Bath, Maine, anti-Catholic riot of 1854

[citation needed] The resurgence of violence in the 1850s was associated with the rise of the nativist Know Nothing Party and the passage of the Maine law, America's first statewide prohibition ordinance.

[3] The Bath mob was gathered and inflamed by a traveling street-preacher named John S. Orr, who called himself "The Angel Gabriel," dressed in white robes, and carried a trumpet.

[4] As Orr delivered an anti-Catholic sermon on Commercial Street, the crowd of spectators grew, eventually swelling to over a thousand and blocking carriage traffic.

Some began shouting for the mob to move on the Old South Church, a structure built by Congregationalists in 1805 but recently abandoned by that denomination and purchased by Irish Catholics.

In the late afternoon, the crowd marched to the church, began smashing up the pews, hoisted an American flag from the belfry, rang the bell, and set the building on fire.