The Jesuits in the United States constitute the American branch of the Society of Jesus and are organized into four geographic provinces — East, Central and Southern, Midwest and West — each of which is headed by a provincial superior. The order is known, historically, for its missions to the Native Americans in the early 17th century, for owning and participating in the Atlantic slave trade, and, contemporarily, for its network of colleges and universities across the country.

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Most of the Jesuit missions to North America were located in today's Canada, but they explored and mapped much of the west.^[1][2] French missionaries Père Marquette and Louis Jolliet were the first Europeans to explore and chart the northern portion of the Mississippi River, as far as the Illinois River.^[3]

Peter De Smet was a Belgian Jesuit active in missionary work among the Plains Indians in the mid-19th century. His extensive travels as a missionary were said to total 180,000 miles. He was known as the "Friend of Sitting Bull" because he persuaded the Sioux war chief to participate in negotiations with the United States government for the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie.

It was a crime for Jesuits to enter Colonial Massachusetts, but none were known to be present there. There were about two dozen Jesuits in the Thirteen Colonies in 1760, and they kept a low profile.^[4]

Jesuit John Carroll (1735–1815), who was technically unaffiliated due to the Suppression of the Society of Jesus, became the first Catholic bishop in the young republic, which prevented him from officially rejoining order when it was reestablished in 1814. He founded Georgetown College in 1789, and it remains a pre-eminent Jesuit school.^[5]

Stephen Larigaudelle Dubuisson, S.J. (1786–1864) was sent by the Jesuits from France to the United States in 1816–1826. He served in several parishes and colleges in the Maryland-Pennsylvania area, the center of Catholicism in the new nation. He was not a success as the head of Georgetown College, but otherwise was highly energetic and generally successful. In 1826 he was recalled to Rome, where he became effectively in charge of all Jesuits in the United States, as the advisor on American affairs to the head of the Society. He handled fund-raising, appointments, and setting general policies.^[6]

The American Jesuits were restored in 1804, and intellectually reflected the English Enlightenment, emphasizing reasonableness of faith, the right of individual conscience, private devotion, and active participation in the political life of the Republic. In Europe, by contract, the Jesuits were restored in 1814, as part of the Bourbon reaction against the French Revolution. The restored order "resisted intellectual innovation, distrusted Republicanism, championed papal primacy, clung to the throne/altar alliance, and promoted a Baroque piety that was 'warm, emotional, colorful and ardent.'"^[7] The European and American models were incompatible, and a flood of European Jesuits to America overwhelmed the new nation and established its conservative policies. In 1864, they wholeheartedly adopted the "Syllabus of Errors", an encyclical from Pope Pius IX that named 80 specific modern liberal ideas that Catholics were forbidden to teach or believe in.^[8]

Prior to the Civil War, Jesuit plantations in the United States owned African-American slaves and participated in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. In 1838, to raise funds Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. sold 272 African American slaves to plantation owners in Louisiana for the current-day equivalent of three million dollars. Jesuits also owned slaves in many other states. In 2017, the Jesuits apologized for their involvement and announced measures to recognize and atone for the university's participation in the slave trade.^[9][10] Following the Civil War, the Jesuits established operations in the African-American community inviting them community to worship at their St. Ignatius Church in Baltimore in the 1850s and starting Black parishes and schools in Florida (including St. Peter Claver Catholic School in Tampa) some decades later. The congregation would later shift away from Black ministry in response to various factors, including racist opposition and threats of violence.^[11]

The Jesuits were quite successful in establishing staffing, funding and enrolling students for a growing network of secondary and collegiate schools. As the Irish and German ethnic middle classes became better established, they sent their boys off to Jesuit schools. The main goals of the Jesuit education were to inculcate piety, loyalty to the church, and strict adherence to the rules. The chief intellectual pursuit was Thomistic philosophy. Catholic students were not allowed to attend lectures given by non-Catholics.^[12] As late as the 1950s, Catholic writers such as John Tracy Ellis were bemoaning the intellectual weakness of the Catholic community.^[13]

The late 19th century, the reform element emerged among Catholics, led by Archbishop John Ireland, that was strongly opposed by conservative elements led by the Jesuits. One battle involved creation of the Catholic University of America in Washington, which would compete directly with the nearby Jesuit school Georgetown University. The dispute lasted for decades, and weakened both schools.^[14]