on the contrary, grew only the more furious and clamorous for attack. At this juncture General Cadwallader, with a part of the city cavalry, came to the rescue, just barely in time to save the sacred edifice from destruction, but not to avert a sanguinary encounter. The mob had the temerity to attack the military, and kept up the fight even though General Cadwallader had opened fire with artillery on them. Many were killed and wounded on either side before the scene of death and terror closed that night. Next day, undeterred by these tragic results, but rather the more exasperated by them, the Native American crowd reassembled for a renewal of the attack.

A military company called the "Montgomery Hibernia Greens," by permission of General Cadwallader, had been mustered for the defense of the church, and knowing the reception that awaited them if they ventured to attack, the mob held off all that Saturday. But on Sunday they appeared before the building, and began an attack with cannon and small arms, and some fierce fighting took place. The handful of Irish defenders, finding themselves enormously outnumbered and entrapped, determined to make a rush for their lives. They got out over a side wall, and would have been instantly killed. only that a few of the city soldiery came to their assistance. The attack on the church was kept up until evening, when General Cadwallader and his cavalry again bore down upon the assailants. Fighting of a desperate character went on until the shades of night put an end to the sanguinary work, and allowed the mob to disperse to their homes in the different quarters of the city from whence they had been summoned by the tocsin of faction. They left thirty of their number dead on the streets, while fifty more who had been wounded were carried off the field by the fugitives. Two of General Cadwallader's force were slain on the occasion. Next day the Magis

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trates, seeing the gravity of the situation, had the city parcelled out into districts, under martial law, and bodies of troops were sent into each to seize all the arms that could be found in private houses. These measures, together with a proclamation by the Governor, David R. Porter, had the effect of quelling the disturbances finally.. After an outbreak of so fierce and destructive a kind, decency required that some show be made of bringing to account those who were responsible for it or known to be participants. A grand jury was impanelled ostensibly for this solemn purpose, but those who had the management of such duties knew the sort of men that could be relied on to frustrate the requirements of justice. In their declaration on the culpability in the matter, the grand jury "found" that the cause of the riots was "the efforts of a portion of the community to have the Bible excluded from the public schools." In the face of Bishop Kenrick's repeated statements on the subject, it is difficult to realize how any men sworn to discover and announce the truth could have the hardihood to make such an assertion as this. But these forsworn individuals were quite prepared to go even further on the path of falsification. Those who had been slain while engaged in the diabolical work of burning Catholics out of their homes were described by those perjurers as "unoffending citizens," while the defenders of their homes, the Irish, were punished by having several of their number returned for trial on the charge of murder or riot; and although it was known to all the city that it was the Native American party who marched with arms into the Irish district to slay and to burn, not one syllable of the fact was known to the grand jury, so far as their "findings" on that occasion showed. Neither did the gentlemen who drew them up seem to have known anything of the destruction of Catholic churches and school houses and

orphanages by the Native American party and their auxiliaries the mob. Moreover, every tortuous device known to traffickers in "the law's delay" was resorted to in order to defeat the claims of the Catholic body to just compensation, under the laws of the State, for the property destroyed by the mobs; and it was not until after the lapse of many years that these claims were finally settled.

But with the better class of citizens the effect of those terrible episodes was sobering and chastening. They perceived with horror how fearful a thing it is to address words of fanatical heat to ignorant crowds, and how widely different was such conduct from the maxims of that religion for whose inviolability the party of riot and murder professed to be so anxious. Coals of fire were heaped upon their heads by the meek action of the Bishop and the priests of the city. No rebuke could be more keen than the sight of the closed doors of the Catholic churches and the armed guards pacing to and fro in front and about. With such a reproach staring them in the face, all honorable citizens felt that either they must say, "This is no longer the land of liberty" or put an end forever to the tyranny that would destroy the supreme glory of the American Constitution.

The kindly and thoughtful disposition of Bishop Kenrick is strikingly manifested in the simple entry he makes in his Diary concerning the end of the fighting around St. Philip's, in those never-to-be-forgotten days of trial. After noting that on the Tuesday following the later outbreak the church was handed over to him by the city authorities, and that Mass was celebrated there on the following Sunday, he adds: "Me suadente, egressus est ex urbe Revs. Ds. J. P. Dunn, qui parochus est ecclesiae. Post paucas hebdomadas rediit, suaque obit munia.' The dreadful ordeal through which he had passed, we

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may reasonably surmise, had shattered the nerves of the devoted priest, who probably had been in feeble health previously; yet Bishop Kenrick seems to have had some trouble to induce him to leave his post even for the purpose of recuperation; he even appears to have had to use pressure to that end, as the expression "Me suadente" would indicate. The priest who took Father Dunn's place on that occasion was the Rev. Nicholas Cantwell, afterwards Monsignor and Vicar-General of the Diocese. Father Dunn returned after a few weeks, and was for several years pastor of St. John's Church.

CHAPTER IX.

DIVISION OF THE PHILADELPHIA DIOCESE-THE NEW BISHOP OF PITTSBURG-DEATH OF BISHOP CONWELL-PETER RICHARD KENRICK CONSECRATED COADJUTOR OF ST. LOUIS.

Whatever the inconvenience and fatigue of the work, however unequal his powers to the strain, gradually increasing in tension as the years went on, Bishop Kenrick never faltered in the task which he had laid out for himself as one of the most imperative of his office, his annual visitations. With unfailing regularity we trace the record of his journeys in his Diary, and the evidences also of their increasing difficulty.

Some little relief was afforded him, however, in the appointment of the Rev. Michael O'Connor to the Vicargeneralship of Pittsburg, in 1841. This was a memorable year in the ecclesiastical history of Philadelphia, inasmuch as it witnessed the consecration of two Bishops -namely, that of Dr. Peter Paul Lefevre, as Bishop of Zela and Coadjutor of Detroit, and of Bishop Kenrick's brother, Dr. Peter Richard, as Bishop of Drasa and Coadjutor of St. Louis. The former ceremony took place in St. John's Church; the latter in St. Mary's.

Troubles with the trustees were not by any means the only ones which were sent to try the soul and test the patience of Bishop Kenrick. Others soon came in the shape of conflicts on questions of authority with the old Bishop, Dr. Conwell. The infirmities of age appear to have been accompanied, in his case, with a querulous habit which seemed to detect slights and disrespect where none were intended, and a jealousy of his episcopal privileges seems to have at times caused him to overlook those