Know-Nothings Appeal to Protestant Women of America, 1856

On America’s great baptismal day, the Spirit of God moved like a wave over the whole nation; it was Protestant America, and the Bible was the cornerstone on which the mighty structure rested; and when we inquire what it is that is now shaking America, and attempting to unsettle her basis, and toss her like boys toss a ball, from her foundation, the problem is solved— she bears on her vast bosom the seal of the Book of Life! It is to take from her this halo of light and of glory, which surrounds her, to mount the sun and to rob him of his rays, to put Rome’s Vicegerent in the place of America’s God! Arrogant mortal, thou dust before the moth, let Rome trust in thee, but the people of America must trust in the living God!

Nero wished Rome’s population were but a single neck, that he might exterminate it at a blow; so has this Popish Hierarchy but one single aim, and that is, mankind itself.

It has fomented discord, weakened and oppressed America; it has poisoned her habits, bit at her freedom, robbed her of her rights, and undermined her national character. What was the oppression of the “stamp act”?— what all the consumption taxes of England, which aroused America to her indefeasible rights, and made her a bloodstained child, comparable to the wound now made upon her heart in seeing the destruction of her Bible? And when her conscience, her religion, all that survives death and the grave are periled, as well as her honor, her freedom, and her nationality, what less can women do than come now to reveal its vitality?

And if the women of America have soul or eye, now or never they must be the pillar of support in the great moral and political revolution, which designs the overthrow of Popish oppression in Protestant America! And with a bosom thrilling with the necessities of the moment, a heart filled with the purity of the feeling— a mind balanced on the convictions of the great principles of the Protestant Bible, in God’s name, we say, come! Every nail and every tack has a place in the great structure of human liberty!

Unprepared because unsuspecting, the expulsion of the Bible from our institutions of education has been demanded by intolerant Rome, and yielded by free America. Popish prelates have come with their scissors in their hands and lopped out before our eyes, the thoughts and the arguments of American freedom— every truth precious to liberty, which its founders sought to carve in the mountains and hills, and on the plains of America, have been maimed and murdered before the youth of America! Let woman reassure America that she shall not be the nursery for Papal Rome— that the will of God, and not priest-craft and jugglery, shall govern the mind of America. That the ground on which we stand is not slippery ground; that the soil which has drank the spirit, and been enriched by the blood of its heroes and martyrs, that has been fashioned and molded by iron implements, the plough, the hoe, and the spade, cannot be blotted out by the mere draft of a Papal pencil.

Our Saviour himself drove out from the halls of the temple those who trod it for desecration, and shall not woman be inspired with resistance, when His foes are already in its vestibule?

It is the political feature of the Church of Rome, its aim to unsettle the principles of our liberties, and hence to destroy them, that has agitated America from centre to extreme. The graves of our fathers have been slandered, an unfathomable abyss has been sought to be created between the living and the dead; but though concealed in their cofiins and charnel-houses, they speak to us to-day, and in their thoughts, their deeds, and their blood, they disclaim the aspersion that any system, religious or political, should be tolerated, that strikes at the foundation of free America.

An assault on Protestantism is an assault upon our liberties; when the Bible, our foundation stone, is struck, how can the building stand? It was the beam, the spindle, the shuttle, which warped and wove our freedom. The descendants of Luther and Calvin, the Puritans and Penn, came to America, to have a Church without a Pope, and they made a government without a throne.

Like the temple of Solomon, reared without sound of hammer, has been the long and silent preparation for Liberty’s overthrow in Protestant America. Sweet-meats, cheese, bread, butter, roast beef, and plum pudding, have all been set at the base of our political temple, to tempt the taste of Jesuitical rats, who bite, and gnaw, and grow fat in undermining it: every beam, every joint, every stone, and every slab, has its laborer, that riveted and morticed a Popish edifice of despotism and death may rise upon the ruins of free America and her Protestant Bible. To hasten this vast work, infidelity, Socialism, and Jesuitism have made equality and fraternity; every influence, foreign and domestic, has been addressed, every treasury has been taxed. The church, the school, the confessional, the political caucus, and the American ballot-box. It has made for us Legislators, Governors, and Presidents. It has elevated to positions of trust, honor, and power, Jesuitical emissaries. It has founded colleges and convents in all the States. The cabinet, the supreme bench, chaplains in our public service, foreign missions and embassies, offices of honor and emolument in the revenue and postal service of the country,— all! all! have been affected by this pestilential influence.

As the captive lion beats against his cage, does the soul of woman now beat against the sworn foes of God and her country. America without her Bible, her Sabbath School, without God, and without woman, to cherish and uphold these, would not be America. She will never consent to grant to Rome’s Vicegerent the disposal of America’s blood, and America’s humanity. She feels it a transaction between Heaven and Hell, between the blessed and the damned; and only thus can be contemplated America’s fall.

We have seen that the signal of our nationality was the signal of Rome’s irrevocable decree to crush us in our might ; and commencing with the honied expressions of the tongue and a sardonic smile upon her face, she has received largely and enjoyed long our national confidence and hospitality. We remembered that it was not the least of America’s glory that her Roman Catholic sons fought, and suffered, and periled for her liberty; and we did not thus perceive the Jesuitism which now absolutely controls the Church of Rome in the United States, never had anything in common with our institutions, the Declaration of our Independence, or our Republican government.

There is an eternal hostility between the principles of Washington and the principles of Popery; between the spirit of Romish priests and prelates, and that of the fathers of our republic, who owned allegiance only to God, and need no intercessor but His well-beloved Son. There were no surpliced traitors, no perfidious prelates in that great Convention which formed the eternal code of our liberties, and wrote our everlasting principles; but God-fearing, God-depending, God-trusting men, of robust and manly life. It was no vulnerable, conceited popinjay— but the spirit which had drawn lightning from the skies — who arose in that assembly, and to solve doubt, and difficulty, and danger, said “let us pray!” They knelt; the collected wisdom of America, before the God who had given them Independence— that He might guide them to a Constitution wise and holy enough to save it.

And now, women of America, let the pulsations of one heart arouse you to that Almighty echo of public opinion which has moved the hills and mountains of America— and risen now, with her thundering trumpet, may it send out her warning notes until this foreign aggression, this Papal Despotism, this Jericho of human oppression, falls before Protestant America. Raise high with womanly hands the blazing torch of truth — that the oppressed may be consoled by the Word of God— plead that the great principles of the American party, founded on the eternal laws of God’s immutable truth, shall stand until time shall be no more.

Anna Ella Carroll, The Great American Battle: Or, the Contest between Christianity and Political Romanism (New York: Miller, Orton & Mulligan, 1856), 22-25.

NOTE: An accomplished lobbyist and author, Maryland-born Anna Ella Carroll was a member of the Know-Nothing Party. The above is an excerpt from a book expounding the party’s anti-Catholic views.