Evan Matthew Watson

Major: History and Philosophy and Religion

University Honors with Honors in History

Supervisor: Dr. Walter H. Conser

CATHOLICS AND ANTI-CATHOLIC SENTIMENT IN NINETEENTH

CENTURY NORTH CAROLINA

This research project was designed to explore the lived experience of Catholics and Catholicism in North Carolina in the nineteenth century. Specifically, it examines the relative success and failure of Catholicism and Catholics in the old Diocese of Charleston, and the social connotations of religious affiliation in nineteenth century North Carolina. There is a long tradition of scholarship on Catholic groups in the United States, particularly immigrant groups, which identifies a xenophobic, nativist reaction to Catholicism following waves of immigration. This research attempts to identify some explanations for the anti-Catholic sentiment present in North Carolina, where there was no significant wave of immigration, nor a significant Catholic population. This research also demonstrates changes in Catholicism itself as it was practiced in North Carolina, with its lack of clergy and dependence on lay leadership, among other factors, which produced a vastly different lived experience from orthodox Roman Catholicism, and one more similar to that of their Protestant neighbors. The identity of North Carolina’s Catholics, along with their more Protestant worship practices stunted the growth of anti-Catholic sentiment in the state. While there clearly did exist anti-Catholic sentiment among North Carolinians, it is eventually outweighed in the antebellum period by mutual cooperation and fascination,

with charismatic individuals and regional ties overriding conflicting religious identities between Catholics and Protestants. The final section of the paper is a case study on the Catholic community in Newton Grove, North Carolina in the 1870’s, which exemplifies the dynamics discussed in the body of the text.