The Bishop of Charleston and The Confederacy

Bishop Patrick Lynch was the spiritual leader of South Carolina's Catholics at the time of the Civil War. Born in Ireland, Bishop Lynch immigrated to South Carolina in 1819. In 1840 he was ordained as a priest in Rome. In 1857 he was appointed vicar-general and was consecrated bishop in 1858. He was bishop in Charleston for twenty-four years, and he served as the Confederacy's special envoy to the Vatican.

Patrick N. Lynch was consecrated as the Catholic bishop of Charleston on March 14, 1858 in the Cathedral of St. John and St. Finbar on Broad Street, which burned in the Great Fire of 1861. It was the first consecration of a new bishop in Charleston.

Bishop Lynch's appointment was a popular one. He had been a priest for eighteen years and was a favorite speaker. "Father Lynch preached and his sermon impressed me profoundly," William T. Sherman, then a lieutenant, wrote home from Fort Moultrie in the 1840's.

The Catholic community staunchly supported the Confederacy. "Long years of menace, insult, outrage and unconstitutional aggression have been at last brought to a close by the event -- the election of a Black Republican President" the diocesan newspaper, the "U.S. Catholic Miscellany," editorialized on Lincoln's election.

Bishop Lynch was active in support of the Confederacy. He said a mass for the Meagher Guard at Castle Pinckney on December 26, 1860. He presented the Irish Volunteers with their new flag, saying as he did so, "Peace is a blessing. It is a blessing for which we all pray to heaven; while it is a blessing not always granted. When granted we return our thanks for it; when it is withheld, we bow before the will of heaven, and strive to do our duty."

The Great Fire of 1861 burned the Catholic Cathedral. The siege of Charleston forced Bishop Lynch and his secretary to move to St. Joseph's in Ansonborough. St. Mary's Church, on Hassell Street, the mother church of Catholicism the South, was struck by Federal shells on several occasions. Few parishioners could attend church in downtown Charleston.

When Jefferson Davis visited Charleston in November 1863, Bishop Lynch accompanied him on his tour of fortifications. The bishop had been particularly active and helpful in the exchange of prisoners between Charleston and the Federal forces on Morris Island. Dr. Slaven later recalled the exchange in a book: "The Bishop had been extremely kind in receiving the blessings of our boys, who spoke in warm terms of his Christian humanity. So far as I could judge from the specimen, our wounded had not anything to complain of in their treatment. At least nothing which the necessities of this situation rendered unavoidable."