claiming as it does the respectable age of three centuries. The
Catholic church here is almost as old as Protestantism, and a
brief of St. Pius V., in regard to some of the religious affairs
of this colony, is still extant. There are remnants of an old
wall in several places, and a large fortress built in Spanish
times, and called the castle of St. Marco, where you may yet see
the marks of the cannon-shot fired at the invasion of Oglethorpe
from Georgia. This fort might serve as a scene for the plot of a
new "Mysteries of Udolfo," it is so unlike any thing modern, and
so thoroughly Spanish and mediæval. It is not, however, of a sort
to make one regret the past. Its dark, damp casemates look like
prisons, especially one frightful dungeon, which is a cell within
a cell, without any embrasure, and admitting no light or air
except that which comes through the door opening into the outer
casemate. This was the cell of the greatest criminals. In one of
these casemates, Wildcat, the celebrated Indian chief, was once
confined with a companion. Although cruel and blood-thirsty,
Wildcat was a great warrior, and a man gifted with a high order
of genius, an orator, a poet, and a true cavalier of the forest.
On pretence of illness, he and his companion reduced their bulk
as much as possible by a low diet and purgative medicines, and by
the aid of a knife, which he had secreted and used as a spike by
thrusting it into the wall of soft concrete, with a rope
dexterously made from strips of his bed-clothes, he clambered to
the high and narrow embrasure, squeezed himself through, not
without scraping the skin from his breast, and let himself down
into the moat. His companion followed him, but fell to the
ground, breaking his leg. Nevertheless, Wildcat carried him off,
seized a stray mule, and escaped to his tribe in the forest.
{162}
After the conclusion of the war, he went to Mexico, where he
became the alcalde of an Indian village, and did his new country
essential service by leading a body of Indian warriors, armed
with Mississippi rifles, against a band of filibusters from the
United States. Osceola, the half-breed king of the Seminoles, who
was not only a hero, but a just and humane man, was also captured
near St. Augustine, by treachery and bad faith, and confined in
this fortress for a time, but afterward removed to Charleston,
where he died of a broken heart. The great mahogany
treasure-chest of Don Juan Menendez is still remaining in the
fortress, and in one of the casemates are remnants of a rude
stone altar and holy-water stoups, marking the site of a chapel.
The fortress is kept in good preservation by our Government, and
a noble sea-wall extends from it to the barracks at the other end
of the town, which are established in an ancient Franciscan
monastery. A great part of the old city is in ruins. The old
Spanish families left the country when it was ceded by Spain to
the United States, and the resident inhabitants are Minorcans,
negroes, and a small number of settlers from the other portions
of the United States. The Minorcans are descendants of a body of
colonists, brought to Florida under false pretences by an English
speculator, who enslaved them, and kept them for a long time in
that state before they became aware that there was any way of
escaping from it. When they did take courage to shake off the
yoke, they removed to the Spanish colony of St. Augustine, where
they retain their language, a dialect of the Spanish, with their
ancient, simple character and habits. The illustrious Spanish
names which some of them bear amused us greatly. Sanchez was the
proprietor of a line of slow coaches. Suarez had charge of F.
Madeore's farm, and Ximenes served Mass. The church is a large
Spanish structure, built, as are most of the houses, of soft
concrete formed from sea-shells. On a green in front of it stands
the only remaining monument, erected in commemoration of the
formation of the Spanish Constitution of 1814.
{163}
The tower has a chime of small bells, which are rung in a most
joyous, clashing style, according to the Spanish custom, for
festive occasions, and with a peculiarly plaintive peal for
deaths and funerals. The cemetery is called Tolomato, which was
the name of an Indian village formerly occupying its site. The
ruins of an ancient mission chapel are still to be seen there,
where F. Roger, a French Jesuit, was murdered by an apostate
Indian chief and his warriors. After killing F. Roger, the band
proceeded to another chapel, called Nuestra Señora de Leche,
where they found a priest just robed for Mass. He requested the
chief to allow him to say Mass, and his desire was granted, the
savages prostrating themselves with their faces to the ground
while he performed the holy function, lest the sight of him
should soften their hearts. After Mass he knelt at the foot of
the altar, and received a blow from the tomahawk which made him a
martyr.
Tolomato contains also the beautiful tomb erected by the Cubans
over the grave of the Rev. Dr. Varela, a learned, holy, and
patriotic priest, a native of the Island of Cuba, and a member of
the Spanish Cortes which established the Constitution. Banished
from his native country, where his memory has always been fondly
cherished, he passed the greater part of a long life as a
laborious parish priest in New York, and died in St. Augustine.
There is a beautiful chapel over his grave, with an altar of
marble and mahogany, and a heavy marble slab in the center of the
pavement, containing the simple but eloquent inscription: "_Al
Padre Varela los Cubanos_"-The Cubans to Father Varela.
The mission in St. Augustine absorbed the whole attention of the
Catholic population, who formed a large majority of the
inhabitants. Great numbers of them gathered to welcome the
fathers on their arrival, and whenever they went out they were
met and greeted by groups of these simple, warm-hearted people,
and followed by a troop of children, who live there in a
perpetual holiday.
{164}
There was scarcely any business or work done there at any time;
the climate and the fertility both of the land and water in the
means of subsistence furnishing the necessaries of life to the
poorer classes without much trouble. Most of these pass their
time in fishing, and even this occupation was intermitted, so
that on Friday there was not a fish to be found in the market.
The people seemed literally to have nothing whatever to do; the
fort and barracks were garrisoned by one soldier with his wife
and children; the government of the place was a sinecure; the
mails came only twice a week; behind the city lay the
interminable, uninhabited everglade; before it the Atlantic
Ocean, with its waters and breezes warmed by the Gulf Stream, and
unvisited by any sails to disturb its solitude, except at rare
intervals. Although it was midwinter, the weather was commonly as
pleasant and the sun as warm as it is in New England in the month
of June. I have never witnessed such a scene of dreamy, listless,
sunshiny indolence, where every thing seemed to combine to lull
the mind and senses into complete forgetfulness of the existence
of an active world. To the people, however, it was one of the
most exciting periods of their lives. The presence of several
strange priests, the continual sermons and religious exercises,
gave an unwonted air of life and activity to the precincts of the
old church, and roused them to an unusual animation. Drunkenness,
dishonesty, and the graver vices were almost unknown among them.
The negroes were found to be an extremely virtuous, innocent, and
docile class of people. Honest, sober, observant of the laws of
marriage, faithful and contented in their easy employments, which
seemed to suit their disposition very well, and in many cases not
only pious, but very intelligent, and exhibiting fine traits of
character, they were the best evidence we had yet seen of what
the Catholic religion can do for this oppressed and ill-used
race.
{165}
One of them, a pilot on one of the steamboats navigating the St.
John's River, impressed me as one of the most admirable men of
his class in life, for capacity and conscientious Christian
principle, I have ever met. Another, who was a freedman of the
celebrated John Randolph, and for many years his personal
attendant, was not only intelligent and well informed, but a
well-bred gentleman in his manners and appearance.
The most interesting incident of the mission was the conversion
of an ordnance sergeant of the regular army, who was in charge of
the fortress. This brave soldier had distinguished himself in the
Mexican war, by the recapture of a cannon which had been taken in
one of the battles by the Mexicans, and by his general character
for gallantry and fidelity to his duties. His wife and children
were Catholics, but he himself had lived until that time without
any religion. On New-Year's night, as he sat alone in the
barracks, after his family had retired, he began to think over
his past life, and resolved to begin at once to live for the
great end for which God had created him. He knelt down and said a
few prayers, to ask the grace and blessing of God on his good
resolutions. His prayers were heard, and during the mission he
was received into the Catholic Church and admitted to the
sacraments with all the signs of sincerity and fervor which were
to be expected from one of such a resolute and manly character. I
wish to mention one interesting circumstance which he related to
me, as showing the power of good example in men of high station
in the world. He told me that the first impression he received of
the truth and excellence of the Catholic religion, was received
from witnessing the admirable life of that accomplished Christian
gentleman and soldier, Captain Gareschè, to whose company he
belonged. Many readers will recall, as they read these records,
the admirable and glorious close of this officer's career on the
field of battle.
{166}
During the Western campaign of General Rosecrans,
Lieutenant-Colonel Garesché was his chief of staff. Before the
battle of Stone River, he received Holy Communion, and was
observed afterward alone under a tree, reading the "Imitation of
Christ." During the engagement, one of the fiercest and most
bloody of the civil war, he rode, by the side of his gallant
general, through a storm of shot and shell, and by his side he
fell, besprinkling his beloved commander with his blood, as he
sank upon the field to die, and yielded up his noble life to his
country and to God.
The labors of this mission were so light that it was more like
holiday than work for us. The presence of a number of very
agreeable and intelligent Catholic gentlemen and ladies, who were
visitors in the place, and some of whom were old friends, added
very much to the liveliness of the mission, and to our own
enjoyment of its peculiar attendant circumstances. One of these
was the Abbé Le Blond, a dear friend of ours and of all who knew
him, a priest of Montreal, who was gradually dying of
consumption, yet full of vivacity and activity, improving the
remnant of his days by his labors of love and zeal, and his works
of charity in different parts [of] the South where he passed his
winters. He died eventually in Rome. Another was Lieutenant
McDonald, of the British Royal Navy, and also, for some time
before leaving England, a captain in the Queen's Guards, a
Highland gentleman of a family that has always been true to the
faith, also since deceased.
The quiet city of St. Augustine, as well as all the other scenes
and places where we passed that winter on our missionary tour,
has since then been visited by the desolating breath of war.
Probably all is changed, and greater changes yet are coming with
the new issues of peace--changes which, there is reason to hope,
will advance both the religious and temporal welfare of the
people. Florida may yet become a populous State, and the handful
of Catholics in it swell into a number sufficient to make a
flourishing diocese.
{167}
Immediately after the close of the mission, F. Baker proceeded by
sea to Charleston where he met the other two missionaries who had
been at work in Georgia, and commenced a mission in the cathedral
of that city. His two companions were detained for a time in St.
Augustine by the sudden and severe illness of one of them, and
they went on a little later, returning by the same leisurely
route by which they came to Savannah, and thence to Charleston,
where the mission was already in progress.
Charleston possessed three Catholic churches, and its Catholic
population numbered from five to six thousand. All the
congregations were invited to the mission, and a large number of
them did attend from St. Mary's and St. Patrick's, together with
the whole body of the cathedral parish. The same work performed
by the missionaries in Savannah had been gone through in
Charleston, in scouring the lanes and alleys of the city to bring
up the stragglers, and the great cathedral was accordingly
crowded, morning and night. First of all, two hundred bright and
well-instructed children received communion in a body, and
afterward, through the course of the mission, three thousand
adults, among whom were twenty converts to the faith.
Father Baker never, during the whole course of his missionary
life, enjoyed any thing so much as this Southern tour, and
especially his stay at Charleston, the most delightful city of
the South. After the long seclusion of three years in a convent,
which had impaired his health and vigor, the recreation and
pleasure of such a trip wad most beneficial and delightful to
him. The work in which he was engaged, besides the higher
satisfaction which it gave to his zeal and charity, had also the
charm and excitement of novelty, without the pressure of too
arduous and excessive labor. At Charleston, he was already
prepared by his previous experience and practice to take a full
share in the principal sermons, and to give them that peculiar
tone and effect which is characteristic of mission sermons, and
makes them _sui generis_ among all others.
{168}
All the circumstances were calculated to call the noblest powers
of his mind and the warmest emotions of his heart into full play.
The cathedral was large, beautiful, and of a fine ecclesiastical
style in all its arrangements. The adjoining presbytery, which
had been built for a convent, and all the surroundings, were both
appropriate for the residence of a body of cathedral clergy and
pleasing to the eye of taste. The clergymen themselves, with
their distinguished head, afterward the bishop of the diocese,
were men of accomplished learning and genial character, whose
kindness and hospitality knew no bounds, and whose zeal made them
efficient fellow-laborers in the work of the mission. The
congregation itself had many features of unusual interest. Having
been long established, and carefully watched over, since the
illustrious Bishop England organized the diocese, containing a
large permanent population of various national descent and of all
classes of society, not a few of whom were converts from South
Carolina families, an unusually large number of intelligent young
men, trained up to a great extent under the care of the clergy,
and thus giving scope and affording a field for a man like F.
Baker to display his special gifts to the greatest advantage and
profit--it is not surprising that he should have called out, both
in his public discharge of duty and in private and social
intercourse, that same warm admiration which had followed him in
the former period of his life. In his sermons, he went far above
his former level, and began to develop that combination of the
best and most perfect elements of sacred eloquence, which, in the
estimation of the most impartial and competent judges, placed him
in the first rank of preachers. The present bishop of Charleston,
whose pre-eminent learning and high qualities of mind are well
known, pronounced one of F. Baker's discourses a perfect sermon,
and the best he had ever heard.
{169}
The Catholics of Charleston never saw Father Baker again; but
they never forgot him, and he never forgot them; for, during the
rest of his too short life, he recurred frequently to the
remembrance of that mission, which was so rich in the highest
kind of pleasure, as well as spiritual profit and blessing.
At that time, all was peace. Sumter was solitary and silent,
untenanted by a single soldier. Fort Moultrie and Sullivan's
Island, and the beautiful battery and the bay were calm and
peaceful, where, a few years later, all was black and angry with
the terrible thunder-storm of war. Blackened ruins are all that
remain of that beautiful cathedral and the pleasant home of the
clergy. Some of those clergymen have died in attending the sick
soldiers of the United States, and others are scattered in
different places. Many of those fine young men and bright boys
have left their bodies on the battle-field, or lost the bloom and
vigor of their youth in the unwholesome camp or hospital or
military prison. The good Sisters have been driven from one
shelter to another, by the terrible necessities of a desperate
warfare, whose miseries they have courageously striven to
alleviate by their heroic charity. Charleston has been desolated,
and the Church of Charleston has shared in the common ruin.
Nevertheless, there is every reason to hope that this temporary
period of desolation will be succeeded in due time by one more
auspicious for the solid and extensive progress of the Catholic
religion than any which has yet been seen, in that vast region
where the eloquent voice of Bishop England proclaimed the blessed
faith of the true and apostolic Church of Christ.
After the conclusion of the Charleston mission, F. Baker returned
to Annapolis, and remained there in charge of the little parish
attached to the convent, until the following September. One of
his companions, the invalid of St. Augustine, went to Cuba to
re-establish his health; and the other three, after giving
several other missions in New York State, returned also to summer
quarters.
{170}
The missionary labors in which F. Baker had been thus far
engaged, were, comparatively speaking, but a light and pleasant
prelude to the continuous and arduous missionary career of a
little more than seven years, which he commenced in the autumn of
1857. At the very outset he was obliged to make a decision of a
very grave and important matter, which resulted in a still more
complete separation from the scenes and associates of his past
life, and threw him more completely upon a pure and conscientious
devotion to his priestly duties for the sake of God alone, as his
only consolation in this world.
One of our number was at that time in Rome, for the purpose of
obtaining from the chief authority a settlement of certain
difficulties which had arisen, and which impeded the successful
and harmonious prosecution of the missions. The question was
finally settled by a separation of five American Redemptorists,
by a brief of the Holy Father, from their former congregation,
and the formation of the new Congregation of St. Paul, under
episcopal authority. F. Baker was for the first time informed of
the reasons for appealing to the decision of the Holy Father, at
the mission of St. James's Church, Newark, which commenced on the
26th of September, 1857. I have no intention of exposing the
history of the difference which arose between us and our former
religious superiors, or of making a criticism upon their conduct.
If the providence of God ordered events in such a way that a new
congregation should be formed for a special purpose, it is
nothing new or strange that men, having a different vocation, and
whose views and aims were cast in a different mould, should with
the most conscientious intentions, be unable to coincide in
judgment or act in concert. There is room in the Catholic Church
for every kind of religious organization, suiting all the
varieties of mind and character and circumstance.
{171}
If collisions and misunderstandings often come between those who
have the same great end in view, this is the result of human
infirmity, and only shows how imperfect and partial are human
wisdom and human virtue. All that I am concerned to show is, that
F. Baker did not swerve from his original purpose in choosing the
religious state. He had never been discontented with his state,
or with his superiors. He was still in the first fervor of his
vocation, and had just made a strict and exact retreat. He
deliberated for some weeks within his own mind, without saying or
doing any thing to commit himself to any particular line of
conduct. When he finally made up his mind to cast in his lot with
his missionary companions, and to abide with them the decision of
the Holy Father, it was solely in view of serving God and his
fellow-men in the most perfect manner. For the congregation where
he was trained to the religious and ecclesiastical state, he
always retained a sincere esteem and affection. He did not ask
the Pope for a dispensation from his vows in order to be relieved
from a burdensome obligation, but only on the condition that it
seemed best to him to terminate the difficulty which had arisen
in that way. When the dispensation was granted, he did not change
his life for a more easy one. He resisted a pressing solicitation
to return to Baltimore as a secular priest, and continued until
his death to labor in a missionary life, and to practise the
poverty, the obedience, the assiduity in prayer and meditation,
and the seclusion from the world, which belong to the religious
state. Let no one, therefore, who is disposed to yield to
temptations against his vocation, and to abandon the religious
state from weariness, tepidity, or any unworthy motive, think to
find any encouragement in the example of F. Baker; for his
austere, self-denying, and arduous life will give him only
rebuke, and not encouragement.
{172}
During the entire autumn and winter of this year, F. Baker and
his companions were occupied in a continuous course of large and
successful missions, in the parishes of St. James, Newark; Cold
Spring and Poughkeepsie, on the Hudson; St. John's, Utica, N. Y.;
Brandywine, Del.; Trenton, N. J.; Burlington, Brandon, East and
West Rutland, Vt.; Plattsburg, Saratoga, and Little Falls, New
York. With loyal hearts we continued to obey our superiors, and
fulfil our obligations as Redemptorists, until the supreme
authority in the Church released us by his decree. This decree
was issued on the 6th of March, 1858, and received by us on the
6th of April. After the Mission of Little Falls, F. Baker was
directed by the Provincial to return to Annapolis, and although
fatigued by the missions, and aware that his dispensation was on
the way, yet, true to the letter to his principle of obedience,
he obeyed at once. The other three missionaries passed the Holy
Week and Easter in the convent of New York, in Third street, and,
after receiving the official copy of the Papal decree, bade
farewell to the congregation where we had passed so many happy
years, and witnessed so many edifying examples of high virtue and
devoted zeal, to enter upon a new and untried undertaking.