Charleston's Bishop John England and American Slavery

University of St. Thomas (Center for Irish Studies)

Charleston's Bishop John England and American SlaveryAuthor(s): Joseph KellySource: New Hibernia Review / Iris Éireannach Nua, Vol. 5, No. 4 (Winter, 2001), pp. 48-56Published by: University of St. Thomas (Center for Irish Studies)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20557774 .

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Joseph Kelly

Charleston s Bishop John England and American Slavery

Because local elites interpret and influence the experiences of ordinary people, we can trace the corporate life of a community?and its ideology?through the

biographies of its eminent men and women.1 In the history of the American

South, biography can help us explain why slavery?once considered an evil to

be tolerated?came to be defended as a postive good.2 The life the first Roman

Catholic bishop of Charleston, John England? and especially his failures in the

summer of 1835, helps explain this ideological reversal. Born in Cork City, John

England (1786-1842) was the oldest child of a family that had suffered under the

tyranny of the anti-Catholic Penal Laws; his grandfather had been imprisoned for four years, and his father? threatened with transportation to the West Indies

for the terrible crime of teaching school, had spent a year hiding in the moun

tains of County Cork.3

Called to the priesthood, England spent his earlier years as a cleric running a local newspaper that actively agitated for Catholic emancipation. It was not

i. This essay is a portion of a book of biographical essays or* eminent Char?estonians from die

age of the revolution to the Civil War. ? Mow Lytton Strachey's example in Eminent Vktoriam (Hew

York: Penguin, 1986) by seeing these figures as "characteristic specimen!s\n of an age. For m excel

lent defense of Strachey^ method against the protests of ''orthodox historians,* see Mkhad Hairoy?,

Lytton Strachey: A Critical Biography, Vol II: The Years of Achievement (1910-1932) ( Hew York: Holt,

Rinehard and Winston, 1968}, pp. 262-66.

2. The question that led roe into this project was how the conscience of revolutionary South

Carolina, which recognized the evils of slavery, could have changed into the pre-Civii War belief that

slavery was a positive good. This is, of course, an issue of much interest and unsettled conclusions.

See, for example, David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution 1770-1823, mi

ed, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). First published in 1975, this book sparked a debate

about slave ideology that is sul current For a work concerned more specifically with the region around Charleston, see Jeffrey Robert Young, Domesticating Slavery- The Piaster Class its Georgia and

South Carolina 1670-1837 (Chapel Hilt University of North Carolina Press, 2000).

3, Peter Guilday's monumental 1927 biography The Life and Times of John Engknd of Charleston, 2 Vois. (1927; New York: Amo Press, 1969} remains the starting point for any study of

England's life. Guilday's work has been enhanced by Patrick Car?y An Immigrant Bishop: John Eng land's Adaptation of Irish Catholicism to American Republicanism (Yonkers, MY: United States

Catholic Historical Society, 1982) and by Peter Clarke, A Free Church in a Free Society : The Ecclmi

ology of John England, Bishop of Charleston, i&io-ifyz (Greenwood. SC: Center for John England Studies, 1982).

' NEW HIBERNIA RBV?EW/?R?S ?lBMAMNACm Kg&? 5:4 (w?MTSt/^B?MHEMrJll* 3#0S)? #~#



Charleston's Bishop John England and American Slavery

long before the Liberator, Daniel O'Connell, observed England's talent for pol itics.4 The young man had a great way with his pen, and his oratory, mixing a

tradesman's common sense with romantic, dramatic images worthy of a poet, moved audiences, Protestant and Catholic alike, at least to sympathy if not to a

singleness of opinion. He was a patriot through and through, republican in pol itics and Gallican in religion. His family had laid low during the 1798 rebellion and made it through the Cork retributions unharmed, but the betrayal of Catholics that followed the Union fixed in England's mind a conviction of the

crown's enmity to Ireland, and under O'Connell's tutelage, he made emancipa tion without concession his life's work.5 It was his effectiveness as part of

O'Connell's political machine that got him sent to America. The hierarchy, not

entirely averse to compromise, disposed of this thorny young agitator by pro

moting him out of Ireland. At the age of thirty-four he was made bishop of the

newly created missionary diocese of Charleston.

No traveler ever had disembarked on the bustling piers along the Cooper River better prepared to combat racial bigotry, to undermine the tyranny of

Charleston's first families, and to persuade the city of the evils of slavery than

John England. He had studied the catechisms of liberty as devotedly as the

catechisms of the church, and his dearest political credos were the rights to

liberty of conscience?codified in America by the separation of church and

state?and the freedom of the press. In fact, shortly after installing himself in

Charleston, he set up a national weekly paper, the United States Catholic Mis

cellany, printed off a press in his own chambers. Needless to say, it did not take

long for him to make a public name for himself.

England liked to exploit the apparent contradiction between his ecclesiastic

rank and his advocacy of republican equality. On one of his many diocesan

tours through Georgia and both Carolinas, he visited the remote village of

Columbus, which was separated from Savannah by three hundred miles of

dusty, sweaty travel in a horse-drawn jingle. As few Catholics of substance lived

in the town, England had made reservations at what passed as a hotel The

townsfolk, all Protestant, eagerly crowded the lobby and waited for the strange

creature to arrive. Finally, someone?surely not a Catholic bishop??a middle

sized man, covered in road dust and sun-burnt, drew his two spent horses to a

stop outside the hotel. He jumped down, strode into the lobby, "stripped off his

coat, hat, and vest; washed his face and hands," and demanded a good glass of

wine, which he drank down heartily. The crowd studied his every gesture. Only

4* Works of the Rt. Rev. John England, First Bishop of Charleston, ed. Reynolds, vol. Ill (Cleve

land: Arthur H. Clark Co.), p. 98.

5. See Carey for an excellent discussion of England's fight against the crown's right to veto

episcopal appointments in Ireland.

49... . !.-'-.' - - 'i?




when the glass was dry did he produce a "large and lustrous" ring from his

pocket, and, "with his jewelled hand," sign his name to the register, +John Bish

op of Charleston. No doubt he meant to astonish the crowd, which was duly

astonished; here was a bold preacher who drank wine right in front of them, just

like any old sinner, rather than on the sly. The backcountry Georgians were

delighted. So was England.6 The pleasure of the ring and the pleasure of the

drink were each doubled by their mingling.

England devoted his political energies to the fight against nativist prejudice

aimed at the Catholic minority.7 Each week in the Catholic Miscellany he

defended the church against false charges; defended the Constitution's guaran

tee of tolerance; explained why Catholicism did not interfere with loyalty to

one's country and how similar the America federal system was to Catholic

governance.

In the winter of 1834-35, he brought a group of Ursuline nuns to Charleston

from Ireland. Even while England was arranging for their move, an Ursuline

convent in Massachusetts was burned to the ground by a mob and the nuns

barely escaped alive. The mob was encouraged by Lyman Beecher, the fiery

Presbyterian preacher and father of the future abolitionist Harriet Beecher

Stowe, who was in Massachusetts to raise support for the Lane Seminary in

Cincinnati. Beecher extorted charity mainly by pouring into the ears of his lis

teners fear of a popish empire in the West, The mob's violence, as much an anti

Irish race riot as it was a blow aimed against Catholicism, reflected the increas

ing influence of the nativist movement throughout the country, which included

both upper- and lower-class Protestants. The leaders of the riot were brought to

trial but were acquitted in December, 1834, which further demonstrated the

extent of anti-Catholic sentiment in America.

In 1833? Bishop England estimated that as many as fifty sectarian periodicals

published anti-Catholic propaganda each week, and this was in addition to the

many secular newspapers. Books like Scippio de Riccfs Female Convents. Secrets

of Nunneries Disclosed (1834), directed much of their invective against convents. "The sole object of all monastic institutions in America," Ricci wrote, "is merely to proselyte youth of the influential classes of society, and especially females" so

that Roman priests "shall silently but effectually attain control of public affairs"8

6. J. J. O'Conneli, Catholicity in the Carolinas and Georgia; Leaves of Its History (Hew York J. D. Sadlier, 1878), pp. 91-92,

7. Guilday, Clarke, and Carey have ably demonstrated England's importance to the history of the Catholic church in America. His importance to the history of American Emery and the aboli tion movement have not been adequately explored.

8. Scippio de Ricci, Female Convents. Secrets of Nunneries Disclosed (Mew York*1834)? P* ?di

Quoted in Ray Allen Billington, The Protestant Crusade\i$m^B6o (Hew Yorfc Macmiikn, 1$$)* p. 68. Billington's book is still an excellent chronicle of the Nativlst rnovement m America*

50



Charlestons Bishop John England and American Slavery

This assessment was exaggerated, but nonetheless a generally accurate view of the Ursulines, John England told the pope that he wanted to bring the Ursu lines to Charleston to educate mostly Protestant girls so that anti-Catholic

"prejudices will be removed and many conversions will follow; or at least the

way will be opened through the good ladies educated by the nuns to exercise a

very powerful influence on the whole mass of society."9 As such nativists as

Ricci, Beecher, and even John Quincy Adams feared, England was trying to

influence public opinion, but only to the degree that he might remove all prej udices against Catholics.

Because of his outspoken defense of Catholicism, John England became a

main target of the anti-Catholic press. Sectarian newspapers reported that the

pope had given England a* commission to establish the Inquisition in the Unit

ed States." Furthermore, his position as papal legate to Haiti and his mission to

establish normal diplomatic ties between that black republic and the Vatican

made him particularly vulnerable in the South. Southern newspapers told their

readers that the ultimate purpose of England's Haiti mission was to "facilitate

the abolition of slavery of negroes in the [American] South"10

At the same time, northerners like Lyman Beecher were likewise attacking him, but for being in favor of slavery. Protestant missionaries, England com

plained? were quick to send to Haiti "every document they could find to prove that I was an enemy to the abolition of slavery, that I had abused O'Connell for

his reproaches against American Slave-holders, and that I was quite a friend to

the Southern institution of the U. S., slavery included"11 Ironically, although

England hated slavery, he was also scared of emancipation, for he feared the vio

lence of political upheaval, "the cataracts of blood" opened by the Haitian rev

olution.12 Furthermore, before even setting foot on Haiti, he had already judged

the character of that emancipated nation: "The Island of Haiti has deteriorat

ed so much [since the revolution] from the sloth of its inhabitants that most of

the ancient plantations are gone to ruin."13 Certainly England recognized that

slavery sapped initiative out of a persona constitution, but even so, his use of the

word "sloth" is surprising. No doubt the emancipated slaves largely refused to

work the old plantations, but while we might describe such refusals as enlight

ened self-interest, all England saw was inbred idleness. Like other Americans of

the time, he was hot immune to racial prejudice.

9- Report of Bishop England to the Cardinal Prefect of Propaganda, American Catholic His- ,

torkal Society [ACHS], 8 (1897), 323.

10. England to Cullen, 23 February 1836. ACHS, 8 (1897), 218-19.

11. England to Cullen, 15 May 1836. Quoted in Guilday, ir.308.

12. United States Catholic Miscellany, .15 October 1831, p. 123. ^

13. England to Cullen, 3 January 1834. Quoted in Guilday, II: 278-81.

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Yet England was sincere in regard to Haiti. That the mission served not a sin

gle white never diminished its importance in his mind. His health bent under

"the responsibility of the fate of a whole island and its hierarchy and liberties,

perhaps for ages,"14 and, haunting his conscience during future difficulties, was

the fate of "nearly a million of souls and of the generations to succeed them"15

Nor did he indulge Southern fantasies about the full humanity of blacks. In a

public letter, he powerfully insisted that, "when any man grows so fastidious as

to imagine that God Almighty revealed more or less to his negro than for him

self, he ceases to be a Roman Catholic "16

Through his experience in Haiti, England came to recognize the Africans'

capacity for full citizenship in a republic. Clearly, England believed that if he

could establish normal relations between the Vatican and Haiti, he would

improve the condition of the newly freed slaves throughout the West Indies.

Furthermore, he probably hoped that the example of a pious, just, black,

Catholic republic would undermine the foundation of slavery in the Americ

as?the ideology of white supremacy and black inferiority.

Historically, such hopes were not unusual among abolitionists. Before the

early 1830s, most abolitionists favored a gradual amelioration of the slave's con

dition that would not disrupt society. But in 1831, William Garrison organized the American Anti-Slavery Society and published as part of its "Declaration of

Sentiments" a statement that said that "the slaves ought instantly to be set free, and brought under the protection of the law."l7 Believing that slavery was a sin, Garrison organized a cadre of like-minded preachers, and together, they began

disseminating the new gospel of immediate emancipation and denouncing slaveholders as the foulest villains. They met with violence wherever they went, and not only in the South, In New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, crowds turned out to lynch them. The Tappan brothers of New York, retail magnates

who funded the abolition movement, were targeted. Lewis Tapparfs house was

destroyed, and the Tappan store was saved only because Arthur Tappan armed his clerks in its defense.

The result was that "immediatism," which is what Garrisorfs ideas came to be called, became associated with radical, dangerous politics in the minds of

most Americans, including moderate abolitionists, The members of the Amer ican Anti-Slave Society looked like religious fanatics styling themselves after

early Christian martyrs, deliberately provoking slave holders more to satisfy

14- England to Cullen, 14 February 1834, Quoted in Guilday? ??: 291. 15. England to Cullen, 10 May 1836, Quoted in Guilday ??; 306. 16. John England, The Works of the Right Reverend John Bngknd, ?d. Sebastian Messmcr,

(Cleveland; Arthur H. Clark, 1908), II: 99-100, Quoted by Clarke, p. m> 17. The Liberator, 14 December 1833, p*198.

; .52 "'.




their own sense of self-righteousness than to free slaves. Eventually, Arthur

Tappan split with Garrison and formed the American Union for the Relief and

Improvement of the Colored Race, which held that "the peaceful abolition of

slavery in the United States depend [s] upon securing the concurrence of slave

holders, procured by an appeal to their human and Christian principles "18

Whites in Charleston, as across the whole South, did not distinguish between Garrison and Arthur Tappan: abolitionists were stirring up slaves, so

the South would give them no quarter. John England opposed the immediatists on principle, and he found the whole movement distasteful because the aboli

tionists had demonstrated themselves to be "most bitter enemies also to the

Catholics."19 England considered himself a gradualist believing that the South

should be liberalized, but that the process of change should occur slowly and

that the impetus for change would have to come from Southerners themselves.

As early as 1831, Bishop England established a school for "black girls [and] the poor white girls" of Charleston, and in the summer of 1835, he also opened a school for free black boys. He had a handful of motives for opening these

schools, not the least of which was to provide a Catholic education for black

members of the church, who until then had been obliged to send their children

to Protestant schools in the city. But England must have also believed he was

taking a small step toward liberalizing the condition of blacks in the South, for

he knew from personal experience in Ireland that the best way to refute racist

ideology is to educate the persecuted. The examples of his grandfather and

father had disproved the racist stereotypes that justified the Penal Laws of Ire

land, After fifteen years in America and after two years of negotiations on equal

terms with blacks in Haiti, John England finally began the struggle for emanci

pation that had taken the Catholics in Ireland half a century to win. The first

Irish Relief Act came in 1778, though Catholics did not win emancipation until

1829. It would probably take longer to free the blacks, for the statutes of Amer

ica were more severe than Ireland's. But one had to start somewhere, so John

England began with a small school for "free children of colour "20

Two seminarians taught the boys while the Sisters of Charity, an order that

England had established in Charleston, taught the girls. A month after admit

ting boys, eighty-four pupils crowded their schoolrooms.21 It was a great suc

cess; though perhaps too great a success, for the anti-Catholic elements in

i8. Quoted in Gilbert Hobbs Barnes, The Antislavery Impulse 1830-1844 (Gloucester: Peter

Smith, 1973), p. 61.

19* England to Cullen, 23 February 1836, ACHS, 8 (1897) j 222.

20. England to Cullen, 23 February 1836, ACHS, 8 (i&97)>219.

21. Guilday, II: 153.

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Charleston saw in England's school "the germ of [slave] insurrection "

and the

twin phobias of popish and abolitionist conspiracies began to rear their ugly heads.22 In the summer of 1835, it would not take much to spark mob violence

against the school, and, unfortunately for England, the American Anti-Slave

Society lit the fuse.

In late July, the Society flooded Charleston's mail with antislavery propa

ganda. The effect was stunning: the South Carolina Association, a sort of vigi lante committee semi-officially charged with maintaining slave-ideology, sent

circulars out to other cities warning them of "incendiary publications," the

term given to all materials advocating abolition.23 On the night of July 29, a mob

broke into the Charleston post office and stole the pamphlets out of the mail

bags. The next day the Charleston Courier endorsed the mob> implying that

much of the city believed that interfering with the mail had been done in patri otic defense of the South.

Two Catholics hung about the crowd, indulging their own sense of patrio

tism, when things took an unexpected turn. The mob was not satisfied with

cursing abolitionists a thousand miles away. Unable to strike a distant enemy, it

looked for someone closer to home on whom to spill its rage. John England was

denounced. The mob expected that the papal legate to Haiti would be part of

this antislavery conspiracy. Wasn't there a rumor going round that one of his

nuns, one of the school teachers, was a mulatto? Why not drag John England from his house and lynch him, and afterwards tear down the church build

ings?24 The two Catholics slipped out of the crowd and alerted the Irish Volun

teers, a Charleston militia unit, which hurried to defend their bishop. England gathered the officers, made them swear that they would obey his own com

mand, and then he directed them to the best defenses of the church property. They would fight the mob only on his order.25

But the mob never arrived. Whether they got wind of the guns waiting for them on Broad Street or dissolved under the discipline of a long walk is un

certain, but England kept the Volunteers at the ready The next day he wrote a letter to the Courier in which he denied receiving or harboring any of the

pamphlets. He then further added

I knowno Carollinian [sic] who more sincerely deplores, more fully condemns? or moreseriously reprobates the conduct of those [abolitionists], who,bypour ing [anti-slavery pamphlets] in upon us, are

destroying our peace, and endan

22. England to Cullen, 23 February 1836, ACHS, 8 (1897), 2*9. 23. Charleston Courier, 30 July 1S35* p? 2,

24. England to Cullen, 23 February 1836, >1CHS, 8 (1897), 219-20. 25. England to Cullen, 23 February 1836, ?CHS,$m97hn&~m>

; . 54




gering our safety. Nor do I know a single Roman Catholic, clerical or lay, with whom I conversed upon the subject, who is not My determined to use his best efforts to prevent the mischief of their interference.26

On the second day, England solicited the help of more refined Charlestoni ans, and the result was that "several of the most respectable citizens of all reli

gions sent to have their names enrolled" in the Irish Volunteers. Despite this show of public support, a "respectable committee of citizens" asked England to close his schools for free blacks. England was obliged to send an explanation to the South Carolina Association, which was, by law, in charge of all schools for blacks. In a letter he circulated publicly, England wrote, "I find it rumoured that the existence of this school, which I desired and determined always to have open to the inspection of every respectable Carolinian, is not pleasing to several of my fellow citizens." He protested that his "disposition is not to act in opposition to the wishes of any respectable portion of the community in regard to any polit ical, civil or social subject, even under the permission of the law." However, he

would not stand for Catholic prejudice. If the City Council and the South Car olina Association wanted to close all schools for blacks, he would "not be found backward in sacrificing [his] opinion to their advice." If, on the other hand, the Catholic schools were singled out, he would refuse to comply with the Associ ation's wishes.27

Clearly, Bishop England hoped to demonstrate to the community that

Catholics were not incendiaries, and Catholics throughout the city scrambled to back up his efforts. Within a week Charleston's storekeepers, many of whom

were Catholic, resolved to boycott Northern merchants who were known to be

abolitionists. The same day, "A large and overflowing meeting of citizens, com

prising an ample representation of the property, respectability and intelligence of [the] community, assembled at the City Hall

" They appointed a committee

of twenty-one citizens to deal with the situation, and Captain James Lynah, a

leader of the local Catholic church, was made one of the appointees.28 Unfor

tunately, the committee resoto^ to close all schools for free blacks in the city.

England must have been disappointed; nevertheless, in a letter to an Irish friend

he rationalized that "it would be mischievous to attempt an explanation" of his

views on emancipation.29

After this episode, it was obvious that to secure the safety of Catholicism in

South Carolina, England would have to dissociate the church from abolition

26, Letter to the Editor, Charleston Courier, 30 July 1835.

27, England to the Presiding Officer of the South Carolina Association, 29 July 1835. Reprint

ed in the Charleston Courier, 30 July 1835.

28. Charleston Courier, 4 August 1835.

29. England to Cullen, 23 February 1836, ACBS, 8 (1897)? 218-19.

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ism. In the summer of 1835, suspected abolitionists had to declare themselves for

or against the South. Those who wanted gradual abolition had to make a terri

ble decision, and at that moment England equivocated. He declared Garrison

his enemy, but he refused to publish his own emancipatory principles, and

thereby represented himself and his religion to Charleston as pro-slavery.

There can be no doubt that a public statement of his principles in the sum

mer of 1835 would have been mischievous, and would have invited persecution.

But who better than John England could distinguish in the minds of his fellow

Charlestonians the radical abolitionism of Garrison from the liberal, constitu

tional reform hoped for by gradualists? Who better than John England to cham

pion the right to free speech? At the very least, who was better equipped than

John England to check the erosion of the rights of blacks who already were free?

Above all else, who better than England to fight for that most precious right-? the right to education?of black Catholics? How many others in the city

deplored slavery? How many others deplored the unjust treatment of free men

and women of color? How many of these citizens of lesser ability than England, less able to articulate what they innately felt, less accustomed to public contro

versy, and without a press at their disposal, how many looked for the example that only John England could provide? There were more than a few timid indi

viduals who still recognized the evils inherent in slavery, but they grew more

timid every day. It was the last chance for dissent in Charleston, and the one per son who could have effectively voiced that dissent?John England?kept silent.

The worst of it is, the decision looked like a tactical victory. The following winter, the state assembly voted by a narrow margin to incorporate the Ursuline Convent. At a public meeting during which "thanks were returned to those who closed the schools" for free blacks, Bishop John England "sat with the pre

siding magistrate in the most conspicuous place/'30 It should havebeen a bitter

honor, but England cherished what it symbolized for his religion: Catholics were

finally recognized as full citizens of the state. Unfortunately, England did not realize that he had just made Catholics full partners in America's crime against humanity. Today's readers?and England's biographers?are more than a little embarrassed by England's outrage at being accused of abolitionism and his

sincerity in denouncing the "incendiaries." But he was no hypocrite. He was a

good man who failed to be great

c^ UNIVERSITY OF CHARLESTON

30. Letter, England to Cullen, 23 February 1836, ACHS, 8 (x897), 221.

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Charleston's Bishop John England and American Slavery

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