THE THEORIES

Our main theoretical question is informed by three alternative or complementary approaches, each of which can account for the rise of the KNP, in whole or in part. They are: moral panic, persistent cultural (cyclical) patterns, and revitalization theory. We shall make the argument that all three theories may contribute to an explanation of the KNP, but that each theory has different strengths.

THE KNOW NOTHING PARTY AS A REFLECTION OF A MORAL PANIC

In 1790, there were only 35,000 Catholics in the United States, out of a total population of nearly four million. Most of the immigrants in pre-Revolutionary times were Presbyterians, even among those from Ireland. After 1815, immigration rose steadily until 1847, when, two years into the seven-year long Irish potato famine, the rate of immigration began to accelerate. Already in 1840, there were 663,000 Catholics living in the United States — roughly twice the number in 1830 — and by 1845, the number of Catholics would reach 1,110,000 out of a total population of 19.7 million (Hueston Reference Hueston1976, 34). Some 80,000 immigrants arrived in America that year alone. Many of the new arrivals in the 1840s were Catholics, bringing the Catholic population of the United States to 1.5 million by 1850 (Hueston Reference Hueston1976, 131; “Early Irish Immigration” 1901, 99; Haynes Reference Haynes1897, 70). The main ports of entry were New York, New Orleans, and Boston and, among the immigrants, Irish and Germans predominated. Almost all of the Irish arriving in these years were Catholics. After 1851, German immigration exceeded Irish, but, while the Germans spread into small towns and rural communities as far west as Texas and Minnesota, the Irish concentrated in the larger cities in the northeast, especially New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cincinnati, and Cleveland, although there were also sizeable Irish populations in Galveston, San Antonio, and Houston in the 1850s (Wooster Reference Wooster1962, 210). In 1841, almost all of the Catholic priests serving Philadelphia's 120,000 Catholics were foreign-born, as were many of the laity. Some 90% of Catholic priests in the state of New York (in 1845) were foreign-born; 60% of them had been born in Ireland (Hueston Reference Hueston1976, 48, 50). In 1850, about two-thirds of New York's Catholics were Irish. Along with increases in the number of Catholics came increases in other related institutional and cultural spheres so that, by 1845, the Church in the USA had 26 bishops, 709 priests, 675 churches, and 15 periodicals (Hueston Reference Hueston1976, 34, 35, 37).

Although the KNP was strongest in the northeast, it managed to attract adherents also in the South. One factor was, rather obviously, the presence of immigrants. In 1860, more than 40% of the population of New Orleans was foreign born, as was more than one-third in Louisville alongside more than 25% of the population of Baltimore. Across the South as a whole, there were 93 counties in which foreign-born persons accounted for more than 10% of the local population (Broussard Reference Broussard1966, 16–17). However, as Broussard (1966, 9–11, 16) has noted, there were other factors attracting Southerners to the new party, above all: the tendency of Whigs to prefer the new party rather than to join their old rival, the Democratic Party; the American Party's loyalty to the Union; and the hope of local slave-owners that the Southern branches of the party would maintain their benevolent “neutrality” on the issue of slavery.

The idea that there was an “immigration problem” became widespread relatively quickly. Controversies soon erupted about the Bible, politics, and jobs, and contributed to the moral panic that became fairly widespread in the early 1850s. These controversies were played out in the media, in line with Critcher's Stages one and two, with moral entrepreneurs offering contending solutions to the perceived problem. The solutions offered included the introduction of corrective legislation.

The role played by the Bible in public schools was one conspicuous controversy. As the Irish Catholic populations of the above-noted cities increased, Catholics started to raise concerns about the exclusive use of the Protestant Bible in public schools and to demand the right to use their own translation, the Douay Bible, in the schools. When they failed to obtain at least equal time for the Douay Bible, Catholic bishops pressed Democratic legislators in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Maryland, in the years 1852–1854, to pass laws to bring an end to Bible reading in public schools. Bishop (later Archbishop) John J. Hughes of New York played a prominent role in registering Catholic opposition to having Catholic children exposed (exclusively) to the Protestant Bible in the public schools. Failing to obtain permission for Catholic pupils to read from the Douay translation, Bishop Hughes then tried but failed to have a portion of the public school funds, controlled by the Public School Society, allocated for the use of Catholic schools (McCadden Reference McCadden1964, 201; Connors Reference Connors1951, 18–28).

Catholic efforts to shield their children from the Protestant Bible enraged Protestants, many of whom felt threatened; the “gestalt” for individual Protestants and for their institutions was under stress. Bishop Hughes became a lightning rod for Protestant hostility, as reflected in the stoning of the bishop's house in April 1842.Footnote ¹ An anonymous member of the KNP would claim in his 1855 book, The Sons of the Sires, that Catholic

But there was a second, more sinister purpose that the author of Sons of the Sires suspected behind Catholic objections to having their children read the Protestant Bible. That purpose — according to the author — was to “overturn and cover with disastrous ruin our institutions,” and to bring about “the destruction of republicanism, and the establishment of a spiritual despotism” (An American 1855, 36).

The Catholic periodical The Pilot did not do Catholics any favor, however, when it mused in 1843 that in time “Catholicism will obtain an ascendancy over all minds in the land” (The Pilot, September 16, 1843, as quoted in Hueston Reference Hueston1976, 38). Or again, there was the example of the Catholic Telegraph which, in the same year, predicted that, given continued growth in the number of Catholics, by 1855 Cincinnati could be “a little Rome in the West” (Catholic Telegraph, December 30, 1843, as quoted in Hueston Reference Hueston1976, 39).

A second controversy had to do with the increase in the number of naturalized citizens casting their votes. This increase became noticeable by 1851 and has been credited as a major incentive for the establishment of the secret order that became the KNP. The author of Sons of the Sires expressed his fear that Catholics, and through them the pope in Rome, would come to dominate America. In his words, it had become

In fact, Catholic immigrants tended overwhelmingly to support the Democratic Party, although years later The American Catholic Quarterly Review would complain that that party had let down Catholics, among other ways by generally opposing the nomination of Catholics to public office of any significance (“The Anti-Catholic Issue in the Late Election” 1881, 45).

Sons of the Sires further alleged that the pope had dreamt of moving his seat of power from Rome to the Mississippi Valley and would have done so — but for the resolute action of the KNP (An American 1855, 57–58). The standard remedy that the KNP advocated was to lengthen the residential requirement for naturalization from five years to 21 years. But in 1855, in New York, there was even a challenge in court to the right of naturalized citizens to vote in that city's municipal elections (New York Daily Times 1855).

But there was a third factor that could not be addressed either by prolonging the residential requirement for naturalization or by converting immigrant Catholics to Protestantism, under the rubric of assimilation: that was the intensified competition for working-class jobs associated with rising immigration (Mulkern Reference Mulkern1990; Beals Reference Beals1960). If the KNP — so-called because its members typically replied “I don't know” to all questions from outsiders — owed its rise to a “moral panic,” then that panic had, thus, religious, political, and economic facets.

As early as 1837, a large meeting of “native Americans” — meaning white Protestants — took place in Germantown, Philadelphia County, registering alarm about both rising immigration and the naturalization law (Lee Reference Lee1970, 14–17). Those assembled in Germantown adopted a “Preamble and Constitution” demanding the repeal of the law allowing naturalization after just five years of residence. Five years later, on November 8, 1842, came the formation of the American Protestant Association, with 98 Philadelphia Protestant clergymen signing its constitution; the association was openly anti-Catholic. Only six days later, in an ill-timed initiative, the Irish-born Bishop Francis P. Kenrick of Philadelphia wrote to the Board of Controllers of Philadelphia's public schools to ask for permission for Catholic children enrolled in public schools to use their own Bible, rather than the Protestant version. This request met with incomprehension among local Protestants and the subsequent wave of anti-Catholicism in Philadelphia “assumed the character of a holy war in defense of Sacred Writ” (Geffen Reference Geffen1969, 400).

In the meantime, on August 26, 1842, unknown arsonists had set fire to a wooden bridge of the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad Company. The crime was immediately blamed on local Irish Catholics (Geffen Reference Geffen1969, 397). As distrust between Protestants and Catholics escalated, local Protestants established a Protestant Institute expressly for the purpose of disseminating anti-Catholic literature (Geffen Reference Geffen1969, 399). Then, in December 1843, Nativists set up the American Republican Association, establishing branches in most of Philadelphia's wards. As mutual recriminations continued, the scene was set for the violence which broke out in May 1844.

On May 3, 1844, a group of immigrants, mostly Irish, broke into one of the meetings of the American Republican Association (ARA) meetings, armed with clubs, and broke it up. There were further disturbances at the same location three days later, leaving 11 Nativists wounded and one dead. Protestants countered by attacking a school of the Sisters of Charity. Then, in what Tarrow might consider a “moment of madness,” Protestants brought three cannon together with loaded muskets to bear, setting fire on May 8 to St. Michael's Church and rectory, the seminary of the Sisters of Charity, and St. Augustine's Church, and the adjoining school (Pennsylvania Freeman 1844; Geffen Reference Geffen1969, 400–401). Troops finally arrived but experienced difficulty in restoring calm. A grand jury subsequently convened and blamed the disturbances squarely on Bishop Kenrick's plea that Catholic children be allowed to read from the Catholic Bible. Stoning the bishop's house and brawls represented violence at a relatively low level of intensity, but arson and cannon and muskets brought the two sets of actors to yet another level, adding even more stress and accelerating the cycle of protest.

In the wake of these riots, local membership in Nativist organizations swelled from 500 to many thousands. The Nativists' indignation of these moral entrepreneurs was at its height. Then, on July 4, 1844, Native Americans staged an ostentatious parade in downtown Philadelphia, carrying banners with anti-foreigner and pro-Bible slogans (Schafer Reference Schafer1924, 3–4). In what may be interpreted as a quintessential expression of moral panic, Governor Henry J. Gardner of Massachusetts alleged that the nation was facing “a crisis of unprecedented magnitude” with “the potential for an undigested mass of ignorant aliens to mongrelize American institutions” (as paraphrased by Mulkern Reference Mulkern1990, 95).

Already in 1835, a group of New Yorkers had formed a political party at the state level, called the Native American Democratic Association, and had contested state elections later that year, winning about 40% of the vote. But in the 1840s, especially in the wake of the widely publicized disturbances in Philadelphia, more Nativist groups were set-up in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and elsewhere. Among these was the Order of United Americans (OUA) — also known as the Order of the Star Spangled Banner — that favored clandestine meetings, passwords, and secret rituals (Schafer Reference Schafer1924, 6). By 1852, these sundry currents had come together in the American Party,Footnote ² with branches in 35 states and territories. By then, this new party was being increasingly noticed and in 1854 swept elections in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere, even reaching the west coast in California and Oregon (Hewitt Reference Hewitt1935, 69–70, 74; Mulkern Reference Mulkern1990; Knuth Reference Knuth1953, 40–53; Beals Reference Beals1960). With this, the Know Nothing movement reached the peak of its success, and then began to decline rapidly in influence.

THE KNOW NOTHING PARTY AS AN EXPRESSION OF A PERSISTENT CULTURAL PATTERN OR CYCLE OF POLITICAL CULTURE

An alternative way of looking at the KNP is to stress its continuity with persistent cultural patterns of xenophobia and anti-Catholicism in American history. The advantage of this approach is that it downplays the importance of the various contextually specific triggers that provoked the emergence of this party and stress, rather, the recurrent phobias to which (some) Americans have been susceptible from the colonial-era Salem witch trials to Islamophobic (and, for that matter, homophobic) tendencies today. For John Higham, an advocate of this line of approach,

Anti-Catholicism preceded and survived the Revolution and no less a figure than John Adams, the second president of the United States, called Catholicism “Cabalistic Christianity” and asked, apparently rhetorically, “Can a free Government possibly [co]exist with the Roman Catholic Religion?” (as quoted in “The Anti-Catholic Spirit of the Revolution” 1889, 170). With such dispositions being expressed by the highest dignitaries of the land, it is no wonder that hostility toward Catholicism was openly featured in the pages of the press. Thus, in 1795, “Catholicus” — presumed to be the pen name of Archbishop John Carroll of Baltimore — wrote to the editor of The Carlisle Weekly to complain that that publication had “disseminated seeds of violent hatred against Roman Catholics, as forming the very kingdom of [the] antichrist” (“Archbishop Carroll” 1894, 133). Some 86 years later, the New York Herald echoed this sentiment, calling the United States a “Protestant country” and Americans a “Protestant people” (“The Anti-Catholic Issue in the Late Election” 1881, 40). Demands were also heard throughout the nineteenth century for the “Americanization” (i.e., conversion to Protestantism) of the foreign-born.

19th-century schoolbooks also fit this pattern, promoting the image of a chosen people sharing a common Protestant religion, favored by God, and entrusted with “a world mission to spread democratic government and pure religion” (England Reference England1963, 191; Anbinder Reference Anbinder1992, 10). Pure religion meant Protestant Christianity since, in the schoolbooks, Catholicism was consistently tied to “bigotry, ignorance, servility, and persecution” (“The Public Press” 1883, 123), as well as problematic, if not treasonous, subservience to the pope in Rome — an allegation often captured in the smear-word “popery.” The public press in 19th-century America also served as the vehicle for anti-Catholic prejudices, both before and after the turbulent 1850s, and an unsigned article in The American Catholic Quarterly Review in 1883 gave the press part of the blame for “…the sudden anti-Catholic eruptions that take place from time to time…” (“The Public Press 1883, 124).

In 1834, 20 years before the KNP scored its dramatic victories across the northeastern states, even gaining a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, there was the case of the notorious riots against the Ursuline Convent in Charlestown, just outside Boston.Footnote ³ Provoked by calumnious rumors concerning the behavior of the Ursuline nuns, the riots resulted in the destruction of the convent. A committee subsequently appointed to investigate the nuns found the nuns innocent of any wrongdoing and declared the rumors “without any foundation in truth” (Daily National Intelligencer 1834). It was symptomatic of the political culture of that age, however, and of the persistent pattern of anti-Catholicism, that the defense team for those brought to trial for the violence argued “that the Roman Catholic religion places all who profess it in the relation of foreigners to our government” (The Atlas 1835).

Two years later came the publication of Maria Monk's (Reference Monk1836) Awful Disclosures, which purported to be a record of sexual orgies among Catholic nuns in Montreal, Canada. Claiming to have been a nun at the Hôtel Dieu convent, Maria Monk alleged that “…she and other nuns were obliged to submit to carnal intercourse with priests … Nuns who resisted were killed. Illegitimate babies were baptized, strangled, and thrown into a basement hole” (Beals Reference Beals1960, 44). In fact, Monk had never been in the Hôtel Dieu convent and had been raised a Protestant. The book was later shown and admitted to have been a fabrication by Rev. J. J. Slocum (Frink Reference Frink2009, 237–238),Footnote ⁴ but sales of the book continued to climb even after this admission, reaching 300,000 copies sold by 1860; this made the Awful Disclosures the second best-selling book in 19th-century America, second only to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. In fact, the book signed by Maria Monk was only the most infamous in a huge cottage industry of anti-Catholic texts that “titillated” Protestant readers in that century and which have been described by Thomas Archdeacon as the “pornography of the Puritans” (as quoted in Frink Reference Frink2009, 249), allowing their readers to sanctify their vicarious enjoyment by indulging in self-righteous outrage.

Nativism, the seedbed of the KNP, emerged in various parts of the country already in the 1830s, i.e., prior to the big wave of Irish Catholic immigration, while Rev. Lyman Beecher's (Reference Beecher1835) A Plea for the West called for Protestants to extend their religious domain westward, aspiring thus to prevent Catholics from becoming a majority in the Mississippi Valley (Hinckley Reference Hinckley1962, 126; Billington Reference Billington1938). Thus, the rise of Know-Nothingism in the 1850s, as Stickney (Reference Stickney and Franklin1894, 4) has noted, merely revived and continued the anti-Catholic tradition in a new form. It was in this spirit that James Brooks commented in 1855, at the height of this movement's popularity: “I can see nothing new in Know-Nothingism. There is not an idea there that has not had half a century's growth among observing men” (as quoted in Levine Reference Levine2001, 471).

Nor did anti-Catholicism expire with the disappearance of the KNP at the beginning of the 1860s. On the contrary, anti-Catholicism lived on in the American Protective Association, established by Henry F. Bowers in 1887 and supported by the Republican Party (Higham Reference Higham1952; Nugent Reference Nugent1963), and in the Ku Klux Klan, which, like the KNP, was secretive and anti-intellectual, and claimed to be patriotic (Myers Reference Myers1924, 5; Scott Reference Scott1926, 268). Among other things, the Ku Klux Klan recycled the Know-Nothing canard that Catholics supposedly could not be integrated into American society and bore a political allegiance to the pope. Anti-Catholicism was also sustained by publications such as Richard W. Thompson's (Reference Thompson1894) Footprints of the Jesuits, which claimed that the Jesuits' motivation for being involved in education was to turn the young into passive agents accustomed to “uninquiring obedience” and, thereby, to “fit them to become subservient slaves of monarchical and papal power” (as quoted in Neely Reference Neely1976, 121).

Mistrust of and hostility toward Catholics continued to be visible also in the highest political echelons. Thus, for instance, in December 1875, President Ulysses S. Grant, in his Seventh Annual Message to Congress, called for a constitutional amendment to bar the allocation of any public school funds to any school operated by a religious denomination — a call pointedly aimed at the Catholic Church. Less than a year later, Rutherford B. Hayes, who would assume the office of the president in March 1877, admitted in a letter to William Henry Smith that he “oppose[d] Catholic interference and all sectarian interference with political affairs, and especially with the schools” (Hayes letter, October 5, 1876, as quoted in Neely Reference Neely1976, 109, emphasis removed). Anti-Catholicism survived the KNP nativism to resurface again and again, even into the Kennedy campaign for the White House.

REVITALIZATION

Interpreting the intense anti-Catholicism of the 1850s as a moral panic makes sense of the impact of Irish Catholic immigration on anti-Catholic prejudices of the time, as well as of the suddenness of the rise of nativist organizations. Emphasizing the persistent patterns of anti-Catholicism and xenophobia places the KNP in a broader historical context and contributes to understanding the susceptibility of American Protestants to anti-Catholic prejudice. What neither approach offers, however, is either an accounting of the role of leadership (although Goode and Ben-Yehuda do discuss the role of the elite) or an interpretation of why anti-Catholicism in the 1850s took specifically the form of a political party. Nor does either of the foregoing theories suggest the need to highlight the objectives of the KNP, as opposed to its responses to processes emerging from other sources. Moral panic theory can certainly explain why this happened when it did, but not why it took the form it took.

This is precisely where recourse to Anthony Wallace's theory of revitalization movements in combination with Tarrow's cycles of protest may make a contribution as noted above. As we have seen, for Wallace, a revitalization movement is an organized movement or grouping under clear leadership, which seeks to change certain features of the social or religious or political landscape in which it arises. For what we shall call revitalization theory, the operative collective emotion is not so much panic or fear, as discontent, indeed seething discontent, and it is the movement that promises to change those features which have given rise to this discontent in the first place.

There were important figures in the KNP in every state in which it operated. Among those prominent in the party were: James W. Barker, elected president of the KNP in May 1854; Thomas Spooner, president of the influential Ohio organization; Richard W. Thompson, a major figure in the Indiana organization; James Macpherson Berrien, elected president of the Georgian organization in December 1855; and Thomas Whitney (Reference Whitney1856), author of the influential book, A defence of the American policy. Whitney, whose historical role has been highlighted by Maizlish (Reference Maizlish1982), was an eloquent speaker, became Grand Sachem (chief officer) of the OUA in spring of 1846, when he was 39 years old, and was reelected to a second term as Grand Sachem in 1853. During his first term in that office, membership in the OUA grew from 2,000 members in 1846 to 30,000 nationally by 1851 (Levine Reference Levine2001, 460–461). In 1856, Whitney brought out his book, A Defence of the American Party, described by Levine as a “Know-Nothing Bible” (Levine Reference Levine2001, 463). Whitney served in the U.S. House of Representatives for the American (Know Nothing) Party from March 1855 to March 1857 but died of tuberculosis the year following the end of his term in the House.

While the other approaches that we have already described might incline one to interpret the KNP as a one-issue party utilizing a more general master frame, revitalization theory lends itself to a more nuanced approach. Although anti-Catholicism gave the party its driving force, the KNP also presented itself as a party committed to ending the widespread corruption in American politics (Plain Dealer 1855; Holt Reference Holt1973, 318), to defending the economic interests of the working classes, and to championing conservative values in general and in gender relations and sexuality particularly (Roll Reference Roll1948, as quoted in Neely Reference Neely1976, 100; Frink Reference Frink2009, 243–244). Indeed, the OUA believed that the subordination of wives to their husbands was essential to the stability of family life and, as a consequence of that, also to the stability of society at large. As Levine argues, the KNP, as the successor to the OUA,

At first the KNP seemed to have clear objectives, at least judging from its programmatic statements and from the rhetoric of its leaders. These included limiting immigration, extending the residence requirement for naturalization from five to 21 years, resisting efforts by the Catholic bishops to see Catholic pupils in public schools read from the Catholic Bible, and promoting temperance (an objective that clashed with the traditions of the newer European immigrants) (Maizlich 1982, 167, 174–175, 183; Gudelunas Reference Gudelunas1978, 229). But the KNP was, in many ways, more of a movement than a party, with variations in the given party's program from state to state (Maizlish Reference Maizlish1982, 167; confirmed in Rice Reference Rice1947, 61). Even anti-Catholicism played out differently from state to state. In Virginia, the local party worked to moderate its anti-Catholic rhetoric (Rice Reference Rice1947, 70), while in Louisiana, the local branch of the party, meeting for its state convention in July 1855, rejected the idea of incorporating anti-Catholicism into its platform and the Louisiana party entered the subsequent election campaign declaring openly its rejection of the national party's anti-Catholic stance (Carriere Reference Carriere1994, 464).

We agree with Michael Holt (Reference Holt1993, 1684) that “nativism, anti-Catholicism, and prohibitionism, and not simply antislavery sentiment, fueled the voter realignment of the 1850s.” Many of those who joined the KNP were Whigs, whose erstwhile party was clearly in its death throes and who were looking for a more vigorous party machine. The self-described American Party looked attractive to many, at least those who shared the anti-Catholic and nativist spirit of the new party.

The KNP did not have a unified stance on slavery, which by 1856 was increasingly recognized as the “paramount” question confronting the nation (Cincinnati Gazette, as quoted in Maizlish Reference Maizlish1982, 195), and the party split along sectional lines on this issue. On the other hand, there were strong Unionist sentiments in the American Party; in fact, at its 1854 national convention attended by delegates from 13 states, the party adopted a set of principles that included preservation of the Union (Rice Reference Rice1947, 63–64).

In the South, as already suggested, the KNP supported slavery and thus endorsed the Kansas-Nebraska Act which had the effect of repealing the Missouri Compromise, while KNP branches in the North opposed the extension of slavery and therefore objected to the Kansas-Nebraska Act (Anbinder Reference Anbinder1992, 47). Many northerners favored abolition outright. For northern branches of the KNP, opposition to slavery and anti-Catholicism became linked, on the argument that “Catholicism was itself a form of slavery, binding men's consciences to a despotic ruler in Rome” (Maizlish Reference Maizlish1982, 178).

Thus, in spite of some local tendencies toward moderating its anti-Catholicism, the diverse strands in Know Nothing discontent were, nonetheless, all tied back to the growing Catholic presence in the United States. It was Catholics in the first place, the nativists charged, who were corrupting American politics, Catholics who were taking jobs away from Protestants, and Catholics again who were corrupting the sexual morality of the nation and threatening the delicate balance of gender inequality. And of course, it was Catholics who were objecting to the exclusive use of the Protestant Bible in public schools. Thus, John Hancock Lee's The Origins and Progress of the American Party in Politics (1855) emphasized the threat posed by naturalized Catholics to Protestant domination in politics (Lee Reference Lee1970, 32), demanded a residence requirement of 21 years for naturalization, insisted that the Protestant Bible was “not sectarian,” and held that “native Americans only (in practice, Protestants) should be appointed to office, to legislate, administer, or execute the laws of their own country” (Lee Reference Lee1970, 21, quoting from a Declaration of Principles).

Or again, Anna Ella Carroll's (1859) The Great American Battle alleged that the Catholic Church advocated “principles and aims antagonistic to American liberty,” characterized Catholicism as “a religion without God,” and called the educational work of the Jesuits among Catholic children a “growing evil” (Carroll Reference Carroll1859, 32, 72, 60). In a curious twist, the same author claimed that the vows (of poverty, chastity, and obedience) taken by priests — and especially the vow of obedience to hierarchical authority — were “antagonistic to liberty and our free government, and whoever is faithful to them cannot be [loyal] to America!” (Carroll Reference Carroll1859, 105). As for Catholic protestations of loyalty and respect for American democracy, the author dismissed such representations, alleging, on the contrary, that “Popery … has talked of its spiritual allegiance to us, as to a nation of fools!” (Carroll Reference Carroll1859, 317). And then there is Whitney's own Defence of the American Policy, with its strident arguments against Catholicism. For Whitney, “the perfect homogeneousness of the people” is among the best guarantees of “permanent nationality” and stable political life (Whitney Reference Whitney1856, 69), while the Catholic Church injected a foreign element into the nation. Noting that the pope is elected by a college of cardinals, rather than by a broad popular vote, Whitney declared that Catholicism was “diametrically opposed to Republicanism” (Whitney Reference Whitney1856, 95. The complaint about the College of Cardinals appears on page 96). In his view, the Catholic Church was “the open foe of progress” and wherever Catholicism established itself, “there is stagnation and public lethargy” (Whitney Reference Whitney1856, 100, 101). Whitney's book reads as a lengthy jeremiad against the Catholic Church, in which contempt is mixed with hostility.

Revitalization theory highlights the role of organization — the revitalization movement — and is better suited to explaining the various programmatic statements which were issued by the KNP. For example, in April 1853, Nativists of Maryland met in Baltimore and adopted a set of resolutions in which Catholic efforts to see their children use the Catholic Bible in public schools were characterized as a “conspiracy against the diffusion of knowledge,” while calling for “our Senators and Representatives … to crush forever this confederacy” (from the full text of the resolution, as cited in McConville Reference McConville1928, 26). Such programmatic statements and resolutions served to guide their readers to pre-conceived conclusions and to identify those problems in Wallace's “mazeway” that needed to be addressed.

As with many such movements, the KNP simultaneously looked to a more pristine past that should be restored — the era of uncontested Protestant hegemony — and sought “to construct a more satisfying culture” (Wallace Reference Wallace1956, 265). Already in OUA days, the Nativists set up a women's auxiliary, the United Daughters of America, dedicated to preserving the ‘natural’ hierarchy

WHY THE KNOW NOTHING PARTY DISINTEGRATED

As already noted, the KNP had a very short life-span — just about 10 years in all. Although all three theories can offer some accounting of why the party disintegrated, revitalization theory's emphasis on leadership points us directly to the internal divisions over slavery that caused the party leadership to split and the party itself to fragment and collapse. Although slavery had been a divisive issue already in the 1780s, matters came to a head for the KNP in June 1855, when party councils meeting in New York and Philadelphia saw rancorous arguments about slavery. The delegates to the Philadelphia convention proved unable to reach a consensus and, after a majority of the delegates adopted a platform that accommodated the slaveholding states, northern delegates seceded, repudiated the party platform, and adopted an “Address” to the American people urging an end to the domestic slave trade (Bangor Daily Whig and Courier 1855).

Party members in Massachusetts decided to set-up an independent party at the state level and, at a meeting in late June, declared that their organization, henceforth known as “the American Party in Massachusetts”, was severing its connections with the national organization (Boston Daily Advertiser 1855b).Footnote ⁵ The Massachusetts party thus denounced slavery, but the platform it adopted in August reiterated the various anti-Catholic and Nativist principles around which the Know Nothings had united in the first place (Boston Daily Advertiser 1855c). Already in mid-June, the Boston Daily Advertiser (1855a) referred to “…the impossibility of forming a national party upon sectional issues,” thereby forecasting the ultimate demise of the KNP. The anti-slavery wing of the KNP would adopt the name “Know-Somethings” (The American Citizen 1855).

There is a debate among historians concerning the relative prominence of the diverse issues in contention in the 1850s. William Brock (1979) and Tyler Anbinder (Reference Anbinder1992) emphasize antislavery sentiment as the decisive issue leading to the reshaping of the political party system in the 1850s. By contrast, William Giennap (Reference Giennap1985) and Joel Silbey (Reference Silbey, Giennap, Maizlish and Kushma1982) have challenged this view, drawing attention to ethnic and religious antagonisms as independent variables. Silbey (Reference Silbey, Giennap, Maizlish and Kushma1982, 201–202), for example, writes that

Along the same lines, Michael Holt has argued that slavery alone cannot account for the reshuffling of the political deck in the 1850s (Holt Reference Holt1973, 309), and, by extension, internal divisions over slavery — as important as they were in fracturing the party — are not the whole story. We believe that the evidence supports the analysis of Giennap, Silbey, and Holt. There were problems associated with some of the politicians who had joined the party. Although some of its leading figures were respected members of their communities, others, newly recruited into politics, were inexperienced, and this gave rise to complaints about their incompetence in office. Moreover, as the party scored successes at the polls, second-rank politicians from other parties joined its ranks (Holt Reference Holt1973, 319–320). Opportunism accounted for some of these cross-overs. Again, the continued secrecy associated with some aspects of the party's work aroused suspicions in some quarters (Tuska nd, 10). And finally, the persistent rowdyism and sporadic violence associated with the party (Tuska nd, 13–14, 21–29; Ohio Statesman 1855) (especially at election time), such as the “bloody riot” in Baltimore in 1856 (New York Herald 1856a; 1856b), increasingly alienated both the more respectable figures in the party and ordinary voters, who drifted to other parties, especially, in the northern states, to the relatively young Republican Party. The southern members of the KNP secured their party's selection of Millard Fillmore as its standard-bearer in the 1856 presidential elections, but his nomination impelled some members in the North to bolt (Anbinder Reference Anbinder1992, 210–212). After its poor showing in the 1856 presidential elections, when its candidate, ex-president Millard Fillmore, garnered only eight of the 296 votes in the electoral college (21% of the popular vote in the three-way contest) (Scarry Reference Scarry2001, 285), the party rapidly withered. In the 1860 presidential election, there was no American Party nominee in the race.