“The Unionists would all go to hell, and the secessionists to heaven.”
That was the message Catherine Bockman heard when she attended Mass on May 27, 1862, at St. Vincent’s, near the French market in St. Louis’s Soulard neighborhood. She had come to pray for the welfare of her husband, a Union soldier in the Fifth Regiment, Missouri Cavalry, and instead heard the Union cause denounced.
In St. Louis, the greatest Civil War battle was over the nature of neutrality.
As part of its onging series on the 150th anniversary of the Civil War the New York Times on June 14, 2012 published an article recounting an incident that took place at St. Vincent de Paul Church in St. Louis (founded in 1844 and still run by the Vincentians).
See the following: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/14/secession-and-ascen…
Thanks to Edward R. Udovic, C.M for drawing attention to this Vincentian parish’s reflection of the non-battlesfield struggles during the Civil War.
Tags: Civil War, history, Network, parish, Vincentian
