I know that the Catholic Church sent representatives to meet Davis while he was in Prison. And that the Papal State was the only one, which "officially" exchanged ambassadors with the Confederacy.

That got me to asking why would the Catholic Church would do something like that? Of course the obvious answer off the top of ones head would be humanitarian. However, that seemed a little too shallow to be the influence that these meeting seemed to be credited to have had.

This links started me looking.

www.reformation.org/lincoln.html

And in the dark recesses of history as was pointed out by another responder to this post the newspapers at first did think Lincoln's Assination was a plot of the Catholic church. There was a lot of Anti-Catholic, Anti-Irish bigotry in the north especially in New York City. In addition, I am wondering if there is a connection with this Irish against Black animosity that was some of the trigger in the New York Draft Riots?