Rhetorical Campaigns of the 19th Century Anti-Catholics and Catholics in America

This study explores answers to the following questions: 1) how did anti-Catholic rhetors make the alleged threat of a Catholic conspiracy against American liberty so persuasive that it could sustain an active movement from the 1830s-1850s? and 2) how did Catholic leaders construct and justify their response strategies and what did those strategies tell Catholics, and all American, that it meant to be a Catholic American?