Wonder What He Really Thought...

[L Verge]

About ten years ago, I worked with Dr. Kenneth Zanca of Marymount College in California as he researched for his book on The Catholics and Mary Surratt. He recently cleared out materials and sent a copy of the Journal of the American Catholic Historical Society for the fall of 2011, which carried an article he had written on James A. McMasters, a renowned convert to Catholicism in the 1800s. McMasters was very outspoken and served as editor of the New York Freeman's Journal for nearly forty years.

Students of Dr. Mudd will remember that the doctor sent a blistering letter to another Catholic journalist, Orestes Brownson, whose writings regarding the Lincoln policies were irritating to him. After reading this article, I suspect that Dr, Mudd's thinking was more in line with McMasters.

McMasters started out more in line with Northern Catholics in the pre-war years (pro-Lincoln, pro-Union, and anti-abolition). The anti-abolition stance might surprise you, but remember that the Catholic influence in the North was gaining strength with the ever-increasing immigration from Ireland and Germany. New immigrants were not abolitionists in general because freed slaves became competition in the work force.

His views quickly changed, however, and his comments on Lincoln's First Inaugural Address were highly critical - to the point of calling it a "clarion to danger." He did hope that Lincoln would not do what it seemed he was intending on doing, but he called the speech "earnest and narrow, and bigoted." It was referred to as a speech in the language of "the miserable and anti-national party that elected him." McMasters predicted that, if Lincoln attempted to reclaim federal property taken by already seceded states, "...he will force every slave-holding State to unite with the Southern Confederacy, and will bring a united South into armed collision with a divided North..." This editorial ran on March 9, 1861; Ft. Sumter was fired on on April 12, 1861.

The next editorial was on April 20, 1861, and McMasters did not mention Lincoln per se, but continued to condemn abolitionists and the Republican Party - calling the latter "the proximate cause of the evil." By the June issue of his Journal, McMasters had really taken to demeaning the president. He took the position that Lincoln and his Cabinet were the real enemies of the nation and the Constitution. This got him arrested and held in detention in Lafayette Prison in New York harbor for six weeks.

Lincoln's Conscription Law in 1863 did not go over well with either the New York Irish or McMasters. Peace Democrats held a rally in Union Square on May 18 that year, and McMasters gave a fiery opinion of the law by advocating violent resistance to it. This inflamed the situation further and resulted in the now-famous draft riots, which are considered the bloodiest race riots in American history.

Throughout the remainder of the war, McMasters continued to sharpen the verbal knives that he threw in Lincoln's direction. By the time of the assassination, he would only comment that political assassination should be abhorred. As far as lamenting Lincoln's death, McMasters was silent.