Setting the scene

John England was not a native of South Carolina. The newly ordained Irishman arrived in Charleston on Dec. 30, 1820, to find a three-state diocese divided by the issue of slavery. The events of the summer of 1822 highlighted this division. Denmark Vesey, a free Black Protestant pastor in Charleston, planned a slave uprising throughout the state. Vesey sought to begin by slaughtering the slaveholding families of Charleston in a night of blood.

Catholics numbered among both sides of this crisis, those who desired to rise in revolt and those slaveholders targeted for slaughter. Despite Bishop England’s desire for emancipation, he rejected violence as its means. Instead, he advised his flock to embrace the concept of Jubilee (Lv 25:8-55), the biblical festival of emancipation rooted in the recognition of enslaved people 
as fellow children of God.

The investigation into the Vesey conspiracy revealed that the uprising had been spread among the enslaved population through written messages and anti-slavery pamphlets. Slaveholders moved to eliminate the ability to read from the enslaved. As Bishop England relied heavily on literate catechists to preserve the faith in isolated communities, he knew that the Church would be negatively impacted by this development.

England’s efforts in education

Bishop England became an opponent of the growing anti-literacy sentiments of slaveholders. He recognized that if he wanted to preserve the ability of the enslaved to read Scripture, the Catholic Church had to provide it to them. It would be years before England could establish a method to fulfill this need.

In 1829, John England made the journey north to attend a convocation of American bishops in Baltimore. There, he met Mary and Honora O’Gorman, Teresa Barry and Elizabeth Burke. These Irish women accompanied him back to his diocese, and together they established the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy (later Sisters of Charity of Our Lady of Mercy). The newly created religious order began to educate the enslaved and free Black populations of the city out of their convent. 

During this time, Bishop England expanded his literacy efforts beyond the borders of his diocese. Through the US Catholic Miscellany, he publicly rebuked Protestant anti-literacy advocates across the country for presenting a false version of the Gospel to illiterate enslaved peoples as a means of dampening their hope for freedom.

Bishop England had become one of the most respected bishops in America’s Catholic Church, regularly traveling outside his diocese to tend to the wider needs of the faithful. On one such trip to Europe in 1834, the bishop recruited nine Ursuline sisters from Ireland to establish a community in Charleston that would assist the Sisters of Mercy’s education efforts. Bishop England’s anti-literacy opponents in the South Carolina Legislature, however, used his absence to outlaw the education of an enslaved person.

John England returned to the city with a cadre of nuns excited to begin their missionary work, only to find his diocese in anxious disarray. He found that while the law was written to be absolute, allowances were made for children who, out of Christian charity, taught the enslaved to read the Bible. Seeing no difference between the act of a child and the act of a religious sister, England continued the education of enslaved populations.

The Post Office Riot of 1835

In July 1835, large numbers of abolitionist pamphlets appeared at Charleston’s U.S. Post Office. These pamphlets called for an uprising similar to that of Denmark Vesey’s. On the night of July 30, pro-slavery rioters broke into the Post Office to steal and burn in the streets all the pamphlets bound for the inhabitants of the city. The fervor of the crowd waned until someone brought Catholics to their attention, since they were still educating the enslaved and many of the pamphlets were addressed to Catholics. The mob had new targets in sight.

John England woke that night to Irishmen at his door bringing news that a mob was going to turn on the Catholics in the city. The bishop sprung into action. He sent word to mobilize the Irish Volunteers, the immigrant society of which he was the chaplain, to arm themselves and defend Catholic properties in Charleston. The mob found the Irish defenses ready, with candlesticks and chair legs holding the attackers at bay.

Bishop England spent the pre-dawn hours of July 31 waging his own defense of his diocese with his pen. He sent out a stream of urgent letters to his acquaintances across the city. What was happening? Why were Catholics targeted? Will you come to our aid?

When the sun rose and the city began to wake, responses flooded in. By noon, the Irish Volunteers found that much of Charleston’s Protestant clergy had joined them, and their defenses held.

Aug. 1 broke to a new issue of the US Catholic Miscellany. Bishop England laid out the fruits of his investigation to the people of Charleston. From what he could find, Catholics of the city had nothing to do with either the abolitionist pamphlets found at the Post Office or the uprising the materials advocated. Instead, he suggested that his out-of-state opponents sent the pamphlets to turn the people of Charleston against Catholics. 

The Miscellany article was a balm to the tensions within the city and the mob dispersed. Bishop England now faced a legal dilemma: He and the religious sisters of the city had been operating an illegal school for six months. The diocese could not afford the $100 per student per day fine, so he and the nuns were facing years in a South Carolina debtors’ prison.

Ultimately, any punishment was waived by the state government, but the Church was forbidden to continue the education of enslaved children. While this avenue of mission had been closed to him, Rt. Rev. England’s efforts to bring the Gospel to all people, slave and free, continued.