I fear my post may be very similar to Alan's, as I had very similar questions as to the validity of these anti-catholic conspiratorial theories promulgated by preachers and patriots alike. I will try to approach this question from a different perspective. Kidd seems to buy into the validity of these conspiracies, saying that "mobilizing the people at large required a broader, religiously urgent appeal" (91) Essentially, he believes these conspiracies and millenialisms as true concerns because it pushed the public into action more than the more "Common Sense" arguments. This might be more of a psychological question, but what effectiveness do these sorts of arguments have? Clearly most people did not fear Catholicism as much as claimed, as American ended up allying with France. And, while I can't speak for the millenialists, (and the 19th century saw quite the surge in millenial ideas) the fact that the world continued to exist could dispell those concerns.
Did the colonists go to war for anti-Catholicism, or was anti-Catholicism injected into the more reasonable arguments because of the culture? I know that recruitment was a constant concern for the colonists in the Revolutionary War, could the anti-Catholic rhetoric simply be attributed to the "shotgun method"? Just throw whatever you can think of at them and hope something sticks, or was this a calculated effort?
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