18. The co-developer of Morse Code, Samuel F. B. Morse harbored intensely xenophobic and anti-Catholic views, seeking to impose his vitriol in an unsuccessful bid to become Mayor of New York City
Samuel Finley Breese Morse, after a successful life as a painter and inventor, is most remembered today for his subsequent development of the eponymous signal for telecommunications. However, despite his many praiseworthy accolades and accomplishments, Morse was also aggressively nativist in his political opinions. A prominent figure of the anti-Catholic and anti-immigration movements of the mid-19th century, Morse sought to institute a ban on Catholics holding public office and proposed altering immigration laws to inhibit migration from Catholic countries. In fact, Morse’s hatred for Catholics was so severe that during a visit to Rome he angrily refused to take off his hat in the presence of the Pope.
Claiming the Austrian government, alongside Catholic philanthropic organizations, were secretly organizing and financing Catholic immigration into the United States in order to subjugate and enslave the nation, in 1835 Morse published his treatise as Foreign Conspiracy Against the Liberties of the United States. Proclaiming also that slavery was morally just as it was sanctioned by God – a common argument of the defenders of slavery during the mid-19th century – Morse ran the following year in the New York mayoral elections as the candidate for the Nativist Party. Demonstrating the limited scope of his views at this time, Morse lost decisively, receiving only 1,496 votes.