USA > Maine > The Catholic church in Maine > Part 12
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William H. Chaney,1 editor of the Herald, saw no reason for waiting. He gave the decision in the same issue of the paper that carried Bapst's letter. After reminding his readers that Bapst has escaped from his native land after plotting against his government, he informed Bapst that:
you will learn, should your unprofitable life be spared, that a Protes- tant Committee has the constitutional power to enforce the reading of the Bible upon all who attend the district schools, whether they are Mohammedans, Infidels, Pagans, or Papists ...
The case as argued before Maine's Supreme Court did not involve directly the constitutional issue. It was an action of damage; Donahoe was suing to collect money to pay for the private education of his child excluded from the public school. Rowe, however, presented the constitutional aspects of the case and the position of the Catholics. He argued that the school committee had, by their policy, established a religious test and that this was not within the competence of a school committee or a legislature. As evidence of the correctness of the Catholic position he cited the General Superintendent of Public Education in New York who had declared that “no particular versions of the Sacred Scriptures can be forced upon the schools." He pointed out that the Catholics of Ellsworth were only asking for the system adopted in Bangor where the case was being argued, a system that allowed the pupils to read the version of the Bible of their choice, a system, he added, that was approved by an "eminent orthodox clergyman." Rowe made the Catholic position reasonable, but he did not offer any convincing arguments that Donahoe should be reimbursed.
1 Some authors have spelled the editor's name Chany and in some reports it is so spelled. The Herald, however, identified its editor as Chaney.
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Dana spoke for four hours. He had refused an invitation to speak on the Nebraska question1 while in Bangor in order to give all his time to his clients. He wisely skirted the constitu- tional issue. He argued that school committees were not liable for damages resulting from execution of their public duties, provided malicious intent was absent. Citing precedent, he said "no action has ever been maintained for damages, for the exclusion of a scholar from a public school." The Bible was a textbook, and school committees are empowered to introduce such books as they think best for the moral and intellectual instructions of the students; they had the power, too, to expel students for the peace and utility of the schools. He ended his argument with an eloquent defense of the English Bible as a common school book, and warned that if the position of the Catholics was upheld, all versions of the Bible would be soon excluded from the classroom and practically any textbook could be challenged and proscribed. Dana served his clients well. Donahoe was not reimbursed. Actually, the suit as entered did not directly involve the issue between the school committee and the Catholic parents of Ellsworth. But the case did serve to show that the position of the Catholics was sound and reasonable. And the system used in the Bangor public schools showed that there was no need to exclude the Bible from the classrooms.
Early in 1854 the opposition to the Catholics and Bapst was organized. This was an important move. In many other New England towns where there was a strong current of hostility to Catholics the opposition never reached the stage of violence because it was never organized. In Ellsworth a group called the Cast Iron Band was formed. Chaney was active in the group. Indeed Chaney's daily schedule these days was crowd- ed, for besides the demands of his editorial duties he had to find time to prepare and give lectures and discharge the re- sponsibilities of Town Clerk. That he was elected to this post
1 The warmly debated question was the extension of slavery in territories. Senator Stephen A. Douglas had proposed that the slavery problem be settled by the voters of each territory ( popular sovereignty ). Nebraska and Kansas were the two territories immediately involved.
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indicates some public support of his crusade. And Chaney had to keep an eye on those in Ellsworth and the neighboring towns who frowned on his activities. He lashed out at Protestants who deprecated the ugly tone of the controversy, calling them "Jack Catholics," and he took the Eastern Freeman, the Herald's local competitor, to task for expressing the opinion that the policy of the Ellsworth school committee was wrong. Chaney, made of stout stuff, assured his readers that threats and slanders would not prevent him, as long as he had the power to move, from continuing the "war against Papal interference with our Republican rights.'
In February Bapst thought the tide of events was turning in favor of the Catholics despite "anti-popery lectures and indignation meetings." The Catholics had remained calm under the attacks, their faith was growing stronger ("at least twenty times stronger"), and public opinion was turning in favor of the Catholics "at least throughout the State if not in Ellsworth." Even on the touchy school question Bapst detected a growing support for the position of the Catholics.
The good behavior of the Ellsworth Catholics is worthy of note. The temptation to retaliate must have been strong. The Catholics of Ellsworth were mainly Irish immigrants and their children. In some Maine towns the celebrations of the Irish had, it must be said, disturbed the peace of the native Ameri- cans and had naturally aroused ill feelings against them. Sometimes these celebrations and subsequent quarrels were more than the local police could cope with. Such an affair had happened, according to the papers, in Portland on February 12, 1854, two days after Bapst had reported the good behavior of the Ellsworth Catholics. A disgraceful fracas had taken place and was ended by the intervention of their pastor, Father John O'Donnell of St. Dominic's. It could well be that Bapst and Moore (he was living in Bangor at this time), aware of the unpredictable consequences of the most innocent of celebra- tions, had persuaded the Irish of Bangor to abandon any public recognition of their patron saint. The Whig and Courier noted
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that they had not heard of any planned celebration of St. Patrick's day in Bangor, as was customary. Due respects, how- ever, were paid to St. Patrick. Bapst went to Bangor and gave a lecture the night before the feast and at Mass the next morning preached on St. Patrick. Some may have thought that this was hardly the way to honor the saint, but Moore tells us that both talks were received with "general satisfaction."
As summer approached the organized opposition resorted to violence. On June 3 a crowd moved on to the rectory and, when told Bapst was not in, broke some windows. Bapst re- turned from his mission three days later and that night the church was attacked and some windows smashed. Colonel Charles Jarvis,1 a courageous objector to Chaney's crusade, prevented destruction of the church. Bishop Fitzpatrick then directed Bapst to reside in Bangor, thinking that his absence would ease the situation. It appears that the move only em- boldened those bent on violence.
On the night of June 13 the chapel-school was badly damaged. The newspapers began to report the acts of violence. Under the caption of Ellsworth, the Bangor Whig and Courier told its readers that:
An attempt was made on Tuesday night to blow up a building formerly used as a Catholic chapel. The door was burst in and the windows broken by the explosion of a canister of powder placed against the door by some persons unknown. The Freeman intimates that some "respectable" people are implicated, but we guess not.
This unprovoked and lawless act was condemned by some of the Ellsworth citizens who demanded a public condemnation of the act. After the attack on his person, Bapst made it clear that there was "a portion of highly respectable gentlemen" in the town who "would have exposed their lives to save mine .. . " It does seem, however, that they had lost control of the course of events by this time. The town meeting called to condemn the acts of violence did no such thing; it passed a resolution promising Bapst rough treatment if he ever came to Ellsworth
1 In Tincker's book, The House of Yorke, Jarvis is Charles Yorke, the hero of the romance. He is an admirable character.
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again. This public resolution, passed July 8 and signed by W. A. Chaney, Town Clerk, removed the near murder of Bapst from the realm of the unpremeditated.
July was a distressing month in the diocese. The church in Manchester, New Hampshire, and the one in Bath were destroyed early in the month. On one day, within a few hours, the sacrifices of many people for many years disappeared in flames and smoke. They were not magnificent edifices, but to the Catholics they were their respected houses of worship. On July 15 there was an unsuccessful attempt to fire the new church in Ellsworth. Under the caption of "Ellsworth Rowdy- ism" the editor of the Whig and Courier told his readers:
We learn that another attempt was made on Saturday night last to fire the Catholic Chapel at Ellsworth. Tar and other combustibles were placed against it and set on fire, but it was immediately dis- covered and extinguished.
Unfortunately, these acts of violence could not be blamed entirely on rowdies. If so, the respectable leaders of the town would have discovered ways of handling them. But, the town was deeply divided, and less than two weeks after this attempt to burn the church the opponents of Know-Nothingism lost one of their supporters. The Eastern Freeman, the weekly that dared to question the wisdom of the school policy and the editorials of Chaney in the Herald, suspended publication. Its existence had been brief; it had started publication April 23, 1853, a few months after Bapst had moved to Ellsworth, and ceased on July 28, 1854. Evidently it had been losing sub- scribers. The Herald (later called the American) now had no local press opposition.
The attack on Bapst followed three months later. He arrived in Ellsworth late on Saturday, October 14, and went to the home of Richard Kent, a parishioner. This was his first visit since his departure in June. Word that he was in town soon got around. That evening, a crowd, soon a mob, gathered around and then entered Kent's house, grabbed Bapst, took his watch and wallet, and carried him away. He was stripped, plastered with hot tar, daubed with feathers, posted and jostled
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on a rough plank. He was unconscious when they abandoned him around midnight. The public resolution passed on July 8 had been duly and forcibly carried into execution.
Friends found him and took him first to another house where he was attended. He refused to take any drink or food, for he had come to say Mass and intended to do so. In his weakened condition he offered Mass Sunday morning and spoke a few words. Colonel Jarvis offered him protection in his home and the Catholics gathered what arms they could to provide further protection. He remained in the Jarvis home Sunday night, offered Mass again Monday morning, and then was taken to Bangor. Bangor found it difficult to believe the story, was soon convinced, and the city papers rushed the news to the other cities and towns of the state. The Bangor Mercury sent an extra edition to press.
The news truly shocked Maine. Not until Wednesday did the people of Portland get the details. The Eastern Argus, borrow- ing its information from the Bangor papers, could scarcely believe "that such an outrage should have been possible in the State of Maine" without provocation. The next day's edition (Thursday, October 19) carried a lengthy editorial on "The Ellsworth Outrage." The editor had pored over the Bangor papers to discover the cause; "the outrage seems to have been wholly unprovoked and without excuse, and is deeply disgrace- ful to the town where it occurred." It was not only an outrage against Father Bapst and the Catholic Church, "but against the laws of the land, and all the pledges of civilized society." Father Bapst, a stranger to Portland, was described: small of stature, with a frail physique, a former pastor of Ellsworth. He was, however, bearing the ordeal "with a great degree of calm- ness." The readers were told of the role played by Colonel Jarvis and that Bapst had recognized some of the "ruffians" who had not bothered with a disguise.
Indignation ran high in Bangor. It was greater, said the editor of the Bangor Journal "than we have known to exist here for a long time." The outrage "surpasses belief almost, and
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makes us shudder, when such outrages are perpetrated in our state, to think what may be possible from the fury of the fanaticism of the day." The efforts of some in Ellsworth to minimize the violence was quickly challenged. Though the whole town could not be rightly blamed, there was the fact of the public resolution. That was difficult to bypass, said the Whig and Currier:
Now an outrage of the kind perpetrated at Ellsworth admits of no palliation; and any attempt to detract from its turpitude only makes the matter worse. It was not only a crime - but it was a stupendous folly ... We do not condemn the people of Ellsworth indiscrimin- ately, in this matter, although the fact that a foolish, threatening resolution was passed at a public meeting there in July last, without reprehension, is a difficult thing for them to get over.
The citizens of Bangor acted quickly to redeem the name of Maine. On Thursday, October 19, three days after Bapst's return to the city, a group of prominent men, acting in the name of the community, presented Bapst with a purse of five hundred dollars, a valuable gold watch and chain, and a letter. The inside case of the watch carried the inscription: Rev. John Bapst, Presented by Citizens of Bangor, October 19, 1854. The letter, signed by forty-one men, read:
From the expressions that fell from the mob while engaged in their work, the motive that impelled the act was doubtless hostility and persecution of the Catholic church, and an adopted citizen. Although not agreeing with you in the tenets of the faith you profess, and of which we are happy to know you are an ornament, we are unwilling to see any man proscribed for worshipping God according to the dictates of his own conscience.
Bapst, in accepting the gifts, termed the act of the Bangor citizens a strong defense of toleration and freedom. Holding the watch he had received, he remarked that it would serve to remind him that "if outrages can be commited [sic] in this glorious land of liberty, there is immediately a strong public opinion raised to reprove and punish it."
For a frail man Bapst made a speedy recovery from the ordeal. The day he was honored by the citizens of Bangor, probably before the ceremony, he wrote a letter to Father Stonestreet, the Provincial of Maryland Jesuits. He said he was
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sending him the account of the Ellsworth affair as given in the Bangor Journal; the account was correct but incomplete. But the purpose of writing him now was:
to assure yr Rev. that, notwithstanding the nervous agitation I felt for few days [sic], my health, is again as good as ever. Moreover, the indignation not only among the catholics, but also among the protestants, & particularly among the most influential & respectable citizens, is such; the denunciation of the outrage by the press is so strong & so unanimous; & the marks of sympathy to me from all classes & creeds are so numerous that this event will be a confirma- tion of the divine word: diligentibus Deum omnia cooperantur in bonum; & that God knows from evil how to draw all sorts of good for his children.
Bapst was reporting press opinion correctly. Four days after he penned this letter the editor of the Eastern Argus derived comfort from the "unanimity with which this outrage is de- nounced by the American press." But that was not enough, he added; the guilty ones should suffer "to the full extent of the law," and it was the duty not only of the town of Ellsworth but of the good citizens of Hancock county to see that this was done. He concluded his comments by agreeing with the New York Post that "those who are fomenting the Know-Nothing movement, should find in this outrage food for serious reflec- tion." I think it can be said that the Ellsworth affair did play an important part in the decline of Know-Nothingism in New England. One could not, however, expect an immediate end to violence. This was the peak year of the movement and leaders in the saddle are not easily unseated.
There were disturbances in some of the towns and cities of Maine for another year or so. Father John O'Donnell, who had found the streets of Portland unsafe after sunset, had requested and received police protection for St. Dominic's since the middle of October 1855; in November the laying of the corner- stone of the new church in Bath was prevented by an ugly crowd; and on April 27, 1856, the Catholic church in Ellsworth and an unoccupied home owned by a Catholic were delib- erately destroyed by fire. The church, a small (seventy-five
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feet by fifty ) wooden edifice with a cross that stood a hundred feet above the ground, had been constructed under the direc- tion of the Jesuits. If not an ornament to the town, it was respectable and the Catholics were rightly proud of it. It had cost them five thousand dollars and a debt of only five hundred remained; but it was not covered by insurance since there were no profits in Catholic churches to the insurance companies of the 1850's. Twice the windows had been broken; after the second act of vandalism the Catholics, at the expense of one hundred dollars, substituted blinds for the window glass. That was in the fall of 1855, and the change did not make for a comfortable church in the winter. However, the church was rarely used after the attack on Bapst. Since there had not been a fire to heat the building for more than a week prior to its destruction, the possibility of an accidental fire from within was eliminated, as a visitor to the town and an eye-witness of the fire and subsequent events testified. The meeting called to investigate the origin of the two fires ended in bedlam.
The culprits who had tarred and feathered Bapst were never indicted. An able lawyer, George Evans, a former United States Senator, had presented the evidence (conclusive evi- dence, too, according to an important Maine paper) to the grand jury, but no indictment was voted. The reason was given: "a portion of the jury belonged to a secret, and oath- bound anti-Catholic society."1 Members of the jury (the vote was nine to seven against the indictment) who were not mem- bers had been conditioned by a public meeting called by Chaney and held on October 24, a few days before the presentation of the evidence to the jury. At this meeting it was resolved that Bapst himself was responsible for the whole affair, that they intended to continue to defend their liberties, and that the Bangor press and citizens had by their attitude and actions become accomplices after the fact. By then, how- ever, Bapst was busy building a church in Bangor.
1 Eastern Argus, November 2, 1854. The Boston Pilot of November 4 and 11, 1854, using the reports in the Bangor Journal, posted its readers on the reaction of Ellsworth and the grand jury case.
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5. LAST YEARS OF THE MAINE MISSION
Bangor and Eastport became the two centers of the missions in June 1854. Late in this year, after Bapst's unpleasant ex- perience in Ellsworth and heartwarming condolences in Bangor, two new Jesuits arrived to carry on the increasing labors of the expanding missionary field. Father Eugene Vetro- mile was the first to arrive, a day or two after the Ellsworth affair. He replaced Father Bixio who left Bangor Monday, October 16, the day Bapst returned from Ellsworth. He could supply all the details omitted by the newspaper accounts. Vetromile remained on the missions until the fall of 1858; by then it was clear that the end of the Jesuit missions in Maine was soon at hand. Yet it was not the end of Maine for Vetro- mile; after a few years he became a priest of the diocese of Portland and became a recognized authority on the Maine Indians.
Father Anthony Ciampi who had completed his first term as President of Holy Cross was the other addition to the band. He was a long time in arriving. Bapst had received with joy in June the news that the former President of New England's only Catholic college was assigned to Maine. He did not arrive, however, until late in November or early in December. But this was not Ciampi's fault. He was one of those talented, affable, zealous souls wanted by every Superior. Before he had retired from office he had received confidential word that his name would be submitted to Rome by Monsignor Bedini as bishop of Portland after Monsignor Coskery of Baltimore had declined the office. On receiving the news he had written to Father Stonestreet, the Provincial, urging him to see to it that the General of the Society in Rome prevented the appointment, if seriously considered. When his first term at Holy Cross was completed he was sent to Washington to be pastor of Trinity Church, near Georgetown College. Then, to his delight, he was assigned to Maine. He had fallen in love with New Eng- land and wanted to remain there. What the work was did not
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matter. Yet he was hardly established in Bangor when the Provincial told him he was needed in Baltimore as Procurator of the Province. Ciampi begged him to get someone else: "I am not capable of making a numerical division," he added.
Ciampi may have been baffled by numbers, but he had a talent for making friends. He made many while in Maine, and the records of one friendship have survived in the letters he wrote to Cornelius Hanrahan, a leader of the Catholics of Rockland. Ciampi's first visit to this town was late in December 1855, a few days after Christmas. Bapst asked Hanrahan to meet the former college president at the wharf, directing him to look for a young and fine looking man carrying "a large red carpet bag." This meeting between Hanrahan and Ciampi at the Rockland wharf was repeated frequently during the next two years, and between visits they corresponded. The two con- tinued to exchange letters long after the Maine missions were closed. The last of Ciampi's surviving letters to Hanrahan was written in Portland in the summer of 1876 when the priest returned to Maine to direct the retreats for the Sisters of Mercy in Portland and Bangor. Ciampi told Hanrahan they must arrange a meeting somewhere; anywhere would satisfy him, but he preferred "your own roof, where I spent so many hours with a pleasure I relish still."
Despite the current hostility, Ciampi found the Catholics were increasing in Maine at a surprising rate. This, no doubt, was one of the reasons for the hostility in some quarters and yet it also indicates that racial and religious tolerance was on the increase and blunting much of the hostility. This was especially true in Bangor. According to Ciampi, in a letter dated December 17, 1854, the Jesuits in Bangor were minister- ing to nearly fifteen thousand Catholics, and in Bangor alone there were four thousand. Actually, this was an underestimate for Bangor. Six thousand, one-third of the city's population, would be more accurate.
The growth of Catholics in Bangor had been remarkable. In the early 1830's, as already noted, there were scarcely a score
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of Catholics in this town. Then the Irish started to move in steadily. In Bangor, as in all American towns and cities, their manners and rough ways and their religion aroused resentment among natives who were slow to appreciate Celtic charm and wit. The Irish must be given credit for unwittingly introducing the city charter in Bangor. In the fall of 1853 a mob "instigated by race prejudices," according to a local historian, played havoc for two nights with the rude shanties in the Irish section of Bangor. This uncontrolled violence prompted the town leaders to push through a city charter so that Bangor would have a local government able to cope with violence. Some of the Irish saw to it that the members of the new police department earned their money.
On the whole, however, the Irish quickly adjusted to Bangor and a good feeling prevailed between them and the native Americans. Father Ciampi gives us the reason: the Irish of Bangor were a lovable group of people. They had no wealth, but their faith made them generous; they worked hard for what little resources they had, but were quick to help in any project their pastor proposed; they had no refinement and no education, but they had ready wills and hearts untainted with self-conceit. Whatever opposition they encountered made them more active. It was a consolation to work among them, said Ciampi, and not be in some wealthy parish where one had to spend a week polishing a Sunday sermon to deliver to a critical congregation. Others agreed with Ciampi. The Boston Pilot, for instance, was willing to admit that "In no city for its size in the country are there more zealous Catholics than in Ban- gor." There is no reason to think that this was a sales promotion gesture. And some of the Bangor Catholics had a taste for reading; at least, Thomas Nagle had a bookstore with "an as- sortment of Catholic books for sale."
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