Today in History...BLOODY MONDAY

I check out a blog called "Today I Found Out" and today I found out about Bloody Monday. The date was August 6 and the year was 1855 in Louisville,  Kentucky. It was an election day and there was a tight race for mayor between candidates from the Democrat Party candidate and the candidate from the Know-Nothing Party, or American Party  (an offshoot of the Whig Party, which broke apart due to the slavery issue). The Know Nothings were vehemently anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic. Most of the immigrants to Louisville were Irish and German, so hey! Two-fers!

From Wikipedia:

The Know-Nothings formed armed groups to guard the polls on election day, but the riots took place after the polls closed as the armed groups moved into Catholic neighborhoods. Germans (primarily Catholics) were also caught up. By the time it was over, more than 100 businesses, private homes and tenements had been vandalized, looted and/or burned, including a block long row of houses known as Quinn's Row. Historians estimate the death toll at 19-22^. while Catholics including Bishop Martin John Spalding of Louisville, said the death toll at well over 100 with entire families consumed in the fires.

 Only by Louisville Mayor John Barbee's intervention, despite being a Know-Nothing, were the bloodshed and the property destruction brought to an end, including his personal intervention that saved two Catholic churches: the new German parish of St. Martin of Tours and the Cathedral of the Assumption from destruction by the mob.

Cathedral of the Assumption

St. Martin of Tours