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ix.

The War

INTENSELY AS THEY WERE OCCUPIED with their local responsibilities, the missionaries, along with their parishioners, were increasingly concerned with a grave and complicated matter which grew upon the whole nation throughout 1845 and which, in 1846, came to a state of crisis.

Ex-President Andrew Jackson stated the issue when he said, “You might as well, it appears to me, attempt to turn the current of the Mississippi, as to turn the democracy from the annexation of Texas.” For Texas had applied several times for statehood under the American republic, had been refused, had declared herself an independent republic by an act of secession from Mexico; and now, in 1846, Texas was willing to give up her own sovereignty if allowed to become a state of the United States. The Democratic candidate for president in 1846 was James K. Polk, who ran principally on the plank of admitting Texas to the Union. When he won the election, the admission of Texas was a certainty; and just as certain was a declaration of war against the United States by Mexico, which had never conceded that the vast Texan lands were independent, and now considered them wrongfully acquired by the North Americans. Polk ordered troops south to the Rio Grande border of Texas-Mexico, and Mexico City in turn ordered forces north to the opposite side of the river. Inevitably they clashed, and a war fever swept the States. Congress authorized the raising of a volunteer force of fifty thousand men, and President Polk declared, “A portion of this force was assigned to each State and Territory in the Union so as to make each feel an interest in the war.” For the hundreds asked for from each state, ten times in the thousands flocked to volunteer.

Ohio and all of Purcell’s diocese felt the call. Troops moved down the Ohio River and others boarded river steamers at Cincinnati for the voyage to New Orleans, the Gulf, and the coast of Texas. Barges of coal needed by the armies so far from home also took the route of the rivers, and all who remained at home felt the national quickening and saw the troop movements and the great flow of supply, and had a new place name by which to reckon the loneliness of separation, worries, news of victories, and messages of death—the Rio Grande. Just where was it? Evidently it divided Texas from Mexico, and ran down from the high Rockies all the length of New Mexico, as the northernmost inland state of the Mexican nation was called. So far away—nobody knew what the land out there was like except the traders who since 1824 had been voyaging across the prairies to Santa Fe, and down to Chihuahua. It all seemed to move closer when news came that on 18 August 1846 the American General Stephen Watts Kearny had captured Santa Fe—peaceably, as it turned out—and with it, for all practical purposes, the whole of New Mexico. The act was the first in a sequence which, though without meaning for Lamy until three more years had passed, was to determine his work for the rest of his life.

Meanwhile, what was nearest seemed larger. Father Pendeprat, who was intended for Sandusky to help Machebeuf, would soon be reassigned to Louisville by Purcell—hardly a matter for rejoicing in the north. In April Lamy suggested to Purcell that he station a permanent pastor at Newark, and announced that his presbytery at Danville was completed and that Mrs Brent and one of her daughters were established as his housekeepers. “The old lady does great deal for me and yet she will be no burden to me she finds her own provisions and says she is quite happy to do it for she is now near the church and can go to mass often. I am really edified by this regularity and piety. I have also an orphan Irish boy about 14 years old. I can buy in general but the Catholics of this congregation have furnished me with provisions such as they have.” Lamy later converted Mrs Brent’s young son, took him to Rome to be educated for holy orders, and years afterward Father Brent, in turn, became pastor of St Luke’s.

Northern Ohio was growing faster than the central counties of the state. Machebeuf—with an air of complaint—reported to Sister Philomène at Riom that Purcell had, since his return from France, assigned to him all the duties of Norwalk in addition to those he already struggled to meet. He would have to take charge of everything—assembling materials of all kinds, keeping all accounts, spending almost a month at Norwalk making a general canvass for funds to protect the church from being sold on demand by “a protestant fanatic who had furnished various materials” and who obviously had not yet been paid.

A momentous response to the leaping growth of the lake cities and inland towns of northern Ohio came in the summer of 1846. The American bishops petitioned Rome to separate the area into a new diocese, to be taken from Purcell’s great domain of Cincinnati, and proposed Father Rappe of Toledo as the new bishop-designate—the first of the original party from Auvergne to be raised to the mitre. The decision would throw both Danville and Sandusky, among other settlements, under a new bishop so soon as he should be consecrated—presumably in the autumn. In his own group of parishes, Machebeuf was desperate for more help. Lamy was named by Purcell to go to him if only for a month, and wrote Purcell in late August that he was daily awaiting his own replacement at Danville. “Everybody,” he said, “except in my own congregation knows that I am going to Sandusky City … one thing only I regret it is to be cut off from the diocese of Cincinnati, but whether I stay at Danville or be removed to Sandusky City I will belong to the new diocese of Cleveland, but if I must be out of your jurisdiction … I shall never forget the kind attention, the paternal affection which you have always showed to me.”

Sandusky was in need of every sort of governance. “Dreadful scenes” went on in public, drunkenness, street fights, sometimes reaching even to the church door. One of the rowdies was so out of control that he bit off the nose of his father-in-law, an old man almost seventy. Machebeuf, small as he was, often had to separate such fighters. Lamy would be a great reinforcement, with his powerful, quiet presence. Not only would the public peace be resumed, and the missions attended, but the two great friends would be united, as they had always hoped to be on leaving home together.

But this was not to be. In September Lamy wrote to Machebeuf to report that Purcell had felt obliged to rescind his decision. Lamy was not to go to Sandusky. Machebeuf was downcast, wrote Purcell that he accepted the will of Providence, and did not know how he could now carry on against civil disgraces and religious neglects all of which brought ill repute upon the Catholic name. Purcell wrote to Machebeuf twice—once evidently to explain the change of plan, to which there was no answer from Sandusky; and again to hope that Machebeuf was not angry at him for what had been done. The answer to both letters was late in going off to Purcell, but its manner was somewhat stiff—sorry if Purcell had been made to “think that I was displeased with you.” Protesting his devotion, Machebeuf went on to add, “To say that I did not feal [sic] disappointed in hearing that I was to [be] deprived of my very dear friend Rev. Mr. Lamy would not exactly be true, but I did my best to resign myself.” He could not forbear mentioning one other matter of grievance—it seemed to him that he might have had the “consolation of assisting at the forthcoming consecration” of his “worthy and beloved neighbour”—Bishop-designate Rappe—but he had not been invited. Ah, well. Machebeuf’s spirited nature could be testy as well as merry. Also, on occasion, discreet. He was baptized Joseph Projectus Machebeuf. The Latin middle name was translated into French as “Priest” (with no connotation of prêtre). In all his early life he used the French middle name, but during his Ohio years he dropped it, since in an anti-Catholic atmosphere it seemed open to invidious use, and for it he substituted his baptismal middle name of Projectus. (To avoid confusion, his original style of Joseph Priest Machebeuf is here used throughout.)

For Lamy, it was a sorrowful year. He received word from Lempdes in the course of the autumn that his father had died there on 7 September 1846. Writing this news to Purcell, he said that his father’s family “urge me very much to go to France, but I have no desire of going,” and ended by asking his friend the bishop to “be so good as to pray for the repose of his soul.”