Response to Brownson's views was mixed during his lifetime. He was invited to New Orleans in 1855 by the publication Le Propagateur, because he was viewed as a figure whom both Protestants and Catholics might enjoy hearing from, because of his multiple political and religious associations during his life. Although various newspapers recorded contradictory opinions on his lectures, all praised his "eloquent" speech. In 1850s, among his many intellectual contributions, in the midst of Irish and German immigration debate and related nativist moral panic, Brownson introduced the term "Americanization" into the public discourse while delivering a lecture, "Church and the Republic", at St. John’s College, future Fordham University. His attempts to harmonize ethnic immigrant identities with American democratic tradition without social and cultural homogenization are considered as an early move in the direction of multiculturalism. Brownson is often incorrectly credited with being the person to coin the term Odinism, referring to his 1848 "Letter to Protestants". Brownson was summed up by poet and critic James Russell Lowell in his satirical A Fable for Critics as someone trying to bite off more than he could chew: "his mouth very full with attempting to gulp a Gregorian bull". Edgar Allan Poe refers to Brownson in his Autography series, calling him "an extraordinary man," though he "has not altogether succeeded in convincing himself of those important truths which he is so anxious to impress upon his readers." He is also mentioned in Poe's story "Mesmeric Revelation," referring to Brownson's 1840 novel Charles Eldwood; or, The Infidel Converted. While reviewing Brownson's biography penned by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Henry Steele Commager noted that: "In his day Orestes Brownson was respected and feared as were few of his contemporaries; European philosophers regarded him with hope; American politicians enlisted his vitriolic pen; denominations competed for his eloquence; and when he listed himself among the three most profound men in America there were those who took him seriously." Peter J. Stanlis has pointed out that "In the generation following the founding fathers of the American republic, Orestes Brownson, together with John C. Calhoun, was probably the most original and profound political thinker of the nineteenth century. Woodrow Wilson considered his most important book, The American Republic (1865), the best study of the American constitution." Additionally, Brownson was held in high regard by many European intellectuals and theologians, including Auguste Joseph Alphonse Gratry, who called Brownson "the keenest