² Auguste Marie Martin, “Lettre Pastorale de Mgr. l'Eveque de Natchitoches a l'Occasion de la Guerre du Sud Pour Son Independence,” Natchitoches, Louisiana, 21 August 1861, F96, Society for the Propagation of the Faith Papers, University of Notre Dame Archives (hereafter UNDA), Notre Dame, Ind.; Auguste Marie Martin, Lettre Pastorale a l'Occasion de la Guerre du Sud pour son Independence, Propagateur Catholique (New Orleans), 37:983, 7 September 1861. See also Maria Genoino Caravaglios, The American Catholic Church and the Negro Problem in the XVIII–XIX Centuries, ed. Ernest L Unterkoefler (Charleston, S.C.: 1974); and Elisabeth Joan Doyle, “Bishop Auguste Marie Martin of Natchitoches and the Civil War,” in Cross, Crozier, and Crucible: A Volume Celebrating the Bicentennial of a Catholic Diocese in Louisiana, ed. Glenn Conrad (Chelsea, Mich.: The Archdiocese of New Orleans in cooperation with the Center for Louisiana Studies, 1993), 135–144.

³ Congregation of the Index to Auguste Marie Martin, 15 November 1864, in American Catholics and Slavery, ed. Kenneth Zanca (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1994), 221. See also Maria G. Caravaglios, “A Roman Critique of the Pro-Slavery View of Bishop Martin of Natchitoches, LA,” American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia, Records 83 (June 1972): 67–82.

⁴ Here, ultramontanism refers to the relationship between the French clergy and the pope following the French Revolution. Many French clerics looked to the pope ultra montes, or over the Alps, as a source of religious authority in a time of religious persecution. The French clergy was especially ultramontanist during the military campaigns of Napoleon III. See Patricia Byrne, C.S.J., “American Ultramontanism,” Theological Studies 56:2 (June 1995): 301–338; and Austin Gough, Paris and Rome: The Gallican Church and the Ultramontane Campaign, 1848–1853 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986).

⁵ Samuel Hill set the standard for understanding religion in the South with his seminal work Southern Churches in Crisis (Boston: Beacon, 1966). In it, he argued that “no single feature of the southern religious picture is more revealing than the absence of pluralism and diversity from the popular denominations—and to a large extent from the other white Protestant bodies also. It is the homogeneity of that picture which marks southern religious history as distinctive” (xvii).

⁶ Donald Mathews, Religion in the Old South (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977). More recently, Mathews urged scholars to “deal with the pervasiveness of myth, type, and image—that is, with popular belief that seems to hide or at least to confound the historical.” The idea that the South was always a solidly evangelical region is one of those popular, misleading beliefs about the past: Epilogue, in The Southern Albatross: Race and Ethnicity in the American South, eds. Philip D. Dillard and Randall L. Hall (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1999), 276.

⁷ Christine Heyrman, Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 6.

⁸ Paul Harvey, Redeeming the South: Religious Culture and Racial Identities among Southern Baptists, 1865–1925 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 3.

⁹ Eugene Genovese argued that “virtually all Southern spokesmen, clerical and lay, acknowledged that the South was fighting to uphold slavery. … Prominent Catholics and Jews joined Protestants in upholding the biblical sanction for slavery while they complained that Southern slavery fell short of biblical norms.” His references to Catholics are tangential to his general respect for Southern Protestants: Genovese, A Consuming Fire: The Fall of the Confederacy in the Mind of the White Christian South (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1998). See also Drew Gilpin Faust, The Creation of Confederate Nationalism: Ideology and Identity in the Civil War South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988); and Mitchell Snay, Gospel of Disunion: Religion and Separatism in the Antebellum South (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

¹⁰ Jay Dolan, The American Catholic Experience: A History from Colonial Times to the Present (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, 1985), 123; and John Tracy Ellis, American Catholicism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), 80.

¹¹ Randall M. Miller and Jon L. Wakelyn, eds., Catholics in the Old South: Essays on Church and Culture (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1983), 4.

¹² For examples of the “cultural captivity” argument, see Randall Miller, “A Church in Cultural Captivity: Some Speculations on Catholic Identity in the Old South,” in Catholics in the Old South, 11–52; Randall Miller, “Catholics in a Protestant World: The Old South Example,” in Varieties of Southern Religious Experience, ed. Samuel Hill (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988), 115–134; and Fred J. Hood, “Kentucky,” in Religion in the Southern States: A Historical Study, ed. Samuel Hill (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1983), 101–122.

¹³ Madeleine Hooke Rice, American Catholic Opinion on Slavery (New York: Columbia University Press, 1944); Cyprian Davis, The History of Black Catholics in the United States (New York: Crossroad, 1991); Benjamin Blied, Catholics and the Civil War (Milwaukee, 1945); and Randall M. Miller, “Slaves and Southern Catholicism,” in Masters and Slaves in the House of the Lord: Race and Religion in the American South, 1740–1870, ed. John Boles (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1988), 127–152.

¹⁴ Jon F. Sensbach, “Before the Bible Belt: Indians, Africans, and the New Synthesis of Eighteenth-Century Southern Religious History,” in Religion in the American South: Protestants and Others in History and Culture, eds. Beth Barton Schweiger and Donald Mathews (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 7. For depictions of the South as composed of frontier cultures, see Bertram Wyatt-Brown, The Shaping of Southern Culture: Honor, Grace, and War, 1760s–1890s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001); Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982); and Ted Ownby, Subduing Satan: Religion, Recreation, & Manhood in the Rural South, 1865–1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990). Several studies also refer to the experiences of Catholic missionaries in frontier environments, including Dolores Liptak, R.S.M., Immigrants and Their Church (New York: Macmillan, 1989), 13–32; Anne M. Butler, Michael E. Engh, and Thomas W. Spalding, eds., The Frontiers and Catholic Identities (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1999); Thomas W. Spalding, “The Catholic Frontiers,” U.S. Catholic Historian, 12:4 (Fall 1994): 1–15; Leslie Woodcock Tentler, “‘How I would save them all’: Priests on the Michigan Frontier,” U.S. Catholic Historian, 12:4 (Fall 1994): 17–35; and Margaret C. DePalma, Dialogue on the Frontier: Catholic and Protestant Relations, 1793–1883 (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2004). For an introduction to Catholicism and ethnicity in the South, see David Edwin Harrell, “Religious Pluralism: Catholics, Jews, and Sectarians,” in Religion in the South, ed. Charles Reagan Wilson (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1980); Dennis Clark, “The South's Irish Catholics: A Case of Cultural Confinement,” in Catholics in the Old South, 195–210; David Gleeson, The Irish in the South, 1815–1877 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001); and George B. Tindall, The Ethnic Southerners (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1976).

¹⁵ Robert Orsi, The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880–1950 ([1985] New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002), xx.

¹⁶ John T. McGreevy, Catholicism and American Freedom: A History (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003), 14.

¹⁷ Peter R. D'Agostino, Rome in America: Transnational Catholic Ideology from the Risorgimento to Fascism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 5.

¹⁸ Thomas Tweed, Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006), 129–131. As missionaries worked to reorient themselves in parts of the American South, they noticed discrepancies between an ideal priesthood and a lived priesthood. Living according to a strict code of missionary behavior, they learned, often inhibited the feeling of being at home in the world. According to Tweed, religions “involve finding one's place and moving through space. One of the imperfections the religious confront is that they are always in danger of being disoriented. Religions, in turn, orient in time and space” (74). Tweed also treats missionaries as transnational migrants trying to make sense of their position in a world unlike their homeland. The missionary priests of this article are not outside Tweed's characterization of crossing and dwelling.

¹⁹ Sister Elizabeth Kolmer, A.S.C., “Catholic Women Religious and Women's History: A Survey of the Literature,” American Quarterly 30:5 (Winter 1978): 639.

²⁰ Sister Mary Ewens, O.P., is an important contributor to the history of women religious in the United States. She was a religious and a historian, and this dual perspective reveals itself in her scholarly works. See Mary Ewens, “The Double Standard of the American Sister,” in An American Church: Essays on the Americanization of the Catholic Church, ed. David J. Alvarez (Moraga, Calif.: St. Mary's College of California, 1979), 23–35; and Mary Ewens, “Removing the Veil: The Liberated American Nun,” in Women and Spirit: Female Leadership in the Jewish and Christian Traditions, eds. Rosemary Ruether and Eleanor McLaughlin (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979).

²¹ Joseph Mannard, “Maternity of the Spirit: Nuns and Domesticity in Antebellum America,” U.S. Catholic Historian 5 (Summer/Fall 1986): 305–323; Margaret Susan Thompson, “Discovering Foremothers: Sisters, Society, and the American Catholic Experience,” U.S. Catholic Historian 5 (Summer/Fall 1986): 273–290; Margaret Susan Thompson, “Philemon's Dilemma: Nuns and Blacks in Nineteenth-Century America—Some Findings,” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society 96 (March–December 1985): 3–18; Barbara Misner, “Highly Respectable and Accomplished Ladies”: Catholic Women Religious in America, 1790–1850 (New York: Garland, 1988); James J. Kenneally, The History of American Catholic Women (New York: Crossroad, 1990); Barbara Mann Wall, “‘We Might as Well Burn It’: Catholic Sister-Nurses and Hospital Control, 1865–1930,” U.S. Catholic Historian 30 (Winter 2002): 21–40; and John J. Fialka, Sisters: Catholic Nuns and the Making of America (New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2004).

²² Tracy Fessenden, “The Sisters of the Holy Family and the Veil of Race,” Religion and American Culture 10:2 (Summer 2000): 187–224; Diane Batts Morrow, Persons of Color and Religious At the Same Time: The Oblate Sisters of Providence, 1828–1860 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); and Carol K. Coburn and Martha Smith, Spirited Lives: How Nuns Shaped Catholic Culture and American Life, 1836–1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999).

²³ Amy Koehlinger, The New Nuns: Racial Justice and Religious Reform in the 1960s (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), 3.

²⁴ French historian Pierre Pierrard contends that there is a myth of the bon prêtre, or good priest, in the representation of Catholic priests in French history: Pierrard, La Vie Quotidienne du Prêtre Francais au XIXe Siècle, 1801–1905 (Paris: Hachette, 1986), 13, 22. The same could be said of priests in United States history, though American historians have been less amenable to such interpretations. For further discussion of the “vie quotidienne” of Catholic priests, see Marcel Launay, Le Bon Prêtre: Le Clergé Rural au XIXe Siècle (Paris: Aubier, 1986), 7; and Joseph Rogé, Le Simple Prêtre (Paris: Casterman, 1965), 5–7.

²⁵ Patrick Carey, Catholics in America: A History (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2004), 29–30. Jay Dolan reiterates the distinction between Brownson, “who clearly wanted Catholics to become more American,” and Archbishop John Hughes, who “wanted to emphasize the Catholic dimension of American Catholicism”: Dolan, In Search of an American Catholicism: A History of Religion and Culture in Tension (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 65.

²⁶ Wolfzettel argues that “la literature de voyage missionaire est caractérisée par des buts de propaganda visant, le plus souvant, un public relativement restraint” (“The literature of missionary travel is characterized by its propaganda purposes, which aim, most often, at a relatively controlled public”): Wolfzettel, Le Discours du Voyageur: Pour une histoire littérraire du récit de voyage en France, du Moyen Age au xviiie Siècle (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1996), 166–167. See also Tangi Villerbu, La Conquête de l'Ouest: le récit francais de la nation américane au XIXe siècle (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2007).

²⁷ Sue Peabody, “‘A Dangerous Zeal’: Catholic Missions to Slaves in the French Antilles, 1635–1800,” French Historical Studies 25:1 (2002) 53–90; Charles Frostin, “Méthodologie missionaire et sentiment religieux en Amérique francaise aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles: Le case de Saint-Domingue,” Cahiers d'histoire 24:1 (1979) 19–43; and George Breathett, “Religious Protectionism and the Slave in Haiti,” Catholic Historical Review 55:1 (1969–1970): 26–39.

²⁸ For more on the abolitionist movement in France, see Patrick Weil and Stéphane Weil, eds., L'Esclavage, la colonization, et après … : France, Etats-Unis, Grande-Bretagne (Paris: Presses Universitaires des France, 2005); Nelly Schmidt, Abolitionistes de l'esclavage et réformateurs des colonies, 1820–1851: Analyse et documents (Paris: Karthala, 2000); and Lawrence Jennings, French Anti-Slavery: The Movement for the Abolition of Slavery in France, 1802–1848 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

²⁹ The nationwide canvassing of missionary literature in the mold of the Jesuit Relations provided potential missionaries with a partly accurate rendering of American missions and ample opportunity to imagine themselves in the image of Jesuit martyrs in New France and the new wave of missionaries in the early American republic. It also contributed to the formation of what historian André Latreielle called les réveils missionaires, or the missionary awakenings, of nineteenth-century France. Latreille, “Preface,” in Les Réveils Missionaires en France: Du Moyen-Age a Nos Jours (XIIe–XXe siècles) (Paris: Beauchesne, 1984), 9. This renaissance de l'idée missionaire, according to historian Jean-Claude Baumont, was a direct result of “the significant impact of missionary writings” on the decision of seminarians and priests to become missionaries. Baumont, “La renaissance de l'idée missionaire en France au début du XIXe siècle,” in Les Réveils Missionaires en France, 215, 219.

³⁰ Thomas Murphy, Jesuit Slaveholding in Maryland, 1717–1838 (New York: Routledge, 2001). For more on Catholicism in Baltimore, see Thomas W. Spalding, The Premier See: A History of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, 1789–1989 (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989); and Annabelle M. Melville, John Carroll of Baltimore, Founder of the American Catholic Hierarchy (New York: Scribner, 1955).

³¹ John Tessier, Slave Purchase Contract of “the Negro Boy named Basil,” Baltimore, 4 February 1819, RG 1 box 11, Archives, U.S. Province, Society St. Sulpice (hereafter, AUSPSS), Associated Archives at St. Mary's Seminary and University (hereafter, AASMSU), Baltimore, Md.; John Tessier, Manumission of Marie Magdeleine Georgette, Baltimore, Md., 13 June 1826, RG 1 box 11, AUSPSS, AASMSU. Other Sulpicians bought and sold slaves: Pierre Babad, Receipt of Sale of Slave named Colmar, Baltimore, Md., 5 June 1820, Babad Papers, RG 3 box 12, AUSPSS, AASMSU. Tessier also hired indentured servants: John Tessier, Termination of Indenture of John G. Heydecker, Baltimore, Md., 20 June 1809, RG 1 box 11, AUSPSS, AASMSU; and John Tessier, Indenture of Augustine Snyder, Baltimore, Md., 20 November 1816, RG 1 box 11, AUSPSS, AASMSU.

³² John Dubois to Simon Bruté, Mount St. Mary, Md., 5 February 1816, RG 3 box 12, AUSPSS, AASMSU; Simon Bruté to Abbé Garnier, Emmitsburg, Md., 1815(?), RG 1 box 13, AUSPSS, AASMSU; and Benedict Joseph Flaget to Father Deluol, Kentucky, 10 September 1842, Flaget Letters, Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, Kentucky, Records (hereafter, NAZ), UNDA.

³³ Stephen Badin to John Carroll, near Bardstown, Ky., 16 December 1810, Francis P. Clark Copies, Transcripts, and Translations (hereafter, CCOP) 6, UNDA.

³⁴ Archibald McDonnell to William Louis DuBourg, Slave of Negro Boy called Bob, Baltimore, Md., 12 May 1808, RG 3 box 18, AUSPSS, AASMSU; and Pierre Babad, Receipt of Sale of Slave called Colmar, Baltimore, Md., 5 June 1820, Babad Papers, RG 3 box 12, AUSPSS, AASMSU.

³⁵ For more on the life of DuBourg, see Annabelle M. Melville, Louis William DuBourg, Bishop of Louisiana and the Floridas, Bishop of Montauban, and Archbishop of Besancon, 2 vols. (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1986). For more on Catholicism and slavery in Missouri, see Stafford Poole and Douglas Slawson, Church and Slave in Perry County, Missouri: 1818–1865 (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1986), 148–186.

³⁶ Stephen Ochs argued that the Catholic Church was the single largest slaveholding entity in the territory of Louisiana in A Black Patriot and a White Priest: André Cailloux and Claude Paschal Maistre in Civil War New Orleans (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000), 22. See also Roger Baudier, The Catholic Church in Louisiana (New Orleans: A. W. Hyatt Stationary, 1939); Caryn Cossé Bell, Revolution, Romanticism, and the Afro-Creole Protest Tradition in Louisiana, 1718–1868 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997); and Glenn R. Conrad, ed., Cross, Crozier, and Crucible.

³⁷ Luis Penalver y Cardenas, New Orleans, 12 September 1799, V-3-a, UNDA; Miguel Bernardo Barriere to Luis Penalver y Cardenas, Attakapas, La., 24 October 1800, V-3-e, UNDA. For an introduction to the history of colonial Louisiana, see Bradley G. Bond, ed., French Colonial Louisiana and the Atlantic World (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005); Charles Edward O'Neill, Church and State in French Colonial Louisiana: Policy and Politics to 1732 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1966); and Kimberly S. Hanger, Bounded Lives, Bounded Places: Free Black Society in Colonial New Orleans, 1763–1803 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997).

³⁸ For more on the influence of Antonio de Sedella on the Catholic Church in colonial New Orleans, see Charles Edward O'Neill, S.J., “‘A Quarter Marked by Sundry Peculiarities’: New Orleans, Lay Trustees and Père Antoine,” Catholic Historical Review 76 (1990): 235–277; and Richard E. Greenleaf, “The Inquisition in Spanish Louisiana, 1762–1800,” New Mexico Historical Review 50:1 (January 1975): 45–72.

³⁹ Cirilo de Barcelona, 28 January 1792, New Orleans, V-3-e, UNDA.

⁴⁰ William Duparc to Manuel de Salcedo, Pointe Coupee, La., 30 September 1803, V-4-a, UNDA. For insight into “sex across the color line,” see Martha Hodes, White Women, Black Men: Illicit Sex in the Nineteenth-Century South (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997). See also Diane Miller Sommerville, Rape and Race in the Nineteenth-Century South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004).

⁴¹ Sister Antonia de St. Monica Ramos, O.S.U., to Thomas Hassett, New Orleans, 21 March 1803, V-3-n, UNDA; Sister Antonia de St. Monica Ramos, O.S.U., to Thomas Hassett, New Orleans, 24 March 1803, V-3-n, UNDA; Sister Antonia de St. Monica Ramos, O.S.U., to Thomas Hassett, New Orleans, 7 May 1803, V-3-o, UNDA; and Patrick Walsh, New Orleans, 1798, V-4-c, UNDA. For more on the Ursulines in colonial New Orleans, and for more on Roman Catholicism in colonial New Orleans in general, see Emily Clark, “‘By All the Conduct of Their Lives’: A Laywomen's Confraternity in New Orleans, 1730–1744,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Ser., 54:4 (October 1997): 769–794; Emily Clark and Virginia Meacham Gould, “The Feminine Face of Afro-Catholicism in New Orleans, 1727–1852,” William and Mary Quarterly 59:2 (April 2002): 409–448; Emily Clark, Masterless Mistresses: The New Orleans Ursulines and the Development of a New World Society, 1727–1834 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007); and Mary V. Miceli, “The Influence of the Roman Catholic Church on Slavery in Colonial Louisiana, 1718–1763,” Ph.D. diss., Tulane University, 1979.

⁴² Diocesan priests went to considerable lengths to make sure that baptismal and burial registries were accurate in the categorization of Catholics by race. By extension, they also demonstrated a serious concern that all persons of color, whether enslaved or free, receive the sacraments. See Pierre Genti to Luis Penalver y Cardenas, n.p., 1800, V-2-i, UNDA; Penalver y Cardenas, New Orleans, 14 January 1800, V-2-i, UNDA; Isidro Quintero, New Orleans, 14 January 1800, V-2-i, UNDA; Penalver y Cardenas, New Orleans, 15 January 1800, V-2-i, UNDA; Antonio de Sedella to Luis Penalver y Cardenas, New Orleans, 17 January 1800, V-2-i, UNDA; Antonio de Sedella, New Orleans, 3 January 1800, V-2-i, UNDA; Penalver y Cardenas, New Orleans, 1 February 1800, V-2-i, UNDA; Thomas Hassett to Manuel de Salcedo, New Orleans, 22 June 1802, V-3-j, UNDA; Manuel de Salcedo to Thomas Hassett, New Orleans, 22 June 1802, V-3-j, UNDA; and Miguel Bernardo Barriere, Census of St. Martin's Church for 1801, Attakapas, La., 4 June 1801, V-2-a, UNDA.

⁴³ Alfred E. Lemmon, “Spanish Louisiana: In the Service of God and His Most Catholic Majesty,” in Cross, Crozier, and Crucible, ed. Conrad, 28.

⁴⁴ According to Barbara Jeanne Fields, Maryland was a “middle ground” where the social mixture of free whites, free people of color, and enslaved persons produced a space of continual negotiation over the ideas of slavery and freedom: Fields, Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground: Maryland during the Nineteenth Century (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985). T. Stephen Whitman reiterated the findings of Fields in The Price of Freedom: Slavery and Manumission in Baltimore and Early National Maryland (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997). However, Whitman was careful to distinguish between the negotiated “middle ground” of urban Baltimore and the more clearly defined white rule of rural plantations: “Baltimore's hinterlands,” he wrote, “remained strongly committed to slave labor even as blacks transformed the city into an island of freedom” (1).

⁴⁵ Harold Tallant, like many of his predecessors, referred to Kentucky as a moderate middle ground between immediate emancipation and the biblical justification of slavery as a moral good: Harold Tallant, Evil Necessity: Slavery and Political Culture in Antebellum Kentucky (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2003).

⁴⁶ In his cultural study of the slave market in antebellum New Orleans, Walter Johnson captures the private and public lives of both masters and slaves: Walter Johnson, Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999).

⁴⁷ Herbert Klein argued in African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986) that “racism was a part of every American system that held African slaves and did not disappear when blacks and mulattoes became free citizens and economic and social competitors” (218). Virginia Dominguez argued in White by Definition: Social Classification in Creole Louisiana (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1986) that “race is the issue in Louisiana” (xiv). Recent scholarship has also challenged the popular conception of New Orleans as a multiracial community of white, colored, and black people: Bell, in Revolution, Romanticism, and the Afro-Creole Protest Tradition in Louisiana, argued that antebellum New Orleans subscribed to a “new American racial order,” or a binary system of black and white (65–88). Thomas N. Ingersoll, in Mammon and Manon in Early New Orleans: The First Slave Society in the Deep South, 1718–1819 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1999), extended the binary system of racial order to the Louisiana colonial period in spite of French and Spanish influences (275).

⁴⁸ United States Documents in the Propaganda Fide Archives, Index to Calendar, vols. I–VII, edited by Finbar Kenneally, O.F.M. (Washington, D.C.: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1981). These seven volumes refer to thousands of letters between cardinals of the Propaganda Fide and priests in the United States. For an introduction to the early history of the Propaganda Fide, see Bernard Jacqueline, “La Sacrée Congrégation de la Propaganda Fide et le réveil de la conscience missionaire en France au XVIIe siècle,” in Les Rèveils Missionaire en France du Moyen-Age a Nos Jours (XIIe–XXe siècles) (Paris: Beauchesne, 1984), 107–118; and Raphael Hung Sik Song, The Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith: A Dissertation (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1961). References to “Rome” in this article are not meant to imply that all Catholic authorities in Rome spoke with the same voice or with the same authority. The Propaganda Fide, in fact, can be described as a relatively loosely organized contingency of cardinals, bishops, and priests who attempted to control missionary operations the world over. Missionaries in the United States, however, acted as though the decisions of the Propaganda Fide represented the decisions of the pope, which in turn meant that Rome spoke with a common, definitive voice. In other words, missionaries thought of Rome as a source of order and clarity, a source that was all the more desired in the face of disorder and confusion in the American missions.

⁴⁹ William Louis DuBourg to Jesuits of Missouri, St. Louis, 10 April 1823, American Catholics and Slavery, ed. Zanca, 155–156.

⁵⁰ William Louis DuBourg to the Propaganda Fide, Scrutture Riferite nei Congressi 3, fol. 466, Congregation of the Propaganda Fide Archives, UNDA.

⁵¹ Scritture Riferite nei Congressi 9, fol. 339rv, u.d., Congregatio de Propaganda Fide Collection, UNDA; Decisioni, cherichiede alla Sac. Congr' de Propaganda Fide: Il Vescovo d'alta Louisiana, Congregatio de Propaganda Fide Collection, UNDA. DuBourg demonstrated this frustration in his attempt to marry enslaved persons when slaveholders refused to give their consent. Without the consent of masters and without adequate sacramental records, priests were unsure of how to canonically validate the marriages of enslaved persons.

⁵² Michael J. C. Fournier to John Carroll, 25 January 1802, Baltimore Cathedral Archives (hereafter, BCA), box 4, CCOP 8, UNDA.

⁵³ “Doubts proposed by Monsignor Nerinckx,” Kentucky, 1816, Acts of the Sacred Congregation of the Propagation of the Faith (hereafter, ASCPF), Propaganda Fide Translations, vol. 179, fol. 6–26v, CCOP 12, UNDA.

⁵⁴ Benedict Joseph Flaget to the Prefect of the Propaganda Fide, Bardstown, Ky., 4 February 1828, “Writings Referring to the General Congregations,” Propaganda Fide Translations, CCOP 12, UNDA.

⁵⁵ On the enslavement of persons by missionaries in Kentucky, see C. Walker Gollar, “The Role of Father Badin's Slaves in Frontier Kentucky,” American Catholic Studies 115:1 (Spring 2004): 1–24; C. Walker Gollar, “Father John Thayer: Catholic Antislavery Voice in the Kentucky Wilderness,” Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 101 (Summer 2003): 275–96; and C. Walker Gollar, “Catholic Slaves and Slaveholders in Kentucky,” Catholic Historical Review 84 (1998): 42–63. On the maintenance of plantations with enslaved workers, see Benedict J. Flaget to Cardinal Fransoni, Louisville, Ky., 18 June 1848, ASCPF, vol. 14, 704r-v, Propaganda Fide Translations, CCOP 12, UNDA; John David to Simon Brute, Louisville, Ky., 4 June 1811, CCOP 17, UNDA; John David to Simon Brute, St. Stephen's, Ky., 21 June 1811, CCOP 17, UNDA; Benedict Joseph Flaget to Louis William DuBourg, New York, 1 March 1832, RG 3 box 19, AUSPSS, AASMSU; Benedict Joseph Flaget to the Prefect of the Propaganda Fide, Bardstown, Ky., 5 November 1827, CCOP, UNDA. On the purchase of slaves and the reliance of priests on the services of enslaved persons, see Benedict Joseph Flaget to Louis Regis Deluol, Kentucky, 10 September 1842, Flaget Letters, NAZ, UNDA; Charles Nerinckx to Joseph Rosati, Loretto, Ky., 1823, CCOP, UNDA; and Flaget Diary, 7 February 1814, NAZ, UNDA.

⁵⁶ Joseph Rosati to Louis William DuBourg, St. Louis, Mo., 1 May 1832, RG 3 box 19, AUSPSS, AASMSU; and Flaget Diary, 24 October 1814, NAZ, UNDA. In an undated note at the end of Flaget's diary, the bishop refers to “Suzanne, a negress of Mr. Duket, [who] told me, first, that she had been forced to [commit] the crime [of extramarital sexual intercourse]. … [S]he told me then [during confession] that … she was in her bed and that he committed the crime with her”: See the Flaget Diary, Notes, NAZ, UNDA.

⁵⁷ Flaget Diary, 14 January 1814, 15 January 1814, 26 January 1814, 21 February 1814, NAZ, UNDA.

⁵⁸ Benedict Joseph Flaget to the Sacred Congregation of the Propagation of the Faith, Bardstown, Ky., 16 April 1825, “Writings Referring to the General Congregations,” Propaganda Fide Translations, CCOP 12, UNDA.

⁵⁹ DuBourg, always seeking monetary support for his missions in Louisiana, contributed to the formation of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith in Lyon in 1822. In coordination with a wealthy laywoman, Pauline Jaricot, and several other French Sulpicians, the Society started as an association interested in supporting Catholic missionary activities in what were considered non-Catholic countries. French missionaries corresponded regularly with their colleagues still in France, as seen in the Society's publication, Annales de l'Association de la Propagation de la Foi. See Edward John Hickey, The Society for the Propagation of the Faith: Its Foundation, Organization, and Success (1822–1922) (New York: AMS, 1974); and Baumont, “La renaissance de l'idée missionaire en France,” in Les Réveils Missionaires en France, 210.

⁶⁰ Michel Portier to Cholleton, New Orleans, 15 April 1818, Propagation of the Faith Collection, #2724, L65, Archives of the Archdiocese of New Orleans (hereafter, AANO), New Orleans.

⁶¹ Benedict Joseph Flaget Diary, 4 October 1814, NAZ, UNDA; and Benedict Joseph Flaget to M. Garnier, Priestland, Ky., 17 June 1811, CCOP, UNDA.

⁶² Antoine Blanc to his cousin, Pointe Coupée, La., 17 November 1823, Propagation of the Faith Collection, #2735, L65, AANO; and Antoine Blanc to Lyon Seminary, Pointe Coupée, La., 10 May 1823, Propagation of the Faith Collection, #2733, L65, AANO.

⁶³ Etienne Richard to the Propagation at Lyon, New Orleans, 7 August 1825, Propagation of the Faith Collection, #2747, L65, AANO.

⁶⁴ Michel Portier to Cholleton, New Orleans, 15 April 1818, Propagation of the Faith Collection, #2724, L65, AANO.

⁶⁵ Michel Portier to Cholleton and Mioland, New Orleans, September 1820, Propagation of the Faith Collection, #2726, L65, AANO.

⁶⁶ Michel Portier to Cholleton, New Orleans, 15 April 1818, Propagation of the Faith Collection, #2724, L65, AANO.

⁶⁷ Michel Portier to Cholleton and Mioland, New Orleans, September 1820, Propagation of the Faith Collection, #2726, L65, AANO.

⁶⁸ Antoine Blanc to his cousin, Point Coupée, La., 17 November 1823, Propagation of the Faith Collection, #2735, L65, AANO, New Orleans.

⁶⁹ John England, Pastoral Letter of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, 1837.

⁷⁰ For studies of anti-Catholicism, see Jenny Franchot, Roads to Rome: The Antebellum Protestant Encounter with Catholicism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); Francis Dolan, Whores of Babylon: Catholicism, Gender, and Seventeenth-Century Print Culture (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999); and Francis D. Cogliano, No King, No Popery: Anti-Catholicism in Revolutionary New England (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1995).

⁷¹ Pope Gregory XVI, In Supremo Apostolatus, read during the Fourth Provincial Council of Baltimore, 3 December 1839, www.papalencyclicals.net/Greg16/g16sup.htm. See also John F. Quinn, “‘Three Cheers for the Abolitionist Pope!’: American Reaction to Gregory XVI's Condemnation of the Slave Trade, 1840–1860, Catholic Historical Review 90:1 (January 2004): 67–93.

⁷² John England, Works, ed. Sebastian G. Messmer (Cleveland, Ohio: Arthur H. Clark, 1908), 189.

⁷³ John England, U.S. Catholic Miscellany (Charleston, S.C.), 25 February 1841.

⁷⁴ Rice, American Catholic Opinion in the Slavery Controversy, 132.

⁷⁵ John England, U.S. Catholic Miscellany (Charleston, S.C.), 14 March 1840.

⁷⁶ Francis Patrick Kenrick, Theologia Moralis, in American Catholics and Slavery, ed. Zanca, 200.

⁷⁷ Ibid. Joseph Brokhage, in his theological biography of Kenrick, stated that “Kenrick intimated that the rights of slaves to their liberty might be limited for the sake of the common good”: Brokhage, Francis Patrick Kenrick's Opinion on Slavery (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1955), 149.

⁷⁸ John Joseph Chanche to Antoine Blanc, Natchez, Miss., 31 January 1842, V-4-m, UNDA; and John Joseph Chanche to Antoine Blanc, Natchez, Miss., 21 February 1846, II-4-j, UNDA.

⁷⁹ A. Beaugier to Antoine Blanc, Ville Platte, La., 10 May 1855, VI-1-I, UNDA: “Ils sont jusque tous gens de couleur, mais si leur peau reste brun, leur âmes sera je l'espère bientot blanche.”

⁸⁰ Francis Xavier Leray to Antoine Blanc, Jackson, Miss., 2 January 1857, VI-1-I; Auguste Marie Martin to Antoine Blanc, Natchitoches, La., 3 April 1856, VI-1-j, UNDA; Julius J. O'Dougherty to Antoine Blanc, Monroe, La., 4 April 1853, VI-1-e, UNDA; and Julius J. O'Dougherty to Antoine Blanc, Monroe, La., 29 July 1853, VI-1-e, UNDA.

⁸¹ Emily Archinard to Antoine Blanc, Bayou Rapide, La., 14 December 1849, V-5-1, UNDA.

⁸² J. E. Blin to Antoine Blanc, Charenton, La., 25 February 1850, V-5-m, UNDA: “je donnes des instructions aux nègres.”

⁸³ Ibid.: “comment donc expliquer leur indifference en leur impiété sinon sur leur negligence à recevoir nos instructions, en par celle qu'ils recoivent des voltairiens qui nous environment.”

⁸⁴ Desire LeBlanc and Adrien Dumartrait, “Eglise St. Martin,” newspaper clipping, 29 June 1843, enclosed with the letter from Adrien Dumartrait to Antoine Blanc, St. Martinville, La., 10 July 1843, V-4-o, UNDA: “il devra seulement preacher la morale de l'Evangile, suivant les réglemens de l'Eglise catholique.” See also Adrian Dumartrait to Etienne Rousselon, St. Martinville, La., 10 July 1843, V-4-o, UNDA.

⁸⁵ James Fontbonne to Antoine Blanc, St. Martinville, La., 15 July 1850, V-5-n, UNDA: “mon sacristain recu ordre de la fabrique de St. Martin de mettre deux nappes à la table de la communion, afin d'établir une separation des gens de couleur avec les blancs.”

⁸⁶ See John Gillard, Colored Catholics in the United States: An Investigation of Catholic Activity in behalf of the Negroes in the United States and a Survey of the Present Conditions of the Colored Missions (Baltimore, Md.: Josephite Press, 1941); and Bell, Revolution, Romanticism, and the Afro-Creole Protest Tradition in Louisiana.

⁸⁷ James Fontbonne to Antoine Blanc, St. Martinville, La., 1849, V-5-k, UNDA; Pitrait to Antoine Blanc, Milliken Bend, La., 18 February 1850, V-5-m, UNDA; and Francis Rene Pont to Antoine Blanc, Vicksburg, Miss., 2 January 1857, VI-1-I.

⁸⁸ Charles Dalloz to Antoine Blanc, Avoyelles, La., 23 May 1845, V-5-c, UNDA.

⁸⁹ J. Francis Abbadie to Stephen Rousselon, Grand Coteau, La., 18 March 1861, VI-2-d, UNDA.

⁹⁰ Alexandro Barnabo to John Mary Odin, Rome, Italy, 10 September 1861, VI-2-e, UNDA.

⁹¹ John Andrew Fierabras to Antoine Blanc, Port Gibson, Miss., 29 June 1852, VI-1-c, UNDA.

⁹² James Fontbonne to Antoine Blanc, St. Martinville, La., 1849, V-5-k, UNDA.

⁹³ Amadee Beccard to Antoine Blanc, Lafourche, La., 1854, VI-1-g, UNDA.

⁹⁴ Father Augustine Marechaux to Stephen Rousselon, Assumption, La., 20 October 1858, VI-1-0, UNDA: “Devenus adultes, tous ces nègres se déclarent Protestans, & cela pour ne pas venire à l'église, car, au fond, ils ne sont rien.”

⁹⁵ Antoine Blanc, “Pastoral Letter on Slavery and True Freedom,” New Orleans, 2 February 1852, Pastoral Letters Collection, AANO.

⁹⁶ For more on the Protestant defense of slavery and sectionalism, see Larry E. Tise, Proslavery: A History of the Defense of Slavery in America, 1701–1840 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987); C. C. Goen, Broken Churches, Broken Nation: Denominational Schism and the Coming of the American Civil War (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1985); and Eugene Genovese, “Religion and the Collapse of the American Union,” in Religion and the American Civil War, ed. Randall M. Miller, Harry S. Stout, and Charles Reagan Wilson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 74–88.

⁹⁷ McGreevy, Catholicism and American Freedom, 43–90.

⁹⁸ “Lettre de l'honorable C. M. Conrad,” Supplement du Propagateur Catholique (New Orleans), 37:948, 5 January 1861: “Ils ont outragé nos sentiments, ils nous ont volé notre propriété et ont foulé aux pieds nos droits les plus sacrés. La seule excuse qu'ils presentment pour ces outrages, c'est qu'ils ne sont pas satisfaits de nos institutions domestiques; que l'esclavage est un mal et qu'il devrait etre aboli.” Archbishop Odin approved of Perché's public support for Martin's pastoral letter. Napoleon Joseph Perché to Jean Marie Odin, New Orleans, 21 September 1861, VI-2-e, UNDA; and Auguste Marie Martin to Stephen Rousselon, Natchitoches, La., 20 September 1861, VI-2-e, UNDA. Perché immigrated to the United States in 1836 with Bishop Benedict Joseph Flaget of Kentucky.

⁹⁹ “Esclavage et Abolitionisme, Sermon de Mgr. Verot, sur les Droits et les Devoirs des Naitres,” Advertisement, Propagateur Catholique, 39:999, 28 December 1861, and 19:8, 4 January 1862; “De la Source Legitimè de l'Esclavage,” Propagateur Catholique, 18:10, 18 January 1862. Verot gave Perché permission to reprint the tract. See Augustin Verot to John Mary Odin, Savannah, Georgia, 9 November 1861 VI-2-e, UNDA. Perché would later be arrested by General Butler for his belligerent position against the Union occupation. See Unknown to James Alphonsus McMaster, New Orleans, 21 January 1863, VI-2-g, UNDA. Verot visited the missionaries of Mississippi, where he gave retreats and preached about slavery and the Civil War. See William Henry Elder to John Mary Odin, Natchez, Miss., 4 November 1861, VI-2-e, UNDA; and William Henry Elder to John Mary Odin, Natchez, Miss., 20 December 1861, VI-2-e, UNDA.

¹⁰⁰ Augustin Marcellin Verot, A Tract for the Times. Slavery and Abolitionism, Being the Substance of a Sermon Preached in the Church of St. Augustine, Florida, on the 4th Day of January 1861, Day of Public Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer (Baltimore, Md.: John Murphy and Co., 1861). See also Michael Gannon, Rebel Bishop: Augustin Verot, Florida's Civil War Prelate (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1967).

¹⁰¹ Augustine Gauget, O.M.I, to John Mary Odin, Brownsville, Texas, 26 June 1861, VI-2-d, UNDA: “Les talents ne manqueront pas aux catholiques du Nord non plus qu'à ceux du Sud, pour faire valoir la justice de leur cause et l'équité de leurs procédés.”

¹⁰² Victor Jamey to John Mary Odin, Convent, La., 3 February 1862, VI-2-f, UNDA: “priez donc Mr. Perché ne plus parler de cette exécrable question de l'esclavage avec son titre, anti-canonique, de journal officiel du Diocese.”

¹⁰³ Stephen Rousselon to John Mary Odin, New Orleans, 23 August 1862, VI-2-f, UNDA: “C'est une pitié de les entendre parler sur la question de l'esclavage, ce sont des aveugles qui veulent parler de couleurs, même Mgr. Dupanloup, ouvrez leurs donc les yeux.” See also Stephen Rousselon to John Mary Odin, New Orleans, 15 October 1862, VI-2-f, UNDA. For more on Dupanloup, see McGreevy, Catholicism and American Freedom, 50, 53.

¹⁰⁴ Stephen Ochs's study of racial and religious relations between white and black Catholics in New Orleans during the Civil War is an excellent source of insight into the practical responses of Catholic missionaries to the post-emancipation South: Ochs, A Black Patriot and a White Priest.

¹⁰⁵ E. J. Foltier to John Mary Odin, Vermillionville, La., 3 December 1861, VI-2-e, UNDA: “Les lois civiles ne permettens pas de donner une liberté.”

¹⁰⁶ Madame A. Shannon, R.S.C., to John Mary Odin, St. Michael's, La., 15 March 1862, VI-2-f, UNDA; and Stephen Rousselon to John Mary Odin, New Orleans, 23 August 1862, VI-2-f, UNDA: “On nous prépare un St. Domingue.” Rousselon made the same observation a month later. See Stephen Rousselon to John Mary Odin, New Orleans, 18 September 1862, VI-2-f, UNDA.

¹⁰⁷ Stephen Rousselon to John Mary Odin, New Orleans, 15 October 1862, VI-2-f, UNDA: “Mais c'est aussi la destruction totale du Sud. C'est le signal d'un cataclysme.”

¹⁰⁸ Mother Columba Carroll to Mary Ann, Nazareth, Ky., 27 August 1864, NAZ, UNDA.

¹⁰⁹ Martin John Spalding was born in Bardstown, studied in a Kentucky seminary, and later entered the Propaganda Fide in Rome. He wrote a hagiographic biography of Flaget and served as his coadjutor for a time. Later, during the First Vatican Council, Spalding strongly supported the doctrine of papal infallibility. See Journal of Martin John Spalding, 1 January 1863, BCA box 6, CCOP 10, UNDA.