Lincoln:  Jesuits Started Civil War    

The following is a brief debate between Lou and Andrew over the Know-Nothing propaganda that the Jesuits started the Civil War and killed Lincoln.  It is all foolishness for weak and prejudiced minds.  

Lou writes:  
       
Honest Abe Cites The Jesuits As Instigators In The Civil War   

I wonder what other wars they might have instigated!!!   

Peace!   

A QUOTE FROM ABRAHAM LINCOLN ABOUT THE CIVIL WAR   

“This war would never have been possible without the sinister influence of the Jesuits. We owe it to Popery that we now see our land reddened with the blood of her noblest sons. Though there were great differences of opinion between the South and North, on the question of slavery, neither Jeff Davis nor any one of the leading men of the Confederacy would have dared to attack the North, had they not relied on the promise of the Jesuits, that, under the mask of Democracy, the money and the arms of the Roman Catholics, even the arms of France, were at their disposal if they would attack us.” Charles Chiniquy, Fifty Years in the Church of Rome, The Wickliffe Press, Protestant Truth Society, Wickliffe Avenue, 104 Hendon Lane, Finchley, London, N3., 1885, p. 388.  
 
Andrew responds: 

Lies and the Fools Who Believe Them!   

I am told by a reputable historian that the anti-Catholic press (20 years after Lincoln's death) fabricated the quote. It does not reflect Lincoln's respect for Catholics, although he had inherited some of the common Protestant misconceptions about Catholics in vogue at that time. It does not appear in his collected writings, which I own. Lincoln even engaged Bishop Hughes of New York to appeal to the French not to aid the South in the War Between the States.   

Oddly enough, the same Know-Nothings who popularized the lie you quote were refuted by Lincoln:   

August 24, 1855 
I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that ``all men are created equal.'' We now practically read it ``all men are created equal, except negroes.'' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ``all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics.'' When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty---to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy.