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| Know Nothing (US political movement) | |
|---|---|
| Name | Know Nothing |
| Founded | 1849–1855 |
| Dissolved | 1860s |
| Position | Right-wing to far-right |
| Country | United States |
| Predecessor | Order of the Star Spangled Banner |
| Successor | American Party (19th century) |
Know Nothing (US political movement) was a mid‑19th century American nativist political movement and secret society that mobilized opposition to immigration from Ireland and Germany and to the influence of the Catholic Church. Emerging from clandestine organizations in the late 1840s, it rose rapidly in the 1850s to influence municipal, state, and national politics before fracturing over the issue of slavery. The movement shaped debates involving immigration, religious liberty, and party realignment that contributed to the collapse of the Second Party System and the rise of the Republican Party.
The movement developed from underground fraternities such as the Order of the Star Spangled Banner and the Order of United Americans in urban centers like New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, and Baltimore. Influential publications and figures in antebellum circles—editors at newspapers including the New York Herald, activists associated with the Temperance movement, and members of municipal ward politics networks—fostered the transition from secret ritual to public politics. The term "Know Nothing" derived from the practice in local lodges of answering inquiries with "I know nothing," a response rooted in traditions from organizations like the Freemasonry‑style fraternal orders and influenced by transatlantic models such as the Liverpool Mechanics' Institutes and the continental Catholic emancipation debates. Nationalization accelerated after the formation of the American Party (19th century) and the holding of conventions that attempted to unify disparate nativist groups.
The movement articulated a platform grounded in nativism, anti‑Catholicism, and cultural nationalism. Its public pronouncements endorsed longer naturalization periods, restrictions on immigrant voting, and the exclusion of foreign‑born citizens from public office—positions echoed in municipal ordinances in New York City, Boston, and Philadelphia. Leaders invoked fears about influences from the Papal States, alleged clerical intervention in public schools, and connections to European revolutionary movements such as the European Revolutions of 1848. Economic rhetoric borrowed from debates involving the Whig Party and the Democratic Party, opposing perceived immigrant competition in labor markets represented by immigrant communities in ports like New Orleans and San Francisco. The Know Nothing platform intersected with issues addressed at gatherings of the American Colonization Society and contested questions raised by the Dred Scott v. Sandford controversy.
Organizationally, the movement combined clandestine rituals with public party machinery. Local councils, sometimes called "lodges," fed into state councils and a national convention system reminiscent of structures in the Tammany Hall and Albany Regency patronage networks. Membership drew from native‑born urban artisans, middle‑class professionals, and some rural constituencies in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Rhode Island. Prominent personalities associated by contemporaries or adversaries included editors and politicians who had affiliations with the Know Nothing movement and with newspapers like the Boston Atlas and the New York Tribune. Women participated informally through benevolent societies and temperance societies connected to the movement in cities such as Cincinnati and Providence; clergy in denominations like the Protestant Episcopal Church and Methodist Episcopal Church often offered rhetorical support.
The American Party achieved electoral successes in municipal elections in New York City, Baltimore, and Chicago, and in state contests in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, capturing mayoralties and legislative seats in the mid‑1850s. In the 1854–1856 cycle, the movement mounted gubernatorial campaigns and ran presidential aspirants at a national convention that sought to challenge the Kansas–Nebraska Act and to occupy a middle ground between the Whig Party collapse and the emergent Republican Party. Electoral coalitions sometimes included defectors from the Whig Party and anti‑immigrant Democrats. High‑profile contests involved figures in state legislatures, federal congressional delegations, and municipal machines in port cities where immigrant enfranchisement had shifted local majorities.
Nativist agitation produced social tensions and episodes of violence in urban centers; clashes occurred in neighborhoods with dense Irish and German Catholic populations and in settings contested by groups such as Hibernia societies and German mutual aid associations. Anti‑Catholic rhetoric targeted institutions like St. Patrick's Cathedral (New York) and Old St. Patrick's Cathedral, and alleged conspiracies involving the Papal Nuncio and European clerical networks. Know Nothing mobilization influenced public debates over parochial schools, the use of public school curricula, and immigrant naturalization law, and prompted responses from Catholic bishops like John Hughes of New York and Catholic newspapers including the Boston Pilot. The movement also intersected with nativist currents in temperance campaigns and municipal policing debates in Philadelphia and Boston.
Opposition came from immigrant communities, Catholic clergy, and national politicians in the Democratic Party and segments of the collapsing Whig Party, while emerging antislavery organizations including the Republican Party drew away many northern activists. Internal divisions over slavery, the Kansas–Nebraska Act, and national leadership disputes produced splintering by the late 1850s; many former members migrated to the Republican Party or aligned with the Constitutional Union Party and the Know Nothing movement's local institutions dissolved into municipal political machines. Historians link the movement's legacy to subsequent nativist currents such as the American Protective Association, and to cultural debates that informed later legislation like the Immigration Act of 1917 and the Emergency Quota Act. The Know Nothing era remains a reference point in studies of antebellum political realignment, ethnic conflict in cities such as New York City, Boston, and Baltimore, and the evolution of American party systems.