In 1848 revolutions ripped through Europe. Beginning in Sicily they spread to Paris and then throughout Europe: Milan, Venice, Naples, Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Krakow, Munich and Berlin. As Metternich said "When Paris sneezes all of Europe catches a cold (One can't help seeing similarities in the uprisings throughout the Arab world today. Leaders of today's revolts even use the same evocative description, “The Springtime of Hope." And is not Cairo like Paris?). The goals were constitutional government and democracy. It was a violent and tumultuous time. The people of Yonkers were well aware of the revolutions. Their sympathies are apparent. They named one of the new streets in Yonkers after the poet-revolutionary and, for a few months in 1848, the President of the new Republic of France, Alphonse de Lamartine. In the short run the revolutions of 1848 failed but they sowed the seeds that eventually bore fruit in many capitals of Europe.
One place that the seeds did not take root was in Rome and in the Papal States (which were about a third of today's Italy). Pope Pius IX, although initially attracted to some of the liberal ideas to reform the Papal States, turned against the reformers after the assassination of his secretary of State, Count Pellegrino Rossi, on November 15, 1848 by radicals. Pope Pius IX, leader of Catholic Church, closed its windows to anything that smacked of "modernity." This had significant consequences for the Catholic Church in a democratic America. The problem came to a head in the "Americanist" controversaries in the 1880's and 1890's, which in turn, affected St. Mary's bid to become the cathedral of a new diocese.
In 1848 the Treaty of Guadalupe formally ended the Mexican- American War. Today's California and most of the Southwest was ceded to the U.S.A. During the war some Irish Catholics in the army of the U.S.A. deserted to the Mexican side. One of the reasons was the refusal of the American government to allow Catholic chaplains in the army. Most were captured after the war and executed. This fed the suspicions of those who maintained that the allegiance of Catholics was more to their religion (Mexico was Catholic) and to the Pope than to the U.S.A.
Deep ethnic and class resentments seethed through the population. Between 1847 and 1851, 850,000 Irish entered the port of New York City. The arrival of so many Irish Catholics, many sick and emaciated, frightened people. In an age "not given to sensitivity" the many penny newspapers vied for attention with the most outrageous stories. In 1847 one of the leading ministers of a leading Presbyterian Church proclaimed: "If I had the power I would erect a gallows at every landing place in the City of New York and suspend every cursed Irishman as soon as he steps on shore."
The question of loyalty remained until the Civil War when thousands of Irish fought and died (on both sides) for their country. Buried in St. Mary's cemetery (opened in 1855) are 137 Civil War veterans. When the draft riots broke out in July of 1863 in New York City and in parts of Westchester, many feared Irish Catholics of Yonkers would join. They did not.
In partial response to this hostile and Protestant environment, the Catholic school system grew. In 1852, St. Mary's opened its own school. The Sisters of Charity came to teach in 1857 . The LaSalle Christian Brothers came in 1861. The first four founding Brothers from France 1848.
In July of 1848 the Seneca Fall Convention was held in upstate New York. It is considered the beginning of the woman's movement in America. Lucretia Mott, one of the main speakers, was the aunt of Thomas Cornell who helped found the parish of St. Mary's.
Gold was discovered in California in 1848.

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