Protestant Crusade, 1800-1860: a Study of the Origins of American Nativism [Textbook Binding]

Ray A. Billington (Author)

Product Details

• Textbook Binding
• Publisher: Peter Smith Pub (June 1938)
• ISBN-10: 0844610763
• ISBN-13: 978-0844610764
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,141,595 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Anti-Catholicism and Nativism, December 18, 2000

By 

"roger_o" (Mercer, WI United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Protestant Crusade, 1800-1860: a Study of the Origins of American Nativism (Textbook Binding)

Ray Billington, a pioneer in the study of nativism, helped to bring the study of nativism into the mainstream in the 1930s. As a student of American social and intellectual history at Harvard under Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr., he began to study the social significance of Know-Nothingism, and in 1933 finished his doctoral dissertation on the origins of American Nativism. His dissertation eventually became The Protestant Crusade 1800-1860 in 1938. Like his contemporaries, he focused heavily on nativism as an anti-Catholic movement. That Billington began his work with Know-Nothingism helps to explain why he focuses on anti-Catholicism almost to the exclusion of other manifestations of nativism. He also acknowledges the influence of Schlesinger throughout the process, which further helps to explain the scope and direction of Billington's work. Schlesinger believed anti-Catholicism to be one of the most persistent themes in American History, and his declaration seems to have strongly influenced his student. Billington's equation of nativism and anti-Catholicism does not, however, detract from his work. In 1996, historian of nativism Dale T. Knobel wrote that, "although dated, Ray Allen Billington's The Protestant Crusade, is still the place for a student of the nativist movement to begin." Billington presents a thorough and detailed description of anti-Catholic movements in the first half on the nineteenth century, at times touching on anti-foreign manifestations of Know-Nothingism, but only as peripheral to his anti-Catholic focus. Billington treats nativism as an Anglo-American cultural inheritance and often as the practice of and the mob, but he nevertheless provides a careful description and at analysis of the important events, organizations and individuals.

Billington argues for two causes of the eruption of nativism into national politics in the early 1840s, first "a hatred of Catholicism bred by the forces of organized No-Popery," and second "a fear of the immigrant, not only as a Catholic, but as a menace to the economic, political, and social structure." He also traces the development of anti-Catholic sentiment into organized movements and sees their propagandizing through sermons, lectures, periodicals and tracts as influential in bringing the issue into the political realm.

Thus, while Billington deals well with nativism as an issue of national policy, he is less effective in dealing with the underlying causes of nativism. For instance he sees propagandizing as influential in swaying public opinion toward the nativist cause, but fails to explain either why certain Americans decided to spread such propaganda, or why the American people were so receptive to it. So too, he argued that the Know-Nothings faced ridicule for their principles inimical to the founding principles of the nation, but Billington fails to explain why Americans who might at one time have ascribed to Know-Nothingism suddenly found its principles untenable.

Even so Billington's careful narrative history of the antebellum anti-Catholic movement is unsurpassed. Moreover, the book is beautifully written and an excellent read. Anyone with even a passing interest in nativism and the history of American anti-Catholicism will thoroughly enjoy this book

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Useful Corrective, December 6, 2008

By 

R. Albin (Ann Arbor, Michigan United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

Long out of print, this well written book is a good description of anti-Catholic bigotry in American life and politics in the first half of the 19th century. Billington begins with a brief description of the historic roots of anti-Catholic prejudice in the English Reformation and English politics, followed by a concise narrative of the role of anti-Catholic bigotry in the genesis of the American Revolution. The period following the Revolution is a relatively tolerant, partly because the sparse number of Catholics in the USA prevented them from appearing threatening to American Protestants. By 1820, however, anti-Catholic bigotry as a significant social force returned. The arrival of substantial numbers of Catholic immigrants, especially Irish immigrants, and the religious revivalism of the Second Great Awakening provoked a recrudescence of of anti-Catholic feeling. Several chapter of the book are fine descriptions of the different phases of the anti-Catholic (No Popery) movement, which drew heavily on anti-immigrant sentiments. Much of the anti-Catholic feeling was driven by what can only be described as paranoia regarding the Catholic Church and Vatican, including ideas of Papal plots to dominate American education and the idea that Catholic immigration was part of a deliberate plan to create a Catholic dominated state in the central USA. Billington concludes with a very nice narrative and analysis of the emergence and decline of the Know-Nothing (American) party in the mid-1850s. Essentially a single issue movement based on anti-Catholic/anti-immigration prejudice, the Know-Nothing party was able to rise to national power because of the collapse of the second American party system under the strains of the slavery controversy. It fell just as rapidly because of failure to achieve its ends and because the Know-Nothings were unable to overcome sectional differences over the great slavery controversy.

Beyond its value as a fine description of an important aspect of 19th century American history, The Protestant Crusade is a useful corrective to some of the recent triumphalism regarding the Second Great Awakening. The evangelical movement undoubtedly gave great impetus to anti-slavery and other reform movements. But it also brought in its wake the anti-Catholic bigotry, often expressed violently, that Billington documents so well. There was a significant overlap between the No-Popery movement and more laudable sequelae of evangelical revivalism. Important anti-slavery figures such as the great preacher Lyman Beecher and Arthur Tappan were involved also in the No Popery movement. These facts should be born in mind whenever someone, which happens surprisingly often in the mass media, writes or speaks about the beneficial aspects of the 19th century evangelical movement.

1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Protestant Crusade of Hatred and Intolerance, April 19, 2008

By 

anarchteacher (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Protestant Crusade, 1800-1860: a Study of the Origins of American Nativism (Textbook Binding)

Virulent anti-Catholic bigotry was at the dark clotted heart of American Protestantism, from the New England Puritan zealots to their postmillennial evangelical Yankee descendants of the 19th century.

Billington's seminal study is legendary in its detailed scholarship and narrative presentation.

Highly recommended!