thumb|right|200px|[[Henry F. Bowers (1837-1911), founder and long-time head of the American Protective Association.]]

The American Protective Association (APA) was an American anti-Catholic secret society established in 1887 by Protestants. The organization was the largest anti-Catholic movement in the United States during the later part of the 19th century, showing particular regional strength in the Midwest. The group grew rapidly during the early 1890s before collapsing just as abruptly in the aftermath of the election of 1896.

Unlike the more powerful Know Nothing movement of the 1850s, the APA did not establish its own independent political party, but rather sought to exert influence by boosting its supporters in campaigns and at political conventions, particularly those of the Republican Party. The organization was particularly concerned about Roman Catholic influence in the public school system as well as unfettered Catholic immigration and what was seen as growing Catholic control of the political establishments of major American cities.

Although it claimed a six-figure membership at its peak in early 1896, the organization's collapse was rapid, with only a hollow shell remaining by 1898. The rump organization was finally terminated in 1911 with the death of its founder.

History

Establishment

On the afternoon of Sunday, March 13, 1887, a meeting was called in the Clinton, Iowa, law office of Henry F. Bowers to discuss the recent electoral defeat of incumbent mayor Arnold Walliker, which Bowers and others blamed on the organized efforts of Roman Catholics in the local organized labor movement. Seven men were in attendance, including the defeated former mayor and his brother. The decision was made by the seven men to establish a new political society to combat Catholic political influence, to be called the American Protective Association, and a constitution and Masonic-influenced ritual was drawn up for this new organization.

Bowers was elected the group's first "Supreme President." Aside from Bowers himself, there were six other founding members. Bowers would later relate that this "First Council" was composed of three Republicans, two Democrats, one Populist, and one Prohibitionist. The religious make-up of the First Council was said by Bowers to include members of the Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, Congregationalist, and Lutheran religious denominations, as well as "one of no religion." No internal documents indicating the membership size of the early secret society exist, the organization's records having been destroyed in a fire. The organization was unquestionably tiny in this period, however, with membership topping the 11,000 mark only in the first weeks of 1892 — this after having "increased enormously" over the preceding six months.

Growth into a mass movement

thumb|right|220px|W.J.H. Traynor, Supreme President of the American Protective Association from 1893 to 1896.

The years 1892 and 1893 initiated a period of dramatic growth in the size of the APA, and the secret society began capturing headlines in newspapers around the country. By September 1893 the head of the Buffalo, New York, local council of the APA – formerly a Loyal Orange Institution member from Toronto — boasted of more than 800 members in that city alone, and promised that "we are going to run this city just as the APA runs Kansas City, Detroit, Saginaw, and other cities of the West." Other cities in which the APA grew to exert powerful political influence during the middle years of the 1890s included Omaha, Rockford, Toledo, Duluth, and Louisville, with a slightly lesser impact in Rochester, St. Louis and Denver.

The Canadian-born W. J. H. Traynor, past Supreme Grand Master of the Loyal Orange Institution of the United States and editor of a weekly anti-Catholic newspaper from Detroit, The Patriotic American, succeeded Bowers as Supreme President in 1893.

During the middle 1890s, the APA expanded from its Midwestern nexus to become a fully national organization, with Supreme President Traynor traveling extensively to help with establishment of new local councils. The organization seems to have legitimately crossed the 100,000 member threshold sometime in the middle of 1894, according to the sanguine estimate of Humphrey J. Desmond, published in 1912. Rather than citing its substantial and growing paid membership figures, however, the organization frequently made use of rhetorical diversion by trumpeting the number of votes it "controlled," with Traynor on a West coast organizing trip in February 1894 claiming to the press that the group had "control" of 2,000 votes in Tacoma, Washington (a town of 36,000 people) as part of 2 million votes "controlled" nationwide. The APA's systematic membership exaggeration was noted expressly by a disgruntled former APA lecturer and founder of a rival organization, Walter Sims, who declared in 1895 that for the APA there was "not a membership in the United States of 120,000, but they call it a million."

The actual high watermark of APA membership actually lay "somewhere between the calculating boastfulness of Traynor and the resentful disparagement of Sims," Humphrey J. Desmond, the first serious scholar of the APA movement, would later declare.

Decline and extinction

In December 1895, the APA played a dominant role in the organization of a convention of patriotic organizations to coordinate efforts in the upcoming 1896 electoral campaign. Joining the APA were representatives of the Loyal Orange Institution, the Junior Order of United American Mechanics, the League for the Protection of American Institutions, and other related groups — organizations which together fancifully claimed some 3 million adherents.

The issue of Free silver and monetary policy proved to be all dominant in the 1896 campaign, however, and the agenda of the APA and its friends sank without a trace. The result proved a crushing disappointment for the APA and initiated a process of rapid membership decline.

In 1898 Henry F. Bowers regained leadership of the organization he had established, but by this date the APA had already been reduced to what one historian has called "a shadow of its former self." The organization closed permanently in 1911 after the death of its founder.

The APAs program and stated aims included the "perpetual" separation of Church and State; maintenance of a free, non-sectarian public school system; prohibition of any government grant or special privilege to sectarian bodies; establishment of an educational qualification to vote, "purification of the ballot"; suspension of further immigration, and its resumption on guarantees of residence and educational qualifications; public inspections of all private schools, convents, monasteries, hospitals, educational and reformatory institutions. In New Jersey they were able to sponsor a "School Flag Act" and an act forbidding students from wearing religious garb in school.

Representatives of the group also made public announcements that the Roman Catholic Church had instigated the Civil War, during which they said Catholics and Irish made up large numbers of deserters, and that both Grover Cleveland and William McKinley were controlled by the Church.

Although a veil of secrecy cloaked early doctrinal documents, which later said to have only "feebly indicated" the APA's organizational aims, the 1894 national convention approved a 13-point statement of principles which was made public and published. This platform stated that "loyalty to true Americanism, which knows neither birthplace, race, creed, or party" was the "first requisite for membership" in the APA, and that the organization did not control the political affiliations of its members.

The group's fundamental opposition to Catholicism was spelled out in the third plank of the 1894 statement of principles, which declared that while the APA was "tolerant of all creeds," it nevertheless

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"holds that subjection to and support of any ecclesiastical power, not created and controlled by American citizens, and which claims equal, if not greater, sovereignty than the government of the United States of America, is irreconcilable with American citizenship. It is therefore opposed to the holding of offices in National, State, or Municipal government by any subject or supporter of such ecclesiastical power." the APA was not automatically hostile to immigrants — quite the contrary. Many members, perhaps a majority, were themselves foreign-born, including Irish Protestants, Britons, and Scandinavian Lutherans. The organization permitted African Americans to membership, with blacks elected representatives of their state organizations to national conventions of the organization. Segregated local councils for black members were organized in the Southern States in 1895 and 1896, but local councils in the North were integrated.</blockquote>

Organizational structure

Although supreme power was nominally vested in a membership gathering at annual conventions each spring, in practice the APA was a centrally directed organization staffed by a "Supreme President," and other "Supreme" officers which included a Vice-President, two Secretaries (one actively working, one ceremonial), a Treasurer, Chaplain, and six others. These officers constituted a Supreme Executive Board that held day-to-day decision-making authority between conventions. After 1897 the attenuated organization maintained headquarters wherever the Supreme Secretary resided.

The primary form of organization was called a "local council," organized on a city-by-city basis, with the various local councils of a state joined into a statewide organization designated a "Superior Council." Dues were set at $1.00 per year, with an initial initiation fee of $1.00.

Legacy

In Ohio in 1914 a new group also calling itself the American Protective Association contributed anti-Catholicism to the defeats of Democratic candidate Timothy S. Hogan and incumbent Democratic Governor James M. Cox. A Missouri-based newspaper, "The Menace," depicted Hogan and Cox as puppets of the pope.

An affiliated organization was founded in Mexico City on September 8, 1895, called the Constitutional Reform Club. Its purpose was to "combat the growing power and prestige of the Catholic clergy and defend the public schools. The APA was also active in Canada, where it is said to have worked with the Orangemen and "is said to have controlled elections in the chief cities of the Dominion in 1894 and 1895." In England they also apparently worked with the Orange Lodge.

See also

  • Anti-Catholicism
  • Immigration Restriction League
  • Know Nothing movement
  • Protestant Protective Association, a spinoff group in Canada
  • Timeline of riots and civil unrest in Omaha, Nebraska

Footnotes

Further reading

Contemporary publications

  • Brandt, John L. America or Rome: Christ or the Pope. St. Louis: Christian Publishing Co., 1899.
  • Debs, Eugene V. "The American Protective Association," Locomotive Firemen’s Magazine, vol. 18, no. 3 (March 1894), pp.&nbsp;280–282.
  • Desmond, Humphrey Joseph. "The American Protective Association," Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Co., 1911.
  • Desmond, Humphrey Joseph. The APA Movement: A Sketch. Washington: New Century Press, 1912.
  • Hershey, Scott Funk, et al. Errors of the Roman Catholic Church: And Its Insidious Influence in the United States and Other Countries by the Most Profound Thinkers of the Present Day, and the History and Progress of the American Protective Association (A.P.A.). St. Louis: J.H. Chambers, 1894.
  • Hubbard, Elbert. "A New Disease," The Arena, vol. 10, whole no. 55 (June 1894), pp.&nbsp;76–83.
  • Traynor, W.J.H. "The Aims and Methods of the 'APA,'" North American Review, vol. 159, whole no. 452 (July 1894), pp.&nbsp;67–76.
  • Traynor, W.J.H. "The Menace of Romanism," North American Review, vol. 161, whole no. 465 (Aug. 1895), pp.&nbsp;129–140.
  • Traynor, W.J.H. "Policy and Power of the APA," North American Review, vol. 162, whole no. 475 (June 1896), pp.&nbsp;658–666.
  • Webb, Ben J. Sham Patriotism in 1896: Knownothingism As It Was and APA-ism As It Is. Louisville, KY: Charles A. Rogers, 1896.
  • Weippiert, G.W. "The APA: Outline of the Principles of a Famous Secret Order," Wichita Beacon, Jan. 25, 1896, pg. 6.

Secondary sources

  • Bennett, David H. The Party of Fear: From Nativist Movements to the New Right in American History. University of North Carolina Press, 1988.
  • Cross, Joseph L. "The American Protective Association: A Sociological Analysis of the Periodic Literature of the Period 1890-1900." American Catholic Sociological Review 10.3 (1949): 172-187. online
  • Higham, John. "The Mind of a Nativist: Henry F. Bowers and the A.P.A.," American Quarterly, vol. 4, no. 1 (Spring 1952), pp.&nbsp;16–24. In JSTOR
  • Higham, John. Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1955.
  • Jensen, Richard J. The Winning of the Midwest: Social and Political Conflict, 1888-1896. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971.
  • Kinzer, Donald L., An Episode in Anti-Catholicism: The American Protective Association. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964.
  • Manfra, Jo A. "Hometown Politics and the American Protective Association, 1887-1890." The Annals of Iowa, vol. 55 (1996), pp.&nbsp;138–166. Online
  • Marsden, K. Gerald. "Patriotic Societies and American Labor: The American Protective Association in Wisconsin," Wisconsin Magazine of History, vol. 41, no. 4 (Summer 1958), pp.&nbsp;287–294. in JSTOR
  • Schlup, Leonard C. "American Protective Society," in Leonard C. Schlup and Ryan, James Gilbert (eds.) Historical Dictionary of the Gilded Age. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2003; pg. 15.
  • Lipset, Seymour M. and Earl Raab. The Politics of Unreason: Right Wing Extremism in America, 1790–1970. New York: Harper and Row, 1970.
  • Wallace, Les. The Rhetoric of Anti-Catholicism: The American Protective Association, 1887-1911. New York: Garland Publishers, 1990.
  • Wiltz, John E. "APA-ism in Kentucky and Elsewhere," The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, vol. 56, no. 2 (April 1958), pp.&nbsp;143–155. in JSTOR
  • "Protestant Paranoia: The American Protective Association Oath," from Michael Williams (ed.), "The Secret Oath of the American Protective Association, October 31, 1893,"
  • Pam Epstein, "The American Protective Association," Vassar University