Dunno in individual US states
Nativist riots in Philadelphia in 1844, in which nativists (center) battle regular U.S. Army troops (left)
Let our strength be the law of truth, for powerlessness proves useless.
Wisdom of Solomon 2:11
Wisdom of Solomon 2:11
History, which few people know. In 1849, nativist Charles B. Allen, an opponent of immigration, founded the oath-bound secret society "The Order of the Star-Spangled Banner" in New York City. Initially, the order had only about 36 members, but all were nativist. Fear of Catholic immigration led some Protestants to resent the Democratic Party, whose leaders in many cities included Catholics of Irish descent. Activists in the order formed secret groups and organized support for candidates who shared their views.
Unlike later anti-Semitic nativist groups in the United States, despite all their xenophobia and religious fanaticism, the Know-Nothings were quite tolerant of Jews and Judaism. While prioritizing zealous contempt for Irish, German, and French Catholic immigrants, the Know-Nothing party, according to American historian Hasia Diner, "had nothing to say about Jews," believing that Jews, unlike Catholics, did not allow "their religious feelings to interfere with their political views." Therefore, in New York City, the Know-Nothings supported the Jewish candidate Daniel Ullman for governor in 1854.
In the spring of 1854, the Know Nothings won victories in Boston and Salem, Massachusetts, as well as other New England towns. In the fall elections of 1854, they achieved their largest victory in Massachusetts. The Whig candidate for mayor of Philadelphia, newspaper editor Robert T. Conrad, was soon exposed as a Know Nothing because he promised to fight crime, close saloons on Sundays, and appoint only Native Americans to all positions. He won a landslide victory.
In Washington, D.C., Know-Nothing Party candidate John T. Towers defeated incumbent Mayor John Walker Maury, sparking such a fierce backlash that Democrats and Whigs in the capital united to form the "Anti-Know-Nothing Party." In New York City, where James Harper had been elected mayor of New York City as a Republican candidate nearly a decade earlier, Know-Nothing Party candidate Daniel Ullman finished third in a four-way race for governor, garnering 26% of the vote.
After the 1854 elections, the Know-Nothings gained significant political influence in Maine, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and California, but historians doubt the veracity of this information due to the closed nature of the party. All this took place against the backdrop of the complex struggles against slavery and for Prohibition, a struggle that intersected intricately with nationalism. The Know-Nothings also managed to secure their candidates for the US Congress, with one of them taking the important post of Speaker of the House of Representatives.
The results of the 1854 elections were so favorable to the Know-Nothings, who had previously been an informal movement without a centralized organization, that they formally formed into a political party called the American Party, which attracted many members of the then-nearly defunct Whig Party, as well as a significant number of Democrats. Within a few months that year, the American Party's membership skyrocketed from 50,000 to approximately over a million.
However, the Know-Nothings protested not only against Catholic immigrants. In 1854, a chapter of the Know-Nothing Party was founded in San Francisco to oppose Chinese immigration. Its members included a state Supreme Court justice who ruled that no Chinese could testify against a white person in court. The Know-Nothing Party attempted to pass several bills in Congress that would have barred certain immigrants from entering the United States, but the laws never passed, as the party's popularity had already begun to wane by 1855.
In the spring of 1855, Know-Nothing candidate Levi Boone was elected mayor of Chicago and banned all immigrants from working in the city. Abraham Lincoln was categorically opposed to the principles of the Know-Nothing movement, but he did not publicly condemn it because he needed its members' votes to form a successful anti-slavery coalition in Illinois. Ohio, therefore, was the only state where the party was most successful in 1855. The Know-Nothings' success in Ohio was apparently due to their ability to attract other immigrants, particularly German-American Lutherans and Scots-Irish Presbyterians, who were hostile to Catholic immigrants.
In Alabama, the Know-Nothings were a motley crew of political outsiders who advocated for government assistance in railroad construction. Virginia attracted national attention with its contentious gubernatorial election of 1855. Democrat Henry Alexander Wise won, convincing voters that the Know-Nothings were aligned with northern abolitionists. After Wise's victory, the Know-Nothing movement in the South began to disintegrate.
In 1854, the Know Nothings won a landslide victory in the northern states, taking control of the Massachusetts legislature and 40% of the vote in Pennsylvania. The party's name gained widespread, albeit short-lived, popularity: "Know Nothing" candies, tea, and toothpicks appeared, as did stagecoaches and even ships bearing the name. For example, in Trescott, Maine, one shipowner named his new 700-ton cargo ship "Know-Nothing." At the time, the party was sometimes referred to by the slightly derogatory acronym "Knism," as the word is an abbreviation of the medical term for the pleasure derived from tickling.
American historian John Mulkern, studying the Know-Nothing Party, concluded that it was populist and highly democratic, hostile to wealth and the elite, and deeply suspicious of outsiders, especially Catholics. The new party's voters were concentrated in rapidly growing industrial cities, where Yankee workers faced direct competition from new Irish immigrants. While the Whig Party was strongest in high-income counties, the Know Nothing electorate was strongest in poor counties. They ousted the traditional, closed political leadership of the upper class, especially lawyers and merchants. In their place, workers, farmers, and a large number of teachers were elected. The moneyed elite was replaced by people who rarely owned property worth more than $10,000.
Nationally, the new party leadership displayed roughly average incomes, occupations, and social status. According to detailed historical studies of once-secret party membership lists, only a handful were wealthy. Less than 10% were unskilled laborers who could compete directly with Irish workers. Few of these were farmers, but many were merchants and factory owners. The party's voters were far from limited to Native Americans: in numerous state elections, it received the support of more than a quarter of German and British Protestants. The party particularly attracted Protestants such as Lutherans, Dutch Reformed Christians, and Presbyterians.
However, in their political activities, the Know-Nothings proved themselves to be highly prone to violence and organizing mass unrest. For example, fearing that Catholics would flood the polling stations with non-citizens, local activists threatened to stop them. On August 6, 1855, riots broke out in Louisville, Kentucky, during a fierce gubernatorial race. Twenty-two people were killed, and many more were injured. This "Bloody Monday" was not the only Know-Nothing protest against Catholics in 1855.
In Baltimore, the mayoral elections of 1856, 1857, and 1858 were also marked by violence and credible accusations of voter fraud by Know-Nothings. In the coastal town of Ellsworth, Maine, Know-Nothings were involved in tarring and feathering Jesuit priest Johannes Bapst in 1854. They also burned down a Catholic church in Bath, Maine.
But the most aggressive and innovative anti-immigrant legislation was passed in Massachusetts, where the new party controlled all but three of the 400 seats in the state assembly, with only 35 members having legislative experience. Historian Stephen Taylor noted that, in addition to the nativist legislation passed at headquarters, the Know-Nothing Party actively opposed slavery, supported women's rights, industrial regulation, and supported measures aimed at improving the situation of workers.
A law was passed regulating railroads, insurance companies, and public utilities. Funds were allocated for free textbooks for public schools, and appropriations for local libraries and a school for the blind were increased. Combating social vices that were causing divisions in society was declared a priority. The Legislature established the state's first reform school for juvenile offenders, while also attempting to prevent the import of allegedly subversive government documents and scientific books from Europe.
The legal status of wives was enhanced, granting them greater property rights and rights in divorce courts. Harsh penalties were introduced for speakeasies, gambling houses, and brothels. A prohibition law was passed, mandating such harsh penalties—for example, six months in prison for selling a single glass of beer—that juries refused to convict.
Many of the reforms were quite costly: government spending increased by 45%, in addition to a 50% annual tax hike for cities and towns. This extravagance angered taxpayers, and few Know-Nothings were subsequently re-elected. These successes in passing reform legislation came at the expense of the party's traditional nativist priorities, leading some national Know-Nothing leaders, such as Samuel Morse, to question the party's goals in Massachusetts.
The Massachusetts Know-Nothings actively opposed the granting of civil rights to Irish Catholic immigrants. They succeeded in having state courts lose their authority to hear citizenship applications, and in introducing mandatory daily reading of the Protestant Bible in public schools (which, the nativists believed, would change Catholic children).
The governor disbanded the Irish militias and replaced Irish officials with Protestants. However, the clueless legislators failed to secure the two-thirds majority needed to pass an amendment to the state constitution restricting voting rights and office to men who had been residents of Massachusetts for at least 21 years.
They then urged the US Congress to raise the naturalization requirement from five to 21, but Congress never acted on it. The most dramatic move by the state legislature was to appoint an investigative committee to investigate widespread sexual immorality in Catholic convents. The press hyped the story, especially when it was revealed that a leading reformer had used committee funds to pay for a prostitute. The legislature disbanded the committee, expelled the reformer from the party, and the investigation itself became a laughingstock.
In New Hampshire, the Know-Nothings won 51% of the vote in 1855, including 94% of the Free Soilers who opposed slavery and 79% of the Whigs, plus 15% of the Democrats and 24% of those who abstained in the previous gubernatorial election the year before. With complete control of the legislature, the Know-Nothings passed their entire agenda. They extended the citizenship waiting period to slow the growth of Irish influence and reformed the state courts. They expanded the number of banks and expanded their powers, strengthened corporations, and rejected a proposed 10-hour workday. They reformed the tax system, increased state spending on public schools, established a system of building high schools, banned the sale of alcohol, and condemned the expansion of slavery into the western territories.
In the fall elections of 1855, the Know-Nothings again won in New Hampshire, defeating the Democrats and the small new Republican Party. When the Know-Nothings' American Party dissolved in 1856 and merged with the Republicans, New Hampshire became a two-party state, with Republicans outselling Democrats.
The Know Nothings also dominated Rhode Island politics, where William W. Hoppin served as governor in 1855, and five out of every seven votes went to the party that dominated the Rhode Island legislature. Local newspapers such as The Providence Journal stoked anti-Irish and anti-Catholic sentiment.
Historian David T. Gleeson notes that many Irish Catholics in the South feared the emergence of the Know-Nothing movement posed a serious threat. They had firsthand experience with the dangers of Protestant fanaticism in Ireland, and they had a strong feeling that the Know-Nothings were an American manifestation of this phenomenon. Every immigrant, no matter how well-established and successful, worried that this aggressive nationalism threatened their hard-won gains in the South and their integration into local society.
However, the immigrants' fears were unfounded, as the primary reason for the Know-Nothing Party's success in the South was the national debate over slavery and its expansion, not nationalism or anti-Catholic sentiment. Southerners who supported the Know-Nothings did so primarily because they believed that Democrats, who advocated the expansion of slavery, could undermine the Union.
In 1855, the American Party challenged the Democratic dominance. But in Alabama, the Know-Nothings suffered a defeat. In a bitter campaign, the Democrats managed to convince voters that the Know-Nothings could not defend slavery against Northern abolitionists, so few voted for them. In Virginia, the movement was harshly criticized by both official parties. Democrats published a 12,000-word document denouncing the Know-Nothings point by point. The Democrats nominated ex-Whig Henry A. Wise for governor. He denounced the "lousy, godless, Christless" Know-Nothings and instead advocated an expanded program of domestic reform.
In Maryland, rising anti-immigrant sentiment fueled the party's rise. Despite the state's Catholic roots, by the 1850s, approximately 60% of the population was Protestant and favorably disposed toward the Know-Nothings' anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant slogans. On August 18, 1853, the party held its first rally in Baltimore, attended by approximately 5000 people. They called for the secularization of public schools, complete separation of church and state, freedom of speech, and the regulation of immigration. The first Know-Nothing candidate elected to office in Baltimore was Mayor Samuel Hinks in 1855. The following year, ethnic and religious conflicts led to riots during municipal and federal elections in Maryland, as gangs affiliated with the Know-Nothings clashed with those supporting the Democrats.
The Know Nothings gained widespread support in Louisiana, including in predominantly Catholic New Orleans. The Whig Party in Louisiana held a staunch anti-immigrant stance, making the Native American Party a natural alternative for the former Louisiana Whigs. The Know Nothings of Louisiana were pro-slavery but opposed immigrants, insisting that "loyalty to the Church should not replace loyalty to the Union." Similarly, the broader Know Nothing movement also looked to Louisiana Catholics, and in particular the Creole elite, who supported those opposed to papal authority in public affairs.
At the same time, many Americans were simply horrified by the activities of the Know-Nothings. Although Abraham Lincoln never publicly criticized them, he expressed his disgust with this political party in a personal letter to Joshua Speed, written on August 24, 1855:
I think we're rapidly declining as a nation. We started by proclaiming, "All men are created equal." Now we practically read that as, "All men are created equal except Negroes." When the Know-Nothings come to power, it will read, "All men are created equal except Negroes, foreigners, and Catholics." When it comes down to it, I'd prefer to emigrate to a country that doesn't pretend to love freedom—for example, to Russia, where despotism can be experienced in its purest form...
In 1857, the pro-slavery Dred Scott v. Sandford decision of the United States Supreme Court further galvanized the anti-slavery movement in the North, leading many former Know-Nothings to join the Republican Party. This effectively spelled the end of their own American Party, which ultimately disappeared during the American Civil War.
To be continued ...
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