CT - The end of the Civil War brings no end to the violence

The end of the Civil War brings no end to the violence

By David J. Merkowitz

In 1884, a mob set fire to the courthouse in Cincinnati, angered over high crime and political corruption. The three-day riot saw more than 55 people killed.

(third in a series)

The last third of the 19th century was an era dominated by domestic interests. After the tremendous bloodshed of the Civil War, Americans were not in the mood for any sort of large-scale military action. Nor did the nation soon return to normal, as many former Confederates refused to acknowledge the true implications of their loss. From the promise of freedom unleashed with the Emancipation Proclamation through the final defeat of the Confederates at Appomattox, it had seemed that the United States would start along the path toward fulfilling the promise of the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal."

Unfortunately, this would not be the case for another century.

There were certainly flashes of hope during the period of Reconstruction. But slavery was not simply a form of labor, it was also an institution built upon racism. As slavery disappeared, racism refused to yield. This racism was not contained to the South, but could be found throughout the United States. Building legalized segregation took time, and it was not until 1890s, on the eve of the Spanish-American War, that the last residual hope for racial equality would finally pass. Forcing African Americans to accept that they were neither fully free nor equal was an extraordinarily violent process. To say that there was no more warfare after the Civil War paints an erroneous picture. The 30 years that followed were violent and disorderly.

The city of Cincinnati and the Archdiocese of Cincinnati had their own brushes with chaos during this era. The city handled a great deal of labor violence, and the courthouse was burned down in 1884 during its worst riot, with more than 56 people killed. Cincinnati's standing among the nation's cities declined, as cities along the Great Lakes leapt ahead. Cincinnati continued to grow, but it could no longer compete with the Chicagos of the world. The after-effects of the Civil War left many of the markets in the South deeply impoverished. As the nation shifted from a seriesof North-South trading routes toward a more East-West focus, Cincinnati was left behind.

From sketches by Joseph B. Beale/Library of Congress

In 1880, Cincinnati formally opened the presidential campaign by holding the National Democratic Convention Session in Music Hall. The area was primarily Democrat at the time.

By the late 1890s, Cincinnati's political system was synonymous with corruption, as George "Boss" Cox was in the midst of his 30-year run as the leading political force in the city. Even in this atmosphere of corruption and backroom deals, Archbishop William Elder and The Catholic Telegraph pushed for municipal reform in quite strident terms in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Immigrants, especially Germans, continued to come to Cincinnati in large numbers through the mid-1880s, but never again would the city be the destination for sizable immigrant groups. The great waves of Italians, East European Jews and various Slavic peoples stayed along the East Coast or settled in the booming cities along the Great Lakes.

In 1877-8, the banking institution put together by then-Archbishop John Baptist Purcell's brother collapsed. From the panic of 1837 through the Civil War, many Cincinnati Catholics had given their money to the archdiocese for safekeeping. But in 1877, during an economic downturn, many needed their cash. The Catholic Church had invested the money in long-term investments, which made it difficult to return the money. The archdiocese was all but bankrupted by the event, and The Catholic Telegraph, too, barely survived. It took most of the rest of the century to recover, and the memory of this calamity continues to lurk in the archdiocesan memory even today. The Catholic Telegraph was only returned to a firm footing in the spring of 1898, when Dr. Thomas P. Hart took control of the paper. He would revive the paper and lead it for the first part of the new century.

As the19th century drew to a close, it was increasingly clear that Cincinnati's Catholic community, both German and Irish, were growing wealthier. By the turn of the century, the bulk of Cincinnati Catholics were moving into the higher reaches of the working class and even into the middle class.

The complex issue of German identity will be touched upon more during the discussion of the World War I, but it is worth noting that many Catholics were assimilating into American society to varying degrees. By 1907, the German Catholic newspaper in Cincinnati, the Wahrheitsfreund, would cease publication.

The Spanish-American War of the late spring and summer of 1898 was seen by many Americans as the moment when the immediacy of the Civil War faded from view, and the United States claimed its rightful place among the nations of the world.

It was also well-timed for Catholics to prove their devotion to the nation, since another flash of intense anti-Catholicism had swept across the nation in the form of the American Protective Association in the mid-1890s. As the Telegraph described it on September 8, 1898, "The Spanish-American war has had very evident good results in wiping out the last trace of sectional feeling and dissipating in a great degree the bigotry against the Catholic Church. The prompt response to the call to arms made by the men who wore the gray (Southerners) and their bravery on the battlefields of Cuba has amalgamated our people into a grand, united nation, and we all feel better for it. The large number of Catholics - from some places in whole regiments - enlisted in the war, their courage in battle, their decorum in camp, the devotion of their chaplains, confounded the calumniators of our Faith, and forced them to a temporary silence." (This was about as positive as the Telegraph was able to be about this short war.)

The Catholic Telegraph expressed pride at the news of Admiral Dewey's defeat of the Spanish Navy at Manila and reports of American victories at Santiago. Beyond those moments, the diocesan newspaper found plenty to be critical of as it tried to challenge the push to war that a number of nationally prominent newspapers carried out.

Once the war started, the Telegraph rallied the war effort out of national pride - much as has been the case, ironically, with the current U.S. involvement in Iraq. The paper emphasized that one of the duties of a good Catholic was support for the civil authority. Once it was clear that the Spanish were defeated and that the settlement of the war might mean the creation of American empire, the paper grew far more critical. The Telegraph was especially opposed to those voices that spoke of the British Empire in positive terms and sought to model a similar American empire.

It should be noted that The Catholic Telegraph had long expressed an abiding distaste for the British and their empire, undoubtedly the result of a predominantly pro-Irish perspective of its various editors and readership.

After the war ended, the newspaper referred to the Spanish-American War as "an example of Protestant America imperialism." The Telegraph did acknowledge the importance of freeing the Catholic Cubans, Filipinos and Puerto Ricans from the poor, despotic rule of the Spanish. However, the paper expended more effort defending the conquered peoples who were portrayed in the mainstream press as uncivilized, inadequately Christian and incapable of self-government.

The Telegraph argued that the real reason why so many of the so-called "Anglo-Saxon" elements wanted an American empire was to provide more opportunities for American Protestant missionaries - and the paper's editor's clearly did not think this was a positive development for the lives of the Filipinos or Cubans.

The Catholic Telegraph published a long editorial by Father Thomas McGrady, a famous labor priest from the neighboring Diocese of Covington, in which he questioned the rationale for war, attacked the idea that the United States needed an empire and reported on the negative opinions that he heard about the United States as he traveled around Europe during the war. (These opinions sound quite familiar to those of Europe about the current war in Iraq.)

After 1898, it was clear that America's place in the world had changed. If the Spanish-American War had been a short war (though the attempt to seize control of Philippines would drag out well into the 1900s) the coming of World War I transformed the world, and Ohio's Catholics, in ways that we still confront today.

Did you know . . . . .?

In the first half-century of The Catholic Telegraph's existence, agents sold the paper in Louisville, Baltimore, Washington, St. Louis, Pittsburgh and other growing cities.

Early advertisers included physicians, booksellers, attorneys, boarding houses and undertakers.

World news was such a priority for The Catholic Telegraph, particularly in the 19th and early 20th centuries, that coverage of President Lincoln's death began on page 4 of the April 19, 1865 issue!

Cincinnati Archbishop John Purcell returned from Vatican I with concerns about the doctrine of papal infallibility, and in the pages of the CT, readers would learn that much of the world was not happy with the doctrine. A Telegraph editorial defended it as "the will of the Holy Ghost," urging Catholics to accept the doctrine and attempting in further editorials to distinguish between political and religious loyalty.

On. Dec. 21, 1880, Arcbishop Purcell published a strong decree on church-sanctioned entertainment: "No dancing after dark and no round dancing at all."

In 1883 a Temperance Society was formed at St. Mary Parish in Urbana, following reports that 200 million glasses of beer had been drunk in Cincinnati in 1882.

One Catholic Telegraph editorial defined a liberal Catholic as "a man who hangs around the gates of hell and fools with the hinges 'til they fly open and swallow him."

The first photograph appeared in the July 4, 1883 issue, covering the death of Archbishop Purcell.

From 1849-1861 the paper was known as The Catholic Telegraph and Advocate, since it was also the official paper of the Louisville diocese. Interesting, the original name, The Catholic Telegraph, preceded by about 13 years Samuel Morse's invention. In 1831, the word "telegraph," was likely selected because it simply meant the art of communication by writing.