By RAY CAVANAUGH
It may be a joke in that there isn’t much evidence to support the claim, but for many years there was a segment of the U.S. population that believed Lincoln’s assassination — which occurred 150 years ago this April 14 — was the work of a Jesuit conspiracy leading all the way to the Vatican.
In the wake of Lincoln’s murder, some put the blame on enemy Confederate leader Jefferson Davis; others blamed Vice President Andrew Johnson, suspecting that he wanted the presidency; but the notion which gained the most momentum was that the murder was a Catholic conspiracy.
According to William Hanchett, author of The Lincoln Murder Conspiracies, “Since some Americans were in the habit of blaming whatever they did not like on the Catholics, it was natural that some of them should have blamed Catholics for Lincoln’s assassination.”
Some of the real conspirators were indeed Catholic. Among them were: Mary Surratt, who owned the boardinghouse where the assassination plot was hatched; her son, John, who had plotted to kidnap Lincoln and later, as a fugitive, served in the Papal Zouaves; Samuel Mudd, the doctor who treated assassin John Wilkes Booth’s broken leg during his escape effort; additionally, there were rumors that Booth himself had converted to Catholicism.
This Catholic aspect fed into the fears and hostilities of a 1860s public that often was opposed to Catholics. Fanning the flames was Civil War correspondent George Alfred Townsend, who, in May 1865, wrote a widely read piece saying that all the conspirators were Catholic. This was actually incorrect, but it was so gleefully accepted by many, that it might as well have been fact.
Though Townsend’s inaccurate report likely gave some degree of assistance to the idea of a Jesuit conspiracy, no one did as much to advance it as Charles Chiniquy, who was, ironically, an ex-Catholic priest.
Born, raised, and ordained as a priest in Quebec, Chiniquy rose to prominence crusading against the vice of drunkenness. In 1851, Fr. Chiniquy, along with many of his Quebecois parishioners, headed to Illinois, where they established a village about 50 miles south of Chicago.
There, however, Chiniquy began to have disagreements with his bishop and other prominent Catholics in the area. Things became so acrimonious that he found himself as a defendant in a slander lawsuit. For legal representation, he turned to a hotshot Illinois lawyer named Abraham Lincoln. The case was soon settled out of court, but the tension continued.
Suspended of his priestly duties in August 1856, Chiniquy was excommunicated one month later. In February 1860, he became a Presbyterian minister. He found controversy here as well, specifically a dispute with the Presbytery of Chicago over his handling of charity funds.
In 1861, Chiniquy — according to his autobiographical Fifty Years in the Church of Rome — learned from a disgruntled Catholic priest that there was a plot to assassinate President Lincoln. So Chiniquy paid the president a White House visit (something which was easier to do back then) to warn him of this plot. A second purported White House visit took place in June 1862, but Lincoln was so busy then that all he could offer was a handshake.
In June 1864, Chiniquy and Lincoln allegedly got together to tour area hospitals, which were filled with wounded veterans. As they surveyed the human suffering, Lincoln kept saying: “This war would never have been possible without the sinister influence of the Jesuits.” At least according to Chiniquy’s account.
Of Lincoln’s assassination, Chiniquy contended that: “Booth was nothing but the tool of the Jesuits. It was Rome who directed his arm, after corrupting his heart and damning his soul.” In Chiniquy’s view, the Catholic Church was afraid that its power would diminish because of a successful American democracy. Seeking to eliminate the nation’s leader, Jesuits acted as conduits between the Holy See and the primary conspirators, such as John Wilkes Booth.
Though he lacked solid evidence, Chiniquy inspired a succession of anti-Catholic literature involving the Lincoln assassination. Among these writers was Thomas M. Harris, a medical doctor and Union general who actually served on the military commission that conducted the trials of the conspirators. He authored the stridently titled tome, Rome’s Responsibility for the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
A noted anti-Catholic minister, Justin D. Fulton, emerged with Washington in the Lap of Rome, which more or less was a summary of Chiniquy’s magnum Catholic-bashing opus.
More recent research has concluded that Chiniquy likely never even spoke with Lincoln inside the White House, much less discussed a Catholic assassination plot. His literature may have been dishonest, but his anti-Catholic vendetta remained true to the bitter end. Whether speaking or writing, he spent his remaining years convincing his French Canadian brethren to abandon their Catholicism. He died in Montreal in January 1899.
Though his scandal-plagued career, dramatic hostilities, and wild accusations make him seem like a crank, Chiniquy — to his credit — was a very successful author. And his legacy endured, inspiring copycat works well into the 20th century.
In 1924, Burke McCarty wrote a book contending that details of the assassination had been suppressed by the Catholic hierarchy. In 1963, the same year as another major assassination, Emmett McLoughlin — like Chiniquy, a former Catholic priest — blamed the Catholic Church in his Inquiry Into the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Even these days, there are still some people who promote Chiniquy’s work, which has been adapted into comic-book form.
Anti-Catholic sentiment has enjoyed a long and strange career in America. Undoubtedly, the Lincoln conspiracy has been one of its stranger episodes.
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(Ray Cavanaugh has written for such publications as Celtic Life, History Today, and New Oxford Review.)
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