Whatever the minor flaws in Martin Scorsese’s 2002 movie Gangs of New York, the critically acclaimed movie did call attention to a number of hot button issues in 1863 New York and the rest of the still fairly young country. One of the hottest of the hot buttons was the religious differences between two rival gangs – the Protestant “Natives” and the Irish Catholic “Dead Rabbits.”  In the movie the Natives espoused the philosophies of the “Know-Nothing” party (more precisely called the American Party, which eventually was absorbed into the Republican Party), of the 1840s and 50s – keep America for Americans, limit immigration, and especially stop the influence of Irish and German Catholics who the Know-Nothings felt were controlled by the Pope in Rome.  Today Catholics make up about one- quarter of the U.S. population, but in the early 1800s, the U.S. was still an overwhelmingly Protestant country. This was slowly...(Read Full Article)