Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919). New York. 1906.
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| immigration gave the Church the stamp it yet retains, and settled that its language should be English, thus turning it into a potent force for Americanizing the Catholic immigrants from continental Europe. As early as 1826 the New York Catholics murmured against having a French bishop put over them; though by that time it had been found necessary to establish separate German churches, as the German immigration had also begun. So enormous had been the inrush during the preceding dozen years, that at this date the Catholics already formed in the neighborhood of a fifth of the city’s population. The Protestant sects became seriously alarmed at this portentous growth of the Church of Rome, and for the thirty years preceding the Civil War there was fierce religious and political agitation against it, the feeling growing so bitter that there were furious riots, accompanied with much bloodshed, between Catholic and Protestant mobs in the great cities, including New YorkNevertheless, the Church went on steadily growing; and much, though by no means all, of the bitterness gradually wore away. Catholicism gained in numbers by converts from among the native Americans, often of high social standing; though this gain was probably much more than offset by the loss of Catholic immigrants who drifted into Protestantism. The Irish have formed the mainstay of the Church in |