Anti-Catholicism was widespread in
colonial America, but it played a minor role in American politics until the arrival of large numbers of Irish and German Catholics surged in the 1840s. It then emerged in
nativist attacks. It appeared in New York City politics as early as 1843 under the banner of the
American Republican Party. The movement quickly spread to nearby states using that name or Native American Party or variants of it. They succeeded in a number of local and Congressional elections, notably in 1844 in Philadelphia, where the anti-Catholic orator
Lewis Charles Levin was elected Representative from Pennsylvania's 1st district. In the early 1850s, numerous secret orders grew up, of which the Order of United Americans and the
Order of the Star Spangled Banner came to be the most important. They emerged in New York in the early 1850s as a secret order that quickly spread across the North, reaching non-Catholics, particularly those who were lower middle class or skilled workers. The name
Know Nothing originated in the semi-secret organization of the party. When a member of the party was asked about his activities, he was supposed to say, "I know nothing." Outsiders derisively called the party's members "Know Nothings", and the name stuck. In 1855, the Know Nothings first entered politics under the American Party label.
Underlying issues The immigration of large numbers of Irish and German Catholics to the United States in the period between 1840 and 1860 made religious differences between Catholics and Protestants a political issue. Violence occasionally erupted at the polls. Protestants alleged that Pope
Pius IX had contributed to the failure of the liberal
Revolutions of 1848 in Europe and they also alleged that he was an enemy of liberty and democracy. One Boston minister described Catholicism as "the ally of tyranny, the opponent of material prosperity, the foe of thrift, the enemy of the railroad, the caucus, and the school". These fears encouraged
conspiracy theories regarding papal intentions of subjugating the U.S. through a continuing influx of Catholics controlled by Irish bishops obedient to and personally selected by the Pope. In 1849, an oath-bound
secret society, the
Order of the Star Spangled Banner, was founded by Charles B. Allen in New York City. At its inception, the Order of the Star Spangled Banner only had about 36 members. Fear of Catholic immigration caused some Protestants to become dissatisfied with the
Democratic Party, whose leaders included Catholics of Irish descent in many cities. Activists formed secret groups, coordinating their votes and throwing their weight behind candidates who were sympathetic to their cause: Unlike later
antisemitic nativist groups in the U.S., and despite their zealous
xenophobia and religious bigotry, the Know Nothings did not focus their ire on
Jews or Judaism. Prioritizing a zealous disdain for Irish, German and French Catholic immigrants, the Know Nothing Party "had nothing to say about Jews", according to historian
Hasia Diner, reportedly because its backers believed Jews, unlike Catholics, did not allow "their religious feelings to interfere with their political views." In
New York, the party supported a Jewish candidate for governor,
Daniel Ullman, in 1854.
Lewis Charles Levin was Jewish.
Rise In the spring of 1854, the Know Nothings carried Boston and Salem, Massachusetts, and other New England cities. They swept the state of Massachusetts in the fall 1854 elections, their biggest victory. The
Whig candidate for mayor of Philadelphia, editor
Robert T. Conrad, was soon revealed as a Know Nothing as he promised to crack down on crime, close saloons on Sundays and only appoint native-born Americans to office—he won the election by a landslide. In Washington, D.C., Know Nothing candidate
John T. Towers defeated incumbent Mayor
John Walker Maury, triggering opposition of such a high proportion that the Democrats, Whigs, and
Freesoilers in the capital united as the "Anti-Know-Nothing Party". In New York, where
James Harper had been elected mayor of New York City as an
American Republican almost a decade before, the Know Nothing candidate
Daniel Ullman came in third in a four-way race for governor by gathering 26% of the vote. After the 1854 elections, they exerted a large amount of political influence in Maine, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and California, but historians are unsure about the accuracy of this information due to the secrecy of the party, because all parties were in turmoil and the
anti-slavery and
prohibition issues overlapped with nativism in complex and confusing ways. They helped elect
Stephen Palfrey Webb as
mayor of San Francisco and they also helped elect
J. Neely Johnson as governor of California.
Nathaniel P. Banks was elected to Congress as a Know Nothing candidate, but after a few months he aligned with Republicans. A coalition of Know Nothings, Republicans and other members of Congress
opposed to the Democratic Party elected Banks to the position of
Speaker of the House. The results of the 1854 elections were so favorable to the Know Nothings, up to then an informal movement with no centralized organization, that they formed officially as a political party called the American Party, which attracted many members of the by then nearly defunct Whig party as well as a significant number of Democrats. Membership in the American Party increased dramatically, from 50,000 to an estimated one million plus in a matter of months during that year. The historian Tyler Anbinder concluded: In
San Francisco, a Know Nothing chapter was founded in 1854 to oppose Chinese immigration—members included a judge of the state supreme court, who ruled that no Chinese person could testify as a witness against a white man in court. The Know Nothing party tried passing multiple bills in
Congress that would hinder the acceptance of certain immigrants into the U.S., but the laws were never passed since the party was slowly declining during 1855. In the
Know Nothing Platform, an 1855 anonymous anti-Catholic book, the self-described Know-Nothing author argued for restricting the political rights of Irish immigrants. The book compared the United States to a business, asserting that just as a firm would not admit someone “totally ignorant of its principles,” immigrants should not be entrusted with voting or governance: –
Donelson campaign poster
In the spring of 1855, Know Nothing candidate
Levi Boone was elected mayor of Chicago and barred all immigrants from city jobs. Abraham Lincoln was strongly opposed to the principles of the Know Nothing movement, but did not denounce it publicly because he needed the votes of its membership to form a successful anti-slavery coalition in Illinois. Ohio was the only state where the party gained strength in 1855. Their Ohio success seems to have come from winning over immigrants, especially German-American Lutherans and Scots-Irish Presbyterians, both hostile to Catholicism. In Alabama, Know Nothings were a mix of former Whigs, discontented Democrats and other political outsiders who favored state aid to build more railroads. Virginia attracted national attention in its tempestuous 1855 gubernatorial election. Democrat
Henry Alexander Wise won by convincing state voters that Know Nothings were in bed with Northern abolitionists. With the victory by Wise, the movement began to collapse in the South. Know Nothings scored victories in Northern state elections in 1854, winning control of the legislature in Massachusetts and polling 40% of the vote in Pennsylvania. Although most of the new immigrants lived in the North, resentment and anger against them was national and the American Party initially polled well in the South, attracting the votes of many former southern Whigs. In
Trescott, Maine, a shipowner dubbed his new 700-ton freighter
Know-Nothing. The party was occasionally referred to, contemporaneously, in a slightly pejorative shortening, "Knism".
Leadership and legislation Historian John Mulkern has examined the party's success in sweeping to almost complete control of the Massachusetts legislature after its 1854 landslide victory. He finds the new party was populist and highly democratic, hostile to wealth, elites and to expertise, and deeply suspicious of outsiders, especially Catholics. The new party's voters were concentrated in the rapidly growing industrial towns, where Yankee workers faced direct competition with new Irish immigrants. Whereas the Whig Party was strongest in high income districts, the Know Nothing electorate was strongest in the poor districts. They expelled the traditional upper-class, closed, political leadership, especially the lawyers and merchants. In their stead, they elected working-class men, farmers and a large number of teachers and ministers. Replacing the moneyed elite were men who seldom owned $10,000 in property. Nationally, the new party leadership showed incomes, occupation, and social status that were about average. Few were wealthy, according to detailed historical studies of once-secret membership rosters. Fewer than 10% were unskilled workers who might come in direct competition with Irish laborers. They enlisted few farmers, but on the other hand they included many merchants and factory owners. The party's voters were by no means all native-born Americans, for it won more than a fourth of the German and British Protestants in numerous state elections. It especially appealed to Protestants such as the Lutherans, Dutch Reformed and Presbyterians.
Violence Fearful that Catholics were flooding the polls with non-citizens, local activists threatened to stop them. On August 6, 1855, rioting broke out in
Louisville, Kentucky, during a hotly contested race for the office of governor. Twenty-two were killed and many injured. This "
Bloody Monday" riot was not the only violent riot by Know Nothings against Catholics in 1855. In
Baltimore, the
mayoral elections of 1856, 1857 and 1858 were all marred by violence and well-founded accusations of ballot-rigging by the Know Nothings. In the coastal town of
Ellsworth, Maine, in 1854, Know Nothings were associated with the
tarring and feathering of the
Jesuit priest
Johannes Bapst. They also
burned down a Catholic church in
Bath, Maine.
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. In the South as a whole, the American Party was strongest among former Unionist Whigs. States-rightist Whigs shunned it, enabling the Democrats to win most of the South. Whigs supported the American Party because of their desire to defeat the Democrats, their unionist sentiment, their anti-immigrant attitudes, and their neutrality on the slavery issue. David T. Gleeson notes that many Irish Catholics in the South feared that the arrival of the Know-Nothing movement portended a serious threat. He argues: The southern Irish, who had seen the dangers of Protestant bigotry in Ireland, had the distinct feeling that the Know-Nothings were an American manifestation of that phenomenon. Every migrant, no matter how settled or prosperous, also worried that this virulent strain of nativism threatened his or her hard-earned gains in the South and integration into its society. Immigrants fears were unjustified, however, because the national debate over slavery and its expansion, not nativism or anti-Catholicism, was the major reason for Know-Nothing success in the South. The southerners who supported the Know-Nothings did so, for the most part, because they thought the Democrats who favored the expansion of slavery might break up the Union. In 1855, the American Party challenged the Democrats' dominance. In Alabama, the Know Nothings were a mix of former Whigs, malcontented Democrats and other political misfits; they favored state aid to build more railroads. In the fierce campaign, the Democrats argued that Know Nothings could not protect slavery from Northern abolitionists. The Know Nothing American Party disintegrated soon after losing in 1855. In Virginia, the Know Nothing movement came under sharp attack from both established parties. Democrats published a 12,000-word, point-by-point denunciation of Know Nothingism. The Democrats nominated ex-Whig
Henry A. Wise for governor. He denounced the "lousy, godless, Christless" Know Nothings and instead he advocated an expanded program of internal improvements. In Maryland, growing anti-immigrant sentiment fueled the party's rise. Despite the state's
Catholic roots, by the 1850s about 60 percent of the population was Protestant and open to the Know Nothing's anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant appeal. On August 18, 1853, the party held its first rally in Baltimore with about 5,000 in attendance, calling for secularization of public schools, complete separation of church and state, freedom of speech, and regulating immigration. Historian Michael F. Holt argues that "Know Nothingism originally grew in the South for the same reasons it spread in the North—nativism, anti-Catholicism, and animosity toward unresponsive politicos—not because of conservative Unionism". Holt cites
William B. Campbell, former governor of Tennessee, who wrote in January 1855: "I have been astonished at the widespread feeling in favor of their principles—to wit, Native Americanism and anti-Catholicism—it takes everywhere". Despite this, in Louisiana and Maryland, prominent Know Nothings remained loyal to the Union. In Maryland, American Party's former governor and later senator
Thomas Holliday Hicks, Representative
Henry Winter Davis, and Senator
Anthony Kennedy, along with his brother, former Representative
John Pendleton Kennedy, all supported the Union in a border state. Louisiana Know Nothing congressman
John Edward Bouligny, a Catholic
Creole, was the only member of the Louisiana congressional delegation who refused to resign his seat after the state seceded from the Union.
Louisiana Despite the national American Party's anti-Catholicism, the Know Nothings found strong support in Louisiana, including in largely Catholic New Orleans. The Whig Party in Louisiana had a strong anti-immigrant bent, making the Native American Party the natural home for Louisiana's former Whigs. Louisiana Know Nothings were pro-slavery and anti-immigrant, but, in contrast to the national party, refused to include a religious test for membership. Instead, the Louisiana Know Nothings insisted that "loyalty to a church should not supersede loyalty to the Union."
Decline The party declined rapidly in the North after 1855, in part due to the party's rejection of a clear anti-slavery platform. During the
presidential election of 1856, the party was bitterly divided over slavery. The main faction supported the ticket of presidential nominee
Millard Fillmore and vice presidential nominee
Andrew Jackson Donelson. In Massachusetts, for example, the American Party ran Republican candidate
John C. Frémont as its presidential nominee. Fillmore, a former president, had been a Whig and Donelson was the nephew of Democratic President
Andrew Jackson, so the ticket was designed to appeal to loyalists from both major parties, winning 23% of the popular vote and carrying one state, Maryland, with eight electoral votes. Fillmore did not win enough votes to block Democrat
James Buchanan from the White House. Many were appalled by the Know Nothings. While
Abraham Lincoln never publicly attacked the Know Nothings, whose votes he needed, he expressed his own disgust with the political party in a private letter to
Joshua Speed, written August 24, 1855: Historian
Allan Nevins, writing about the turmoil preceding the American Civil War, states that Millard Fillmore was never a Know Nothing nor a nativist. Fillmore was out of the country when the presidential nomination came and had not been consulted about running. Nevins further states: However, Fillmore had sent a letter for publication in 1855 that explicitly denounced immigrant influence in elections and Fillmore stated that the American Party was the "only hope of forming a truly national party, which shall ignore this constant and distracting agitation of slavery." After the Supreme Court's controversial
Dred Scott v. Sandford ruling in 1857, most of the anti-slavery members of the American Party joined the
Republican Party. The pro-slavery wing of the American Party remained strong on the local and state levels in a few southern states, but by the
1860 election they were no longer a serious national political movement. Most of their remaining members supported the
Constitutional Union Party in 1860. == Electoral results ==