The American Pope

On March 2, 1848, Lewis Charles Levin, an irascible Pennsylvania congressman, took to the floor of the House of Representatives to warn his colleagues of an encroaching menace: the papacy. With a flair that would not have disgraced the pulpit of a frontier revivalist, he denounced “the paid agents of the Jesuits” and shuddered theatrically at the news that Pope Pius IX—then newly elected and, disconcertingly, liberal—had won the admiration of European reformers.