When The Moon Sings - March 22, 2025

The 1840’s saw immigration of a great number of Irish and German Catholics into the United States, enough that earlier, mainly Protestant immigrants and their descendants took umbrage.  According to one estimate, immigration between 1820 and 1845 never exceeded 100,000 per year.  Between 1845 and 1854, as the potato famine swept Ireland and the German states suffered agricultural and economic woes, the number was three million, many from those countries.

The angry formed a number of anti-immigration secret societies, which coalesced into the Native American party.  The movement struck a chord and emerged into the national scene as the American Party.  The time was ripe – the old Whig Party had collapsed as the result of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and many were looking for a new structure.  The American Party provided that structure.

It was a curious piece of work.  From the old secret society days, members asked about the party or its beliefs answered “I know nothing,” Outsiders took them at their word, though probably not the way the answer was intended.  The American Party became known as the Know Nothings

No political party can maintain itself on the basis of one issue, and adherents soon attempted a broader platform, if not a specific one.  They started as anti-immigrant and remained so, but they addressed other issues as they gained influence.  The Whigs looking for a new home added ideas from their American system as the Know Nothings grew, ideas that had led to the collapse of the Whigs in the first place.

As a party, they neither organized well nor attracted significant political figures.  Millard Fillmore joined, though he ran as a Whig and was reluctant to advertise his membership.  They won 52 House seats in 1854; that had dropped to 6 by 1858 and none thereafter.

At the time, slavery was a polarizing issue and neutrality simply didn’t work.  Many of the members did not support the anti-immigrant stance – rather, they hoped for some middle position between the Democrats who supported slavery and the new emerging Republican Party, which condemned it.  Anti-slavery Know Nothings in the north disappeared into the Republican party as it gained strength; in the south, neutrality on slavery became equally impossible.  By Lincoln’s election, they were finished.

A curious bunch.  When remembered today, they are remembered for their origins – anti-immigrant, most especially anti-Catholic.  Oddly enough, they held no animus toward other religions – anti-Semitism, which would be a natural addition, never surfaced.  They were convinced that Catholics would slavishly vote as Rome dictated and conspire to assume power.  But their primary beliefs centered on the privileges they supposed being born here conferred.

The secret societies that became the party had their greatest influence in the north, most among the lower classes who perceived the immigrants as competition for the jobs available.  It also seems to have been an eastern urban idea.  We think of immigrants coming into the country and hopping the first Conestoga wagon into the west, but historians point out that many stayed in the east, and the ones who did move west did so only after a generation.  As the party grew, several members disavowed the anti-Catholic tone of the originators.

The Know Nothings did start some political careers – notably Sam Houston, Fillmore, and Nathaniel Banks, successful politician and much less successful Civil War general.  At one time or another, their ranks also included Samuel Morse and John Wilkes Booth.  Most migrated to the Republican Party, though I doubt that was the path that Booth took.  William Poole, gang leader in New York and the inspiration for Bill The Butcher in the Gangs of New York movie, also kept his Know Nothing prejudices.

The post-1850s influx of immigrants included many Catholics, and some Civil War units were comprised of immigrants and second-generation men.  After the Civil War, the party had disappeared, but the sentiment remained.  Thomas Nast, perhaps the first great American political cartoonist, speaks to the modern mind in his advocacy of Indians and the ex-slaves.  His fundamental prejudice against Irish immigrants does not.  He portrays them as dumb violent brutes, given to political cronyism and driven by their church.

Sociologists and historians who have looked at the movement say that the motive was fear of displacement, for either themselves or their children.  That sounds right – every parent wants an easier life for their children or failing that, equally easy.  The movement sprang from the people who could or would not harness the dynamism of the country to better themselves or their offspring.  The sociologist Gordon Allport noted that those with the most violent prejudices against immigrants or minorities are those at the same economic level as those others.

Movements like the Know Nothings were common in countries with more history than ours.  Even today, many European countries have growing nativist ideas.  The idea that heritage confers some entitlement never really dies – it was the basis of the aristocratic society, of eugenics, and of the nationalism that led to the catastrophes of the 20th Century, each of which had its day.  It’s a puzzling idea – a thousand years of European aristocracy proved that no amount of heritage can overcome present incompetence or inability to adapt.  For every adept aristocrat, there were multiples that couldn’t handle the responsibility.

The Know Nothings as a party lasted for fifteen years at most, an incredibly short time given the persistence of nativist ideas. Perhaps it would have lasted longer if they had been able to converge on a broader platform.  The ex-Whigs never wholly adopted the anti-immigration stance, and the party stood away from the polarizing issue of the time, slavery.  Their other ideas never really became a party platform or philosophy, though like nativism, they lasted well beyond the life of the party. For example, they incorporated temperance into their beliefs, which led to the Prohibition of the early 20^th Century.

Ultimately, the Know Nothings were not a party of ideas, but a party of opposition to ideas.  They did not adapt – they railed furiously against adaptation.  They gained positions of power in some states and lost them as quickly.  Opposition to ideas has never been a basis for governing.