The Fires of Philadelphia: Citizen-Soldiers, Nativists, and the 1844 Riots Over the Soul of a Nation by Zachary M. Schrag

The Fires of Philadelphia: Citizen-Soldiers, Nativists, and the 1844 Riots Over the Soul of a Nation Reviews

• 
  Christopher Saunders

  Zachary Schrag's The Fires of Philadelphia revisits the most notorious act of anti-Catholic violence in American history: the 1844 Philadelphia riots, where the City of Brotherly Love descended into anarchy and civil war over religious differences. It's astonishing to me that, given how much of a flashpoint immigration is in modern politics, no popular historian has revisited the Know-Nothing era in decades, so if nothing else Schrag fills a serious void with this book. Fortunately, there's a lot more than mere void-filling: Schrag does an excellent job sketching the tumultuous politics and culture of early Philadelphia. Philly in its early days suffered from the same difficulties as any urban center of the time: corrupt politics, stark ethnic and racial divisions, inadequate police and corrupt fire departments, and a disconcerting tendency to riot. Much of the book is devoted to all of these topics, along with the attempts by George Cadwallader to raise a state miltia to keep the peace (a precusor to the modern National Guard). As for the riot itself, it began as a dispute over allowing Catholic bibles in public schools and, due to inflammatory rhetoric exploited by Nativist politicians, boiled over into violence in May and July 1844 that left at least twenty dead and several Catholic churches destroyed. Schrag's blow-by-blow account of this horrific event shows that, far more than a mere "riot," it was a virtual three-sided civil war between Nativists, Irish militias and Cadwallader's hard, with all sides wielding muskets and even cannon in massive street battles unseen outside of New York's later Draft Riots. The conflict led to the standarization of state militia; the Catholic Church's withdrawal from public education and establishment of parochial schools; and Nativism, though briefly discredited, soon rebounded into a national movement that briefly held the nation in thrall. Or perhaps not so briefly; Scharg avoids drawing modern parallels too closely but it's not hard to conclude that the prejudices, polarization and eagerness for violence exhibited in his narrative die hard.
• 
  John Bicknell

  My review of "The Fires of Philadelphia: Citizen-Soldiers, Nativists, and the 1844 Riots Over the Soul of a Nation"
  
  
  https://lawliberty.org/book-review/th...
  
  "Academics will continue to debate the causes and cures, and whatever applications each might have for the modern world. But the useful lesson from the Philadelphia riots of 1844, the mob assassination of Joseph Smith, and countless other examples across the centuries, is that those with power will always act to defend that power and are not too particular about how they do it. It makes little difference if that power is derived from positions of authority in government, business, religion, the media, academia, or any other institution. If mobs, in the street or online, will help them achieve their ends, they’re willing to exploit them, ignoring Lincoln’s admonition that 'there is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law.'”
• 
  Alan Johnson

  I have not yet read this book, but see Rob Boston's excellent review of it at
  https://www.au.org/the-latest/church-....
• 
  Bob Price

  Philly has always been a tough city...
  
  Imagine a time when a group of people would complain so loudly about newly arrived immigrants. Imagine if this group of people eventually formed a party and then lobbied the government to punish this group of immigrants. Now imagine if this group of people took up arms and burned these immigrants' property and sacred places to the ground.
  
  You don't have to imagine it because you can read about it in Zachary M. Schrag's book The Fires of Philadelphia.
  
  This book presents a history of a little known, but widely influential events in the history of Philadelphia and the history of our country.
  
  The Nativists, a group of Protestants, resented the arrival and existence of an increasing Irish population in the city of Philadelphia. They distrusted their rituals, their devotion to the Pope and their ancestry (Irish).
  
  The Nativists pushed to have Bible reading in school (it wasn't always read in the schools). While most of the population approved or were alright with this, there was the question of which Bible. Protestants preferred the King James Version, while Roman Catholics liked the Douay version. By Canon Law, the Catholic Bible must also contain interpretative notes from the Church, which the Protestants did not have.
  
  Tensions boiled over until the two sides fought in the city...on two separate occasions: once in May and once in July. Both times the militia needed to be called out to suppress the fighting and to attempt to protect the people. While this event has been referred to as a riot, it was really a minor civil war. It may be hard to imagine canon being fired in the streets of Philly (or maybe not too hard) but it happened.
  
  This book is a description of what happens when two sides demonize each other and refuse to compromise or speak rationally to one another. This is a perfect book for many of us to be reading now in our own time.
  
  Eventually the Nativists (the Protestants) became the Pennsylvania Republican party and they started picking on new targets.
  
  Schrag's writing is clear and exciting. He describes the fighting in particular detail and gives you a clear picture of what happened. He is writing for a popular audience and this makes it easily accessible.
  
  I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in history, espeically the early roots of how we have arrived at MAGA.
  
  Grade: A
• 
  Alger Smythe-Hopkins

  One of the most useful distinctions historians have made in the past 30 years is picking apart how we understand race today versus how it was deployed decades or centuries ago. The key insight is that who qualifies as a racial other is defined by identifying what doesn't qualify as 'Us' for whatever reason. In Antebellum America this patrolling of the borders of whiteness was something of a cultural obsession that reached the level of national electoral politics. The primary focus of their hatred was aimed at the steadily expanding Irish population in the Northern states. As a target for Nativist hate the Irish had the advantage of not being Anglo-Saxon and also 'papists' (the Pope being the ultimate bugbear to the Nativist mind). The growth and strength of the Nativist movement at the midpoint of the 19th century is largely ignored by historians, perhaps because this regional issue was overtaken by the related, but separate, sectional conflict emerging over slavery, but also it makes for a complicated story of a population that could somehow be avid racists while also fighting a war to free enslaved Blacks. As a result, the fact that a considerable proportion of Americans viewed Catholics, Masons, and the Irish in particular, with fear and hatred is almost unknown. This hatred fueled every degree of violence, from childish insults through to firing cannons at a cathedral filled with defenders, but is simply forgotten.
  This volume corrects that with considerable detail and a clear timeline of events. Like all history it isn't always exciting, but it is informative, but this book manages to engage more often than one might expect. For example, the entertaining Keystone Kops-level of the militia response is also very informative as to why the old style 'citizen soldiers' of the Constitution largely vanished since the mid-19th century as a domestic peacekeeping force (replaced these days by gun humping white nationalist man/boys who really imagine they can hold off a professional army).
  Anyway, this is a thorough and authoritative history of the anti-Catholic violence that swept across Philadelphia in the 1844 and some of the outcomes. Recommended.
• 
  Neal Fandek

  Fascinating. And sobering, that anti-immigrant frenzy was here from the very beginning of the republic, in this case, Irish Catholics; and that unsavory idealogues with little or no conscience were eager to exploit that fear and loathing for their own personal gain.
  
  I would give this 4 stars but for the book's organization: each chapter focuses on individuals instrumental in the riots, not the riots themselves. Until the book picks up steam halfway through and focuses on the events, we endure long descriptions of personalities. And frankly it's the side notes, the minutiae, of these individuals that are interesting: That President Jefferson Davis was not at all in the nativist camp but was pro-immigration, for example.
  
  
• 
  Eric

  A well-researched and detailed account of the events leading up to and during the 1844 Bible War and riots in Philadelphia. The Nativist outrage of those days can still be heard in so much of what's going on today.
• 
  John

  Fascinating and distressing - we’ve learned so little from our history and continue to repeat the same mistakes.
• 
  Ralph Tamlyn

  Very interesting history.