Lewis Charles Levin - Philadelphia Riots and Election To Congress

Philadelphia Riots and Election To Congress

By 1838 Levin was in Philadelphia and giving public lectures on the evils of alcohol. He founded and edited a journal called the Temperance Advocate. In 1842 he staged an immense public "bonfire of booze" to draw attention to his campaign against taverns and for local control of liquor licensing.

Levin's anti-alcohol crusade proved to be excellent preparation for his next cause, a campaign against Catholic political power, which he carried on in two papers, the Native American and The Daily Sun. Initially the main political issue was a 1843 public school ruling permitting Catholic children to be excused from Bible-reading class (because the Protestant King James Version was being used). Levin became the leader and chief spokesman for a start-up political movement calling itself the American Republican Party (later the American Nativist Party). Between May and July 1844 he gave speeches and led public demonstrations in Kensington and Southwark, leading to the looting and burning of several dozen houses, businesses and religious buildings. Levin and his colleague Samuel R. Kramer (publisher of the Native American) were arrested and fined for "exciting to riot and treason" in inciting locals to invade and burn several Catholic churches and a convent.

Shortly after the 1844 Philadelphia riots, Levin ran for Congress and was elected on his party's platform, to wit: (1) to extend the period of naturalization to twenty-one years; (2) to elect only native born to all offices; (3) to reject foreign interference in all institutions, social, religious, and political.

Levin was returned to Congress in 1846 and 1848. He served as chairman of the United States House Committee on Engraving during the Thirtieth Congress, 1847-48. (As a side note, it was this Thirtieth Congress that saw a young Illinois lawyer named Abraham Lincoln serve his one and only term in the House.)