At Peace with All Their Neighbors: Catholics and Catholicism in the National Capital, 1787-1860In 1790, two events marked important points in the development of two young American institutions—Congress decided that the new nation's seat of government would be on the banks of the Potomac, and John Carroll of Maryland was consecrated as America's first Catholic bishop. This coincidence of events signalled the unexpectedly important role that Maryland's Catholics, many of them by then fifth- and sixth-generation Americans, were to play in the growth and early government of the national capital. In this book, William W. Warner explores how Maryland's Catholics drew upon their long-standing traditions—advocacy of separation of church and state, a sense of civic duty, and a determination "to live at peace with all their neighbors," in Bishop Carroll's phrase—to take a leading role in the early government, financing, and building of the new capital. Beginning with brief histories of the area's first Catholic churches and the establishment of Georgetown College, At Peace with All Their Neighbors explains the many reasons behind the Protestant majority's acceptance of Catholicism in the national capital in an age often marked by religious intolerance. Shortly after the capital moved from Philadelphia in 1800, Catholics held the principal positions in the city government and were also major landowners, property investors, and bankers. In the decade before the 1844 riots over religious education erupted in Philadelphia, the municipal government of Georgetown gave public funds for a Catholic school and Congress granted land in Washington for a Catholic orphanage. The book closes with a remarkable account of how the Washington community, Protestants and Catholics alike, withstood the concentrated efforts of the virulently anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic American nativists and the Know-Nothing Party in the last two decades before the Civil War. This chronicle of Washington's Catholic community and its major contributions to the growth of the nations's capital will be of value for everyone interested in the history of Washington, D.C., Catholic history, and the history of religious toleration in America. |
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... Letters , the Georgetown University Archives , and the Archives of the Archdiocese of Baltimore as from the Trinity Church records themselves , al- though the latter are invaluable in determining the nature and composition of Trinity's ...
... letters of John Carroll preserved in the archives of the Archdiocese of Balti- more , many of which concern the beginnings of other churches , there is not one about Trinity.10 Rather , what Carroll's considerable correspondence does ...
... letters from America as well as the public prints , inform me that the district , now settled for the future capital of the United States , ... is on Potowmack river . Commissioners under direction of the President are to determine the ...
... letters . Carroll expressed great disappointment over the misunderstandings that had arisen between them and told Neale , " You evidently show that you have been exceedingly misinformed , since you came to America . " To Neale's ...
... letter on this subject while Carroll was in England awaiting his consecration as first bishop of the United States . ) 13 Carroll had in fact tried to transfer Neale from St. Thomas two years earlier , when Governor Thomas Sim Lee ...
Contents
3 | |
15 | |
33 | |
For Nation and Town | 55 |
The Church | 79 |
A Church So Crowded | 81 |
St Patricks St Peters St Marys and More | 100 |
The Nations Capital | 121 |
Daniel Carroll of Duddington | 166 |
The Passing Storm | 189 |
Time of Wonder Time of Trial | 191 |
A Final Test | 213 |
Acknowledgments | 231 |
Abbreviations | 233 |
Notes | 234 |
Bibliography | 289 |