standard of living, his illiteracy and slovenliness, his ignorance of
American ways and his unwillingness to submit to them, his
clannishness, the danger of his organizing and capturing the political
offices and ultimately the Government. In addition to the alarmist and
the prejudiced, careful and thoughtful citizens were aroused to the
danger. Unfortunately, however, religious antagonisms were aroused
and, as is always the case, these differences awakened the profoundest
prejudices and passions of the human heart. There were many towns in
New England and in the West where Roman Catholicism was unknown except
as a traditional enemy of free institutions. It is difficult to
realize in these days of tolerance the feelings aroused in such
communities when Catholic churches, parochial schools, and convents
began to appear among them; and when the devotees of this faith
displayed a genius for practical politics, instinctive distrust
developed into lively suspicion.

The specter of ecclesiastical authority reared itself, and the
question of sharing public school moneys with parochial schools and of
reading the Bible in the public schools became a burning issue. Here
and there occurred clashes that were more than barroom brawls.
Organized gangs infested the cities. Both sides were sustained and
encouraged by partisan papers, and on several occasions the antagonism
spent themselves in riots and destruction. In 1834 the Ursuline
convent at Charlestown, near Boston, was sacked and burned. Ten years
later occurred the great anti-Irish riots in Philadelphia, in which
two Catholic churches and a schoolhouse were burned by a mob inflamed
to hysteria by one of the leaders who held up a torn American flag and
shouted, "This is the flag that was trampled on by Irish papists."
Prejudice accompanied fear into every city and "patented citizens"
were often subject to abuse and even persecution. Tammany Hall in New