Acclaimed biographer John Loughery tells the story of John Hughes, son of Ireland, friend of William Seward and James Buchanan, founder of St. John’s College (now Fordham University), builder of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, pioneer of parochial-school education, and American diplomat. As archbishop of the Archdiocese of New York in the 1840 and 1850s and the most famous Roman Catholic in America, Hughes defended Catholic institutions in a time of nativist bigotry and church burnings and worked tirelessly to help Irish Catholic immigrants find acceptance in their new homeland. His galvanizing and protecting work and pugnacious style earned him the epithet Dagger John. When the interests of his church and ethnic community were at stake, Hughes acted with purpose and clarity.
In Dagger John, Loughery reveals Hughes’s life as it unfolded amid turbulent times for the religious and ethnic minority he represented. Hughes the public figure comes to the fore, illuminated by Loughery’s retelling of his interactions with, and responses to, every major figure of his era, including his critics (Walt Whitman, James Gordon Bennett, and Horace Greeley) and his admirers (Henry Clay, Stephen Douglas, and Abraham Lincoln). Loughery peels back the layers of the public life of this complicated man, showing how he reveled in the controversies he provoked and believed he had lived to see many of his goals achieved until his dreams came crashing down during the Draft Riots of 1863 when violence set Manhattan ablaze.
To know "Dagger" John Hughes is to understand the United States during a painful period of growth as the nation headed toward civil war. Dagger John’s successes and failures, his public relationships and private trials, and his legacy in the Irish Catholic community and beyond provide context and layers of detail for the larger history of a modern culture unfolding in his wake.
John Loughery is the author of three books, Alias S. S. Van Dine, John Sloan, and The Other Side of Silence, the last two of which were New York Times Notable Books. His biography of John Sloan was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography.
Table of Contents
Prologue: To the Tuileries 1. A Son of Ulster 2. A Vocation 3. Courting Controversy 4. Confronting Gotham 5. Who Shall Teach Our Children? 6. "The Baal of Bigotry" 7. War and Famine 8. A Widening Stage 9. The Church Militant 10. Authority Challenged 11. A New Cathedral 12. A House Divided, a Church Divided 13. Manhattan under Siege Epilogue: Legacy
What People are Saying About This
Catherine O’Donnell
"This delightfully written book introduces the transformational Catholic figure, John Hughes. John Loughery's astute analysis and adept storytelling conjure not just the extraordinary man himself but the boisterous social and political worlds through which he moved. Anyone who wants to understand the place of the Irish in nineteenth-century America must read Dagger John."
Tyler Anbinder
"Roman Catholic archbishop John Hughes was one of the most influential nineteenth-century New Yorkers. John Loughery's insightful biography of the controversial archbishop, who defended the famine Irish refugees in America against virulent nativism and built Saint Patrick's Cathedral, will help Americans better understand the important role he played in shaping Civil War America."
Catherine O’Donnell
"This delightfully written book introduces the transformational Catholic figure, John Hughes. John Loughery's astute analysis and adept storytelling conjure not just the extraordinary man himself but the boisterous social and political worlds through which he moved. Anyone who wants to understand the place of the Irish in nineteenth-century America must read Dagger John."
Thomas J. Shelley
"As the archbishop of the nation's largest city, John Hughes was a controversial figure known for his intensity and his willingness to pick a political fight. Dagger John puts Hughes squarely in the middle of the political, social, and ecclesiastical context of his times. The result is an engagingly written and fair appraisal of the feisty archbishop."
Daniel Walker Howe
"Archbishop Hughes, a major player in nineteenthth-century U.S. history, finally receives his due in John Loughery's fascinating, wide-ranging, richly informative, and insightful biography."
