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James K. Polk could bask in the comforting reflection that in a single term (1845–49) he added more territory to the United States than any other president before or since. He ensured the annexation of Texas, worked out a compromise on the Oregon Territory, and secured New Mexico and California as the rewards of a successful war against Mexico. In these latter acquisitions, the U.S. Army had proved its value. A number of young junior officers—among them, Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, William T. Sherman, and Thomas J. Jackson—received their baptism of fire. They would go on to greater fame in the near future.
The Army had proved something else, too: The United States was becoming an ethnically and religiously diverse country. Part of that story intersects with the history of Boston College, providing a rich footnote to Professor James O’Toole’s excellent biographical sketch of John McElroy, SJ, “The Old Man,” which appeared in the Summer 2007 edition of this magazine. During the early years of the Republic, the men who served in the Army were almost entirely Anglo-Saxon Protestant, except for a notable minority of Irish Presbyterians (the “Ulster Irish”), who had emigrated from the northern counties of Ireland during the colonial period and fought valiantly in the American Revolution and the War of 1812. In those days, the only chaplains appointed were of various Protestant denominations.
As the number of Catholic immigrants from the southern counties of Ireland increased steadily during the 1820s and 1830s, however, many of the newcomers sought service in the military. For them it was a way of obtaining the practical necessities of life—food, clothing, and the kind of occupational training usually unavailable to them in the civilian world. Military service was also a way for Irish Americans to publicly demonstrate their patriotism in the face of continued Nativist bigotry. In January 1837, a group of Irish-Americans in Boston, among them Andrew Carney, the Catholic philanthropist, received permission to create their own militia company—the Tenth Company of Light Infantry, Regiment of Light Infantry, Third Brigade, First Division, of the Massachusetts Volunteer Militia—better known as the Montgomery Guards.
In May 1846, Congress accepted President Polk’s claim that “blood had been shed upon American soil” (on disputed land near Matamoras, Mexico, and present-day Brownsville, Texas) and promptly declared war on Mexico. Among New Englanders there was general opposition to the war as an unconstitutional scheme to grab land and expand slavery, but Boston’s Irish Catholics saw an opportunity to demonstrate their loyalty to the president and their devotion to the country. The Pilot, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Boston, stoutly defended President Polk, insisting the war was not a “conquest of territory or people,” and proclaimed that American troops were going into Mexico on a “sacred mission.” An entire unit of a Massachusetts volunteer regiment raised to support the war by former Congressman Caleb Cushing was made up of Irishmen from Boston, who could be seen every Sunday morning heading in a group to Mass at the city’s only Catholic church, on Franklin Street. Governor George Briggs raised another Mexico-bound volunteer regiment; the rolls show that at least two-fifths of the enlisted men of this regiment were Irish Americans.
The rapidly changing character of the U.S. Army, as well as the embarrassing propaganda effects of a largely Protestant country invading a Catholic nation, caused President Polk to consider the radical idea of appointing Catholic chaplains. Taking advantage of the fact that the U.S. Catholic bishops were attending meetings of the Sixth Provincial Council in nearby Baltimore, Polk had his secretary of state, James Buchanan, escort Archbishop John Hughes of New York to the White House one evening for a quiet conversation. As Steven O’Brien, Ph.D.’99 related in a paper titled “Soldiers in Black,” which he presented at a binational conference on the U.S.-Mexican war in Brownsville, Texas, in 1995, Polk told Hughes he would like Catholic priests to go into Mexico and assure the clergy in that country that American troops would not violate their Catholic religion or desecrate their church property. The archbishop realized that the president’s motives were purely pragmatic, but he saw the advantage of having Catholic military chaplains for the first time in American history.
After the interview, Hughes and other bishops traveled to nearby Georgetown College and consulted with the Jesuit provincial, who recommended two men of considerable stature. One was 39-year-old Anthony Rey, SJ, who had been educated in France and was vice president of Georgetown; the other was 64-year-old John McElroy, SJ, an immigrant from Ireland and a well-known preacher and retreat master who would later found Boston College. Because the idea of officially appointing Roman Catholic priests as Army chaplains raised the potentially explosive issue of church-state relations, Secretary of War William Marcy arranged to have the two priests recorded as “contractors.” President Polk made a point, however, of asking Secretary Marcy to order American commanders to respect the priests’ standing and to allow Catholic soldiers to attend their religious services.
As a matter of historical fact, it must be admitted that the appointment of these first two Catholic chaplains had little or no immediate effect on the military or in persuading the Mexicans that the war was not being fought for religious purposes. Poor Fr. Rey was shot and killed by highway robbers in Mexico. Fr. McElroy, who tended the sick and wounded, was so ill most of the time that he was finally ordered back from Mexico to the United States by his superiors. He left in May 1847, after 10 months of service. The fighting was over by year’s end.
As a matter of historical perspective, however, the appointment of these two Jesuit priests did serve as an important precedent for the Civil War, when the presence of a much larger number of Irish Catholic troops in the Army would require more serious consideration of the role and responsibilities of Catholic chaplains.
John McElroy, SJ, was indeed, as Professor O’Toole makes clear in his article, a man of many accomplishments. Not only was he the founder of Boston College, but he and his fellow Jesuit Anthony Rey can also be considered the pioneers of a Catholic chaplaincy in the U.S. Army.
Thomas H. O’Connor is the University Historian of Boston College.
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