Know Nothing

The American Party, known as the Native American Party before 1855 and colloquially referred to as the Know Nothing, Know-Nothings, or the Know Nothing Party, was an Old Stock nativist political movement in the United States from the 1840s through the 1850s. Members of the movement were required to say "I know nothing" whenever they were asked about its specifics by outsiders, providing the group with its colloquial name. Supporters of the Know Nothing movement believed that an alleged "Romanist" conspiracy to subvert civil and religious liberty in the U.S. was being hatched by Catholics. Therefore, they sought to politically organize native-born Protestants in defense of their traditional religious and political values. The Know Nothing movement is remembered for this theme because Protestants feared that Catholic priests and bishops would control a large bloc of voters. In most places, the ideology and influence of the Know Nothing movement lasted only one or two years before it disintegrated due to weak and inexperienced local leaders, a lack of publicly proclaimed national leaders, and a deep split over the issue of slavery. In parts of the South, the party did not emphasize anti-Catholicism as frequently as it emphasized it in the North and it stressed a neutral position on slavery, but it became the main alternative to the dominant Democratic Party.…

The American Party, known as the Native American Party before 1855 and colloquially referred to as the Know Nothing, Know-Nothings, or the Know Nothing Party, was an Old Stock nativist political movement in the United States from the 1840s through the 1850s. Members of the movement were required to say "I know nothing" whenever they were asked about its specifics by outsiders, providing the group with its colloquial name. Supporters of the Know Nothing movement believed that an alleged "Romanist" conspiracy to subvert civil and religious liberty in the U.S. was being hatched by Catholics. Therefore, they sought to politically organize native-born Protestants in defense of their traditional religious and political values. The Know Nothing movement is remembered for this theme because Protestants feared that Catholic priests and bishops would control a large bloc of voters. In most places, the ideology and influence of the Know Nothing movement lasted only one or two years before it disintegrated due to weak and inexperienced local leaders, a lack of publicly proclaimed national leaders, and a deep split over the issue of slavery. In parts of the South, the party did not emphasize anti-Catholicism as frequently as it emphasized it in the North and it stressed a neutral position on slavery, but it became the main alternative to the dominant Democratic Party. The Know Nothings supplemented their xenophobic nativist views with populist appeals. At the state level, the party was, in some cases, progressive in its stances on "issues of labor rights and the need for more government spending" and furnished "support for an expansion of the rights of women, the regulation of industry, and support of measures which were designed to improve the status of working people". It was a forerunner of the temperance movement in the U.S. The Know Nothing movement briefly emerged as a major political party in the form of the American Party. The collapse of the Whig Party after the passage of the Kansas–Nebraska Act left an opening for the emergence of a new major political party in opposition to the Democratic Party. The Know Nothing movement managed to elect congressman Nathaniel P. Banks of Massachusetts and several other individuals into office in the 1854 elections, and it subsequently coalesced into a new political party which was known as the American Party. Particularly in the South, the American Party served as a vehicle for politicians who opposed the Democrats. Many of the American Party's members and supporters also hoped that it would stake out a middle ground between the pro-slavery positions of Democratic politicians and the radical anti-slavery positions of the rapidly emerging Republican Party. The American Party nominated former president Millard Fillmore in the 1856 presidential election, but he kept quiet about his membership in it and he personally refrained from supporting the Know Nothing movement's activities and ideology. Fillmore received 21.5% of the popular vote in the 1856 presidential election, finishing behind the Democratic and Republican nominees. Henry Winter Davis, an active Know-Nothing, was elected on the American Party ticket to Congress from Maryland. He told Congress that "un-American" Irish Catholic immigrants were to blame for the recent election of Democrat James Buchanan as president, stating: The recent election has developed in an aggravated form every evil against which the American party protested. Foreign allies have decided the government of the country – men naturalized in thousands on the eve of the election. Again in the fierce struggle for supremacy, men have forgotten the ban which the Republic puts on the intrusion of religious influence on the political arena. These influences have brought vast multitudes of foreign-born citizens to the polls, ignorant of American interests, without American feelings, influenced by foreign sympathies, to vote on American affairs; and those votes have, in point of fact, accomplished the present result. The party entered a period of rapid decline after Fillmore's loss. In 1857 the Dred Scott v. Sandford pro-slavery decision of the U.S. Supreme Court further galvanized opposition to slavery in the North, causing many former Know Nothings to join the Republicans. The remnants of the American Party largely joined the Constitutional Union Party in 1860 and they disappeared during the American Civil War. ===New England=== ====Massachusetts==== The most aggressive and innovative legislation came out of Massachusetts, where the new party controlled all but three of the 400 seats—only 35 had any previous legislative experience. The Massachusetts legislature in 1855 passed a series of reforms that "burst the dam against change erected by party politics, and released a flood of reforms". The period from 1854 to 1857 saw among Massachusetts Know Nothings a decline in the traditional nativist wing of the party and the rise of the group of abolitionists and reformers, including former Massachusetts Senate President Henry Wilson, looking to redirect the focus of the party. Historian Stephen Taylor says that in addition to nativist legislation, "the party also distinguished itself by its opposition to slavery, support for an expansion of the rights of women, regulation of industry, and support of measures designed to improve the status of working people". It passed legislation to regulate railroads, insurance companies and public utilities. It funded free textbooks for the public schools and raised the appropriations for local libraries and for the school for the blind. Purification of Massachusetts against divisive social evils was a high priority. The legislature set up the state's first reform school for juvenile delinquents while trying to block the importation of supposedly subversive government documents and academic books from Europe. It upgraded the legal status of wives, giving them more property rights and more rights in divorce courts. It passed harsh penalties on speakeasies, gambling houses and bordellos. It passed prohibition legislation with penalties that were so stiff—such as six months in prison for serving one glass of beer—that juries refused to convict defendants. Many of the reforms were quite expensive; state spending rose 45% on top of a 50% hike in annual taxes on cities and towns. This extravagance angered the taxpayers, and few Know Nothings were reelected. These successes at enacting reform legislation came at the expense of the traditional nativist priorities of the party, causing some national Know Nothing leaders, like Samuel Morse, to question the Massachusetts party's aims. The Massachusetts Know Nothings did advance attacks on the civil rights of Irish Catholic immigrants. After this, state courts lost the power to process applications for citizenship and public schools had to require compulsory daily reading of the Protestant Bible (which the nativists were sure would transform the Catholic children). The governor disbanded the Irish militias and replaced Irish holding state jobs with Protestants. However, Know Nothing lawmakers failed to reach the two-thirds majority needed to pass a state constitutional amendment to restrict voting and office holding to men who had resided in Massachusetts for at least 21 years. The legislature then called on Congress to raise the requirement for naturalization from five years to 21 years, but Congress never acted. The most dramatic move by the Know Nothing legislature was to appoint an investigating committee designed to prove widespread sexual immorality underway in Catholic convents. The press had a field day following the story, especially when it was discovered that the key reformer was using committee funds to pay for a prostitute. The legislature shut down its committee, ejected the reformer, and saw its investigation become a laughing stock. ====New Hampshire and Rhode Island==== The Know Nothings scored a landslide in New Hampshire in 1855. They won 51% of the vote, including 94% of the anti-slavery Free Soilers, and 79% of the Whigs, plus 15% of Democrats and 24% of those who abstained in the previous election for governor the year before. In full control of the legislature, the Know Nothings enacted their entire agenda. According to Lex Renda, they battled traditionalism and promoted rapid modernization. They extended the waiting period for citizenship to slow down the growth of Irish power; they reformed the state courts. They expanded the number and power of banks; they strengthened corporations; they defeated a proposed 10-hour workday law. They reformed the tax system, increased state spending on public schools, set up a system to build high schools, prohibited the sale of liquor, and denounced the expansion of slavery in the western territories. The Whigs and Free Soil parties both collapsed in New Hampshire in 1854–55. In the 1855 fall elections the Know Nothings again swept New Hampshire against the Democrats and the small new Republican party. When the Know Nothing "American Party" collapsed in 1856 and merged with the Republicans, New Hampshire now had a two party system with the Republicans edging out the Democrats. The Know Nothings also dominated politics in Rhode Island, where in 1855 William W. Hoppin held the governorship and five out of every seven votes went to the party, which dominated the Rhode Island legislature. Local newspapers such as The Providence Journal fueled anti-Irish and anti-Catholic sentiment. ==References== ===Notes=== ===Citations=== ===Bibliography=== Alsan, Marcella, Katherine Eriksson, and Gregory Niemesh. "Understanding the Success of the Know-nothing Party" (No. w28078. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2020) statistical analysis of anti-Irish vote in Massachuesetts online. Anbinder, Tyler. Nativism and Slavery: The Northern Know Nothings and the politics of the 1850s (1992). online at ACLS History e-Book;, the standard scholarly study' summary Anbinder, Tyler. "Nativism and prejudice against immigrants," in A companion to American immigration, ed. by Reed Ueda (2006) pp. 177–201 online excerpt Baker, Jean H. (1977), Ambivalent Americans: The Know-Nothing Party in Maryland, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins. Baum, Dale. "Know-Nothingism and the Republican Majority in Massachusetts: The Political Realignment of the 1850s." Journal of American History 64 (1977–78): 959–86. in JSTOR Baum, Dale. The Civil War Party System: The Case of Massachusetts, 1848–1876 (1984) Bennett, David H. The Party of Fear: From Nativist Movements to the New Right in American History (1988) online Billington, Ray A. The Protestant Crusade, 1800–1860: A Study of the Origins of American Nativism (1938), standard scholarly survey; online Bladek, John David. "'Virginia Is Middle Ground': the Know Nothing Party and the Virginia Gubernatorial Election of 1855." Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 1998 106(1): 35–70. in JSTOR Boissoneault, Lorraine. "How the 19th-Century Know Nothing Party Reshaped American Politics." Smithsonian Magazine (2017), heavily illustrated with editorial cartoons. online Carriere, Marius. "Political Leadership of the Louisiana Know-Nothing Party." Louisiana History (1980): 183–95. online Cheathem, Mark R. "'I Shall Persevere in the Cause of Truth': Andrew Jackson Donelson and the Election of 1856". Tennessee Historical Quarterly 2003 62(3): 218–37. Donelson was Andrew Jackson's nephew and K–N nominee for Vice President Dash, Mark. "New Light on the Dark Lantern: the Initiation Rites and Ceremonies of a Know-Nothing Lodge in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania" Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 2003 127(1): 89–100. Desmond, Humphrey J. The Know-Nothing Party (1905) online Farrell, Robert. "No Foreign Despots on Southern Soil: The Know-Nothing Party in Alabama, 1850–1857." Alabama Review 72.2 (2019): 99–122. extract Farrelly, Maura Jane. Anti-Catholicism in America, 1620–1860 (Cambridge University Press, 2017) . Gienapp, William E. "Nativism and the Creation of a Republican Majority in the North before the Civil War," Journal of American History, Vol. 72, No. 3 (Dec., 1985), pp. 529–59 in JSTOR Gienapp, William E. The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852–1856 (1978), detailed statistical study, state-by-state Gillespie, J. David. Challengers To Duopoly : Why Third Parties Matter in American Two-Party Politics. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 2012. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 4 Dec. 2014. Gleeson, David T. The Irish in the South, 1815–1877 Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. Haebler, Peter. "Nativist Riots in Manchester: An Episode of Know-Nothingism in New Hampshire." Historical New Hampshire 39 (1985): 121–37. Holt, Michael F. The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party (1999) Holt, Michael F. Political Parties and American Political Development: From the Age of Jackson to the Age of Lincoln (1992) Holt, Michael F. "The Antimasonic and Know Nothing Parties", in Arthur Schlesinger Jr., ed., History of United States Political Parties (1973), I, 575–620. Hurt, Payton. "The Rise and Fall of the 'Know Nothings' in California," California Historical Society Quarterly 9 (March and June 1930). Kadir, Djelal. "Agnotology and the Know-Nothing Party: Then and Now." Review of International American Studies 10.1 (2017): 117–31. online Lee, Erika. America for Americans: A history of xenophobia in the United States (Basic Books, 2019) online. Levine, Bruce. "Conservatism, Nativism, and Slavery: Thomas R. Whitney and the Origins of the Know-nothing Party" Journal of American History 2001 88(2): 455–88. in JSTOR McGreevey, John T. Catholicism and American Freedom: A History (W. W. Norton, 2003) Maizlish, Stephen E. "The Meaning of Nativism and the Crisis of the Union: The Know-Nothing Movement in the Antebellum North." in William Gienapp, ed. Essays on American Antebellum Politics, 1840–1860 (1982) pp. 166–98 Melton, Tracy Matthew. Hanging Henry Gambrill: The Violent Career of Baltimore's Plug Uglies, 1854–1860. Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society (2005). Mulkern, John R. The Know-Nothing Party in Massachusetts: The Rise and Fall of a People's Movement. Boston: Northeastern UP, 1990. excerpt Nevins, Allan. Ordeal of the Union: A House Dividing, 1852–1857 (1947), overall political survey of era online Overdyke, W. Darrell. The Know-Nothing Party in the South (1950) Ramet, Sabrina P., and Christine M. Hassenstab. "The Know Nothing Party: Three Theories about its Rise and Demise." Politics and Religion 6.3 (2013): 570–95. Parmet, Robert D. "Connecticut's Know-Nothings: A Profile," Connecticut Historical Society Bulletin (1966), 31 #3, pp. 84–90 Rice, Philip Morrison. "The Know-Nothing Party in Virginia, 1854–1856." Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (1947): 61–75. in JSTOR Roseboom, Eugene H. "Salmon P. Chase and the Know Nothings." Mississippi Valley Historical Review 25.3 (1938): 335–50. online Scisco, Louis Dow. Political Nativism in New York State (1901) full text online, pp. 84–202 Taylor, Steven. "Progressive Nativism: The Know-Nothing Party in Massachusetts" Historical Journal of Massachusetts (2000) 28#2 online Tuska, Benjamin. "Know-Nothingism in Baltimore 1854-1860." Catholic Historical Review 11.2 (1925): 217–51. online Voss-Hubbard, Mark. Beyond Party: Cultures of Antipartisanship in Northern Politics before the Civil War (2002) Wilentz, Sean. The Rise of American Democracy. (2005); Busey, Samuel Clagett (1856). Immigration: Its Evils and Consequences. Carroll, Anna Ella (1856). The Great American Battle: Or, The Contest Between Christianity and Political Romanism. Fillmore, Millard; Frank H. Severance (ed.)(1907). Millard Fillmore Papers One of Them. The Wide-Awake Gift: A Know Nothing Token for 1855. New York: J.C. Derby, 1855. Bond, Thomas E. "The 'Know Nothings , from The Wide-Awake Gift: A Know Nothing Token for 1855. New York: J. C. Derby, 1855; pp. 54–63.

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