James McMaster (born MacMaster; April 1, 1820 – December 29, 1886) was a 19th-century American Roman Catholic newspaper editor and activist known for his conservative political views and ultramontane religious values. McMaster was a "states rights" Democrat, "...ever intemperate and always arch-conservative." Early life McMaster was born in Duanesburg, New York, the son of Rev. Gilbert MacMaster, a Presbyterian minister. He was descended from Scots who had settled in Vermont. He entered Union College but left before graduation. He briefly read law at Columbia. He entered the General Theological Seminary in New York to become an Episcopalian priest. While there, he converted to Catholicism, under the influence of the writings of John Henry Newman. He added the name "Alphonsus" in honor of Alphonsus Liguori, founder of the Redemptorists, and enrolled in an ultramontane Redemptionist seminary in Belgium, but did not take holy orders. McMaster had either three children, according to Thomas Meehan, writing in the Catholic Encyclopedia, or four children, according to his New York Times obituary. His son Alphonsus became a physician. According to Meehan, two daughters became nuns, one a Carmelite and one who joined the Society of the Holy Child Jesus. According to the Times, there were three daughters, two of whom became Carmelite nuns and one who joined the Society of the Holy Child Jesus. Writer Patrick McNamara numbers three children. Career McMaster returned to New York, worked as a freelance journalist, and in 1848 became the publisher and editor of the city's principal Catholic newspaper, The New York Freeman's Journal, which he purchased from then-bishop John Hughes. He changed his surname to McMaster, an Irish-looking name with more appeal to the paper's largely Irish-American readership than the Scottish-spelling MacMaster. The paper continued to function, in effect, as the voice of the archdiocese. McMaster had "...an aversion to episcopal supervision and a determination to propound his own views." Ultimately, McMaster tried even the patience of Archbishop Hughes. In July 1856, Hughes decided to break with the paper, informing McMaster that he must make clear to his readers that his columns were not to be taken as representing the official archdiocesan view on anything. The heading "Official Organ of the Archdiocese" had to come off the masthead. Any number of articles from that period might have offended Hughes, but McMaster crossed a line in a May 31 editorial about the Bleeding Kansas controversy when he offered the