A Jesuit Plot to Assassinate President Lincoln?
The fact that many of the conspirators were Catholic may have helped bring about more anti-Catholic legislation after the Civil War.
Stephanie Mann April 26, 2017
You have probably never heard of a Jesuit plot to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln, because there wasn’t any. But after the capture and death of John Wilkes Booth on April 26, 1865, authorities began to explore the conspiracy Booth and others had planned to murder the President, the Vice President, and the Secretary of State on Good Friday, April 14 that year. They discovered one common theme: all the conspirators met at the boarding house owned by Mary Surratt.
Mary Jenkins Surratt was a Catholic, having converted before her marriage to John Surratt in 1840. Everyone who had rooms in her house was a Catholic. Her son John, Jr.—who escaped capture and trial for a time by seeking sanctuary in a Montreal church rectory and then as a Papal Zouave—was a Catholic and had discerned and decided against a vocation to the priesthood. Another accomplice, David Herold, had studied at Catholic colleges including Georgetown. Dr. Samuel Mudd, who set Booth’s broken leg, was a Catholic. One of the main witnesses for the prosecution, Louis J. Weichmann, was a former seminary classmate of John Surratt. Several of the witnesses for the defense were Catholic priests, testifying to Mary Surratt’s Christian character and charity. Another Catholic boarder, Honora Fitzpatrick, was a witness for both the prosecution and the defense at the military tribunal that condemned the conspirators in May and June, 1865.
The Mid-Century Nativist Movement
Perhaps Catholic priests weren’t the best character witnesses in 1865. Since the 1840’s anti-Catholic nativists had been protesting against the influx of Catholics, particularly Irish immigrants. The Native American, American, or Know-Nothing political party—whose members were supposed to reply that they “knew nothing” about the activities or goals of the party—was anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic. They nominated Millard Fillmore, the 13th President (and the last Whig) to run again in the presidential election of 1856. The Democrat James Buchanan won that election and in a way, the American Party won too, since the Republican candidate John C. Fremont was accused of being a Catholic because he and his wife, Jessie, the daughter of Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton, were married by a Catholic priest when they eloped. Fears that the Pope would control a Catholic president were raised, just as they were when John F. Kennedy ran for the office.
As Mark A. Noll notes in his 2006 study "The Civil War as a Theological Crisis", the “American Catholic community remained small and relatively isolated” during the Civil War period and Catholics “had good reason to be wary of dominant American opinions” about them. When Cincinnati’s Archbishop John Baptist Purcell debated the Presbyterian minister Alexander Campbell, the latter stated that the Catholic laity was enslaved by their priests, bishops, and popes, having no free will to make their own decisions. Campbell further opined that Catholics were “essentially anti-American” and “fundamentally opposed to American freedom”.
The fact that the Surratts and other conspirators were Catholic — his family managed to hide indications that John Wilkes Booth was a convert too — just added fuel to Campbell’s fiery denunciations of Catholics. Those opinions continued to hold sway and resulted in the Blaine Amendments after the Civil War, which are in the news today at the Supreme Court.
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