In the conclusion of his very fine book about Archbishop John Hughes, John Loughery states that, “What should interest and concern us is the life lived in its time, and in that sense,” he contends that his subject stands comfortably with the great social and political leaders of the nineteenth century including Abraham Lincoln and William Seward. (348) But Hughes was also so aggressive in his leadership that when he signed his name with a cross, it was mistaken for a weapon, earning him the nickname, Dagger John. Without sugarcoating his faults, Loughery presents Hughes as a complex character, not only a man for his time but a man for the Catholic Church and Irish immigrants of the day. Without him, the author wonders what the status of the Church or immigrant community would have been under the leadership of Hughes's talented peers, none of whom had the “bluster and defiance, disdain for obstacles, a propagandizing instinct, even at moments a crude and frighteningly crowd-pleasing ferocity” required to root these unwelcome communities securely against the bigotry of nativism and the debilitation of first generation poverty. (345)

At its core, Hughes's is an immigrant success story. Arriving in the United States at the age of nineteen with an incomplete formal education, he managed to be admitted to Mount St. Mary's seminary in Maryland while laboring as the gardener. He studied tirelessly to catch up with his more privileged fellow seminarians. It is typical of his mythical rise that he ascended the hierarchy of Church bureaucracy to succeed as bishop of New York the superior (John Dubois) who met his presence in the seminary with disdain.

Hughes was ferociously ambitious and rose through the ranks of the priesthood with a chip on his shoulder that he carried into conflict on behalf of his flock. The author covers a lot of the familiar stories that have followed the legacy of Hughes: his rage at the Ursuline convent attack in Massachusetts, his veiled threat of retaliatory violence in New York in the wake of attacks on Catholics in Philadelphia, his campaign to abolish lay trustees, and his provocative vision to build a cathedral in New York City as big and grand as any Protestant structure. While not one to shy away from a fight, Hughes understood that the way up and out for Catholic immigrants was the classroom. A consistent thread in Loughery's biography is Hughes's belief in education. It is a path that worked for him and his siblings and one he pushed for passionately, from funding and staffing for Catholic schools to neutering Protestant proselytizing in public schools.

What Loughery does convincingly in his effort to flesh out John Hughes is to position him as a national figure. The archbishop is typically remembered for his tenure in New York, shepherding his brethren in the wake of the potato famine, raising money for St. Patrick's Cathedral and fostering a pattern of philanthropy among Catholic elites (on the latter, see Kate Feighery, “‘Everything Depends on the First Year’: Archbishop John Hughes and His Fundraising Plan for St. Patrick's Cathedral,” American Journal of Irish Studies 12 [2015]: 57–76). What Hughes may be less well known for is his presence on the national and international stage. Using letters, editorials, and diaries Loughery demonstrates that Hughes not only had powerful connections among the national leadership of the Catholic Church, but his public conflicts on behalf of his flock raised his visibility among leaders at the state and federal level. His invitation to secular gatherings of American elites “indicated that not all his Protestant countrymen thought as [John] Breckinridge did – that to be a Roman Catholic was, by definition, to be unlettered and opposed to progress” (85). His activity brought him not only to the attention of American leaders but to the Vatican as well, expediting his elevation to the bishopric. Unfortunately, his contentious posture among secular and Catholic peers cost him the red cap of Cardinal. In the mid-nineteenth century American leaders expressed their concern to the Vatican that a foreign-born cardinal would inflame nativist bigotry, but within the Church “no one wanted to be under [Hughes's] authority and a fair number of his peers found his overbearing manner and the public persona he cultivated not at all to their taste” (221).

Loughery shows that Hughes's success was due in no small part to his stamina and work ethic. But near the end of his life, his battle with Bright's disease required that he slow down. Hughes's last years coincided with the Civil War and the Draft Riots of 1863, and he was not at full strength to deal well with the latter. The Civil War tore the Catholic Church community apart as it did the rest of the country. Friends and colleagues that Hughes had known since his days in the seminary were now on opposite sides of the conflict, and letters between these men during the war express that distress. The Draft Riots broke Hughes's heart, confirming a popular image of the Irish as savages, a stereotype he spent his life combating, but he was too weak to react to the riots in any effective way. Hughes died six months later.

While Loughery argues persuasively that Hughes was a man of his time and should be judged as such, in many ways the themes explored in this biography—immigration, religion, bigotry, poverty, polarizing politics—are strikingly contemporary. It makes a reader wonder (as Loughery does) not only what would the legacy and position of the American Roman Catholic Church today be without Hughes but could a leader like him succeed in today's world dealing with the same issues? History is fascinating in its ability to surprise and inform.

Loughery really gives us this man in full; his sources are thorough but his footnoting style is cumbersome, requiring the reader to turn to the back of the book and find quotes from the page in question to locate sources. It is a minor fault in an otherwise valuable biography.