Editing Samuel Morse (section)

===Anti-Catholic===
Morse was a leader in the [[anti-Catholic]] and anti-immigration movement of the mid-19th century. In 1836, he ran unsuccessfully for [[mayor of New York]] under the anti-immigrant [[Know Nothing party|Nativist Party]]'s banner, receiving only 1,496&nbsp;votes. When Morse visited Rome, he allegedly refused to take his hat off in the presence of the Pope.

Morse worked to unite Protestants against Catholic institutions (including schools), wanted to forbid Catholics from holding public office, and promoted changing immigration laws to limit immigration from Catholic countries. On this topic, he wrote, "We must first stop the leak in the ship through which muddy waters from without threaten to sink us."<ref>{{cite journal | url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1892624 | jstor=1892624 | title=Anti-Catholic Propaganda and the Home Missionary Movement, 1800-1860 | last1=Billington | first1=Ray A. | journal=The Mississippi Valley Historical Review | date=1935 | volume=22 | issue=3 | pages=361–384 | doi=10.2307/1892624 }}</ref>

He wrote numerous letters to the New York ''Observer'' (his brother Sidney was the editor at the time) urging people to fight the perceived Catholic menace. These were widely reprinted in other newspapers. Among other claims, he believed that the [[Austrian government]] and Catholic aid organizations were subsidizing Catholic immigration to the United States in order to gain control of the country.<ref>{{cite journal | url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3002916 | jstor=3002916 | title=Assimilation and Nativism | last1=Curran | first1=Thomas J. | journal=The International Migration Digest | date=1966 | volume=3 | issue=1 | pages=15–25 | doi=10.2307/3002916 | s2cid=149476629 }}</ref>

In his ''Foreign Conspiracy Against the Liberties of the United States'',<ref>{{cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/foreignconspiracy00morsrich |title=Foreign conspiracy against the liberties of the United States |year=1835 |access-date=May 14, 2012}}</ref> Morse wrote:
 
<blockquote>Surely American Protestants, freemen, have discernment enough to discover beneath them the cloven foot of this subtle foreign heresy. They will see that [[Popery]] is now, what it has ever been, a system of the darkest political intrigue and despotism, cloaking itself to avoid attack under the sacred name of religion. They will be deeply impressed with the truth, that Popery is a political as well as a religious system; that in this respect it differs totally from all other sects, from all other forms of religion in the country.<ref>{{cite magazine |author=Terry Golway |date=2007-02-09 |url=http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=3508 |title=America &#124; The National Catholic Weekly – Return of the Know-Nothings |magazine=[[America (magazine)|America]] |access-date=2010-08-24 |archive-date=June 26, 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070626214442/http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=3508 |url-status=live }}</ref></blockquote>

In the same book, published in 1835 under the name of "Brutus", in speaking of "the foreign Emissaries of Popery re-warded in their own country," said: "Where is [[Patrick Kelly (bishop of Waterford and Lismore)|Bishop Kelly]] of Richmond, Va.? He also sojourns with us until his duties to foreign masters are performed, and then is rewarded by promotion."<ref>{{Cite journal |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/44374830.pdf |jstor=44374830 |title=Bishop Patrick Kelly of Richmond, Va |last1=Magennis |first1=Michael I. J. |journal=The American Catholic Historical Researches |date=1910 |volume=6 |issue=4 |pages=347–349 }}{{PD-notice}}</ref> ([[Patrick Kelly (bishop of Waterford and Lismore)|Patrick Kelly]] was a native of Ireland, and the first bishop of Richmond, Virginia. When after a couple of years, differences regarding questions of jurisdiction arose between him and [[Ambrose Maréchal]], Archbishop of Baltimore, Kelly was offered the recently vacant [[Bishop of Waterford and Lismore|See of Waterford and Lismore]] in his homeland.)