On March 15, 1875, Archbishop John McCloskey was appointed a Cardinal, the first one given that dignity in America.  He remarked:
I frankly confess to a sense of my unworthiness, and that many of my brethren might well have been found more worthy. Special cause of diffidence might well be found in the exceptional and memorable fact, that upon none other before me in this country in by-gone years, has this dignity been conferred.
Mother Maddalena approached Cardinal McCloskey first, to try to make a foundation in that city. Although he refused her, she always held him in great regard.  It is significant that she wanted to obtain a life of the deceased bishops of the United States, published in 1888 by Richard Clarke. The above quotation is taken from that book.