Today the subject of immigration is a hot-button issue and debate on the topic rages all across the political spectrum. Yet this is nothing new in American history. In the mid 19th century, a political party sprang up based on prejudice against immigrants and Catholics: The American Party, popularly known as the Know-Nothings.
Several factors led to the rise of the Know-Nothings. Prejudice against immigrants and Catholics periodically boiled up throughout the early years of the century, mainly along the East Coast. In 1844, Nativists (those born in the United States) battled Irish immigrants in Philadelphia, and 20 people died in the violence. Perhaps not surprisingly, the City of Brotherly Love became the home of the Native American Party, a precursor to the Know-Nothings. In 1852, Nativists met at Trenton, New Jersey, and nominated Daniel Webster for president. He inconveniently died, however, leaving the party with a candidate of much lesser importance, so it didn’t make much of an impact in the election.
Prejudice against Catholics was the other pillar on which Nativists stood. Anti-Catholicism based partly on the fears that the Pope was sitting in Rome issuing secret marching orders to thousands of Catholics to rise up against America. The arrival in the U.S. of the papal nuncio in 1853 sparked widespread rioting. The church’s hostility toward liberalism and revolution in Europe also fed anti-Catholic basis in America, a country recently born out of its own revolution.
Secret Nativist societies with names like the Order of the Star-Spangled Banner and espousing the time-honored “us against them” philosophy sprang up all over the country. Since these groups were ostensibly “secret,” their members were supposed to answer “I don’t know” or “I Know Nothing” to any questions from people not associated with the group. Thus came the catchall term “Know-Nothings” to describe them.
The final factor that led to the rise of the Know-Nothings was the collapse of the Whig Party. Thrown into disarray after a disastrous defeat in the 1852 presidential election, the Whigs, broken apart by dissension over the slavery issue, drifted into know-nothingism because the Democratic Party was associated with immigrants based on the party’s presence in the cities.
All of these groups coalesced into the Know-Nothing Party. The party’s idealized image of an American was a young man in a cocked hat with a noble Roman nose and finely chiseled features. And they called him “Citizen Know Nothing – Uncle Sam’s Youngest Son,” and they sold thousands of lithographs with his likeness.
The party’s political heyday came in 1854. In the spring, they gained control of numerous cities in New England, including Boston. Then in November, they won control of the Massachusetts legislature. The group scored other important victories, electing the mayors of Philadelphia, Washington D.C., and San Francisco, and wielding political influence in states such as Ohio and Alabama.
Although the Know-Nothings had many beliefs, two of the most popular were requiring all political candidates to be born in the U.S, and forbidding immigrants who had lived in the country less than 25 years from becoming citizens.
However, as popular as the Know-Nothing movement was, some people decried its horrible xenophobia and dared to speak out against it. In 1855, Abraham Lincoln said that under the Know-Nothings, the Declaration of Independence would have to be changed to read that all men were created equal except “negroes, foreigners, and Catholics.” Lincoln added that if that happened he preferred to live in a place where despotism was out in the open, like Russia, rather than live in such an America.
By the presidential election of 1856, there was another new party on the American political map: the anti-slavery Republican Party. This drew anti-slavery members away from the Know-Nothings – now officially wrapping themselves in the flag as the American Party – anyway, but then the party compounded the situation by meekly calling for popular sovereignty for the territories not yet states. Waves of anti-slavery members left the party, particularly in New England, where the party was strongest. Nevertheless, the Know-Nothings bravely soldiered on, and nominated former Whig Millard Fillmore for president.
This was probably a mistake, since Fillmore did not endorse the party’s position on either immigration or Catholicism. Not surprisingly in the 1856 presidential election, Fillmore received a crushing blow and won only Maryland and its eight electoral votes.
By 1860, slavery dominated American politics, and the Know-Nothing movement became an after-thought. The party dissolved soon after. However, immigration has never receded as an issue in American politics from that day to this.
Sources
1. history1800s.about.com/od/immigration/a/knownothing01.html
2. “A History of Presidential Elections,” by Eugene H. Roseboom
3. “American Political Parties”, by Wilfred E. Binkley