St. Mary's Church in Newark, one Irish-American shot and killed, some statuary destroyed; St. Anne's Church in Manchester, New Hampshire, raided on the 4th of July; a Society of Jesuit priest (John Baptist) tarred, feathered, and ridden around Ellsworth, Maine, on a rail; a Roman Catholic church burned at Bath, Maine; Catholic churches at Dorchester, Massachusetts, and Sidney Ohio, blown up with gunpowder; a Roman Catholic church at Massillon, Ohio, burned; an attempt made to burn the Ursuline convent in Galveston, Texas; fires were started in the Roman Catholic churches of St. Peter and St. Paul in Brooklyn, New York; numerous fights in New York City between Irish gangs and the "Wide-Awakes," a young Protestant gang wearing wide-brimmed felt hats as insignia; the convent of the Sisters of Mercy in Providence, Rhode Island, threatened by a Know-Nothing mob, but saved by Roman Catholics, who rallied and threatened to shoot anyone setting foot on the convent grounds; ten killed in a riot in St. Louis; a "ducking party" for Roman Catholics in Washington.

1855 -- "The Bloody Monday Riot" ravaged Louisville, Kentucky.

1856 -- There were election riots between Know-Nothings and Irish Catholic Democrats in Baltimore.

The Know-Nothing Party later died, in part over the slavery issue.

But this did not stop the small wars. On July 12, 1870, 2,500 Orangemen, with their wives and families, were picnicking in Elm Park in New York City. Six hundred Roman Catholic Irish rushed them to revenge the death of a Roman Catholic alderman some months before. Several on both sides were killed and many others were wounded.

The bloodiest massacre of Irish Roman Catholics came one year later on July 12, 1871, when New York militiamen killed fifty-one. One hundred Orangemen had determined that no such dirty thing should take place. Yet, the Orangemen paraded. They were chaperoned by five companies of militia. At 24th Street and 8th Avenue the parade was rushed by the Roman Catholics. The militia fired one volley to kill 51 of the attackers.

Conclusion

I don't know about you -- but I majored in American History in college, at graduate level for my M.A. degree, and I never learned at any level that these activities went on. I was told that all was sweetness and light from the beginning of religion in the U.S. to the end. Looking at it now, I have to say the Roman Catholic Irish had a hard time. I wonder how they stuck it out here in America. I understand now my father's family pride in being Orangemen and Protestant. But, I would never have found out about it from reading history in American schools.

Well, we learn. Our history would be more interesting and more informative and instructional if only the entire tale was told. I try to do that in these American Atheist Radio programs -- and it leads me to feel quite sorry for the poor Roman Irish Catholics of those times -- so indoctrinated into their mindsets that they could not change -- and that coming from a good Irish Orangeman's descendant!

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