Dagger John
Subtitle: Archbishop John Hughes and the making of Irish America
By: John Loughery
Publisher: Three Hills
Published: 2018
Language: eng
Number of pages: 407
ISBN-13: 9781501707742
Copyright date: 2018
Subjects: Irish Americans; Bishops; Biography; Catholic Church
Description: "Acclaimed biographer John Loughery tells the story of John Hughes, son of Ireland, friend of William Seward and James Buchanan, founder of St. John's College (now Fordham University), builder of Saint Patrick's Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, pioneer of parochial-school education, and American diplomat. As archbishop of the Archdiocese of New York in the 1840s and 1850s and the most famous Roman Catholic in America, Hughes defended Catholic institutions in a time of nativist bigotry and church burnings and worked tirelessly to help Irish Catholic immigrants find acceptance in their new homeland. His galvanizing and protecting work and pugnacious style earned him the epithet Dagger John. Hughes the public figure comes to the fore, illuminated by Loughery's retelling of his interactions with, and responses to, every major figure of his era, including his critics (Walt Whitman, James Gordon Bennett, and Horace Greeley) and his admirers (Henry Clay, Stephen Douglas, and Abraham Lincoln). Dagger John's successes and failures, his public relationships and private trials, and his legacy in the Irish Catholic community and beyond provide context and layers of detail for the larger history of a modern culture unfolding in his wake"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 353-397) and index.
Table of contents: title: A son of Ulster; title: A vocation; title: Courting controversy; title: Confronting Gotham; title: Who shall teach our children?; title: "The Baal of bigotry"; title: War and famine; title: A widening stage; title: The church militant; title: Authority challenged; title: A new cathedral; title: A house divided, a church divided; title: Manhattan under siege.