While involved in apparently endless litigation which necessitated much correspondence, and while the compilation and revision of his “Defense” must have consumed not only days but weeks and months, he yet found time to write a prodigious number of letters and newspaper articles on other subjects, especially on those relating to religion and politics.  Although more tolerant as he grew older, he was still bitterly opposed to the methods of the Roman Catholic Church, and to the Jesuits in particular.  He, in common with many other prominent men of his day, was fearful lest the Church of Rome, through her emissaries the Jesuits, should gain political ascendancy in this country and overthrow the liberty of the people.  He took part in a long and heated newspaper controversy with Bishop Spaulding of Kentucky concerning the authenticity of a saying attributed to Lafayette—­“If ever the liberty of the United States is destroyed it will be by Romish priests.”

It was claimed by the Roman Catholics that this statement of Lafayette’s was ingeniously extracted from a sentence in a letter of his to a friend in which he assures this friend that such a fear is groundless.  Morse followed the matter up with the patience and keenness of a detective, and proved that no such letter had ever been written by Lafayette, that it was a clumsy forgery, but that he really had made use of the sentiment quoted above, not only to Morse himself, but to others of the greatest credibility who were still living.

In the field of politics he came near playing a more active part than that of a mere looker-on and humble voter, for in the fall of 1854 he was nominated for Congress on the Democratic ticket.  It would be difficult and, perhaps, invidious to attempt to state exactly his political faith in those heated years which preceded the Civil War.  In the light of future events he and his brothers and many other prominent men of the day were on the wrong side.  He deprecated the war and did his best to prevent it.

“Sectional division” was abhorrent to him, but on the question of slavery his sympathies were rather with the South, for I find among his papers the following:—­

“My creed on the subject of slavery is short.  Slavery per se is not sin.  It is a social condition ordained from the beginning of the world for the wisest purposes, benevolent and disciplinary, by Divine Wisdom.  The mere holding of slaves, therefore, is a condition having per se nothing of moral character in it, any more than the being a parent, or employer, or ruler, but is moral or unmoral as the duties of the relation of master, parent, employer or ruler are rightly used or abused.  The subject in a national view belongs not, therefore, to the department of Morals, and is transferred to that of Politics to be politically regulated.

“The accidents of the relation of master and slave, like the accidents of other social relations, are to be praised or condemned as such individually and in accordance with the circumstances of every case, and, whether adjudged good or bad, do not affect the character of the relation itself.”