CHAPTER IV.

THE CHURCH AND CATHOLICS DURING THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR.

THE Condition of the Church in the country east of the Mississippi in 1774 has been portrayed. The Catholic bodies were widely separated; in those of French and Spanish origin the royal aid was withdrawn, and the people were discouraged. The suppression of the Society of Jesus cut off all hope of further missionary supply from that order, and the prospect for the future was bleak enough, as no provision for the maintenance of a clergy and divine worship was made.

The Jesuits in Maryland and Pennsylvania formally accepted the Brief and became secular priests. The property of the order in Illinois, like that in Canada, was taken by the English government, which to this day holds the latter as a trust.' In Maryland the title to the property had not been held by the Jesuits as a body corporate, but by individual members, all British subjects, and had been transmitted from one to another by will or deed ever since the settlement of the country. On the suppression, Bishop Challoner sent the Brief to Maryland for the adhesion of the members in that and the adjoining province, but neither he nor the Sovereign Pontiff took any steps in regard to the property.

'The Illinois and other lands must have passed to the United States by the treaty of 1783 under the same trust, to apply them to the purposes for which they were given. 66 Memoire sur les Biens des Jésuites en Canada," Montreal, 1874, p. 96. If government sold the land, the proceeds belong to the Catholic Church, or justice is a mockery.

The outburst of bigotry in New York, excited by the Quebec Act and stimulated by narrow-minded fanatics like John Jay, caused the only serious trouble experienced by Catholics during this period. A number of Scotch Highlanders, chiefly Catholics from Glengarry, had, as already stated, settled near Johnson Hall, in the Mohawk Valley, to which they had been invited by Sir William Johnson. They were attended by the Rev. John McKenna, an Irish priest, educated at Louvain. Comparatively strangers in the country, many speaking English imperfectly, the immigrants knew little of the points on which the colonists based their complaints against the English government. They soon found themselves denounced as tories, papists, and friends of British tyranny by the fanatics near them. They were disarmed by General Schuyler, and before the spring of 1776 began to withdraw to Canada, by way of Oswegatchie, abandoning the homes they had created in the wilderness. Their sufferings were great, one party subsisting for ten days on their dogs and herbs they gathered as they went. Their priest, more obnoxious than his flock, withdrew with a company of 300, and took up his abode with the Jesuit Fathers at Montreal.

Thus did anti-Catholic bigotry deprive New York of industrious and thrifty settlers, and send to swell the ranks of the British army, men who longed to avenge the defeat at Culloden, men eager to draw their claymores against England.

One of these parties of Catholics flying from persecution, was attacked by Indians from St. Regis, and several were killed.'

1 Allan McDonald to Congress, March 25, 1776, complaining of arrest near Johnstown, "American Archives," v., p. 415. Thomas Gummersall, "New York Colonial Documents," viii., p. 683; Ferland, "Vie de Mgr. Plessis,” p. 50; English edition, p. 32. Rev. Mr. McKenna, when

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The Rev. John McKenna was the first resident Catholic priest among the settlers in New York after the Jesuit Fathers in Dongan's time, nearly a century before.

The influence of the same spirit manifested itself also in Baltimore, where John Heffernan, a Catholic, had opened a school. We are told "that the laws against Roman Catholic teachers still existing, some persons actuated by worse motives broke up Mr. John Heffernan's school, and he also left the place."1

So, too, John Maguire and his wife, Margaret Tuite, who had resided in Delaware, were hunted out by over-zealous whigs, and their son Thomas, born at Philadelphia, May 9, 1776, became one of the most able and distinguished priests in Canada, holding many important positions in that province, and negotiating its affairs in England and Rome." He was apparently the second Catholic priest of Pennsylvania birth. Yet Catholics were swelling the ranks of the army which the colonists raised in defence of the rights they claimed as British subjects, and as the British liberties handed down from their ancestors."

When the petitions and remonstrances of the American

the Hessians arrived in Canada, finding that many were Catholics, went from company to company preaching and confessing in German, which he spoke fluently. Schlösser, "Briefwechsel," Thiel 4, Heft 23, p. 318. "N. Y. Revolutionary Papers," ii., p. 196. Tryon to Dartmouth, February 7, 1776. Capt. McDonald's letters, “N. Y. Historical Society," 1882, pp. 224, 275, 357. The result was that in 1778, Bishop Hay could declare to Sir John Dalrymple, "that nearly all the emigrants who had left the Highlands a few years before were now wearing his Majesty's uniform." Gordon, "Journal and Appendix," Glasgow, 1867, p. 144. Scharf, "The Chronicles of Baltimore," Baltimore, 1874, p. 136.

* Tanguay, "Repertoire Général du Clergé Canadian," Quebec, 1868, p. 151.

"Pennsylvania Journal," January 24, 1776. McCurtin's Journal, in "Maryland Papers," Philadelphia, 1857, p. 11.

colonists failed, and the English government, adhering to its policy, increased its military force in Massachusetts, it was evident that force would be met by force. The English opened the war by the advance on Lexington, and soon after finding themselves encircled by troops in Boston, attempted in vain in the Battle of Bunker Hill to break through the investing army. The struggle once began, the other colonies were called upon to send troops; then the Catholics of Maryland and Pennsylvania, with many in other parts, shouldered their muskets. The advance into Canada found so many there ready to join the Americans against their old enemies that two regiments were formed, known as "Congress' Own,"

chartier de fotbiniève pr de Cordre de matte curé deft Lunevent

Jus Liste d'orléans

FAC-SIMILE OF SIGNATURE OF Rev. L. c. de LOTBINIÈRE, CHAPLAIN OF CONGRESS' OWN.

one of them Livingston's, having a chaplain duly commissioned by the Continental Congress, the Rev. Francis Louis Chartier de Lotbinière of the Order of Malta, who served with the regiment.'

They have appointed a priest called Lotbinière to absolve the people : they give him a salary of 1,500 livres, and promise him a bishopric." "N. Y. Historical Collections," 1880, p. 221. The Rev. Mr. Lotbinière's commission bore date Jan. 26, 1776. Hamersly, “Army Register,” Washington, 1881, p. 32. Tanguay, "Repertoire General," Quebec, 1868, p. 103. Bishop Briand, Appointment Oct. 2, 1770. The Canadian Corps was at Fishkill, November 12, 1776. N. Y. Revolutionary Papers," i., p. 534. Hazen's Regiment was on the right of the American storming party at Yorktown. The Canadians who joined the American cause were excom

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All Canada would have been won but for the influence of John Jay's bigoted address to the People of Great Britain, in which the Canadians and their religion were assailed in the grossest terms. The change of sentiment caused by this illtimed and unchristian address, led to the defeat of Montgomery and to the decline of the American cause in Canada. Something should now be said of the condition of the Church at this time.

In 1775 the Catholic mission lost one of its zealous members by death. This was the German priest, Rev. Mathias Sittensperger, known in Pennsylvania and Maryland by the name of Manners. He expired at Bohemia, on the 16th of June, attended by Rev. Mr. Mosley from Tuckahoe, of a dysentery which was epidemic on the Eastern Shore, and gave the two missionaries abundant occasions for the exercise of their zeal. The Rev. Mr. Mosley was urged by his family to return to England, but he saw the mission losing priests, and no clergymen coming to take their place. He would not desert the field in which he had so long labored. "I see that I am a very necessary Hand in my situation," he wrote, "and our Gentlemen here won't hear of my departure." So he stuck manfully to his post, his "Single Horse-Chair," carrying far and wide through the peninsula of the Eastern

municated by the Bishop of Quebec, and those who returned to Canada were denied the sacraments even on their death-bed, unless they openly recognized that they had committed sin by joining the Americans. Christian burial was as a consequence denied them, and they were buried by the roadside. De Gaspé, "Les Anciens Canadiens," 1877, pp. 183-4. Another priest in Canada who sided with the Continental Congress, was the Sulpitian, Rev. Peter Huet de la Valinière, curé of Ste. Anne du Sud. He was sent out of Canada by the English authorities in 1779, and ordered to embark in the fleet which left Quebec October 25. He came to the United States, and his name will recur in our pages. Haldimand to Bishop of Quebec, October 14, 1779, in Brymner, "Report in Canadian Archives," Ottawa, 1887, p. 473.