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The fact that many of the new immigrants were Roman Catholic sat poorly with much of the United States's largely-Protestant population. In particular, many Protestants viewed with distrust the strong allegiance of Roman Catholics to the Pope; many Protestants saw this allegiance to the Pope as an allegiance to a foreign prince (especially since the Pope was also head of state of the Papal States), and thus dangerous to American independence and possibly even treasonous.
These concerns spawned widely-held conspiracy theories regarding the Pope's purported plans to subjugate the United States through a continuing influx of his followers. The fact that Popes in the past had in fact wielded significant power and entangled themselves in wars and political disputes was frequently pointed to as evidence that the Pope was simply waiting for the right time to regain his lost temporal power, and served to further cement this notion in the minds of many Americans.
While significant in their own right, the concerns about the Pope largely exacerbated already-present anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic feelings held by many Americans. The newcomers differed culturally from most Americans, so their influx was seen as a threat to maintaining American culture. The immigrants brought with them their strong accents, Irish traditions and culture, and Roman Catholicism, and didn't seem likely to become "Americanized" anytime soon. A vocal minority of American PuritanThe Puritans were members of a group of radical Protestants which developed in England after the Reformation. Terminology The word puritan is now applied unevenly to a number of Protestant churches from the late sixteenth century to the early eighteenth cs also protested against the immigrants' alcohol consumption. While alcohol consumption was already quite popular among the general public in the United States (even George WashingtonGeorge Washington ( February 22, 1732— December 14, 1799), also called Father of his Country 1 was an American general and Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War ( 1775 1783) and later the first President of the Unite had run a distillery), the Puritan elements managed to promote a caricature of the Irish as drunkards, and thus gained some support for their anti-alcohol crusade by painting drinking as foreign and un-American.
The growing anti-immigrant sentiment led to a dissatisfaction with the major parties—the Democratslogo depicts a stylized donkey in red, white, and blue. The Democratic Party is one of the two major United States political parties. The Party is currently the minority in both the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives, as w were seen as too dependent on the votes of immigrants, and the WhigsThe United States Whig Party was a political party of the United States. The party was created in order to oppose the policies of Andrew Jackson and called itself the Whig Party by analogy with the English Whigs, who had opposed the power of the King in R were seen as ineffectual, and were largely in decline in any case. Thus anti-immigrant activists began splitting off from the major parties and forming secret groups, coordinating their votes and throwing their weight en masse behind candidates sympathetic to their cause (regardless of political party). When asked about these secret organizations, members would reply "I know nothing," which led to them popularly being called Know-Nothings. The Know-Nothings in effect gained control of a large number of local offices, especially in the North, through the early 1850s ("in effect" because the officeholders were still technically either Democrats or Republicans, as the Know-Nothings were not yet an actual party).
In 1854Events January 13 The accordion is patented by Anthony Faas. February 11 Major streets lit by coal gas for first time. February 14 Texas is linked by telegraph with the rest of the United States, when a connection between New Orleans and Marshall, Texas i they won significant victories in CongressThe United States Congress is the legislative branch of the United States federal government. The structure and responsibilities of Congress are defined in Article One of the United States Constitution. The United States Congress is bicameral, meaning tha and at the State level, again as an unofficial party driven by coordinated votes for sympathetic candidates; the secret societies themselves supplemented by supporting votes from the population at large, once it was made known who was sympathetic to the Know-Nothings' cause. The results of this election were so favorable to the Know-Nothings that they formed officially as a political party, called the American Party, and swallowed many members of the now nearly-defunct Whig party, as well as a significant number of Democrats, especially Northern Democrats.
The height of their success came in the Election of 1856Summary President Franklin Pierce was defeated in his effort to be renominated by the Democrats, who instead selected James Buchanan of Pennsylvania. The Whigs meanwhile had disbanded but been largely replaced by the Republican Party, a new organization t, in which they threw their weight behind Millard FillmoreMillard Fillmore Order 13th President Term of Office July 10, 1850 March 3, 1853 Followed Zachary Taylor Succeeded by Franklin Pierce Date of Birth January 7, 1800 Place of Birth Summerhill, New York Date of Death March 8, 1874 Place of Death Buffalo, New (a Whig who had been president from 1850 to 1853). Fillmore lost, but won 22% of the popular vote and Maryland's 8 electoral votes. However, by this time the newly-formed party was beginning to be rent by differences over slavery, and greatly declined in strength. Know-Nothings remained strong on the local and state levels in many northern states, but by the Election of 1860, they were no longer a serious national political movement. Most of the anti-slavery Know-Nothings went on to join the new Republican Party.