The specter of ecclesiastical authority reared itself, and the question of sharing public school moneys with parochial schools and of reading the Bible in the public schools became a burning issue.  Here and there occurred clashes that were more than barroom brawls.  Organized gangs infested the cities.  Both sides were sustained and encouraged by partisan papers, and on several occasions the antagonism spent themselves in riots and destruction.  In 1834 the Ursuline convent at Charlestown, near Boston, was sacked and burned.  Ten years later occurred the great anti-Irish riots in Philadelphia, in which two Catholic churches and a schoolhouse were burned by a mob inflamed to hysteria by one of the leaders who held up a torn American flag and shouted, “This is the flag that was trampled on by Irish papists.”  Prejudice accompanied fear into every city and “patented citizens” were often subject to abuse and even persecution.  Tammany Hall in New York City became the political fortress of the Irish.  Election riots of the first magnitude were part of the routine of elections, and the “Bloody Sixth Ward Boys” were notorious for their hooliganism on election day.

The suggestions of the nativists that paupers and criminals be excluded from immigration were not embodied into law.  The movement soon was lost in the greater questions which slavery was thrusting into the foreground.  When the fight with nativism was over, the Irish were in possession of the cities.  They displayed an amazing aptitude for political plotting and organization and for that prime essential to political success popularly known as “mixing.”  Policemen and aldermen, ward heelers, bosses, and mayors, were known by their brogue.  The Irish demonstrated their loyalty to the Union in the Civil War and merged readily into American life after the lurid prejudices against them faded.

Unfortunately, a great deal of this prejudice was revived when the secret workings of an Irish organization in Pennsylvania were unearthed.  Among the anthracite coal miners a society was formed, probably about 1854, called the Molly Maguires, a name long known in Ireland.  The members were all Irish, professed the Roman Catholic faith, and were active in the Ancient Order of Hibernians.  The Church, the better class of Irishmen, and the Hibernians, however, were shocked by the doings of the Molly Maguires and utterly disowned them.  They began their career of blackmail and bullying by sending threats and death notices embellished with crude drawings of coffins and pistols to those against whom they fancied they had a grievance, usually the mine boss or an unpopular foreman.  If the recipient did not heed the threat, he was waylaid and beaten and his family was abused.  By the time of the Civil War these bullies had terrorized the entire anthracite region.  Through their political influence they elected sheriffs and constables, chiefs of police and county commissioners.  As they became bolder,