Know-Nothings Steal The Pope's Stone (1854)

This Day in Esoteric Political History

Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia

History

4.6 • 982 Ratings

🗓️ 7 March 2021

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s March 7th. On this day in 1854, vandals broke into the construction site at the Washington Monument, made off with the “Pope’s Stone,” and threw it in the Potomac River.

Jody, NIki, and Kellie discuss the incident, why it was part of rising anti-Catholic sentiment in the United States, and the very rocky construction of the Washington Monument.

Find a transcript of this episode at: https://tinyurl.com/esoterichistory

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from radiotopia.
0:07.0	My name is Jody Abergen.
0:12.0	This day, March 7, 1854, let me tell you listeners a little bit about this segment and involves showing a little bit of our process, how we make this show together. But we have this big document, this big document, this big Google Doc, and our producer Jacob Feldman is the keeper of this document. And he does these little short entries throughout the year so every
0:34.5	date that we're gonna possibly do a show on has like six or seven different entries
0:38.0	and it's just like a one-liner description of a moment and then we decide if we
0:42.3	want to actually do a story about it if you know it falls into an area of expertise for
0:47.2	Kelly and a coal or something we're just interested in
0:49.9	But the entry for March 6th that's actually the date. It just reads no nothing vandals steal the Pope's stone from the Washington Monument and our reaction was we don't have to do any more research. We don't have to know what this is about. We are going to do this. The vandal stealing a stone from the Washington Monument. So here we are. We are doing it. We're very intrigued by this story. Nicole Hammer of Columbia is here.
1:13.1	Hello, Nicki.
1:14.2	Hello, Jody.
1:14.9	You had me at Pope Stone.
1:16.8	I know.
1:18.1	All of us were like, wait, is this a national treasure situation?
1:20.8	Exactly.
1:21.9	Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley is here as well.
1:23.8	Hello, Kelly.
1:24.8	Hello, you had me at No Nothing's.
1:27.0	Yeah, and I will say we have done our research and we love this story. I think it's a both a great twisty turny little story but it also ties into some very fascinating issues at the time.
1:39.0	So let's go step by step here. Kelly, I guess we should start with who are the No Nothing's and then we'll talk about why they decide to steal a stone from the Washington Monument.
1:48.4	Yeah, so the No Nothing's are a really short-lived political party that really hit their stride in
1:54.6	their vibrancy in the 1850s. They are nativists in nature. They are against
1:59.8	immigrants, particularly Roman Catholic immigrants, So they don't have really good relationships
	...

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