The New Zealand Tablet Fiat Justitia. FRIDAY, MAY 20, 1898. UNITED STATES CATHOLICS AND THE WAR.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVI, Issue 3, 20 May 1898, Page 17

The New Zealand Tablet Fiat Justitia. FRIDAY, MAY 20, 1898. UNITED STATES CATHOLICS AND THE WAR.

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♦ :IERE is, in all reason, enough in the present war to cause heart-sorrow to every feeling man, whatever his creed or country may be. It is none the less natural that it should furnish for a decided enlistment of feeling throughout the world in favour of one side or the other. Thus far such manifestation of feeling has run along the lines of racial preference or commercial interest. There has been undoubtedly here and there an undercurrent of religious feeling telling an some nonCatholic countries against Spain. It has been reserved for Rev. W. Saundees, of the Congregational Church, Dunedin, to flaunt that feeling in the face of the shamed noonday. The public were assured that the present war is nob one between two countries — that it is a religious war in which Spain represer^ the Cauholic and the United States the Protestant side. The matter has been dealt with in the secular Press. Rev. W. Saunders has thought it prudent, like Brer Rabbit, to " lay low." One phase of the subject has been admirably dealt with by Mr. J. A. Scott in a letter which is transferred to our columns to-day. Another phase of the subject to wlrch we referred may appeal to a wider public than those who read the Dunedin Evenhui Slav. J

We are asked to regard the United States as a wholly Protestant nation in the act of winning, by virtue of its Protestantism, a victory over a nation, that, by reason of its religion, is in a state of decay. We will not here refer to the leading part played by Catholic missonaries and explorers such as De Soto, Marquette, Serha, Jogubs, Ponce de Leon, Cadillac, Pierrot, Nicolet, Vincennes, De Poktola, and so many others in discovering practically every part of the present United States. Mr. Scott's letter, to which the reader is referred, dialsconclusively with thequestion as to religious statistics and, as to who forms the present fightinoline of the United States. We have touched upon another phase of the subject— the leading part that Catholics played in founding the great .Republic. ~ When tho revolutionary war broke out, Catholics at once and universally threw in their lot with the cause of independence, at a time when many non-Catholics sided with England and others remained neutral. We cannot find a single ' Catholic name in Sabine's Amoiican Lot/alix/s (Boston, 1847). Four Catholics signed the Declaration of Independence. One of them Charles Carroll, of Carroll ton — according to Lord Brougham staked more property on the issue than all the other signers put together. As he set his hand to the memorable document the whisper ran around the hall of Congress : " There <>o some millions of property !" There being many Carrolls somebody remarked : " Nobody will know what Carroll it is' You'll get clear." "Not so!" he replied, and instantly added his address "of Carrollton." When, in 1832, he lay dying, in his ninety-sixth year, he declared that the greatest happiness of his life was this : " I have faithfully practised the duties of my religion."

* * « Scarcely less famous was the Wexfoid Catholic, <• Saucy .Jack Barry," who was "the father of the American navy " its first commodore, the man to whom the first British flaowas struck in the naval battles of the war. A great number of his sailors and marines were, like himself, Irish Catholics Then there were (Jcuoral Moylan, another Irish Catholic the first quartermaster of the revolutionary war ; and General Wayne, who, in 1792, became Commander-in-chief of the American Army. And what shall we say of Washington's trusted friend, Father John Carroll, of Daniel Carroll Thomas Fitzsimoxs, Dominic Lynch, and so many other leaders in the cause ? and of the Catholic soldiers of other lands who fought for American independence under the Catho-

lic generals Lafayette, Rochambeau, Fleury, Dupartail, Lowzun, De Gras, I)e Kalb, Kosciusko, Pulaski, and others ? Of the 288,000 men of the United States army, 2^2,000 were Continental and 56,000 militia. Of this army there were two Irishmen to every native. After the close of the war, Mr. Galloway, who had been speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly, said of the American Army that, according to the birth entries, " there were scarcely one-fourth natives of America ; about half were Irish, and the other fourth principally Scotch and English." When, in 1780, Washington's army was on the verge of stanation and mutiny, Catholics again rushed to the rescue — FrrzsnrONS with £5000, 27 members of the Irish Catholic Friendly Sons of St. Patrick with £103,500, and Charles Carroll with an immense sum. The Republic was by this means saved at the darkest crisis in the war of independence. -,£ -■;.' ,i

Catholics were true to their old tnidit'ons of bravery and patriotism in the subsequent wars against England and Catholic Mexico, and in the great Civil War of the sixties. Headers of that stirring period of United States history will recall the splendid achievements of the Catholic Generals, " Fighting Phil Sheridan," Rosecrans (" Old Rosey," whose deep piety converted his brother, who later on became a bishop), Shields, Meagher and his famous Irish Brigade, Newton (the destroyer of " Ilell-gate "), Mulligan", Ewing, Hunt, Stone, M'Makon, Rucker, Vincent, Colonel Jerome Buonaparte, Admirals Sands and Ammen, and many others. With the close of the Civil War there dawned a new era on Catholicity in the United States. Protestants were, during the war, brought into intimate contact with Catholics, and their prejudices removed. Much of this they owe to their valour and patriotism, and a great deal to the noble self-sacrifice of those angels in disguise, the Sisters of Charity and Mercy, on many a hard-fought field. The Catholic bishops have ordered prayers for their country's success. Catholics are among the first in the fight. They are true to their old traditions. It is difficult to properly characterise the action of the man who boldly states that they are engaged on the Protestant side in a religious war.