As we continue our reflection on the place of American Catholicism in the 250-year history of our nation as we celebrate our Semiquincentennial, we now consider the middle of the 19th century, the movement towards the abolition of slavery and the American Civil War.

In 19th-century America, the Catholic Church occupied a complex position on slavery and abolition: while official Church teaching increasingly condemned the slave trade, coercive enslavement, and violations of human dignity, many American Catholics and bishops were divided over immediate abolition, states’ rights, and political strategy; during the Civil War, religious sisters emerged as prominent caregivers to soldiers, and a minority of Catholic bishops, most notably Archbishop John Baptist Purcell, aligned themselves with the abolitionist cause, helping shape the Church’s eventual unequivocal rejection of slavery as a moral evil.

While in recent historical analysis the American Civil War is typically characterized as an economic and political struggle between the more industrial northern states and the agrarian southern states, it seems clear that, as the nation moved towards the mid 1850s, the reality of slavery became the central moral and political issue of antebellum America. The parallel situation of mass immigration into the United States, many from majority Catholic nations, pressed the larger issue of the dignity of workers, both free (the northern immigrants) and enslaved (the southern slaves) and provided a moral analysis applicable to both.

The Catholic tradition on the injustice of enslavement of persons and, specifically, the slave trade, was one that developed over many centuries. Many proponents of enforced slavery marshalled scriptural evidence in support of slavery, particularly some writings of St. Paul and, in particular, his Letter to Philemon (though the letter itself is not a specific defense of slavery as it condoned the existence of slavery in the eponymous slave about whom the letter is written). Increasingly, papal teachings sought to limit the slave trade and, over time, to condemn it outright. In the years prior to the American Civil War and the nation’s struggle with condoning slavery, the important voice of Pope Gregory XVI emerged through his encyclical In Supremo Apostolatus (1839), where he condemned the slave trade and the reduction of persons to slavery and instructed Catholics not to “dare unjustly to vex Indians, Blacks, or other such peoples, or to despoil them of their goods, or reduce them to slavery.” However, the political situation in the United States led to various interpretations of the pope’s statement: some Southern Catholics read the document as targeting the international slave trade rather than domestic slavery, while abolitionist Catholics cited it against slavery more broadly.

As the nation was divided as perhaps never before or since, Catholics among the American population supported the spectrum of positions regarding slavery. Southern Catholic clergy and laity often accepted slavery as a legal and social reality and some dioceses and religious communities even owned enslaved people before emancipation. On the other hand, many Northern Catholics opposed slavery’s expansion but distrusted radical abolitionism, fearing social upheaval, anti-Catholic nativism, or partisan entanglement. Furthermore, Irish immigrant Catholics were not uniformly abolitionist; economic competition and Democratic Party loyalties complicated their politics. As with the larger populace, there were moral tensions among those who professed the Catholic faith. While the teaching of the church regarding the inherent dignity of the human person solidified, there was an uneven application and acceptance of this truth as regards enslaved persons. Some chose pastoral care of slaves rather than the immediate emancipation of these slaves.

Into this political and ecclesial conflict appeared the abolitionist figure of Archbishop John Baptist Purcell (1800-1883) of Cincinnati, whose see was situated on the front lines of a divided nation. He publicly opposed slavery and then became the first American Catholic bishop to support immediate emancipation. He argued that slavery violated the natural rights and dignity of the human person, drawing on Catholic moral principles rather than secular ideology alone. While other Catholic clergy shared his positions, others tended to emphasize union, order, or pastoral neutrality over abolitionist activism.

Meanwhile, in the midst of the bloody paroxysm of the war, thousands of Catholic sisters served in military hospitals, field hospitals, and transport facilities for both Union and Confederate forces. Religious communities providing pastoral care to the war-wounded included the Daughters of Charity, Sisters of Mercy, Sisters of the Holy Cross, and others. Among their responsibilities were nursing, pharmacy work, cooking, administration, and spiritual care.

Through their care of injured soldiers without exception, they earned respect from Protestant soldiers, military surgeons, and government officials and softened anti-Catholic prejudice in some degree. In the end, they demonstrated a practical Catholic commitment to corporal works of mercy amid national conflict and contributed to a greater acceptance of the Catholic religion in our nation.

With the end of the War, the Northern victory, and the Emancipation Proclamation, Catholic institutions gradually expanded to provide ministry among freed-persons, though progress was limited by segregation, racism, and financial constraints. Meanwhile, papal teaching regarding the inadmissibility of slavery across the world became absolute in the Papal encyclical In Plurimis (1888) on the Abolition of Slavery of Pope Leo XIII.

The position of the Catholic Church in 19th-century America was neither uniformly abolitionist nor uniformly pro-slavery. Official teaching increasingly condemned the slave trade, coercive enslavement, and violations of human dignity, while American Catholics remained divided over abolition and wartime politics. Religious sisters won admiration through sacrificial care for soldiers, and bishops such as Archbishop John Baptist Purcell provided a distinctly Catholic abolitionist witness. By century’s end, papal teaching and Catholic moral theology had moved decisively toward the absolute judgment that slavery was incompatible with the dignity of the human person and the moral law. In the end, however, our Catholic ancestors engaged in both sides of this most controverted era of our nation’s history and, in the end, contributed to the clarification of our nation’s moral conscience regarding the inadmissibility of slavery, another step towards our nation’s assertion that all men were, in principle and reality, created equal and endowed with a uniform human dignity.

(Note: with the changing publication format and schedule of West River Catholic, these monthly reflections on the place of Catholicism across the 250 years of our nation will be published through the website of the Diocese of Rapid City.)