White vigilante groups/societies protect African Americans post-ACW?

I've read a Victoria AAR where, among other interesting things, this happens:

Almost immediately after his death, a cult of Lee emerged. Lee was quoted as saying:

"You cannot be a true man until you learn to obey"

Learn to obey, it was the rallying cry of the League of the South, and the Southern Christian Army. It began appearing on posters and in newspapers, under pictures of Lee. His words and ideas were twisted by the Southern Resistance, and Lee was framed as a freedom fighter who supported armed resurrection against the North. Southerners, many now feeling disenfranchised by their new governments, took to the new ideology of service. Old Confederate generals and politicians formed underground shadow governments. The most famous of these was the government formed by Thomas Jackson and the Southern Christian Army.

The SCA is basically a neo-Confederate political party. There is no Klan, as it was destroyed under a President Sheridan's administration. Then, this happens:

The event occurred not because of any single event, but instead because of the growth of the Southern Christian Army. It became standard for students in colleges and business leaders to join the SCA. The majority of successful southerners were now members of the SCA, a predominantly Protestant organization. In the North, a different organization was founded. The Knights of Columbus, a Catholic group named after the famous explorer, emerged as a Northern answer for the SCA. The group took hold across the North, but also grew heavily in Maryland, a very Catholic state. The presence of a rival so close to the SCA's center of power in Richmond, caused a great deal of fear. That fear lashed out into violence in December of 1882.

The firekeg was lit when Charles Miner was killed. Miner was a black Catholic who had found work in Richmond. He was accused, falsely, of the rape of a white woman. The SCA led the crusade to apprehend him. Miner fled, and sought sanctuary in a Catholic church. A group of SCA supporters found him, and murdered him. This infuriated the Knights of Columbus, who flooded Richmond in protest. The result of was a fist fight that grew into a riot. 15 men were killed, another 50 were wounded. Two churches, one Protestant and one Catholic, were burnt in the process. Thomas Jackson, now in his late 50's, was forced to resign as head of the SCA as a result. The SCA was thrown into a state of disarray, and the government was faced with a black eye from the violence.

The idea seems pretty interesting. A predominantly white Catholic organization wages war against anti-black ones out of the deaths of one of their own. Could such an event have happened in OTL? If so, what kind of white groups could have stepped up to protect blacks during Reconstruction and after? Apparently, the Knights of Columbus in real life was a segregated society until the 20th century.

Also I just realized that Charles Miner is the name of a black character who briefly was on the Office. I think this part of the AAR was written before that episode. The writers of the show are stealing ideas from the Paradox forums!
 

Warsie

Banned
Hilarious. Papists conquering the USA lolol.

Also there were some 'carpetbaggers' who fought Klan members in say Texas
 
Sadly, I'm not aware of any Catholic Americans who were prominent abolitionists, whereas I can name at least one who was definitely on the pro-slavery, or more accurately apparently anti-African-American, side.

Actually reading the Wiki article, it seems Chief Justice Roger Taney was not simply in favor of slavery, nor was he a secessionist. He freed his own slaves and denounced slavery as a "blot on the national character." However, his infamous Dred Scott decision and other statements seem to indicate he did regard African-Americans as alien to the proper citizenry of the United States and believed they should be kept in an inferior position.

I was raised as a Roman Catholic; having been born in 1965 I grew up under the impression that as Christians of course we were against racism, and as the faithful of a Church that claimed to be the true church of all humanity, we naturally embraced peoples of all backgrounds as fully equal. Certainly in the 1960s, a hundred years after the period this thread is focused on, that was what the hierarchy of the Church was saying and what much of the active clergy and other Religious stood for. Well and good. Furthermore, if one examines the overall track record of say the Spanish Empire's attitudes and methods versus the Anglo-Americans, it is reasonable to say that on the whole the Catholic realms had a more nuanced and restrained attitude to inter-ethnic relations and a more regulated form of slavery, also that they tended to abolish it completely earlier. (The total abolition of slavery in countries like Mexico long before it happened in the USA may have been more a legacy of their French Revolutionary/Code Napoleon influenced secessionist republicanism, as Catholic-monarchial Brazil kept it longer even than the USA did, but long before the breakdown of the Spanish imperial system, fugitive slaves from the Anglo colonies and US slave states were running to Spanish Florida for refuge, and finding it there--hence Andrew Jackson's operations in Florida which resulted in Spain "agreeing" to sell the territory to the USA...) So again, well and good.

But the impression I get is that most American Roman Catholics, particularly the ones who rose to some higher position in society, felt they had enough liabilities socially that they didn't need to get entangled in radicalism as well, nor did their religious teaching stress the universal equality of all people, certainly not enough to cover either Native Americans or African-Americans. I would be grateful to be pointed to any Catholics on the progressive side of these issues, but the fact is Taney seems representative of the sort of Catholic attitudes one would expect to hear.

So it would be among your more elite Catholics; unfortunately every clue I have about more plebeian Catholics of the period, such as the Irish population of New York City, suggests that they too were far more interested in defending and improving their own dubious status in American society than helping out fellow victims of oppression, such as African-Americans. It isn't clear to me whether new Irish immigrants were racist in the visceral, trained sense that became all too normal for "white" people born here, but they certainly did see African-Americans as rivals and at best distractions from their own grievances, and during the Civil War they rioted both against the draft and I fear, against the African-Americans in the city.

So it seems highly unlikely to me that any white Catholic organization would go out on a limb even for a Catholic black man in the late 19th century, let alone take on a Klan-like organization, even one that also included anti-Romanism in its platform as the OTL Klan did. Fighting a bunch of Protestant white supremacists, the issue would be to defend white Catholics against anti-Papist bigotry, not to take issue with white supremacy as such. Since only a small fraction of African-Americans were Catholic (mostly in certain areas, like Louisiana) I can't see this scenario happening at all.

I do think it might be possible for the abolitionist spirit to survive based on the shared battle of African-Americans and the Union armies they helped and even joined when they could, and because of that "war buddy" bond and because presumably the Union Army did include a lot of Catholics, the possible rise of white groups in solidarity with Southern blacks, white counter-vigilantes that might well happen to include lots of Catholics. If these pro-Union, pro-equality, pro-Republican groups, black and white together, prevail in defending and extending the rights and dignity of African-Americans in the South (and hopefully, everywhere) in at least a few cases and with lasting effect at least in a few locations, then there might be a bridge built that on one had weakens or offsets the prejudice many Protestant Americans had against Catholics in general, and on the other might persuade the American Catholic community to reconsider their relationship with African-Americans in particular and ethnic minorities in general, perhaps via winning over the formal position of the religious hierarchy to make these issues a priority.

But quite frankly, all of these conditions are individually dubious and taken together seem very unlikely on any time scale much shorter than the century it actually took OTL. It seems logical to me that Catholics should have stood for the general equality of humanity, but it was only after the social position not just of Irish-Americans, but Italians, Poles, and so on became much stronger in the 20th century that the hierarchy and laity dared to go out on that limb.
 
Thank you very much for the detailed and comprehensive analysis. I guess it's harder than expected to have Catholic brotherhoods fighting the Klan, unless it was directly in self-defense. That said, I'm still opening the question to any other possible white groups. Former Union soldiers who fought alongside Coloured troops could certainly be a possibility, I think we should consider that.
 
Catholics were already looked down upon and competed with northern blacks for jobs. Hence the minority urban Democratic machine.
 
Extremely implausible. Historical white Unionists in the South were pro-Union but almost none of them were either anti-slavery or anti-racist. That would have to be the core of a realistic pro-black white militia in the South, and that particular group of people never existed. You did see the US Army used in that fashion under the Grant Administration and during Johnson's Administration, but that was one reason the 19th Century South believed in a small army.
 
Sadly, I'm not aware of any Catholic Americans who were prominent abolitionists, whereas I can name at least one who was definitely on the pro-slavery, or more accurately apparently anti-African-American, side.

Actually reading the Wiki article, it seems Chief Justice Roger Taney was not simply in favor of slavery, nor was he a secessionist. He freed his own slaves and denounced slavery as a "blot on the national character." However, his infamous Dred Scott decision and other statements seem to indicate he did regard African-Americans as alien to the proper citizenry of the United States and believed they should be kept in an inferior position.

I was raised as a Roman Catholic; having been born in 1965 I grew up under the impression that as Christians of course we were against racism, and as the faithful of a Church that claimed to be the true church of all humanity, we naturally embraced peoples of all backgrounds as fully equal. Certainly in the 1960s, a hundred years after the period this thread is focused on, that was what the hierarchy of the Church was saying and what much of the active clergy and other Religious stood for. Well and good. Furthermore, if one examines the overall track record of say the Spanish Empire's attitudes and methods versus the Anglo-Americans, it is reasonable to say that on the whole the Catholic realms had a more nuanced and restrained attitude to inter-ethnic relations and a more regulated form of slavery, also that they tended to abolish it completely earlier. (The total abolition of slavery in countries like Mexico long before it happened in the USA may have been more a legacy of their French Revolutionary/Code Napoleon influenced secessionist republicanism, as Catholic-monarchial Brazil kept it longer even than the USA did, but long before the breakdown of the Spanish imperial system, fugitive slaves from the Anglo colonies and US slave states were running to Spanish Florida for refuge, and finding it there--hence Andrew Jackson's operations in Florida which resulted in Spain "agreeing" to sell the territory to the USA...) So again, well and good.

But the impression I get is that most American Roman Catholics, particularly the ones who rose to some higher position in society, felt they had enough liabilities socially that they didn't need to get entangled in radicalism as well, nor did their religious teaching stress the universal equality of all people, certainly not enough to cover either Native Americans or African-Americans. I would be grateful to be pointed to any Catholics on the progressive side of these issues, but the fact is Taney seems representative of the sort of Catholic attitudes one would expect to hear.

So it would be among your more elite Catholics; unfortunately every clue I have about more plebeian Catholics of the period, such as the Irish population of New York City, suggests that they too were far more interested in defending and improving their own dubious status in American society than helping out fellow victims of oppression, such as African-Americans. It isn't clear to me whether new Irish immigrants were racist in the visceral, trained sense that became all too normal for "white" people born here, but they certainly did see African-Americans as rivals and at best distractions from their own grievances, and during the Civil War they rioted both against the draft and I fear, against the African-Americans in the city.

So it seems highly unlikely to me that any white Catholic organization would go out on a limb even for a Catholic black man in the late 19th century, let alone take on a Klan-like organization, even one that also included anti-Romanism in its platform as the OTL Klan did. Fighting a bunch of Protestant white supremacists, the issue would be to defend white Catholics against anti-Papist bigotry, not to take issue with white supremacy as such. Since only a small fraction of African-Americans were Catholic (mostly in certain areas, like Louisiana) I can't see this scenario happening at all.

I do think it might be possible for the abolitionist spirit to survive based on the shared battle of African-Americans and the Union armies they helped and even joined when they could, and because of that "war buddy" bond and because presumably the Union Army did include a lot of Catholics, the possible rise of white groups in solidarity with Southern blacks, white counter-vigilantes that might well happen to include lots of Catholics. If these pro-Union, pro-equality, pro-Republican groups, black and white together, prevail in defending and extending the rights and dignity of African-Americans in the South (and hopefully, everywhere) in at least a few cases and with lasting effect at least in a few locations, then there might be a bridge built that on one had weakens or offsets the prejudice many Protestant Americans had against Catholics in general, and on the other might persuade the American Catholic community to reconsider their relationship with African-Americans in particular and ethnic minorities in general, perhaps via winning over the formal position of the religious hierarchy to make these issues a priority.

But quite frankly, all of these conditions are individually dubious and taken together seem very unlikely on any time scale much shorter than the century it actually took OTL. It seems logical to me that Catholics should have stood for the general equality of humanity, but it was only after the social position not just of Irish-Americans, but Italians, Poles, and so on became much stronger in the 20th century that the hierarchy and laity dared to go out on that limb.

Very well put.

On the topic of wartime bonds, there was potential there, but it never had a chance to come to fruition in OTL.

I've heard fairly often that the Union armies were a third Irish, which was my knee-jerk thought on responding to this. A moment's research, though, reveals that this was far from the case. Still and all, prior to conscription, Irish and other Catholic soldiers were disproportionately represented in Union forces.

I recognize that it's an extreme long shot, but if the North through some scenario abstains from engaging in conscription, or at least engages in a much more limited form of it, the results would be.... favorable. You'd have a much smaller army, and the lost conscipts would be disproportionately be made up for by recent immigrants - half of which were Irish - and freed slaves. Not mostly, but disproportionately.

It'd be a start.
 
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