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304 troversies of the churches. The Roman Catholic clergy embraced many men of character and dis- tinction, but, with the exception of Bishop England, of Charleston, none of them had any special talent or taste for polemics. Father Hughes possessed the gift for which there seemed to be just then the most pressing demand. He had native pugnacity, great courage, adroitness in debate, and the art of forcible statement. He had partly repaired the defects of his early training by hard reading ; and, although he never became a scholar, he had a wide acquaintance with those branches of theology and history that were most likely to be of service in popular discussions. He dashed into the conflict with an energy that attracted notice far and near, measuring his skill with many eminent Protestant divines, and rarely permitting a serious attack upon his church to pass unnoticed. His most celebrated controversy was with the Rev. John Breckinridge, of the* Presbyterian church, with whom he exchanged a series of public letters in 1833, printing them afterward in book-form under the title "Controversy between Rev. Messrs. Hughes and Breckinridge on the Subject, ' Is the Protestant Religion the Religion of Christ f" (Philadelphia, 1833). An oral debate between the same adversaries took place before a Philadelphia literary society in 1835, and an imperfect record of it, prepared by the two disputants jointly, was afterward published (1836). This debate abound- ed in offensive personalities, and was never re- farded with much complacency by either side. In anuary, 1838, Mr. Hughes was consecrated coad- jutor to Bishop Dubois, of New York. He took the full administration of the diocese the next year, and succeeded to the bishopric on the death of Dr. Dubois in 1842. The territory over which he was called to rule embraced the whole state of New York and a large part of New Jersey. It> contained 200,000 Roman Catholics, for whom there were about twenty churches, eight of them being in the city of New York. There were no colleges or seminaries, and very few schools. The churches were heavily in debt, and the trustees of the cathedral, taking up the cause of a suspend- ed priest, were at war with the bishop, whose salary they threatened to stop unless he satisfied their demands. The young coadjutor was required to organize the diocese almost from the founda- tion. He obtained priests and teachers from Eu- rope, founded St. John's college at Fordham, and, after a short and sharp contest with the malcon- tents at the cathedral, he permanently broke up the abuses of the trustee system, and established the absolute right of the bishop to appoint and re- move pastors and otherwise administer spiritual concerns. In this case he won his victory by ap- pealing to the congregation, who enthusiastically sustained him against the trustees; and thus at the beginning of his episcopate he demonstrated the rare gift as a popular leader which distin- guished his later career. His influence over the Roman Catholic body was signally illustrated in the course of an exciting agitation of the public- school question in 1840-'2. The distribution of the school money in the city of New York at that time was made at the discretion of a corporation known as the Public-school society. While the bishop was in Europe an effort was made to ob- tain a part of the appropriation for certain Roman Catholic schools, and a discussion began, which was marked on both sides by great acrimony. Dr. Hughes, on his return, immediately placed himself at the head of the movement, took decisive meas- ures to separate it from political interests, and, after addressing a series of mass-meetings, drew up a petition to the board of aldermen, containing a statement of the Roman Catholic case and a re- quest for the admission of eight Roman Catholic schools to a participation in the common-school fund. The question was publicly debated before the board during two days, by the bishop on one side, and counsel for the Public-school society and Ave Protestant divines on the other. The petition was rejected, and the bishop then appealed to the legislature. There a measure was introduced, on the recommendation of the secretary of state, ex- tending to the city of New York the general school system of the state, and transferring to elected commissioners the powers of the Public- school society. It granted nothing that the Ro- man Catholics asked; but the bishop supported it as an improvement upon the existing condi- tion of things, and the Roman Catholic masses implicitly followed his advice. The school ques- tion became an issue in the election of 1841. Finding that most of the candidates of both par- ties were pledged against any change, Bishop Hughes caused the Roman Catholics to nominate an independent ticket, and at the municipal elec- tion in the following spring this was repeated. The result was the passage of a bill that became practically the basis of the present common-school system, the bishop, Gov. Seward, Thurlow Weed, and Horace Greeley being previously consulted as to its provisions, one of which was that no money should be given to denominational schools. Thus the chief purpose of the two years' agitation was defeated with the assent of the bishop himself. The principal result to Dr. Hughes was a great increase of his power over his own people, and of his reputation among Protestants, a life-long friendship with Gov. Seward, and several newspa- per wars, the most furious of which was with the " New York Herald." At the time of the " native American " riots in Philadelphia in 1844, when there was imminent danger of a repetition of the outrages in New York, he was strong enough to keep the Irish population quiet under great provo- cation, but he publicly declared that the Roman Catholics would fight if they were attacked, and caused a large body of armed volunteers to occupy the churches. During the Mexican war President Polk asked him to accept an unofficial mission to Mexico, where it was believed that his influence with the clergy might promote the conclusion of peace, but he declined this proposal. A few years later, in 1852, the U. S. government made an in- formal request at Rome for his elevation to the rank of cardinal, and in 1861 a direct and official application of the same nature was made by the administration of President Lincoln. He was created archbishop in 1850, with suffragans at Bos- ton, Hartford, Albany, and Buffalo, to which were soon added the new sees of Brooklyn, Newark, and Burlington, Vt. At the beginning of the civil war, although he was a severe censor of the aboli- tionists, he showed himself a fervent defender of the Union, and he wrote often to the president and Sec. Seward about the most effectual means for carrying on the war. At their request he vis- ited Europe, to exert his personal influence and social tact, especially in high circles in France, for the benefit of the national cause. He sailed in November, 1861, in company with Thurlow Weed, who was charged with a similar mission, and he remained abroad until the following sum- mer, stoutly defending the national interests, and holding a long and interesting conversation on American affairs with the French emperor. This