James McMaster

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James Alphonsus McMaster (born James MacMaster; April 1, 1820 – December 29, 1886) was an American Catholic newspaper editor and activist known for his conservative views and strong loyalty to the Church. He was born in Duanesburg, New York, the son of a Presbyterian minister, Gilbert MacMaster. He descended from Scots who settled in Vermont. He attended Union College but left before graduating and briefly studied law at Columbia. He later joined a seminary to become an Episcopalian priest, but he converted to Catholicism after reading John Henry Newman. He added the name Alphonsus in honor of Alphonsus Liguori and trained at a Catholic seminary in Belgium, though he never became a priest.

McMaster and his family had several children. His son Alphonsus became a physician, and his daughters included nuns in different orders, though counts vary on the exact number of children.

He returned to New York as a freelance journalist and, in 1848, became publisher and editor of The New York Freeman's Journal, the city’s leading Catholic newspaper, which he bought from Bishop John Hughes. He changed his surname to McMaster to appeal to the paper’s largely Irish readership. The newspaper often acted as a voice for the archdiocese, though McMaster preferred to publish his own views rather than official church positions.

This led to friction with Archbishop Hughes. In 1856 Hughes told McMaster to make clear that his columns did not represent the archdiocese, and the masthead saying it was the “Official Organ” had to come off. McMaster stirred controversy with bold statements, including a May 31, 1856 editorial about the Bleeding Kansas debate, where he suggested that harming abolitionists could bring relief to the country. He also opposed sending Catholic children to public schools and took a pro-slavery, pro-secession stance, arguing that Catholics had long lived with slavery in some form. In 1860 he urged Southerners not to abandon their future for the sake of four million black slaves. He was a strong supporter of the papacy, the doctrine of papal infallibility, and he attacked anti-Catholic nativist movements.

Colleagues described him as bold, opinionated, and sometimes harsh. He hired writers who could be sharp and unapologetic, and he expected them to share his views, including a distrust of abolitionists and a suspicion of Jesuits. The Freeman’s Journal even supported Mayor Fernando Wood of Tammany Hall.

There were notable clashes: in 1854 Irish activist Thomas Francis Meagher attacked McMaster on the street after a published attack; McMaster fired his revolver, and both men were arrested. The newspaper faced consequences during the Civil War when it was shut down as Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, and McMaster continued to write against the war, believing the South had a right to secede.

James Alphonsus McMaster died in Brooklyn in 1886 at age 66 after a fall, spending two weeks in the hospital.