Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture;

"From the foundation of our government, it has been a conceded and settled doctrine, that the various religious denominations should not, as such, intermeddle with the political contests of the day. No instance is now remembered where they have done so!"

This is a remarkable sentence, and partakes of the nature of your Wilson county assertions! The history of the Church, and of the world, contradicts every word of the foregoing, and demonstrates that the "settled doctrine" of the Catholic Church, has ever been, as it still is, to "intermeddle with the political contests of the day." I will trouble you with two instances in which "religious denominations, as such," have been guilty of what you deny. The Albany (N. Y.) State Register, a paper which usually does not say what it cannot maintain, states that Archbishop Hughes has issued a mandate, commanding all Catholics in the Albany District, in the exciting State election now coming off, to cast their votes for Mr. Crosby for the Senate. But Roman Catholics, you falsely tell us, never "intermeddle with the political contests of the day: " O no!

The other "instance now remembered," is the one in which you were a candidate for a seat in the Legislature of Tennessee, in the county of Giles: this was, according to my recollection, in 1831, or a quarter of a century ago. At that time, there was a small Manual Labor School in Giles, which had been incorporated by the Legislature, and at the head of which was a Presbyterian. The gentleman who ran against you, if not a member of the Presbyterian Church, "approved" their "creed," and "witnessed their growth and progress for years with the highest satisfaction." You charged upon the stump that the Presbyterians were seeking to establish their religion by law, to unite Church and State – appealed to the Methodist and Baptist to put them down by electing you, with a promise that you would check their march by counter-legislation – and you were elected upon this issue. At the same time, as the oldest inhabitants of Giles know, there were not fifty Presbyterians in the county! But "no instance is remembered" in which one sect has intermeddled with another – O no! You say:

"In the mutations of parties in this country, a new one has lately arisen, to which, I apprehend, more of the Methodist ministers have attached themselves, at least in the State of Tennessee, than might have been expected. This party, known as the Know Nothings, is so peculiar in its organization, that it seems strange to me that any minister or professor of religion should be willing longer to continue in it."

Your apprehensions are well-founded, when you suppose that a very large proportion of the Methodist ministers in Tennessee are either members of this new party or sympathize with it. And, sir, more of the ministers of other denominations than you seem to be aware of, have either attached themselves to this party, "in the mutations of parties," or act with it, and endorse its aims and objects, than you have yet dreamed of! And "it seems strange" to these ministers, and thousands of the purest and best laymen in the Protestant ranks, "that any minister or professor of religion should be willing longer" to oppose the principles of this party, or array themselves under the black flag of Papal Rome, and of the pauper emigrants with whom she is flooding our land! But, sir, the object of your Address is, to persuade if you can, and if not, to drive, by motives of fear, the Clergy of the Methodist Church from their position on this great American and Protestant question. Alas, how little does the "son of a sainted father" understand the material he attempts to work upon! Methodist ministers are free men, the equals of other moral and upright men in heroic virtues, and far in advance of that of politicians in Tennessee who believe parties in religion, as in politics, are only "held together by the cohesive power of public plunder," and who assume to direct public opinion from a principle, of which selfishness is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end! Sir, the violence, bitterness, and the very inflammatory tone, not to say language, of your Gallatin, Lebanon, and Columbia speeches, are enough, it seems to me, to nauseate every good and conservative citizen, and to disgust every "Bishop, Elder, and other Ministers, Itinerant and Local, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South." Even in this Address, you insult these ministers on every page. I see not how any preacher, with a true Protestant and American heart in him, can read this address of yours through, without rising up from his seat and saying: "I have voted with this Anti-Protestant and Anti-American party for the last time."

In warning Methodist ministers to withdraw their sanction and approbation of Know Nothingism, you say:

"I therefore call upon them this day to come out of these lodges, and never return to them: at all events, never return to them until all secrecy, all their bits of red paper, (indicating blood, even by the selection of color,) all their signs and signals, are utterly abolished and dispensed with. I call upon them to do this, and to do it forthwith – by their hopes of heaven – by their obedience to the word of God – by their allegiance to the Constitution and laws of their country – to come out from any party which has adopted a mode and plan of organization so fatal to the peace of society, and the progress of true religion."

What egotism! You call upon them! You make a freer use of the personal pronoun I, than even old Parson Longstreet, the Know Nothing slayer of Mississippi. To parse your different sentences syntactically, nothing else is necessary but to understand the first person singular, and to repeat the rule. Not only your verbiage but your sentiment is thus egotistic throughout!

Your appeal to the ministers to come out of this organization, on the ground of its secrecy, is a species of demagoguism, the more disgusting when it is considered that you are a Free Mason, and have, by all the arts and blandishment of your nature, sought to induce ministers to go into that organization. But, then, there is no violation of law or the Constitution in Masonry– "fatal to the peace of society and to the progress of true religion" – no, nothing! Understand me: I am not opposed to Masonry.

On this subject of the Romish creed, which you excuse, and even advocate, you admit that there are "alleged abuses," which have prompted the Protestant Churches to unite themselves with this new Order! Then you insultingly tell these Churches this tale:

"But they ought to have remembered, that even a virtuous indignation can never justify proscription and persecution: these bring no remedy to the real or supposed evils, but are sure to increase and aggravate them. These errors in faith, and abominations in practice, if they really exist, were known to the Wesleys, and Cokes, and Asburys, who founded your Church: to the Lees, the Bruces, the Capers, the Logan Douglasses, the Summerfields, and the Bascoms, who subsequently extended and adorned it. But they never proposed to kindle, in this enlightened age of Christianity, the consuming fires of religious persecution."

Now, sir, every distinguished "founder" of the Methodist Church you have named, from Wesley to Bascom, has written and preached against the "errors in faith, and abominations in practice," of the Romish Church, and they each and all have taken this very ground upon the religious issues. I have heard three of these men preach, and I am familiar with the writings of the rest, and know whereof I speak.

You intentionally deceive and misrepresent the American party, when you charge that they seek to proscribe one class of our citizens – that they desire to interfere with the rights of conscience – and to say how men should worship God. Why don't you inform your readers that Archbishop Hughes, and other Catholic Bishops, were the first to introduce religion into political discussion in this country? This would not suit your purposes – it suits your objects, taste, and inclination better, to slander the American party by wholesale, and to charge upon its members the atrocities committed by your foreign and pauper allies. We only choose to vote against them, and to vote for American-born citizens and Protestants: which is as much our right, as it is the right of these foreign Catholics to vote against and proscribe American Protestants. For this, you and your villainous associates exhaust the whole vocabulary of Billingsgate upon the American party. What is their offence? Why, they simply place certain questions before persons desiring to act with them, which they think, at least, may affect the national welfare, and before the people of the Union, and ask their opinion of these questions at the ballot-box. The American party has always denied, and I again reiterate the denial, that we do, at all proscribe, or in any way interfere with, any class of our foreign citizens, save that we propose to send convicts from European prisons back to their own native and infamous dens, as fast as they land here – but these are not citizens of ours. I appeal to our Platform, and our Book of Constitutions, and I offer to any man a handsome reward – any man who will produce in either a statement containing the proscription you falsely charge against us. I now say, Gov. Brown, either do this, or cease your empty vaporing against the proscriptive features of our system, as you are pleased to style it. You declaim most lustily in favor of religious liberty for Catholics, which you know we do not propose as a party to interfere with; and this you plead for at the altar of Methodist "Bishops, Elders, and other Ministers," who know there is no religious liberty for Protestants where Catholics have the power to prevent it! You plead in the most plaintive tones for the rights of foreign Catholics to be sworn into good citizens in less than one year after they land here, but do not seem to remember the American Protestant wives and children, who have to subsist on charity during our severe winters, in consequence of their husbands and fathers being elbowed out of employment by the competition of foreign pauper laborers!

Sir, the American party, if in power, would put a stop to that proscription from office that has always characterized the party with which you act, and which has made the present Administration so very and so justly odious to the country. Proscription, indeed! Was there ever such glaring and actual proscription for the sake of religious and political creeds committed as by the present Administration? The infamous Sag Nicht party with which you act, and of which you are a leader and a High Priest, though the "son of a now sainted father," has applied the political guillotine to almost every man in office who has dared to differ with them in their high estimate of foreign paupers and Catholic vagabonds, in many instances turning out native-born Protestants, and filling their places with foreign Catholics. And yet, with a degree of effrontery that throws the Devil far into the shade, you turn round and charge the American party with proscription, and ask the "Bishops, Elders, and other Ministers," of the Methodist Church, "by their hopes of heaven – by their obedience to the word of God – and by their allegiance to the Constitution and laws of their country," to come out from a party so proscriptive! Why, sir, you out-Herod old Herod himself! Your teachings contrasted with your practice, would cause a crimsoned negative to settle on the cheeks of old Pilate! And still you are the "son of a now sainted father" – you "approve" the "creed" of Methodism, and have "witnessed its growth and prosperity for years, with the highest satisfaction!"

You quote from the Declaration of Independence, to show that toleration should be extended to Catholics and foreigners, and then insultingly add, as if you supposed no Methodist minister had ever perused the writings of Mr. Jefferson:

"These are the words of Mr. Jefferson, but the immortal sentiment springs directly from the word of the living and true God. No: persecution at the stake, or by exclusion of Catholics from office, is not the weapon to be wielded by the Protestant Churches."

You know that the notes of warning given to his countrymen by the sage of Monticello, and the great APOSTLE of American Democracy, are in harmony with the doctrines of the Know Nothing party. But you choose to conceal this fact from the "Bishops, Elders, and other Ministers" of the Methodist Church, in the vain hope that their numerous pressing and official engagements will not allow them time to look up the documents. In Mr. Jefferson's Notes on Virginia, written in 1781, and published in 1794, pages 124-5, I find the following Know Nothing doctrine:

"But are there no inconveniences to be thrown into the scale against the advantage expected from a multiplication of numbers by the importation of foreigners? It is for the happiness of those united in society to harmonize, as much as possible, in matters which they must of necessity transact together. Civil government being the sole object of forming societies, its administration must be conducted by common consent. Every species of government has specific principles. Ours, perhaps, are more peculiar than those of any other in the universe. It is a composition of the freest principles of the English constitution, with others derived from natural right and natural reason. To these nothing can be more opposed than the maxims of absolute monarchs. Yet from such we are to expect the greatest number of immigrants. They will bring with them the principles of the government they leave, imbibed in early youth: or, if able to throw them off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty. These principles, with their language, they will transmit to their children. In proportion with their numbers, they will share with us the legislation. They will infuse into it their spirit, warp and bias its directions, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass. I may appeal to experience during the present contest for a verification of these conjectures. But if they be not certain in event, are they not possible? are they not probable? Is it not safer to wait with patience twenty-seven years and three months longer for the attainment of every degree of population desired or expected? May not our government be more homogeneous, more peaceable, more durable?"

Again, Mr. Jefferson, whilst our Minister to the Court of St. Cloud, addressed a letter to John Jay, dated November 14, 1788, in which he uses this language:

"With respect to the Consular appointments, it is a duty on me to add some observations, which my situation here has enabled me to make. I think it was in the spring of 1784, that Congress (harassed by multiplied applications from foreigners, of whom nothing was known but on their information, or on that of others as unknown as themselves) came to the resolution that the interest of America would not permit the naming of any person, not a citizen, to the office of Consul, or Agent, or Commissary. Native citizens, on several valuable accounts, are preferable to aliens, or citizens alien-born. Native citizens possess our language, know our laws, customs and commerce, have general acquaintance in the United States, give better satisfaction, and are more to be relied on in a point of fidelity. To avail ourselves of our native citizens, it appears to me advisable to declare, by standing law, that no person but a native citizen shall be capable of the office of Consul. This was the rule of 1784, restraining the office of Consul to native citizens."

In 1797, Mr. Jefferson drafted a petition to the Legislature of Virginia, on behalf of the citizens of Amherst, Albemarle, Fluvana, and Gouchland Bounties, in which he uses the following language:

"Your petitioners further submit to the two Houses of Assembly, whether the safety of the citizens of this Commonwealth, in their persons, their property, their laws and government, does not require that the capacity to act in the important office of Juror, Grand or Petty, civil or criminal, should not be restrained in future to native citizens, or such as were citizens at the date of the Treaty of Peace which closed our revolutionary war; and whether ignorance of our laws, and natural partiality to the countries of their birth, are not reasonable causes for declaring this to be one of their rights incommunicable in future to adopted citizens." —Jefferson's Writings, Vol. IX., page 453.

Now, Sir, answer me in candor, are you not ashamed of having quoted Mr. Jefferson, and of having so basely misrepresented his position on this great American question? Did not Mr. Jefferson propose to carry his opposition to foreigners much farther than the American party now do?

But, you vile old demagogue, though "son of a now sainted father," I am determined you shall not escape the indignant powers of those "Bishops, Elders, and other Ministers," whom you have wickedly sought to deceive. It is known to you, and to the world, in what veneration all American Democrats hold the Virginia Resolutions of 1798 and '99, and the fame of Mr. Madison, who was the ruling spirit of that session of the Legislature. That Legislature passed the following Resolution, which you may find by consulting Henning's Statutes at Large, Vol. 2, New Series, page 194:

"That the General Assembly, nevertheless, concurring in opinion with the Legislature of Massachusetts that every Constitutional barrier should be opposed to the introduction of foreign influence into our National Councils, —Resolved, That the Constitution ought to be so amended that no foreigner, who shall have acquired the right, under our Constitution and laws, at the time of making the amendment, shall hereafter be eligible to the office of Senator or Representative, in Congress of the United States, nor to any office in the Judiciary or Executive. Agreed to by the Senate, Jan. 16, 1799."

I shall next consider two extracts from your Address, under one general head, relating to the temporal power of the Pope. You say:

"But the genius of sophistry may fly to the rescue of Know-Nothingism, by pretending that it is not on account of his religion that the Catholic is to be excluded from office, but because he is subjected, not merely to the spiritual but the temporal dominion or jurisdiction of the Pope. No error has been wider spread than this."

Again:

"A late distinguished Senator from Georgia, (Mr. Berrien,) in a recent address to the public, has copied a letter of Mr. Wesley, which may require a few observations. That letter was dated in January, 1780. All its conclusions were founded on the assumed and popular opinion of that day, that the Pope did claim a civil jurisdiction beyond his own dominions – that he could absolve the subjects of other governments from their oaths of allegiance, and that there was a principle in one of the tenets of that Church, that Catholics were justified in not keeping faith with heretics. Against these assumed and popular opinions, the Catholics of England in that day, as they now do in this country, were solemnly protesting."

This is a modest way of giving Mr. Wesley the lie, but it is nevertheless quite direct, and is the more surprising, as it comes from the "son of a now sainted father," who was a follower of Wesley, a "co-laborer of that noble band of Christian ministers" he was instrumental in starting out into the world – aye, the son of a "father who, for forty years, ministered at the altars" this same Wesley erected! In holding up John Wesley as the vile calumniator of the Catholic Church in England, it is well enough, Governor, to be modest about it, and cautious in the selection of your words, as you are addressing a class of men who believe in John Wesley, as a faithful man of God, and one incapable of misrepresenting the Catholics of England, the Pope of Rome, or any other sect or individual! John Wesley ministered at the sacred altars of religion for more than sixty years; he had with him the power of God, and the witness that he pleased Him; and the last words he uttered, with his hands clasped, and his eyes raised toward heaven, were these: "The best of all is, God is with us!" And yet the sons and grandsons in the gospel, of this venerated and sainted man of God, are insulted in Tennessee, by being told by an impertinent old sinner, and a vile old party hack, that he was A LIAR, while living, and the slanderer of the Catholic Church, now that he is no more! If Mr. Wesley "assumed" falsehoods in reference to the Romish Church in England, he either did it in ignorance, or with a guilty knowledge of the fact. He was a man of too much learning and information for his friends to get him out of such an indictment under a plea of ignorance. He is therefore, though dead, a wilful liar, according to "Ex-Gov. A. V. Brown," for the Governor goes on to argue the cause against him, and, on page 19 of his address, quotes Catholic authority to prove him a liar! Shame on the "son of a now sainted father," and on the holy seer of Pisgah! O! Aaron, thou priest of corrupt Democracy, you need not endeavor to gull "bishops, elders, and other ministers," with your whining cant, while you thus traduce their great spiritual head, who, under God, taught them the lessons of salvation!

Gov. Brown, go with me, as one of the admirers of John Wesley, to the humble dwellings of the miners of Cornwall, to the homely tents of the colliers of Kingswood and Newcastle, and to the equally humble workshops of the manufacturers of Yorkshire, in England, who are rejoicing in God their Saviour that a Wesley was ever born into the world, and ask them if they believe him capable of slandering the Catholics! Go with me among the backwoodsmen of North America, and examine them in their lone tents – go among the honest and virtuous settlers on our Western frontiers, amid the interminable forests of the far off West, whose thousands are brought into the fold of Christ, through the instrumentality of Wesleyan ministers, and ask them if they think the founder of their Church was a wilful liar!

Go with me to the rich pastures and luxuriant harvest-fields of your own native Middle Tennessee: enter the neat cottages and stately mansions of that glorious division of our State, and ask the intelligent and educated females, who are rejoicing in God, in hope of future and eternal life, through the prayers and sermons of Wesleyan ministers, as instruments in the hands of God, if they believe the founder of their Church was a wicked calumniator! Go to the islands of the sea, to the burning sands of Africa, and ask the benighted converts from heathenism, through the instrumentality of Wesleyan ministers, if they believe the venerable founder of their Church was a man of truth!

Enter the dwellings of the rich and fashionable planters of the South – ride around their sugar and cotton plantations, among the sable sons and daughters of Africa, and witness the blessed fruits of the pious life, Christian integrity, and triumphant death of John Wesley! Come over to East Tennessee, Governor, and enter the log-cabins of the virtuous, happy peasantry of the "hill country," and ask them whether they believe Mr. Wesley or your Catholic authorities, touching the temporal power of the Pope of Rome!

Alas! Gov. Brown, the Reformation dawned with Luther in Germany, but the sun of its glory rose with Methodism in England; the first streaks of Protestant light were seen on the horizon of the sixteenth century, but the meridian sun of the Reformation dawned in all his brightness on the Wesleys and Whitefield! But America has been the land of the glory and triumph of the doctrines of the man you labor to convict of the awful sin of lying!

But you deny that the Pope of Rome, in temporal matters, claims what Mr. Wesley attributed to him in the letter copied by Senator Berrien. You also deny that the Popes claim and have exercised the right to interfere with matters of government, and the right to absolve their followers in other countries, and under other governments, from their allegiance to such rulers and governments. I will proceed to vindicate Mr. Wesley, and, by the proof, saddle the lie on you! Whilst John was King of England, he had the "Magna Charta," the great charter securing, among other things, the right of trial by jury, wrung from him at the point of the bayonet. This great charter was annulled by Pope Innocent. Here is the proof: