The 1844 Philadelphia Bible Riots and the American Irish Catholic Press

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article analyses the development of an American Irish Catholic identity following the 1844 Philadelphia Nativist riots, as perpetuated in New York’s The Truth Teller, and the Boston Pilot. The journalists of these two papers espoused that Irish Catholics had experienced unimaginable horrors at the hands of the British state and the system of Protestant Ascendancy that Britain instituted. For them, the 1844 Nativist riots were a manifestation of Protestant Ascendancy on American soil, instigated by Irish Protestant infiltrators of the Orange Order. These journalists used the experiences of 1844 to differentiate themselves from Irish Protestants, whom they derided as Orangemen. They challenged the rise of Nativism and Whig Anglo-Saxonism, which they believed had been corrupted by a clandestine Orange movement operating in the United States. The specific Irish Catholic response of these papers deserves attention from historians.