University of Virginia Library

Chapter LX.

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE
UNITED STATES, DRAWN FROM THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST—
ROME CANNOT THRIVE AND STAND IN THE UNITED STATES
WITHOUT DESTROYING THEIR PRINCIPLES OF FRATERNITY,
EQUALITY AND LIBERTY, WHICH ARE THE FOUNDATION OF
THE REPUBLIC—MY FIRST VISIT TO ABRAHAM LINCOLN TO
WARN HIM OF PLOTS I KNEW AGAINST HIM—ROMISH
PRIESTS CIRCULATE THE NEWS THAT HE WAS BORN
IN THE CHURCH OF ROME—LETTER OF THE POPE TO JEFF
DAVIS—MY LAST VISIT TO THE PRESIDENT—HIS ADMIRABLE
REFERENCE TO MOSES—WILLING TO DIE FOR HIS NATION'S
SAKE.

EQUALITY AND FRATERNITY OF MEN PROCLAIMED
BY CHRIST.

"Be ye not called Rabbi. For one is your Master, even Christ. And
all ye are brethren." (Math. 23: 8.)

"God is no respecter of persons. But in every nation, he that feareth
Him and worketh righteousness is accepted with Him." (Acts 10: 34-35.)

"Jesus called them unto him and said: Ye know that the princes of the
Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority
upon them:

"But it shall not be so among you. But whosoever will be great among
you, let him be your minister: And whosoever will be chief among you,
let him be your servant.

"Even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister,
and give his life a ransom for many." (Math. 20: 25-28.)

PRINCIPLES OF LIBERTY PROCLAIMED BY
CHRIST.

"If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed, and ye
shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. If the Son shall
make you free, you shall be free indeed." (John 8: 32.)

"The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to
preach the Gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted,

to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to
set at liberty them that are bruised." (Luke 4: 18.)

"Where the Spirit of God is, there is liberty." (2 Cor. 3: 17.)

TOLERANCE AND LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCR
PROCLAIMED BY CHRIST.

"And they did not receive him (Christ) because his face was as though
he would go to Jerusalem. And when his disciples James, and John, saw
this, they said: Wilt thou that we command fire to come down from
heaven and consume them, even as Elias did?

"But he turned and rebuked them, and said: Ye know not what spirit
ye are of.

"For the Son of Man is not come to destroy man's life, but to save
them." (Luke 9: 53-56.)

"Then Simon Peter, having a sword, drew it, and smote the high priest's
servant, and cut off his right ear. The servant's name was Malchus.

"Then said Jesus unto Peter, put up thy sword into the sheath: the cup
which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it? For all they that
take the sword, shall perish with the sword." (Matt. 26: 52. John 18: 10.)

It is no wonder that the people of Judea, filled with admiration
at these sublime doctrines of equality, fraternity, liberty
and tolerance, should exclaim. "Never man spake like this
man!"

Is it on those admirable principles that the Church of Rome
is founded? No! for she has, thousands of times, proclaimed
that her mission was to destroy them all, even if she had to wade
in the blood of those who support them.

But just as the Catholic Church is not only the very antipodes
and the most implacable enemy of those admirable doctrines and
principles, so the constitution of the United States, is the ripe fruit
of this divine seed, sown by the Son of God himself in the bosom
of humanity, eighteen hundred years ago, to save the world.

Yes, in reference to those principles of fraternity, equality,
liberty and tolerance, the constitution of the United States is to
the Gospel of Christ what the fruit is to the tree which has
given it. And this is the verdict given by the whole world, the
Church of Rome excepted.

Why is it that the poor, the bruised, the wounded and the
oppressed from every land, turn their eyes, their hearts and their
steps towards this country? It is because all the echoes of

heaven and earth have told them that the United States Republic
is, par excellence, the land of fraternity, fair-play, equality
and liberty, as the Saviour of the world has revealed them.

The Pope of Rome and his Jesuits know this better than any
one. Hence, their constant and supreme efforts to destroy this
Republic. Believing and preaching that it is their duty to exterminate
the individuals who differ from them in religion, they
assume that it is their duty to destroy the governments and the
nations who refuse to submit to their yoke, when they can do it
safely.

The mission of Rome being, to teach that the inferior, the
people, must obey his superior, just as the corpse obeys the hand
which moves it, or as the stick obeys the arm which directs it, she
knows well that she cannot fulfill her mission, and attain her object
so long as this government of a free, sovereign people, stands;
she is, then, bound to oppose, paralyze and destroy that government
when she finds her opportunity.

With lynx's eye, she watched that opportunity: and with
anxiety and rage she spied from her cradle the onward march
of this young giant Republic. She knew that it was in the bosom
of every true citizen of the United States to propagate
those accursed, (by her) principles of equality, fraternity and
liberty, all over the world. She saw that the irresistible influence
of those principles were felt on the most distant nations,
as well as on the poor, miserable, Irish people, she was keeping
under her heavy and ignominious yoke; she understood that
there was a real danger for her very existence, if those principles
would continue to spread; that her slavery star would go
down as the liberty star would rise on the horizon. In a word,
Rome saw at once that the very existence of the United States
was a formal menace to her own life. Already she had
seen the chains of two millions of her Irish slaves melted at the
simple touch of the warm rays of liberty which had fallen from
the stars and stripes banners. From the very beginning, she
perfidiously sowed the germs of division and hatred between
the two great sections of this country, and she felt an unspeakable
joy when she saw that she had succeeded in dividing its

South from the North, on the burning question of slavery. She
looked upon that division as her golden opportunity. To crush
one party by the other, and reign over the bloody ruins of both,
has invariably been her policy. She hoped that the hour of her
supreme triumph over this continent was come. She ordered
her elder son, the Emperor of France, to keep himself ready to
help her crush the North, by having an army in Mexico ready
to support the South, and she bade all the Roman Catholic bishops,
priests and people to enroll themselves under the banners of
slavery, by joining themselves to the party of Democracy. And
everybody knows how the Roman Catholic bishops and priests,
almost to a man, obeyed that order. Only one bishop dared to
disobey. Above everything, it was ordered to oppose the election
of Lincoln at any cost. For, from the very first day his
eloquent voice had been heard, a thrill of terror had gone through
the hearts of the partisans of slavery. The Democratic press,
which was then, and is still now, almost entirely under the control
of the Roman Catholics, and the devoted tool of the Jesuits,
deluged the country with the most fearful denunciations against
him. They called him an ape; a stupid brute, a most dangerous
lunatic, a bloody monster, a merciless tyrant, etc., etc. In a
word, Rome exhausted all her resources of language, she ramsacked
the English dictionary to find the most suitable expressions
to fill the people with contempt, hatred and horror against him.
But it was written in the decrees of God that the honest Abraham
Lincoln should be proclaimed President of the United States,
the 4th of March, 1861.

At the end of August, having known from a Roman Catholic
priest, whom, by the mercy of God, I had persuaded to leave
the errors of Popery, that there was a plot among them to assassinate
the President, I thought it was my duty to go and tell him
what I knew, at the same time giving him a new assurance of
gratitude for what he had done for me.

Knowing that I was among those who were waiting in the
ante-chamber, he sent immediately for me, and received me with
greater cordiality and marks of kindness than I could expect.

"I am so glad to meet you again," he said: "you see that

your friends, the Jesuits, have not yet killed me. But they
would have surely done it, when I passed through their most
devoted city, Baltimore, had I not defeated their plans, by passing
incognito, a few hours before they expected me. We have
the proof that the company which had been selected and organized
to murder me, was lead by a rabid Roman Catholic, called
Byrne; it was almost entirely composed of Roman Catholics;
more than that, there were two disguised priests among them, to
lead and encourage them. I am sorry to have so little time to
see you; but I will not let you go before telling you that, a few
days ago, I saw Mr. Morse, the learned inventor of electric telegraphy;
he told me that, when he was in Rome, not long ago,
he found out the proofs of a most formidable conspiracy against
this country and all its institutions. It is evident that it is to the
intrigues and emissaries of the pope, that we owe, in great part,
the horrible civil war which is threatening to cover the country
with blood and ruins.

"I am sorry that Prof. Morse had to leave Rome before he
could know more about the secret plans of the Jesuits against the
liberties and the very existence of this country. But do you
know that I want you to take his place and continue that investigation?
My plan is to attach you to my ambassador of France,
as one of the secretaries. In that honorable position, you would
go from Paris to Rome, where you might find, through the directions
of Mr. Morse, an opportunity of reuniting the broken
threads of his researches. `It takes a Greek to fight a Greek.'
As you have been twenty-five years a priest of Rome, I do not
know any man in the United States so well acquainted as you are
with the tricks of the Jesuits, and on the devotedness of whom
I could better rely. And, when once on the staff of my ambasador,
even as one of the secretaries, might you not soon yourself
become the ambassador? I am in need of Christian men in
every department of the public service, but more in those high
positions. What do you think of that?"

"My dear President," I answered, "I feel overwhelmed by
your kindness. Surely nothiug could be more pleasant to me
than to grant your request. The honor you want to confer upon

me is much above my merit; but my conscience tells me that I
cannot give up the preaching of the Gospel to my poor French-Canadian
countrymen, who are still in the errors of Popery. For
I am about the only one who, by the Providence of God, has
any real influence over them. I am, surely, the only one the
bishops and priests seem to fear in that work. The many
attempts they have made to take away my life are a proof
of it. Besides that, though I consider the present President of
the United States much above the Emperors of France, Russia,
and Austria, much above the greatest kings of the world, I
feel that I am the servant, the ambassador of One who is as much
above even the good and great President of the United States,
as the heavens are above the earth. I appeal to your own Christian
and honorable feelings to know if I can forsake the one for
the other."

The President became very solemn, and replied:

"You are right! you are right! There is nothing so great
under heaven, as to be the ambassador of Christ."

But, then, coming back to himself, with one of his fine jokes,
which he had always ready, he added:

"Yes! yes! You are the ambassador of a greater Prince than
I am; but he does not pay you with as good cash as I would
do."

He then added: "I am exceedingly pleased to see you. However,
I am so pressed, just now, by most important affairs, that
you must excuse me if I ask you to give your place to one of
my generals who is, there, waiting for me. Please come again,
to-morrow, at ten o'clock, I have a very important question to
ask you, on a matter which has been constantly before my mind,
these last few weeks."

The next day, I was there, at the appointed nour, with my
noble friend, who said:

"I could not give you more than ten minutes, yesterday, but
I will give you twenty, to-day; I want your views about a thing
which is exceedingly puzzling to me, and you are the only one
to whom I like to speak on that subject. A great number of
Democratic papers have been sent to me, lately, evidently written

by Roman Catholics, publishing that I was born a Roman
Catholic, and baptized by a priest. They call me a renegade, an
apostate, on account of that; and they heap upon my head mountains
of abuse. At first, I laughed at that, for it is a lie. Thanks
be to God, I have never been a Roman Catholic. No priest of
Rome has ever laid his hand on my head. But the persistency
of the Romish press to present this falsehood to their readers as
a gospel truth, must have a meaning. Please tell me, as briefly
as possible, what you think about that."

"My dear President," I answered, "it was just this strange
story published about you, which brought me here, yesterday. I
wanted to say a word about it; but you were too busy.

"Let me tell you that I wept as a child when I read that
story for the first time. For, not only my impression is, that it
is your sentence of death; but I have from the lips of a converted
priest, that it is in order to excite the fanaticism of the Roman
Catholic murderers, whom they hope to find, sooner or later, to
strike you down, they have invented that false story of your
being born in the Church of Rome, and of your being baptized
by a priest. They want by that to brand your face with the ignominious
mark of apostacy. Do not forget that, in the Church
of Rome, an apostate is an outcast, who has no place in society,
and who has no right to live.

"The Jesuits want the Roman Catholics to believe that you
are a monster, an open enemy of God and of his Church, that
you are an excommunicated man. For, every apostate is, ipso
facto (by that very fact) excommunicated. I have brought to
you the theology of one of the most learned and approved of the
Jesuits of his time, Bussambaum, who, with many others, say
that the man who will kill you will do a good and holy work.
More than that, here is a copy of a decree of Gregory VII.,
proclaiming that the killing of an apostate, or an heretic and an
excommunicated man, as you are declared to be, is not murder;
nay, that it is a good, a Christian action. That decree is incorporated
in the canon law, which every priest must study, and which
every good Catholic must follow.

"My dear President, I must repeat to you here what I said

when in Urbana, in 1856. My fear is that you will fall under
the blows of a Jesuit assassin, if you do not pay more attention
than you have done, till now, to protect yourself. Remember
that because Coligny was an heretic, as you are, he was brutally
murdered in the St. Bartholomew night; that Henry IV. was
stabbed by the Jesuit assassin, Revaillac, the 14th of May, 1610,
for having given liberty of conscience to his people, and that
William the Taciturn was shot dead by another Jesuit murderer,
called Girard, for having broken the yoke of the Pope. The
Church of Rome is absolutely the same to-day, as she was
then; she does believe and teach, to-day, as then, that she has
the right and that it is her duty to punish by death any heretic
who is in her way as an obstacle to her designs. The unaminity
with which the Catholic hierarchy of the United States is on the
side of the rebels, is an incontrovertible evidence that Rome
wants to destroy this republic, and as you are, by your personal
virtues, your popularity, your love for liberty, your position, the
greatest obstacle to their diabolical scheme, their hatred is concentrated
upon you; you are the daily object of their maledictions;
it is at your breast they will direct their blows. My
blood chills in my veins, when I contemplate the day which may
come, sooner, or later, when Rome will add to all her other iniquities,
the murder of Abraham Lincoln."

When saying these things to the President, I was exceedingly
moved, my voice was as choked, and I could hardly retain my
tears. But the President was perfectly calm. When I had
finished speaking, he took the volume of Bussambaum from my
hands, read the lines which I had marked with red ink, and I
helped him to translate them into English. He, then, gave me
back the book, and said:

"I will repeat to you what I said at Urbana, when for the
first time you told me your fears lest I would be assassinated
by the Jesuits. `Man must not care where and when he
will die, provided he dies at the post of honor and duty.' But
I may add, to-day, that I have a presentiment that God will call
me to him through the hand of an assassin. Let His will, and
not mine, be done!" He then looked at his watch, and said: "I

am sorry that the twenty minutes I had consecrated to our interview
have almost passed away; I will be forever grateful for
the warning words you have addressed to me about the dangers
ahead to my life, from Rome. I know that they are not imaginary
dangers. If I were fighting against a Protestant South
as a nation, there would be no danger of assassination. The nations
who read the Bible, fight bravely on the battle-fields, but
they do not assassinate their enemies. The Pope and the Jesuits,
with their infernal Inquisition, are the only organized power in
the world which have recourse to the dagger of the assassin to
murder those whom they cannot convince with their arguments,
or conquer with the sword.

"Unfortunately, I feel more and more, every day, that it is
not against the Americans of the South, alone, I am fighting, it
is more against the Pope of Rome, his perfidious Jesuits and
their blind and blood-thirsty slaves, than against the real American
Protestants, that we have to defend ourselves, Here is the
real danger of our position. So long as they will hope to conquer
the North, they will spare me; but the day we will rout their
armies (and the day will surely come, with the help of God),
take their cities, and force them to submit; then, it is my impression
that the Jesuits, who are the principal rulers of the
South, will do what they have almost invariably done in the
past. The dagger or the pistol of one of their adepts, will do
what the strong hands of the warriors could not achieve.
This civil war seems to be nothing but a political affair to
those who do not see, as I do, the secret springs of that terrible
drama. But it is more a religious than a civil war. It is Rome
who wants to rule and degrade the North, as she has ruled and
degraded the South, from the very day of its discovery. There
are only very few of the Southern leaders who are not more or
less under the influence of the Jesuits, through their wives, family
relations and their friends. Several members of the family of
Jeff Davis belong to the Church of Rome. Even the Protestant
ministers are under the influence of the Jesuits without suspecting
it. To keep her ascendency in the North, as she does in
the South, Rome is doing here what she has done in Mexico,

and in all the South American Republics; she is paralyzing, by
a civil war, the arms of the soldiers of Liberty. She divides our
nation, in order to weaken, subdue and rule it.

"Surely we have some brave and reliable Roman Catholic
officers and soldiers in our armies, but they form an insignificant
minority when compared with the Roman Catholic traitors
against whom we have to guard ourselves, day and night. The
fact is, that the immense majority of the Roman Catholic bishops,
priests and laymen, are rebels in heart, when they cannot be in
fact; with very few exceptions, they are publicly in favor of
slavery. I understand, now, why the patriots of France, who determined
to see the colors of Liberty floating over their great and
beautiful country, were forced to hang or shoot almost all the
priests and the monks as the irreconcilable enemies of Liberty.
For it is a fact, which is now evident to me, that, with very few
exceptions, every priest and every true Roman Catholic is a determined
enemy of Liberty. Their extermination, in France, was
one of those terrible necessities which no human wisdom could
avoid; it looks to me now as an order from heaven to save
France. May God grant that the same terrible necessity be never
felt in the United States! But there is a thing which is very
certain; it is, that if the American people could learn what I
know of the fierce hatred of the generality of the priests of
Rome against our institutions, our schools, our most sacred rights,
and our so dearly bought liberties, they would drive them away,
to-morrow, from among us, or they would shoot them as traitors.
But I keep those sad secrets in my heart; you are the only one
to whom I reveal them, for I know that you learned them before
me. The history of these last thousand years tells us that
wherever the Church of Rome is not a dagger to pierce the
bosom of a free nation, she is a stone to her neck, and a ball to
her feet, to paralyze her and prevent her advance in the ways of
civilization, science, intelligence, happiness and liberty. But I
forget that my twenty minutes are gone long ago.

"Please accept my sincere thanks for the new lights you
have given me on the dangers of my position, and come again,
I will always see you with a new pleasure."

My second visit to Abraham Lincoln was at the beginning
of June, 1862. The grand victory of the Monitor over the
Merrimac, and the conquest of New Orleans, by the brave and
Christian Farragut, had filled every heart with joy; I wanted to
unite my feeble voice to that of the whole country, to tell him
how I blessed God for that glorious success. But I found him
so busy that I could only shake hands with him.

The third and last time I went to pay my respects to the
doomed President, and to warn him against the impending dangers
which I knew were threatening him, was on the morning of
June 8th, 1864, when he was absolutely beseiged by people who
wanted to see him. After a kind and warm shaking of hands,
he said:

"I am much pleased to see you again. But it is impossible,
to-day, to say anything more than this. To-morrow afternoon,
I will receive the delegation of the deputies of all the loyal
states, sent to officially announce the desire of the country that I
should remain the President four years more. I invite you to
be present with them at that interesting meeting. You will see
some of the most prominent men of our Republic, and I will be
glad to introduce you to them. You will not present yourself as
a delegate of the people, but only as the guest of the President;
and that there may be no trouble, I will give you this card, with
a permit to enter with the delegation. But do not leave Washington
before I see you again; I have some important matters
on which I want to know your mind."

The next day, it was my privilege to have the greatest honor
ever received by me. The good President wanted me to stand
at his right hand, when he received the delegation, and hear the
address presented by Governor Dennison, the President of the
convention, to which he replied in his own admirable simplicity
and eloquence; finishing by one of his most witty anecdotes. "I
am reminded in this convention of a story of an old Dutch farmer,
who remarked to a companion, wisely, `that it was not best to
swap horses when crossing a stream.' "

The next day, he kindly took me with him in his carriage,
when visiting the 30,000 wounded soldiers picked up on the

battle-fields of the seven days battle of the Wilderness, and
the thirty days battle around Richmond, where Grant was just
breaking the backbone of the rebellion. On the way to and
from the hospitals, I could not talk much. The noise of the carriage
rapidly drawn on the pavement was too great. Besides
that, my soul was so much distressed, and my heart so much
broken by the sight of the horrors of that fracticidal war, that
my voice was as stifled. The only thought which seemed
to occupy the mind of the President was the part which Rome
had in that horrible struggle. Many times he repeated:

"This war would never have been possible without the
sinister influence of the Jesuits. We owe it to Popery that we
now see our land reddened with the blood of her noblest sons.
Though there were great differences of opinion between the
South and the North, on the question of slavery; neither Jeff
Davis nor any one of the leading men of the Confederacy would
have dared to attack the North, had they not relied on the promises
of the Jesuits, that, under the mask of Democracy, the
money and the arms of the Roman Catholics, even the arms of
France, were at their disposal, if they would attack us. I pity
the priests, the bishops and the monks of Rome in the
United States, when the people realize that they are, in great
part, responsible for the tears and the blood shed in this war;
the later the more terrible will the retribution be. I conceal
what I know, on that subject, from the knowledge of the nation;
for if the people knew the whole truth, this war would turn into
a religious war, and it would, at once, take a tenfold more savage
and bloody character. It would become merciless as all religious
wars are. It would become a war of extermination on
both sides. The Protestants of both the North and the South
would surely unite to exterminate the priests and the Jesuits, if
they could hear what Professor Morse has said to me of the plots
made in the very city of Rome to destroy this Republic, and if
they could learn how the priests, the nuns, and the monks, who
daily land on our shores, under the pretext of preaching their
religion, instructing the people in their schools, taking care of the
sick in the hospitals, are nothing else but the emissaries of the

Pope, of Napoleon, and the other despots of Europe, to undermine
our institutions, alienate the hearts of our people from
our constitution, and our laws, destroy our schools, and prepare
a reign of anarchy here as they have done in Ireland, in Mexico,
in Spain, and wherever there are any people who want to be
free, etc."

When the President was speaking thus, we arrived at the door
of his mansion. He invited me to go with him to his study, and
said:

"Though I am very busy, I must rest an hour with you. I
am in need of that rest. My head is aching, I feel as crushed under
the burden of affairs which are on my shoulders. There are
many important things about the plots of the Jesuits that I can
learn only from you. Please wait just a moment, I have just received
some dispatches from General Grant, to which I must give
an answer. My secretary is waiting for me. I go to him. Please
amuse yourself with those books, during my short absence."

Twenty-five minutes later, the President had returned, with
his face flushed with joy.

"Glorious news! General Grant has again beaten Lee, and
forced him to retreat towards Richmond, where he will have to
surrender before long. Grant is a real hero. But let us come
to the question I want to put to you. Have you read the letter
of the Pope to Jeff Davis, and what do you think of it?"

"My dear President," I answered, "it is just that letter
which brought me to your presence again, day before yesterday.
I wanted to come and see you, from the very day I read it. But
I knew you were so overwhelmed with the affairs of your government,
that I would not be able to see you. However, the
anxieties of my mind were so, that I determined to go over every
barrier to warn you again against the new dangers and plots
which I knew would come out from that perfidious letter, against
your life.

"That letter is a poisoned arrow thrown by the Pope, at you
personally; and it will be more than a miracle if it be not your
irrevocable warrant of death. Before reading it, it is true that
every Catholic could see by the unanimity of the bishops siding

with rebel cause, that their church, as a whole, was against this
free Republican government. However, a good number of liberty-loving
Irish, German and French Catholics, following more
the instincts of their noble nature, than the degrading principles
of their church, enrolled themselves under the banners of Liberty,
and they have fought like heroes. To detach these men
from the rank and file of the Northern armies, and force them
to help the cause of the rebellion, became the object of the intrigues
of the Jesuits. Secret and pressing letters were addressed
from Rome to the bishops, ordering them to weaken your armies
by detaching those men from you. The bishops answered, that
they could not do that without exposing themselves to be shot.
But they advised the Pope to acknowledge, at once, the legitimacy
of the Southern Republic, and to take Jeff Davis under
his supreme protection, by a letter, which would be read everywhere.

"That letter, then, tells logically the Roman Catholics that
you are a bloody tyrant! a most execrable being when fighting
against a government which the infallible and holy Pope of Rome
recognizes as legitimate. The Pope, by this letter, tells his blind
slaves that you are an infamous usuper, when considering yourself
the President of the Southern States; that you are outraging
the God of heaven and earth, by continuing such a bloody
war to subdue a nation over whom God Almighty has declared,
through his infallible pontiff, the Pope, that you have not the
least right; that letter means that you will give an account to
God and man for the blood and tears you cause to flow in order
to satisfy your ambition.

"By this letter of the Pope to Jeff Davis you are not only an
apostate, as you were thought before, whom every man had the
right to kill, according to the canonical laws of Rome; but you
are more vile, criminal and cruel than the horse thief, the public
bandit, and the lawless brigand, robber and murderer, whom it
is a duty to stop and kill, when we take them in their acts of
blood, and that there is no other way to put an end to their
plunders and murders.

"And, my dear President, the meaning I give you of this

perfidious letter of the Pope to Jeff Davis, is not a fancy imagination
on my part, it is the unanimous explanation given me by a
great number of the priests of Rome, with whom I have had occasion
to speak on that subject. In the name of God, and in the
name of our dear country, which is so much in need of your services,
I conjure you to pay more attention to protect your
precious life, and not continue to expose it as you have done till
now."

The President listened to my words with breathless attention.
He replied:

"You confirm me in the views I had taken of the letter of
the Pope. Professor Morse is of the same mind with you. It
is, indeed, the most perfidious act which could occur under present
circumstances. You are perfectly correct when you say that
it was to detach the Roman Catholics who had enrolled themselves
in our armies. Since the publication of that letter, a great
number of them have deserted their banners and turned traitors;
very few, comparatively, have remained true to their oath of
fidelity. It is, however, very lucky that one of those few, Sheridan,
is worth a whole army by his ability, his patriotism and his
heroic courage. It is true, also, that Meade has remained with
us, and gained the bloody battle of Gettysburgh. But how could
he lose it, when he was surrounded by such heroes as Howard,
Reynolds, Buford, Wadsworth, Cutler, Slocum, Sickles, Hancock,
Barnes, etc. But it is evident that his Romanism superseded
his patriotism after the battle. He let the army of Lee escape,
when it was so easy to cut his retreat and force him to surrender,
after having lost nearly the half of his soldiers in the last
three days' carnage.

"When Meade was to order the pursuit, after the battle, a
stranger came, in haste, to the headquarters, and that stranger
was a disguised Jesuit. After a ten minutes' conversation with
him, Meade made such arrangements for the pursuit of the enemy,
that he escaped almost untouched, with the loss of only two
guns!

"You are right," continued the President, "when you say
that this letter of the Pope has entirely changed the nature and

the ground of the war. Before they read it, the Roman Catholics
could see that I was fighting against Jeff Davis and his
Southern Confederacy. But now, they must believe that it is
against Christ and his holy vicar, the Pope, that I am raising my
sacrilegious hands; we have the daily proofs that their indignation,
their hatred, their malice, against me, are an hundredfold
intensified. New projects of assassination are detected almost
every day, accompanied with such savage circumstances that they
bring to my memory the massacres of the St. Bartholomew and
the gunpowder plot. We feel, at their investigation, that they
come from the same masters in the art of murder, the Jesuits.

"The New York riots were evidently a Romish plot from
beginning to end. We have the proofs in hand, that they were
the work of Bishop Hughes and his emissaries. No doubt can
remain in the minds of the most incredulous about that bloody
attempt of Rome to destroy New York, when he knows the easy
way it was stopped. I wrote to Bishop Hughes, telling him that
the whole country would hold him responsible for it, if he would
not stop it at once. He, then, gathered the rioters around his
palace, called them his `dear friends,' invited them to go back
home peacefully, and all was finished! so Jupiter of old used to
raise a storm, and stop it with a nod of his head!

"From the beginning of our civil war, there has been, not
a secret, but a public alliance, between the Pope of Rome and
Jeff Davis; and that alliance has followed the common laws of
this world's affairs. The greater has led the smaller, the stronger
has guided the weaker. The Pope and his Jesuits, have advised,
supported, and directed Jeff Davis on the land, from the first gun
shot, at Fort Sumter, by the rabid Roman Catholic, Beauregard.
They are helping him on the sea, by guiding and supporting the
orther rabid Roman Catholic pirate, Semmes, on the ocean. And
they will help the rebellion when firing their last gun to shed
the blood of the last soldier of Liberty, who will fall in this fratricidal
war. In my interview with Bishop Hughes, I told him,
`that every stranger who had sworn allegiance to our government
by becoming a United States citizen, as himself, was liable
to be shot or hung as a perjured traitor, and an armed spy, as

the sentence of the court martial may direct. And he will be
so shot and hanged accordingly, as there will be no exchange of
such prisoners.' After I had put this flea in the ears of the
Romish bishop, I requested him to go and report my words to
the Pope. Seeing the dangerous position of his bishops and
priests when siding with the rebels, my hope was that he would
advise them, for their own interests, to become loyal and true to
their allegiance and help us through the remaining part of the
war. But the result has been the very contrary. The Pope has
thrown away the mask, and shown himself the public partisan
and the protector of the rebellion, by taking Jeff Davis by the
hand, and impudently recognizing the Southern States as a legitimate
government. Now, I have the proof in hand that that
very Bishop Hughes, whom I had sent to Rome that he might
induce the Pope to urge the Roman Catholics of the North at
least, to be true to their oath of allegiance, and whom I thanked
publicly, when, under the impression that he had acted honestly,
according to the promise he had given me, is the very man who
advised the Pope to recognize the legitimacy of the Southern
Republic, and put the whole weight of his tiara in the balance
against us, in favor of our enemies! Such is the perfidy of those
Jesuits. Two cankers are biting the very entrails of the United
States, to-day: the Romish and the Mormon priests. Both are
quietly at work to form a people of the most abject, ignorant
and fanatical slaves, who will recognize no other authority but
their supreme pontiffs. Both are aiming at the destruction of our
schools, to raise themselves upon our ruins. Both shelter themselves
under our grand and holy principles of liberty of conscience,
to destroy that very liberty of conscience, and bind the
world before their heavy and ignominious yoke. The Mormon
and the Jesuit priests are equally the uncompromising enemies
of our constitution and our laws; but the more dangerous of the
two is the Jesuit—the Romish priest, for he knows better how
to conceal his hatred under the mask of friendship and public
good; he is better trained to commit the most cruel and diabolical
deeds for the glory of God.

Till lately, I was in favor of the unlimited liberty of conscience,

as our constitution gives it to the Roman Catholics. But
now, it seems to me that, sooner or later, the people will
be forced to put a restriction to that clause towards the Papists.
Is it not an act of folly to give absolute liberty of
conscience to a set of men who are publicly sworn to cut our
throats the very day they have their opportunity for doing it?
Is it right to give the privilege of citizenship to men who are
the sworn and public enemies of our constitution, our laws, our
liberties, and our lives?

"The very moment that Popery assumed the right of life
and death on a citizen of France, Spain, Germany, England, or
the United States, it assumed to be the power, in the government
of France, Spain, England, Germany, and the United States.
Those states then committed a suicidal act by allowing Popery
to put a foot on their territory with the privilege of citizenship.
The power of life and death is the supreme power,
and two supreme powers cannot exist on the same territory without
anarchy, riots, bloodshed and civil wars without end. When
Popery will give up the power of life and death which it
proclaims as its own divine power, in all its theological
books and canon laws, then, alone, it can be tolerated
and can receive the privileges of citizenship, in a free
country.

"Is it not an absurdity to give to a man a thing which he is
sworn to hate, curse and destroy? And does not the Church of
Rome hate, curse and destroy liberty of conscience, whenever
she can do it safely?

"I am for liberty of conscience in its noblest, broadest, highest
sense. But I cannot give liberty of conscience to the Pope
and to his followers, the papists, so long as they tell me, through
all their councils, theologians and canon laws, that their conscience
orders them to burn my wife, strangle my children, and
cut my throat when they find the opportunity!

"This does not seem to be understood by the people, to-day.
But sooner or later, the light of common sense will make it clear
to every one, that no liberty of conscience can be granted to
men who are sworn to obey a Pope, who pretends to have

the right to put to death those who differ from him in religion.

You are not the first to warn me against the dangers of assassination.
My ambassadors in Italy, France and England, as
well as Professor Morse, have, many times, warned me against
the plots of the murderers whom they have detected in those
different countries. But I see no other safeguard against those
murderers, but to be always ready to die, as Christ advises it.
As we must all die sooner or later, it makes very little difference
to me whether I die from a dagger plunged through the
heart or from an inflammation of the lungs. Let me tell you
that I have, lately, read a passage in the Old Testament which
has made a profound, and, I hope, a salutary impression on me.
Here is that passage."

The President took his Bible, opened it at the third chapter
of Deuteronomy, and read from the 22nd to the 28th
verse.

After the President had read these words with great solemnity,
he added:

"My Dear Father Chiniquy, let me tell you that I have read
these strange and beautiful words several times, these last five or
six weeks. The more I read them, the more, it seems to me
that God has written them for me as well as for Moses.

"Has he not taken me from my poor log cabin by the
hand, as he did of Moses in the reeds of the Nile, to put me at

the head of the greatest and the most blessed of modern nations,
just as he put that prophet at the head of the most blessed nation
of ancient times? Has not God granted me a privilege, which
was not granted to any living man, when I broke the fetters of
4,000,000 of men, and made them free? Has not our God given
me the most glorious victories over our enemies? Are not the
armies of the Confederacy so reduced to a handful of men, when
compared to what they were two years ago; that the day is fast
approaching when they will have to surrender.

"Now, I see the end of this terrible conflict, with the same
joy of Moses, when at the end of his trying forty years in the
wilderness; and I pray my God to grant me to see the days of
peace and untold prosperity, which will follow this cruel war,
as Moses asked God to see the other side of Jordan and enter
the Promised Land. But, do you know that I hear in my soul,
as the voice of God, giving me the rebuke which was given to
Moses?

"Yes! every time that my soul goes to God to ask the favor
of seeing the other side of Jordan, and eating the fruits of that
peace, after which I am longing with such an unspeakable desire,
do you know that there is a still but solemn voice, which
tells me that I will see those things only from a long distance,
and that I will be among the dead, when the nation, which God
granted me to lead through those awful trials, will cross the Jordan,
and dwell in that Land of Promise, where peace, industry,
happiness and liberty will make everyone happy, and why so?
Because he has already given me favors which he never gave, I
dare say, to any man in these latter days.

"Why did God Almighty refuse to Moses the favor of crossing
the Jordan, and entering the Promised Land. It was on account
of his own nation's sins! That law of divine retribution
and justice, by which one must suffer for another, is surely a terrible
mystery. But it is a fact which no man who has any intelligence
and knowledge can deny. Moses, who knew that law,
though he probably did not understand it better than we do,
calmly says to his people: `God was wroth with me for your sakes.'

"But, though we do not understand that mysterious and terrible

law, we find it written in letters of tears and blood wherever
we go. We do not read a single page of history, without finding
undeniable traces of its existence.

"Where is the mother who has not shed tears and suffered
real tortures, for her children's sake?

"Who is the good king, the worthy emperor, the gifted
chieftain, who have not suffered unspeakable mental agonies, or
even death, for their people's sake?

"Is not our Christian religion the highest expression of the
wisdom, mercy and love of God! But what is Christianty if not
the very incarnation of that eternal law of divine justice in our
humanity?

"When I look on Moses, alone, silently dying on the Mount
Pisgah, I see that law, in one of its most sublime human manifestations,
and I am filled with admiration and awe.

"But when I consider that law of justice, and expiation in
the death of the Just, the divine Son of Mary, on the mountain
of Calvary, I remain mute in my adoration. The spectacle of
the crucified one which is before my eyes, is more than sublime,
it is divine! Moses died for his people's sake, but Christ died
for the whole world's sake! Both died to fulfill the same eternal
law of the divine justice, though in a different measure.

"Now, would it not be the greatest of honors and privileges
bestowed upon me, If God, in his infinite love, mercy and wisdom,
would put me between his faithful servant, Moses, and his
eternal Son, Jesus, that I might die as they did, for my nation's
sake!

"My God alone knows what I have already suffered for my
dear country's sake. But my fear is that the justice of God is
not yet paid: When I look upon the rivers of tears and blood
drawn by the lashes of the merciless masters from the veins of
the very heart of those millions of defenceless slaves, these two
hundred years: When I remember the agonies, the cries, the
unspeakable tortures of those unfortunate people to which I
have, to some extent, connived with so many others, a part of
my life, I fear that we are still far from the complete expiation.
For the judgments of God are true and righteous.

"It seems to me that the Lord wants, to-day, as he wanted
in the days of Moses, another victim—a victim which he has
himself chosen, anointed and prepared for the sacrifice, by raising
it above the rest of his people. I cannot conceal from you
that my impression is that I am the victim. So many plots
have already been made against my life, that it is a real miracle
that they have all failed, when we consider that the great majority
of them were in the hands of skillful Roman Catholic murderers,
evidently trained by Jesuits. But can we expect that God
will make a perpetual miracle to save my life? I believe not.
The Jesuits are so expert in those deeds of blood, that Henry IV.
said that it was impossible to escape them, and he became their
victim, though he did all that could be done to protect himself.
My escape from their hands, since the letter of the Pope to Jeff
Davis has sharpened a million of daggers to pierce my breast,
would be more than a miracle.

"But just as the Lord heard no murmur from the lips of
Moses, when he told him that he had to die, before crossing the
Jordan, for the sins of his people, so I hope and pray that he
will hear no murmur from me when I fall for my nation's
sake.

"The only two favors I ask of the Lord, are, first, that I
may die for the sacred cause in which I am engaged, and when
I am the standard-bearer of the rights and liberties of my
country.

"The second favor I ask from God, is that my dear son,
Robert, when I am gone, will be one of those who lift up that
flag of Liberty which will cover my tomb, and carry it with
honor and fidelity, to the end of his life, as his father did, surrounded
by the millions who will be called with him to fight and
die for the defence and honor of our country."

Never had I heard such sublime words. Never had I seen
a human face so solemn and so prophet-like as the face of the
President, when uttering these things. Every sentence had come
to me as a hymn from heaven, reverberated by the echoes of the
mountains of Pisgah and Calvary. I was beside myself. Bathed
in tears, I tried to say something, but I could not utter a word.

I knew the hour to leave had come, I asked from the President
permission to fall on my knees, and pray with him that his
life might be spared; and he knelt with me. But I prayed more
with my tears and sobs than with my words.

Then I pressed his hand on my lips and bathed it with my
tears, and with a heart filled with an unspeakable desolation, I
bade him Adieu! It was for the last time!

For the hour was fast approaching when he was to fall by
the hand of a Jesuit assassin, for his nation's sake.