Hughes founded the Ultramontane newspaper the New York Freeman to express his ideas. In 1850 he delivered an address entitled "The Decline of Protestantism and Its Causes," in which he announced as the ambition of Catholicism "to convert all Pagan nations, and all Protestant nations. . . . Our mission [is] to convert the world –including the inhabitants of the United States – the people of the cities, and the people of the country, . . . the Legislatures, the Senate, the Cabinet, the President, and all!"James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Bantam Books, 1989), p. 132.
