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"More Catholic Insolence!"

About This Item

  • Title: "More Catholic Insolence!"
  • Date: 12 April 1842
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.00584
  • Source: New York Aurora, 12 April 1842: [2]. Our transcription is based on a digital image of a microfilm copy of an original issue. Original issue held at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, University Archives and Special Collections. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the journalism, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Contributors to digital file: Samuel Goggin Jason Stacy Kevin McMullen
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. ""More Catholic Insolence!"." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 18 April 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.00584.xml (TEI)
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MORE CATHOLIC INSOLENCE!—

The foreigners yesterday in Tammany Hall1 were strong in their demands that the democratic leaders should promise, if successful, to give the public printing to an Irishman named Denman, who publishes a Catholic paper, the Truth Teller, in this city,​ 2 They moreover required a further enagagement​ 3 that James T. Brady should have the promise of the office of corporation attorney4 They threatened, unless these things were promised them, still to stand out, or throw their votes in the whig balance.

What American whose blood does not burn in his cheeks at the gross, outrageous impudence of these creatures? And who, that has any love of principle in his bosom, is not filled with deep disgust at the thought that a noble and powerful party thus meanly succumb to such insolent dictation?

Notes:

1. Tammany Hall was a Democratic Party political machine prominent in New York politics in the nineteenth century. For more information see Terry Golway, Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics (New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2014). [back]

2. A comma mistakenly appears at the end of this sentence in the original issue. William Denman was the editor of the New York Truth Teller (Edwin Williams, New-York Annual Register for the Year of Our Lord 1834 [New York: Edwin Williams, 1834], 125). [back]

3. "Engagement" is misspelled in the original issue. [back]

4. The period at the end of this sentence is missing in the original issue. James T. Brady, the son of two Irish immigrants, was a lawyer and Democrat from New York. He did not gain the appointment to Corporation Attorney in 1842 but was appointed in 1845 ("Obituary: Death of James T. Brady—Sketch of His Life and Character," New York Times, February 10, 1869: 5). The Corporation Attorney was the individual tasked with handling the city's legal affairs, and at the time was still an appointed position. The appointee in 1842 was David Graham, Jr. For more information, see William B. Ellison History of the Office of the Corporation Counsel of the City of New York (New York: Martin B. Brown Company, 1907). [back]

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