Lux Lucet

Romanism and Politics:  Tammany Hall The Stronghold Of Rome

There’s an interesting story about how I came across Harwell’s book.  Following the theft of the 2020 presidential election, I read a column by Ann Coulter titled “Voter Fraud Never Happens! (Except in These 10,000 Cases).”  One of the few big-name columnists willing to criticize Rome, even if just on occasion, Coulter noted in her column that “Democratic machines have been stealing elections since before the Civil War,” and provided a link to the book Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics by Terry Golway. 

I finally got around to reading parts of Machine Made this year and found an interesting reference in chapter 8 to Romanism and Politics.   Since it was an old book published in 1887, I thought I’d be able to find a scan of it on Google Books, but all I could find on Google was a link with a reference to the book but no scanned image.  Thankfully, Google provided a “find in library link” that showed there were two – only two! – libraries in the country with a copy of the book, Cornell University, and Columbia University.  Long story short, I was able to work with Cornell’s library to have a scan made and sent to me.  You’re welcome to view and download a copy of this scan for yourself here.  When talking about the difficulty I had in finding a copy of the book, a friend replied that it was possible the Catholic Church had destroyed all the copies they could.  He may very well be right about that, as Rome has a well-earned reputation for doing that very thing.  Worth noting, too, is that the Google Books link for Romanism and Politics has disappeared.   It was there in the summer of 2022, but I no longer can find it.  Who knows, maybe Rome is responsible for the removal of this link as another friend suggested.

At any rate, Romanism and Politics appears to be a very rare book.  To date, I have been unable to find any other reference to it anywhere on the internet.  For that matter, I have not yet found any information on the book’s author, the Rev. Joseph Harwell. 

One thing we learn right away from Hartwell’s book is that Protestant cowardice in the face of Antichrist’s assaults on the Christian faith and on American liberty is not a new thing.  It goes back at least to Harwell’s day.  The opening paragraph of his book reads:

LET none of the political parties be alarmed if for the first time they hear some things called by their right names; for at no distant day this must be the case.  We know that this has not been done by either of the great parties, for fear of losing votes.  A cowardly policy, and as impolitic as cowardly; for multitudes of intelligent voters seeing this in their political leaders have turned away, intensely disgusted and discouraged, and have not voted at all.  This has changed the result of very important elections, though political leaders have seemed blind to the fact (3).

Joseph Hartwell. Romanism and Politics: Tammany Hall The Stronghold of Rome, 3.

Martin Luther wrote, “Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also.”  But the creed of the bulk of American politicians in Harwell’s day – and certainly most of them were Protestant in the 19^th century – seemed to be “don’t give offense.”   But Christians are called to “speak each man the truth to his neighbor.”  And speaking the truth will of necessity result in offending someone.  Of course, this doesn’t mean going about with the aim of being deliberately and unnecessarily offensive.  As the author of Hebrews notes, we are to “pursue peace with all men” but we are to pursue it along with “holiness.”  John Gill had a good comment on this verse when he wrote that holiness was added to peace to show “that peace is no further to be followed than is consistent with holiness.”  And yet American Christians for the past 150 years, and in truth probably longer, have sought peace with the RCCS, an organization that is under God’s curse and that is decidedly not interested in pursuing peace with them but rather in dominating them and their nation. It was the cowardice of American politicians and writers in Hartwell’s day that gave rise to his complaint that things were not being called by their proper names.    

Closing Thoughts

It is my contention that America is facing an existential threat from a globalist tyranny led by the RCCS precisely because American Christians as a whole failed to point out the lies of Rome and stand up against her when the Romanist attacks on our republic first began.  Now, the disease has spread much further and deeper than it ever had in Hartwell’s time, making it that much harder to root out the rot of political Romanism.

Why did American protestants fail to repel the Romanist threat to their republic?  One reason Hartwell gave is that American politicians were more worried about losing votes than they were about standing for truth. 

We will discuss other reasons, Lord willing, next week.        

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