Catholic Confederates

Faith and Duty in the Civil War South

Gracjan Kraszewski

• Publisher: The Kent State University Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781631014017
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire de la guerre de Sécession

How did Southern Catholics, under international religious authority and grounding unlike Southern Protestants, act with regard to political commitments in the recently formed Confederacy? How did they balance being both Catholic and Confederate? How is the Southern Catholic Civil War experience similar or dissimilar to the Southern Protestant Civil War experience? What new insights might this experience provide regarding Civil War religious history, the history of Catholicism in America, 19th-century America, and Southern history in general?

For the majority of Southern Catholics, religion and politics were not a point of tension. Devout Catholics were also devoted Confederates, including nuns who served as nurses; their deep involvement in the Confederate cause as medics confirms the all-encompassing nature of Catholic involvement in the Confederacy, a fact greatly underplayed by scholars of Civil war religion and American Catholicism. Kraszewski argues against an "Americanization" of Catholics in the South and instead coins the term "Confederatization" to describe the process by which Catholics made themselves virtually indistinguishable from their Protestant neighbors.

The religious history of the South has been primarily Protestant. Catholic Confederates simultaneously fills a gap in Civil War religious scholarship and in American Catholic literature by bringing to light the deep impact Catholicism has had on Southern society even in the very heart of the Bible Belt.

CHAPTER ONE

The Bishops Respond to
Secession and the First Year
of the War, 1860–1861

Immediately following South Carolina’s secession from the Union in December 1860, Patrick Lynch, bishop of Charleston, declared the state “henceforth not only our Mother but our only Sovereign, who has sole right to our allegiance.” South Carolinians should give a “whole, undivided loyalty” to this new nation, even taking up arms if necessary. That same month, Archbishop of Baltimore Francis Patrick Kenrick claimed it would be “suicidal” for the South to leave the Union. The bishop of Louisville, Martin John Spalding, agreed with Kenrick and hoped the crisis might yet be resolved: “God grant us peace!”¹

The bishops’ views on pertinent societal matters were important to Southern Catholics. It is still so today. But, with American Catholicism in a nascent, although developing, phase during the Civil War, this relevance was even more pronounced. The ultramontane temperament of the nineteenth century strengthened prelates’ authoritative roles, and a theological congruity with Rome produced a generally unified ecclesial community at home and abroad.

This chapter traces Southern Catholic bishops’ responses to the secession crisis into the war’s first year, demonstrating what these responses were in an analysis of inter-episcopal letters, peace pastorals, and other assorted correspondence. Many of the bishops shared the general augusterlebnis of their fellow Southerners, firmly believing their state proper (and later on, the Confederacy in sum) was an independent nation possessing the right to secede so as to recapture a foundational sovereignty. Thus, many eagerly looked forward to what they believed would be a short and glorious victory over a tyrannical North.

All bishops were clergymen first, tending to religious matters above all. But even those of a more reticent stripe, content to distance themselves from the growing sectional issues before the war had officially begun in April 1861, were found, once this line had been crossed, quickly moving into fervent support of the Confederate nation. Catholics were not simply involved members of the Confederate nation; they were just as devoted to the cause as their Protestant neighbors.

Indeed, Southern Catholics proved to be, like their episcopal leaders, Confederatized partisans throughout the conflict, but what were the statistical realities of this Southern Catholic community by 1860? Although Catholicism was indigenous to the South, Northern Catholics, many of them recently arrived immigrants, were far more numerous. Alabama, home to an estimated ten thousand Catholics, a paltry 1 percent of the state’s population, presented a typical story in a region were Catholic churches made up a tiny fraction of a state’s houses of worship, with Tennessee (ten Catholic churches, 0.4 percent of all churches in the state), Georgia (eight, 0.3 percent), and North Carolina (seven, 0.3 percent) of like character.²

The “most Catholic” Southern states were Louisiana, Kentucky, and Maryland.³ Louisiana boasted the largest number of Catholic churches in the South, ninety-nine, and an impressive statewide percentage of 17.3 percent. Kentucky, with eighty-three Catholic churches, and Maryland, with eighty-two, lagged behind at 3.8 percent and 8.0 percent. New Orleans, home to the highest cluster of Catholics in any American city, possessed a robust eighteen Catholic churches, with a combined seating capacity exceeding twenty-five thousand people and an aggregate property value of $1.04 million. It is unsurprising that five of this book’s main personalities were Louisiana Catholics of some connection; soldiers Felix Poche and Henri Garidel, Chaplain Louis Hippolyte-Gache in his service with the Tenth Louisiana, and the archbishop of New Orleans, Jean-Marie Odin, along with Chaplain James Sheeran, each prewar Louisiana immigrants.⁴

In between conspicuously Catholic New Orleans and Baltimore and the Catholic wilderness in Georgia, Alabama, and North Carolina stood a middle ground of Confederate states. Texas was home to approximately 120,000 Catholic citizens who could celebrate Mass in thirty-three statewide churches. Although Mississippi had nearly an identical number of Catholic citizens as Alabama (approximately 10,000), it had almost twice the number of churches (seventeen). Florida also had seventeen, and while South Carolina had but eleven, it was home to Charleston, one of the most important centers of Southern Catholicism.⁵

Despite these at times paltry numbers, the Catholic faith made significant strides during the antebellum period, progressing markedly since the nation’s founding. In 1776, the faith was illegal in every colony except Maryland and Pennsylvania—which was unsurprising, given Maryland’s foundational Catholic roots and Pennsylvania’s widespread religious toleration. The Church possessed few members and less societal import. Church infrastructure was miniscule, and a frontier, almost missionary, character defined Catholicism in the South. Parish priests moonlighted as itinerant preachers, making the rounds to impoverished outposts at times beset by more than a five thousand to one parishioner-to-priest ratio. Churches often bore more of a resemblance to wooden shacks than majestic European cathedrals.⁶

But growth came, and much of it can be attributed to the establishment of Southern dioceses, which before the nineteenth century were limited to Baltimore (established 1789) and New Orleans (1793). Charleston and Richmond were established in 1820. The Diocese of Mobile was founded in 1829, followed by Natchez and Nashville, each in 1837. Little Rock, Arkansas, a diocese created in 1843, encompassed the entirety of a state that saw its Catholic population nearly triple in size between 1830 and 1850. By 1860, with the establishments of Savannah (1850) and Saint Augustine (1857), North Carolina remained the sole southern state without a Catholic diocese. A growing ecclesiastical nexus was starting to emerge, with the North having but seven more dioceses (twenty-two to fifteen) at the war’s outbreak. As late as the 1840s, Southern dioceses were more numerous than Northern ones, lending credence to the idea of a more entrenched Catholicism in the American South.⁷

Catholic prewar societal integration, an evolving process Confederatization highlighted and firmly cemented during the war years, was visible throughout the South. In Charleston, Protestants financially contributed to Catholic hospitals, helped nuns care for orphans, and even sent their children to Catholic schools. In Louisiana, women religious ran numerous local academies, open to Catholics and Protestants alike, many upper-class women “learn[ing] their attitudes about God, dancing, and government from nuns.” Catholic bishops drew large crowds; for example, the bishop of Mobile, John Quinlan, was known for often having many Protestants in his audience, something common across the Southern episcopate, especially during the war. Bishops preached in wholly secular places, the Louisville courthouse just one such setting. When another bishop was set to give the baccalaureate sermon at the University of North Carolina, one observer commented that the excitement was akin to “as great a rush to see the animal as if he were the big bull of Bashan or Pope of Rome.”⁸

Many Protestants were drawn to Catholic worship, even if they ultimately remained apart from it. In Bardstown, Kentucky, a Protestant lawyer promised land for a new church, on the condition that the building be “attractive.” Congregationalist preacher and abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher, brother to Uncle Tom’s Cabin author Harriet Beecher Stowe, wrote that he was enraptured by the Church’s “majestic and imposing ceremonies,” the “dazzling” lights, ornaments, and vestments, along with “the power of music and the breathing marble and living canvas, and all the diversified contributions of art.” After a European tour, Beecher explained, “I am bound to say, also, that I have been agreeably disappointed in the appearance of the monks and priests in Roman Catholic countries. As a general rule, they have appeared to be clear-faced, intelligent, and sincere men. Only once or twice did we meet the legendary type of monk—round, fat, and worldly. In Switzerland, and in Northern Italy, the general impression produced upon me by the priests has been highly favorable to them.”⁹ Although the Confederacy failed in its independence bid, it was not, as one historian notes, “for lack of sacrifices on the part of southern Catholics.” Catholics’ “support for the southern way of life and southerners’ support for Catholic hospitals, schools, and churches were not unrelated.”¹⁰

The Confederatization thesis demonstrates how numerous emergent factors present during the antebellum period only became more apparent, and more potent, during the war years. During the war, sisters who had operated hospitals throughout the prewar South operated on bodies and souls as sister-nurses; priests, who bore responsibility for souls, now assumed the added responsibilities of chaplaincies and diplomatic posts; laymen, whose children attended parochial schools alongside Protestant children, died alongside those same Protestants, serving together under the same flag, each wholly committed to the Confederate nation; and Catholic bishops, widely respected before the war, only saw their social profiles increase, as when Natchez’s William Henry Elder refused a prayer request for Lincoln, winning him much admiration throughout the South and beyond.

Elder, Quinlan, and the whole of the Southern episcopate presiding during the Civil War were installed within a decade of the conflict.¹¹ The bishops had immediate experience with the characteristics of the Church in the South and, perhaps most importantly, the sectional tensions besetting antebellum America. Clerical paucity augmented their importance. Elder was the sole Catholic bishop in Mississippi, as was the standard reality elsewhere throughout what would become the Confederate States of America. During the war, the bishops participated in both the spiritual and secular realms. They worked, with varying success, to balance these loyalties. Peace initiatives are but one example. For the majority of bishops, peace advocacy included the stipulation that any settlement be favorable for the South. While the bishops did desire an authentically “Christian peace,” one prioritizing the end of bloodshed, they found it difficult to untangle their Confederate commitments from their religion—because they, like many Southern Catholics, saw no contradiction in being both devout Catholics and devoted Confederates.

Bishops would discover that their roles as religious leaders often became inextricably entwined with political issues. Each bishop faced this reality uniquely, and as such the bishops’ responses to secession differed somewhat. Yet all, with one debatable exception, were Confederate supporters.¹² Spalding, arguably the most peace-minded prelate, was thoroughly Confederatized even though he did not express this as forcefully as Lynch or Quinlan. Spalding was from a state outside of the Confederacy anyway; Kentucky, like Maryland had a thoroughly Southern spirit but nonetheless remained in the Union.¹³

Confederatized though they were, bishops refrained from bringing secular matters into sacred space. Political commentary was not heard during the Mass, and the political counsel given outside of Mass was often presented in negative or passive formulations. For example, Elder once stated that the faith did not forbid Catholics from advocating for secession but stressed they were in no way obligated to support it or the Confederacy. This approach enabled the bishops to avoid the appearance of partisanship while resting assured their congregants did not have to be told to be good Confederates.¹⁴

Regarding spiritual matters, however, the bishops did give active and unambiguous counsel. They encouraged their congregants to pray, fast, and live righteous lives—even demanded as much. And they did so often out of a penitential spirit, in reparation for what could seem countless sins. The contrast is important: while giving plentiful advice concerning what Southern Catholics they should do spiritually, the bishops restricted secular matters to the realm of the permissible. This balancing act between did not end with the secession crisis; it framed the entire Catholic Civil War experience.

As 1860 drew to a close, the United States stood on the precipice of war. In November, Spalding, deeply troubled, wrote to the archbishop of Cincinnati, staunch unionist John Baptist Purcell. “The South is assuming a very menacing attitude, & this time I fear these men are in earnest, & disunion is imminent. The Lord deliver us!” he added, as “the whole world seems to be getting out of joint.” On December 1, Kenrick wrote in similar fashion to Richmond bishop John McGill, expressing his fear that secession would cause irreparable damage. Nonetheless, he still believed the Union could be preserved and hoped “conservative men should step forward at this crisis, to save the country.”¹⁵

Other bishops took similar approaches. They were worried but hopeful. Elder joined the public discourse by issuing a circular letter to his parish priests on November 25. The bishop of Natchez, who would later show himself to be a clear-cut Southern partisan, at first refrained from politicization. Priests should simply lead their congregations in the “first duty of the Christian Patriot;— which is to beg for the light and protection of Him, in whose hands are the hearts of men and the destinies of nations.”¹⁶

Because the “present condition of our political affairs calls urgently for the most fervent supplications to Almighty God,” Elder cautioned his priests it was “not for us here to discuss the question connected with our situation.” He instructed his clergy to encourage congregants in “offer[ing] up to God Prayers, Fasting and Alms Deeds, for His merciful guidance and protection.” The faithful should unite in a general Communion on December 9, within the Octave of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, for “our Holy Mother is by excellence the Help of Christians.” Elder desired that Mississippi Catholics attend Mass frequently, pray daily (“at least once the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Glory be to the Father”), recite the Rosary, adore the Blessed Sacrament, fast, give alms, and come to confession for “the most effectual means to obtain God’s favor is to purify the soul from sin, and to receive worthily the Sacrament of the Blessed Eucharist: and no Catholic should imagine he has done his duty to himself and his fellow-citizens on this occasion, so long as these duties to God are left undone.”¹⁷

Elder’s first response to a possible war was a return to Catholic fundamentals. While clergymen were the letter’s primary recipients, the prescriptions were not exclusively for them. These pertained to the laity as well. Elder, who believed faith should preempt, inform, and direct political decisions, expected the men of his parishes, who could become soldiers, to join him and their priests in praying and fasting for peace.¹⁸

On December 20, 1860, South Carolina became the first state to secede, though the opening shots of the war would not be fired for four more months. South Carolina delegates adopted a secession ordinance on Christmas Eve, appealing to state sovereignty and constitutional infractions as justification. The delegates drew heavily from the US Declaration of Independence. Each colony had been “and of right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT; and that, as free and independent States, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract allies, establish commerce, and do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do.” Colonial sovereignty was analogous to state sovereignty. As colonial ties to Britain had been sundered once the Crown’s rule had become “destructive of the ends for which it was established,” so, too, could South Carolina disassociate from Washington for similar reasons. For it was “the right of the pe...