View source for Know Nothing

{{Short description|1850s American nativist political party}}
{{use mdy dates|date=April 2023}}
{{use American English|date=June 2021}}
{{Infobox political party
| name             = American Party
| caption          = ''Uncle Sam's youngest son, Citizen Know Nothing'', an 1854 print
| colorcode        = {{party color|Know Nothing}}
| lang1            = Other
| name_lang1       = {{plainlist|
* Native American Party (before 1855)
* American Party (after 1855)
}}
| leader1_title    = First Leader
| leader1_name     = [[Lewis Charles Levin]]
| foundation       = {{start date and age|1844}}
| dissolution      = {{end date and age|1860}}
| merger           = {{plainlist|
* [[American Republican Party (1843)|American Republican Party]]
* [[Whig Party (United States)|Whig Party]] {{small|(elements)}}
}}
| predecessor      = [[American Republican Party (1843)|American Republican Party]]
| successor        = [[Constitutional Union Party (United States)|Constitutional Union Party]]
| merged           = {{plainlist|
* [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican Party]] {{small|([[Free states and slave states|free states]])}}
* [[Unionist politician (American Civil War)|Union Party]] {{small|(slave states)}}}}
| headquarters     = [[New York City]]
| wing1_title      = [[Secret society|Secret wing]]
| wing1            = [[Order of the Star Spangled Banner]]
| ideology         = {{plainlist|
* [[American nationalism]]
* [[Anti-immigration]]
* [[Anti-Catholicism]]
* [[Anti-Irish sentiment]]
* [[Anti-German sentiment]]
* [[Cultural assimilation]]<ref name="Anbinder 1992">{{cite book |last=Anbinder |first=Tyler |author-link=Tyler Anbinder |year=1992 |title=Nativism and Slavery: The Northern Know Nothings and the Politics of the 1850s |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HBZxbQRA0JkC&pg=PA121 |location=New York, New York |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-507233-4 |page=121 |oclc=925224120 |via=Google Books}}</ref>
* [[Nativism (politics)|Nativism]]
* [[Populism]]
* [[Republicanism in the United States|Republicanism]] <!-- Note: This is not the same as the Republican Party -->
}}
| position         = <!-- Do not label as "right wing", "far right", or other left–right position. The terms are not quite relevant to 1850s political discourse in the U.S. See Talk page and archives. -->
| religion         = [[Protestantism]]
| flag             = Digital Reproduction of the Know-Nothing Party Flag.jpg
| colors           = {{color box|#B22234|border=darkgray}} [[Red]] {{color box|#FFFFFF|border=darkgray}} [[White]] {{color box|#3C3B6E|border=darkgray}} [[Blue]]<br />([[Flag of the United States|American flag]] colors)
| country          = the United States
}}
 
The '''American Party''', known as the '''Native American Party''' before 1855{{efn|The Know Nothings used the name "Native American Party" generations before the descendants of the [[Indigenous peoples of the Americas|aboriginal populations of the Americas]] and [[Native Americans in the United States]] were commonly referred to as "Native Americans". As the membership of the party chiefly consisted of the descendants of colonists and the descendants of [[Protestantism|Evangelical]] European immigrants and did not include [[Native Americans in the United States|Indigenous Americans]], the term "native" in the name of the party refers to those who were brought up in the United States, as opposed to immigrants.<ref>{{cite web |title=Battle on the Ballot: Political Outsiders in US Presidential Elections |url=https://dp.la/exhibitions/outsiders-president-elections/anti-outsider-platforms/know-nothing-party-1856 |website=Digital Public Library of America |language=en}}</ref>}} and colloquially referred to as the '''Know Nothings''', or the '''Know Nothing Party''', was an [[Old Stock Americans|Old Stock]] [[Nativism in United States politics|nativist]] political movement in the United States in the 1850s. Members of the movement were required to say "I know nothing" whenever they were asked about its specifics by outsiders, providing the group with its colloquial name.<ref name="Boissoneault">{{cite web|last=Boissoneault|first=Lorraine|title=How the 19th-Century Know Nothing Party Reshaped American Politics|url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/immigrants-conspiracies-and-secret-society-launched-american-nativism-180961915/|website=Smithsonian Magazine|publisher=Smithsonian Institution|access-date=2020-01-13}}</ref>

Supporters of the Know Nothing movement believed that an alleged "[[Romanism|Romanist]]" conspiracy to subvert civil and [[freedom of religion|religious liberty]] in the United States was being hatched by [[Catholic Church in the United States|Catholics]]. Therefore, they sought to politically organize native-born [[Protestant]]s in defense of their traditional religious and political values. The Know Nothing movement is remembered for this theme because Protestants feared that Catholic priests and bishops would control a large bloc of voters. In most places, the ideology and influence of the Know Nothing movement lasted only one or two years before it disintegrated due to weak and inexperienced local leaders, a lack of publicly proclaimed national leaders, and a deep split over the issue of [[Slavery in the United States|slavery]]. In parts of the South, the party did not emphasize [[anti-Catholicism]] as frequently as it emphasized it in the North and it stressed a neutral position on slavery,<ref>{{cite thesis|title=No Foreign Despots on Southern Soil: The American Party in Alabama and South Carolina, 1850-1857|last=Farrell|first=Robert N.|publisher=[[University of Southern Mississippi]]|location=Hattiesburg, Mississippi|date=2017|type=MA|url=https://aquila.usm.edu/masters_theses/283|access-date=2020-10-01}}</ref> but it became the main alternative to the dominant [[History of the Democratic Party (United States)|Democratic Party]].<ref name="Boissoneault"/>

The Know Nothings supplemented their [[xenophobia|xenophobic]] views with [[Populism|populist]] appeals. At the state level, the party was, in some cases, [[Progressivism in the United States|progressive]] in its stances on "issues of [[labor rights]] and the need for more government spending"<ref>{{cite news |last1=Kierdorf |first1=Douglas |title=Getting to know the Know-Nothings |url=https://c.o0bg.com/ideas/2016/01/10/getting-know-know-nothings/yAojakXKkiauKCAzsf4WAL/story.html |work=[[The Boston Globe]] |date=January 10, 2016}}</ref> and furnished "support for an expansion of the [[Women's rights|rights of women]], the regulation of industry, and support of measures which were designed to improve the status of working people."<ref name="Taylor 2000"/> It was a forerunner of the [[temperance movement in the United States]].<ref name="Boissoneault"/>

The Know Nothing movement briefly emerged as a major political party in the form of the American Party.<ref name="Boissoneault"/> The collapse of the [[Whig Party (United States)|Whig Party]] after the passage of the [[Kansas–Nebraska Act]] left an opening for the emergence of a new major political party in opposition to the Democratic Party. The Know Nothing movement managed to elect congressman [[Nathaniel P. Banks]] of [[Massachusetts]] and several other individuals into office in the [[1854 United States elections|1854 elections]], and it subsequently coalesced into a new political party which was known as the American Party. Particularly in the [[Southern United States|South]], the American Party served as a vehicle for politicians who opposed the Democrats. Many of the American Party's members and supporters also hoped that it would stake out a middle ground between the pro-slavery positions of Democratic politicians and the radical anti-slavery positions of the rapidly emerging [[History of the Republican Party (United States)|Republican Party]]. The American Party nominated former President [[Millard Fillmore]] in the [[1856 United States presidential election|1856 presidential election]], but he kept quiet about his membership in it, and he personally refrained from supporting the Know Nothing movement's activities and [[ideology]]. Fillmore received 21.5% of the popular vote in the 1856 presidential election, finishing behind the Democratic and Republican nominees.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.pantagraph.com/news/local/know-nothings-opposed-immigration-in-lincoln-s-day/article_504e1b70-3331-5640-9248-0fc62c866a39.html|title='Know Nothings' Opposed Immigration in Lincoln's Day|newspaper=[[The Pantagraph]]|date=January 17, 2016 |access-date=April 11, 2016 |last=Kemp|first=Bill}}</ref> [[Henry Winter Davis]], an active Know-Nothing, was elected on the American Party ticket to Congress from Maryland. He told Congress that "un-American" Irish Catholic immigrants were to blame for the recent election of Democrat [[James Buchanan]] as president, stating:<ref>{{cite book |first=James Fairfax |last=McLaughlin |title=The Life and Times of John Kelly, Tribune of the People |year=1885 |location=New York City |publisher=The American News Company |pages=72–73 |url=https://archive.org/details/lifetimesofjohnk00mclauoft/page/73/mode/1up |via=Internet Archive}}</ref><blockquote> The recent election has developed in an aggravated form every evil against which the American party protested. Foreign allies have decided the government of the country – men naturalized in thousands on the eve of the election. Again in the fierce struggle for supremacy, men have forgotten the ban which the Republic puts on the intrusion of religious influence on the political arena. These influences have brought vast multitudes of foreign-born citizens to the polls, ignorant of American interests, without American feelings, influenced by foreign sympathies, to vote on American affairs; and those votes have, in point of fact, accomplished the present result.</blockquote>

The party entered a period of rapid decline after Fillmore's loss. In 1857 the ''[[Dred Scott v. Sandford]]'' pro-slavery decision of the [[Supreme Court of the United States]] further galvanized opposition to slavery in the North, causing many former Know Nothings to join the Republicans.{{sfnp|Anbinder|1992|p=270}} The remnants of the American Party largely joined the [[Constitutional Union Party (United States)|Constitutional Union Party]] in 1860 and they disappeared during the [[American Civil War]].

== History ==
[[File:Citizen Know Nothing.jpg|thumb|left|''Uncle Sam's youngest son, Citizen Know Nothing'', an 1854 print]]
Anti-Catholicism was widespread in [[Colonial history of the United States|colonial America]], but it played a minor role in American politics until the arrival of large numbers of Irish and German Catholics started in the 1840s.<ref>{{cite book |first=Francis D. |last=Cogliano |title=No King, No Popery: Anti-Catholicism in Revolutionary New England |publisher=Greenwood Press |location=Westport, Connecticut |year=1995}}</ref> It then emerged in nativist attacks. It appeared in New York City politics as early as 1843 under the banner of the [[American Republican Party (1843)|American Republican Party]].<ref>{{cite journal |first=Ira M. |last=Leonard |title=The Rise and Fall of the American Republican Party in New York City, 1843–1845 |journal=New-York Historical Society Quarterly |volume=50 |number=2 |date=April 1966 |pages=151–92 |url=https://digitalcollections.nyhistory.org/islandora/object/islandora%3A12434#page/1/mode/2up |access-date=2023-04-25}}</ref> The movement quickly spread to nearby states using that name or Native American Party or variants of it. They succeeded in a number of local and Congressional elections, notably in 1844 in Philadelphia, where the anti-Catholic orator [[Lewis Charles Levin]] was elected Representative from Pennsylvania's 1st district. In the early 1850s, numerous secret orders grew up, of which the Order of United Americans<ref>{{cite thesis |last=Scisco |first=Louis Dow |title=Political Nativism in New York State |year=1901 |type=PhD |location=New York, New York |publisher=Columbia University |url=https://archive.org/details/politicalnativi01scisgoog |page=267 |via=Internet Archive}}</ref> and the [[Order of the Star Spangled Banner]]<ref>{{cite EB1911 |wstitle=Know Nothing Party |volume=15 |page=877}}</ref> came to be the most important. They emerged in New York in the early 1850s as a secret order that quickly spread across the North, reaching non-Catholics, particularly those who were lower middle class or skilled workers.<ref>{{Cite journal |jstor=2675102 |title=Conservatism, Nativism, and Slavery: Thomas R. Whitney and the Origins of the Know-Nothing Party  |journal=The Journal of American History |volume=88 |issue=2 |pages=455–488 |last=Levine |first=Bruce |year=2001 |doi=10.2307/2675102}}</ref>

The name ''Know Nothing'' originated in the semi-secret organization of the party. When a member of the party was asked about his activities, he was supposed to say, "I know nothing." Outsiders derisively called the party's members "Know Nothings", and the name stuck. In 1855, the Know Nothings first entered politics under the American Party label.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Wilentz |first=Sean |title=The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln |date=2005 |publisher=W.W. Norton & Company |isbn=0-393-05820-4 |edition=1st |location=New York, New York |oclc=57414581 |author-link=Sean Wilentz |pages=681–2, 693}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Billington |first=Ray A. |title=The Protestant Crusade, 1800–1860: A Study of the Origins of American Nativism |date=1938 |url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.214564 |via=Internet Archive |location=Chicago, Illinois |publisher=Quadrangle Books |pages=337, 380–406}}</ref>

=== Underlying issues ===
The immigration of large numbers of Irish and German Catholics to the United States in the period between 1830 and 1860 made religious differences between Catholics and Protestants a political issue. Violence occasionally erupted at the polls. Protestants alleged that Pope [[Pius IX]] had contributed to the failure of the liberal [[Revolutions of 1848]] in Europe and they also alleged that he was an enemy of liberty, democracy and [[Republicanism in the United States|republicanism]]. One Boston minister described Catholicism as "the ally of tyranny, the opponent of material prosperity, the foe of thrift, the enemy of the railroad, the caucus, and the school".{{sfnp|Billington|1938|p=242}}<ref>{{cite book |first=John T. |last=McGreevey |title=Catholicism and American Freedom: A History |year=2003 |publisher=W.W. Norton & Company |location=New York, New York |pages=22–5, 34 (quotation) |isbn=0-393-04760-1}}</ref> These fears encouraged [[conspiracy theories]] regarding papal intentions of subjugating the United States through a continuing influx of Catholics controlled by Irish bishops obedient to and personally selected by the Pope.

[[File:Screen-Shot-2021-02-16-at-1.webp|thumb|1850s political cartoon by John H. Goater: Irish and German caricatures "stealing an election" with chaos at the "Election Day Polls" site, fueling fears of immigrant political power]]

In 1849, an oath-bound [[secret society]], the [[Order of the Star Spangled Banner]], was founded by Charles B. Allen in New York City. At its inception, the Order of the Star Spangled Banner only had about 36 members. Fear of Catholic immigration caused some Protestants to become dissatisfied with the [[History of the Democratic Party (United States)|Democratic Party]], whose leaders included Catholics of Irish descent in many cities. Activists formed secret groups, coordinating their votes and throwing their weight behind candidates who were sympathetic to their cause:
{{Blockquote|Immigration during the first five years of the 1850s reached a level five times greater than a decade earlier. Most of the new arrivals were poor Catholic peasants or laborers from Ireland and Germany who crowded the tenements of large cities. Crime and welfare costs soared. Cincinnati's crime rate, for example, tripled between 1846 and 1853 and its murder rate increased sevenfold. Boston's expenditures for poor relief rose threefold during the same period.<ref>{{Cite book |last=McPherson |first=James M. |author-link=James M. McPherson |title=[[Battle Cry of Freedom (book)|Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era]] |date=1988 |isbn=0-19-503863-0 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=New York |page=131 |oclc=15550774}}</ref>}}

Unlike later [[antisemitism in the United States|antisemitic nativist groups in the U.S.]], and despite their zealous [[xenophobia]] and religious bigotry, the Know Nothings did not focus their ire on [[Jews]] or Judaism.{{sfnp|Anbinder|1992|p=120}} Prioritizing a zealous disdain for Irish, German and French Catholic immigrants, the Know Nothing Party "had nothing to say about Jews", according to historian [[Hasia Diner]],<ref>{{cite book |last=Diner |first=Hasia R. |year=2006 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=O7IwDwAAQBAJ&dq=know+nothings+jews&pg=PA158 |title=The Jews of the United States, 1654 to 2000 |page=158 |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=978-0-520-24848-9 |access-date=2022-02-09 |via=Google Books}}</ref> reportedly because its backers believed Jews, unlike Catholics, did not allow "their religious feelings to interfere with their political views."{{sfnp|Anbinder|1992|p=120}} In [[New York (state)|New York]], the party supported a Jewish candidate for governor, [[Daniel Ullman]], in 1854.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Rabinowitz |first=Howard N. |date=March 1988 |title=Nativism, Bigotry and Anti-Semitism in the South |journal=American Jewish History |volume=77 |issue=3 |pages=437–451 |jstor=23883316}}</ref>

=== Rise ===
In the spring of 1854, the Know Nothings carried Boston and Salem, Massachusetts, and other New England cities. They swept the state of Massachusetts in the fall 1854 elections, their biggest victory. The [[Whig Party (United States)|Whig]] candidate for mayor of Philadelphia, editor [[Robert T. Conrad]], was soon revealed as a Know Nothing as he promised to crack down on crime, close saloons on Sundays and only appoint native-born Americans to office—he won the election by a landslide. In Washington, D.C., Know Nothing candidate [[John T. Towers]] defeated incumbent Mayor [[John Walker Maury]], triggering opposition of such a high proportion that the Democrats, Whigs, and [[Free Soil Party|Freesoilers]] in the capital united as the "Anti-Know-Nothing Party". In New York, where [[James Harper (publisher)|James Harper]] had been elected mayor of New York City as an [[American Republican Party (1843)|American Republican]] almost a decade before, the Know Nothing candidate [[Daniel Ullman]] came in third in a four-way race for governor by gathering 26% of the vote. After the 1854 elections, they exerted a large amount of political influence in Maine, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and California, but historians are unsure about the accuracy of this information due to the secrecy of the party, because all parties were in turmoil and the [[abolitionism in the United States|anti-slavery]] and [[Prohibition of alcohol|prohibition]] issues overlapped with nativism in complex and confusing ways. They helped elect [[Stephen Palfrey Webb]] as [[mayor of San Francisco]] and they also helped elect [[J. Neely Johnson]] as governor of California. [[Nathaniel P. Banks]] was elected to Congress as a Know Nothing candidate, but after a few months he aligned with Republicans. A coalition of Know Nothings, Republicans and other members of Congress [[Opposition Party (Northern U.S.)|opposed]] to the Democratic Party elected Banks to the position of [[Speaker of the United States House of Representatives|Speaker of the House]].

The results of the 1854 elections were so favorable to the Know Nothings, up to then an informal movement with no centralized organization, that they formed officially as a political party called the American Party, which attracted many members of the by then nearly defunct Whig party as well as a significant number of Democrats. Membership in the American Party increased dramatically, from 50,000 to an estimated one million plus in a matter of months during that year.{{sfnp|Anbinder|1992|pp=75–102}}

The historian Tyler Anbinder concluded:
{{blockquote|The key to Know Nothing success in 1854 was the collapse of the [[second party system]], brought about primarily by the demise of the Whig Party. The Whig Party, weakened for years by internal dissent and chronic factionalism, was nearly destroyed by the [[Kansas–Nebraska Act]]. Growing anti-party sentiment, fueled by anti-slavery sentiment as well as [[Temperance movement|temperance]] and nativism, also contributed to the disintegration of the party system. The collapsing second party system gave the Know Nothings a much larger pool of potential converts than was available to previous nativist organizations, allowing the Order to succeed where older nativist groups had failed.{{sfnp|Anbinder|1992|p=95}} }}

In [[San Francisco]], a Know Nothing chapter was founded in 1854 to oppose Chinese immigration—members included a judge of the state supreme court, who ruled that no Chinese person could testify as a witness against a white man in court.<ref>{{Cite book |last=LeMay |first=Michael C. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KxW_BKtCjqkC&pg=PT150 |title=Transforming America: Perspectives on U.S. Immigration. Volume 1, The Making of a Nation of Nations: The Founding to 1865 |publisher=Praeger Publishers |year=2012 |isbn=978-0-313-39644-1 |location=Santa Barbara, California |page=150 |oclc=828743108}}</ref> The Know Nothing party tried passing multiple bills in [[United States Congress|Congress]] that would hinder the acceptance of certain immigrants into the [[United States]], but the laws were never passed since the party was slowly declining during 1855.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Know-Nothing Party |url=https://law.jrank.org/pages/8005/Know-Nothing-Party.html |access-date=2025-01-14 |website=law.jrank.org |language=en}}</ref>

[[File:Fillmore2.JPG|thumb|upright|[[Millard Fillmore|Fillmore]]–[[Andrew Jackson Donelson|Donelson]] campaign poster]]
[[1855 Chicago mayoral election|In the spring of 1855]], Know Nothing candidate [[Levi Boone]] was elected mayor of Chicago and barred all immigrants from city jobs. Abraham Lincoln was strongly opposed to the principles of the Know Nothing movement, but did not denounce it publicly because he needed the votes of its membership to form a successful anti-slavery coalition in Illinois.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Miller |first=Richard Lawrence |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=V0pLMk1BLNAC&pg=PA63 |title=Lincoln and His World. Vol. 4, The Path to the Presidency, 1854–1860 |publisher=Mcfarland & Company Inc. |year=2012 |isbn=978-0-7864-8812-4 |location=Jefferson, North Carolina |pages=63–64 |oclc=775680836}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/knownothingparty.htm |last=Lincoln |first=Abraham |date=1855-08-24 |title=Lincoln on the Know Nothing Party (Letter to Joshua F. Speed) |website=Lincoln Home National Historic Site, U.S. National Park Service |language=en |access-date=2019-12-17}}</ref> Ohio was the only state where the party gained strength in 1855. Their Ohio success seems to have come from winning over immigrants, especially German-American Lutherans and Scots-Irish Presbyterians, both hostile to Catholicism. In Alabama, Know Nothings were a mix of former Whigs, discontented Democrats and other political outsiders who favored state aid to build more railroads. Virginia attracted national attention in its tempestuous 1855 gubernatorial election. Democrat [[Henry Alexander Wise]] won by convincing state voters that Know Nothings were in bed with Northern abolitionists. With the victory by Wise, the movement began to collapse in the South.<ref>Allan Nevins, ''Ordeal of the Union: A House Dividing 1852–1857'' (1947) 2:396–8.</ref><ref>{{cite journal |first=John David |last=Bladek |title='Virginia Is Middle Ground': The Know Nothing Party and the Virginia Gubernatorial Election of 1855 |journal=Virginia Magazine of History and Biography |date=1998 |volume=106 |issue=1 |pages=35–70 |jstor=4249690}}.</ref>

Know Nothings scored victories in Northern state elections in 1854, winning control of the legislature in Massachusetts and polling 40% of the vote in Pennsylvania. Although most of the new immigrants lived in the North, resentment and anger against them was national and the American Party initially polled well in the South, attracting the votes of many former southern Whigs.<ref name="Carey1995" />

The party name gained wide, but brief, popularity: Know Nothing candy, tea, and toothpicks appeared, and the name was given to stagecoaches, buses, and ships.<ref>{{cite book |first=David Harry |last=Bennett |title=The Party of Fear: From Nativist Movements to the New Right in American History |year=1988 |publisher=UNC Press Books |location=Chapel Hill, North Carolina |isbn=0-8078-1772-4 |page=15 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mH_zVWsUzlUC&pg=PA115}}</ref> In [[East Central Washington, Maine|Trescott]], Maine, a shipowner dubbed his new 700-ton freighter ''Know-Nothing.''<ref>{{cite news |title=Launches in the United States for the Past Month |author=<!--no byline--> |work=The Monthly Nautical Magazine and Quarterly Commercial Review |date=November 1854 |volume=I |issue=2 |page=140 |url=https://library.si.edu/digital-library/book/monthlynauti118541855newy |via=Smithsonian Libraries}}</ref> The party was occasionally referred to, contemporaneously, in a slightly pejorative shortening, "Knism".<ref>{{cite journal |first=William E. |last=Gienapp |title=Salmon P. Chase, Nativism, and the Formation of the Republican Party in Ohio |pages=22, 24 |journal=Ohio History |volume=93 |url=https://resources.ohiohistory.org/ohj/browse/displaypages.php?display[]=0093&display[]=5&display[]=39 |access-date=2023-04-25}}</ref>

=== Leadership and legislation ===
Historian John Mulkern has examined the party's success in sweeping to almost complete control of the Massachusetts legislature after its 1854 landslide victory. He finds the new party was populist and highly democratic, hostile to wealth, elites and to expertise, and deeply suspicious of outsiders, especially Catholics. The new party's voters were concentrated in the rapidly growing industrial towns, where Yankee workers faced direct competition with new Irish immigrants. Whereas the Whig Party was strongest in high income districts, the Know Nothing electorate was strongest in the poor districts. They expelled the traditional upper-class, closed, political leadership, especially the lawyers and merchants. In their stead, they elected working-class men, farmers and a large number of teachers and ministers. Replacing the moneyed elite were men who seldom owned $10,000 in property.<ref>{{cite book |first=John R. |last=Mulkern |title=The Know-Nothing Party in Massachusetts: The Rise and Fall of a People's Movement |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KyISxp0yfG0C&pg=PA86 |year=1990 |publisher=University Press of New England |location=Lebanon, New Hampshire |pages=74–89 |isbn=978-1-55553-071-6}}</ref>

Nationally, the new party leadership showed incomes, occupation, and social status that were about average. Few were wealthy, according to detailed historical studies of once-secret membership rosters. Fewer than 10% were unskilled workers who might come in direct competition with Irish laborers. They enlisted few farmers, but on the other hand they included many merchants and factory owners.{{sfnp|Anbinder|1992|pp=34–43}} The party's voters were by no means all native-born Americans, for it won more than a fourth of the German and British Protestants in numerous state elections. It especially appealed to Protestants such as the Lutherans, Dutch Reformed and Presbyterians.<ref>{{cite book |first=William E. |last=Gienapp |title=Origins of the Republican Party 1852–1856 |year=1987 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=New York, New York |isbn=0-19-504100-3 |pages=538–542 }}</ref>

=== Violence ===
{{Main|Know-Nothing Riots in United States politics}}
[[File:Know Nothing ticket.jpg|thumb|250px|An 1855 Ohio Know Nothing Party ticket naming party candidates for state and county offices. At the bottom of the page are voting instructions.]]
Fearful that Catholics were flooding the polls with non-citizens, local activists threatened to stop them. On August 6, 1855, rioting broke out in [[Louisville, Kentucky]], during a hotly contested race for the office of governor. Twenty-two were killed and many injured. This "[[Bloody Monday]]" riot was not the only violent riot by Know Nothings against Catholics in 1855.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Charles E. |last=Deusner |title=The Know Nothing Riots in Louisville |journal=Register of the Kentucky Historical Society |volume=61 |issue=2 |date=April 1963 |pages=122–47 |jstor=23375884}}</ref> In [[History of Baltimore|Baltimore]], the [[Know-Nothing Riot of 1856|mayoral elections]] of 1856, 1857 and 1858 were all marred by violence and well-founded accusations of ballot-rigging by the Know Nothings.<ref name="Tuska1925">{{cite journal |last=Tuska |first=Benjamin R. |title=Know-Nothingism in Baltimore 1854–1860 |journal=The Catholic Historical Review |date=1925 |volume=11 |issue=2 |pages=217–251 |jstor=25012185 |issn=0008-8080}}</ref> In the coastal town of [[Ellsworth, Maine]], in 1854, Know Nothings were associated with the [[tarring and feathering]] of the [[Jesuits|Jesuit]] priest [[John Bapst|Johannes Bapst]]. They also [[Bath, Maine, anti-Catholic riot of 1854|burned down a Catholic church]] in [[Bath, Maine]].<ref>{{cite book |title=Maine: A History |volume=1 |year=1919 |publisher=The American Historical Society |location=New York, New York |editor-last=Hatch |editor-first=Louis Clinton |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Sg0hAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA304 |via=Google Books |access-date=2023-04-25}}</ref>

===New England===
====Massachusetts====
The most aggressive and innovative legislation came out of Massachusetts, where the new party controlled all but three of the 400 seats—only 35 had any previous legislative experience. The Massachusetts legislature in 1855 passed a series of reforms that "burst the dam against change erected by party politics, and released a flood of reforms."<ref>{{cite book |first=Ronald P. |last=Formisano |title=The Transformation of Political Culture: Massachusetts Parties, 1790s–1840s |url=https://archive.org/details/transformationof0000form |url-access=registration |year=1983 |page=[https://archive.org/details/transformationof0000form/page/332 332] |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-503124-9 }}</ref> The period from 1854 to 1857 saw among Massachusetts Know Nothings a decline in the traditional nativist wing of the party and the rise of the group of abolitionists and reformers, including former Massachusetts Senate President [[Henry Wilson]], looking to redirect the focus of the party.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Ruchames |first=Louis |date=1952 |title=The Abolitionists and the Jews |journal=Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society |volume=42 |issue=2 |page=138 |issn=0146-5511 |jstor=43057515}}</ref> Historian Stephen Taylor says that in addition to nativist legislation, "the party also distinguished itself by its opposition to slavery, support for an expansion of the rights of women, regulation of industry, and support of measures designed to improve the status of working people".<ref name="Taylor 2000">{{cite journal |first=Stephen |last=Taylor |title=Progressive Nativism: The Know-Nothing Party in Massachusetts |journal=Historical Journal of Massachusetts |year=2000 |volume=28 |issue=2 |pages=167–84 |url=https://www.westfield.ma.edu/historical-journal/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Taylor-summer-2000-combined.pdf}}</ref>

It passed legislation to regulate railroads, insurance companies and public utilities. It funded free textbooks for the public schools and raised the appropriations for local libraries and for the school for the blind. Purification of Massachusetts against divisive social evils was a high priority. The legislature set up the state's first reform school for juvenile delinquents while trying to block the importation of supposedly subversive government documents and academic books from Europe. It upgraded the legal status of wives, giving them more property rights and more rights in divorce courts. It passed harsh penalties on speakeasies, gambling houses and bordellos. It passed prohibition legislation with penalties that were so stiff—such as six months in prison for serving one glass of beer—that juries refused to convict defendants. Many of the reforms were quite expensive; state spending rose 45% on top of a 50% hike in annual taxes on cities and towns. This extravagance angered the taxpayers, and few Know Nothings were reelected.{{sfnp|Taylor|2000|pp=171–172}} These successes at enacting reform legislation came at the expense of the traditional nativist priorities of the party, causing some national Know Nothing leaders, like Samuel Morse, to question the Massachusetts party's aims.{{sfnp|Ruchames|1952|p=139}}

The Massachusetts Know Nothings did advance attacks on the civil rights of Irish Catholic immigrants. After this, state courts lost the power to process applications for citizenship and public schools had to require compulsory daily reading of the Protestant Bible (which the nativists were sure would transform the Catholic children). The governor disbanded the Irish militias and replaced Irish holding state jobs with Protestants. However, Know Nothing lawmakers failed to reach the two-thirds majority needed to pass a state constitutional amendment to restrict voting and office holding to men who had resided in Massachusetts for at least 21 years. The legislature then called on Congress to raise the requirement for naturalization from five years to 21 years, but Congress never acted.{{sfnp|Mulkern|1990|pp=101–102}} The most dramatic move by the Know Nothing legislature was to appoint an investigating committee designed to prove widespread sexual immorality underway in Catholic convents. The press had a field day following the story, especially when it was discovered that the key reformer was using committee funds to pay for a prostitute. The legislature shut down its committee, ejected the reformer, and saw its investigation become a laughing stock.{{sfnp|Anbinder|1992|p=137}}<ref>{{cite journal |first=John R. |last=Mulkern |title=Scandal Behind the Convent Walls: The Know-Nothing Nunnery Committee of 1855 |journal=Historical Journal of Massachusetts |volume=11 |number=1 |year=1983 |pages=22–34 |url=https://www.westfield.ma.edu/historical-journal/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Mulkern-combined.pdf |access-date=2023-04-25}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |first=Mary J. |last=Oates |title='Lowell': An Account of Convent Life in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1852–1890 |journal=New England Quarterly |volume=61 |issue=1 |year=1988 |pages=101–18 |jstor=365222 |doi=10.2307/365222}} (Discusses the actual behavior of the Catholic nuns.)</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=History of the Archdiocese of Boston in the Various Stages of Development, 1604 to 1943 |volume=2 |last1=Lord |first1=Robert Howard |last2=	Harrington |first2=Edward T. |last3=Sexton |first3=John E. |name-list-style=amp |year=1945 |location=Boston |publisher=The Pilot Publishing Co. |pages=686–99 |url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=inu.30000077451536&view=1up&seq=703 |access-date=2023-04-25 |via=Hathi Trust}}</ref>

====New Hampshire and Rhode Island====
The Know Nothings scored a landslide in New Hampshire in 1855. They won 51% of the  vote, including 94% of the anti-slavery [[Free Soil Party|Free Soilers]], and 79% of the Whigs, plus 15% of Democrats and 24% of those who abstained in the previous election for governor the year before.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Renda |first=Lex |title=Running on the Record: Civil War-Era Politics in New Hampshire |publisher=University Press of Virginia |year=1997 |isbn=0-8139-1722-0 |location=Charlottesville, Virginia |pages=54, 211, Table 15 |oclc=36065963}}</ref> In full control of the legislature, the Know Nothings enacted their entire agenda.  According to Lex Renda, they battled traditionalism and promoted rapid modernization. They extended the waiting period for citizenship to slow down the growth of Irish power; they reformed the state courts. They expanded the number and power of banks; they strengthened corporations; they defeated a proposed 10-hour workday law. They reformed the tax system, increased state spending on public schools, set up a system to build high schools, prohibited the sale of liquor, and denounced the expansion of slavery in the western territories.{{sfnp|Renda|1997|pp=33-57}}

The Whigs and Free Soil parties both collapsed in New Hampshire in 1854–55. In the 1855 fall elections the Know Nothings again swept New Hampshire against the Democrats and the small new Republican party. When the Know Nothing "American Party" collapsed in 1856 and merged with the Republicans, New Hampshire now had a two party system with the Republicans edging out the Democrats.{{sfnp|Renda|1997|pp=55, 58, 212}}

The Know Nothings also dominated politics in Rhode Island, where in 1855 [[William W. Hoppin]] held the governorship and five out of every seven votes went to the party, which dominated the Rhode Island legislature.<ref name="McLoughlin">{{cite book |last1=McLoughlin |first1=William G. |title=Rhode Island: A History |date=1986 |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |location=New York, New York |isbn=0-393-30271-7 |pages=141–142}}</ref> Local newspapers such as ''[[The Providence Journal]]'' fueled anti-Irish and anti-Catholic sentiment.<ref name="McLoughlin"/>

=== South ===
In the Southern United States, the American Party was composed chiefly of ex-Whigs looking for a vehicle to fight the dominant Democratic Party and worried about both the pro-slavery extremism of the Democrats and the emergence of the anti-slavery Republican party in the North.<ref name="Carey1995">{{cite journal|last1=Carey|first1=Anthony Gene|title=Too Southern to Be Americans: Proslavery Politics and the Failure of the Know-Nothing Party in Georgia, 1854–1856|journal=Civil War History|volume=41|issue=1|year=1995|pages=22–40|issn=1533-6271|doi=10.1353/cwh.1995.0023|s2cid=144295708 }}</ref> In the South as a whole, the American Party was strongest among former Unionist Whigs. States-rightist Whigs shunned it, enabling the Democrats to win most of the South. Whigs supported the American Party because of their desire to defeat the Democrats, their unionist sentiment, their anti-immigrant attitudes, and their neutrality on the slavery issue.<ref>{{cite journal|title=Some Determinants of Know-Nothing Electoral Strength in the South, 1856|journal=Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association |year=1966 |last=Broussard |first=James H. |volume=7|issue=1|pages=5–20|jstor=4230880}}</ref>

David T. Gleeson notes that many Irish Catholics in the South feared that the arrival of the Know-Nothing movement portended a serious threat. He argues:
<blockquote>The southern Irish, who had seen the dangers of Protestant bigotry in Ireland, had the distinct feeling that the Know-Nothings were an American manifestation of that phenomenon. Every migrant, no matter how settled or prosperous, also worried that this virulent strain of nativism threatened his or her hard-earned gains in the South and integration into its society. Immigrants fears were unjustified, however, because the national debate over slavery and its expansion, not nativism or anti-Catholicism, was the major reason for Know-Nothing success in the South. The southerners who supported the Know-Nothings did so, for the most part, because they thought the Democrats who favored the expansion of slavery might break up the Union.<ref>{{cite book |first=David T. |last=Gleeson |title=The Irish in the South, 1815–1877 |year=2001 |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |location=Chapel Hill, North Carolina |isbn=978-0-8078-4968-2 |page=78}}</ref></blockquote>

In 1855, the American Party challenged the Democrats' dominance. In Alabama, the Know Nothings were a mix of former Whigs, malcontented Democrats and other political misfits; they favored state aid to build more railroads. In the fierce campaign, the Democrats argued that Know Nothings could not protect slavery from Northern abolitionists. The Know Nothing American Party disintegrated soon after losing in 1855.<ref>{{cite journal |title=Unintended Consequences: The Rise and Fall of the Know-Nothing Party in Alabama |journal=[[Alabama Review]] |year=2002 |last=Frederick |first=Jeff|volume=55|issue=1|pages=3–33 |url=http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/5569301/unintended-consequences-rise-fall-know-nothing-party-alabama|access-date=2017-01-23}}{{dead link|date=November 2020|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}}</ref>

In Virginia, the Know Nothing movement came under sharp attack from both established parties. Democrats published a 12,000-word, point-by-point denunciation of Know Nothingism. The Democrats nominated ex-Whig [[Henry A. Wise]] for governor. He denounced the "lousy, godless, Christless" Know Nothings and instead he advocated an expanded program of internal improvements.{{sfnp|Bladek|1998|p=45}}<ref>{{cite journal |first=Philip Morrison |last=Rice |title=The Know-Nothing Party in Virginia, 1854–1856 |journal=Virginia Magazine of History and Biography |date=1947 |volume=55 |issue=1 |page=66 |jstor=245457}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |first=Philip Morrison |last=Rice |title=The Know-Nothing Party in Virginia, 1854–1856 (Concluded) |journal=Virginia Magazine of History and Biography |volume=55 |issue=2 |date=1947 |pages=159–167 |jstor=4245471}}</ref>

In Maryland, growing anti-immigrant sentiment fueled the party's rise.<ref>{{cite book |last=Baker |first= Jean H. |date=1977 |title=Ambivalent Americans: The Know-Nothing Party in Maryland|publisher= Johns Hopkins University Press |isbn= 0-8018-1906-7}}</ref> Despite the state's [[Province of Maryland|Catholic roots]], by the 1850s about 60 percent of the population was Protestant and open to the Know Nothing's anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant appeal. On August 18, 1853, the party held its first rally in Baltimore with about 5,000 in attendance, calling for secularization of public schools, complete separation of church and state, freedom of speech, and regulating immigration.<ref name="Tuska1925"/> The first Know-Nothing candidate elected into office in Baltimore was Mayor Samuel Hinks in 1855. The following year, ethnic and secular conflicts fueled [[Know-Nothing Riots of 1856|riots]] around municipal and federal elections in Maryland with Know-Nothing–affiliated gangs clashing with Democratic-aligned gangs.<ref>{{cite book |last=Melton |first=Tracy Matthew |date=2005 |title=Hanging Henry Gambrill: The Violent Career of Baltimore's Plug Uglies, 1854–1860 |publisher=The Maryland Center for History and Culture |location=Baltimore, Maryland |doi=10.56021/9780938420941 |isbn=978-0-938420-94-1}}</ref>

Historian Michael F. Holt argues that "Know Nothingism originally grew in the South for the same reasons it spread in the North—nativism, anti-Catholicism, and animosity toward unresponsive politicos—not because of conservative Unionism". Holt cites [[William B. Campbell]], former governor of Tennessee, who wrote in January 1855: "I have been astonished at the widespread feeling in favor of their principles—to wit, Native Americanism and anti-Catholicism—it takes everywhere".<ref name="Holt2003">{{cite book|last=Holt|first=Michael F.|title=The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5aGyVFn3VnMC|year=1999|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=New York, New York|isbn=978-0-19-516104-5|page=856}}</ref> Despite this, in Louisiana and Maryland, prominent Know Nothings remained loyal to the Union. In Maryland, American Party's former governor and later senator [[Thomas Holliday Hicks]], Representative [[Henry Winter Davis]], and Senator [[Anthony Kennedy (Maryland politician)|Anthony Kennedy]], along with his brother, former Representative [[John Pendleton Kennedy]], all supported the Union in a border state. Louisiana Know Nothing congressman [[John Edward Bouligny]], a Catholic [[Louisiana Creole people|Creole]], was the only member of the Louisiana congressional delegation who refused to resign his seat after the state seceded from the Union.<ref>{{cite speech |title=Feb. 5, 1861: Secession of Louisiana |first=John Edward |last=Bouligny |event=Speech in the House of Representatives |location=Washington, D.C. |date=1861-02-05 |url=https://www.hnoc.org/programs/documents/LessonPlan_CivilWar.pdf |access-date=2017-01-23  |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170202023424/https://www.hnoc.org/programs/documents/LessonPlan_CivilWar.pdf |archive-date=2017-02-02}}</ref>

==== Louisiana ====
Despite the national American Party's anti-Catholicism, the Know Nothings found strong support in Louisiana, including in largely Catholic New Orleans.<ref>{{cite thesis|title=A Glorious Assemblage: The Rise of the Know-Nothing Party in Louisiana|last=Hall|first=Ryan M.|type=MA|date=2015|publisher=Louisiana State University|location=Baton Rouge, Louisiana|url=https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2251&context=gradschool_theses|access-date=2020-08-04}}</ref>{{sfnp|Anbinder|1992|p=167}} The Whig Party in Louisiana had a strong anti-immigrant bent, making the Native American Party the natural home for Louisiana's former Whigs.<ref name="Tarver1964">{{cite thesis|title=A Rhetorical Analysis of Selected Ante-Bellum Speeches by Randell Hunt|last=Tarver|first=Jerry L.|date=1964|publisher=Louisiana State University|location=Baton Rouge, Louisiana|type=PhD|url=https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/960/|access-date=2020-10-20}}</ref> Louisiana Know Nothings were pro-slavery and anti-immigrant, but, in contrast to the national party, refused to include a religious test for membership.<ref>{{cite web|title=American Convention|author=<!--no byline-->|date=September 5, 1855|work=The South-Western|location=Shreveport, Louisiana|page=1|via=[[Newspapers.com]]|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/61455597/louisiana-branch-of-the-american-party/|access-date=2020-10-20|quote=That while we resist all encroachments of spiritual power upon our political rights, we disclaim the calumnious charge of our own opponents that we require a religious test to qualify native born citizens to hold office or enjoy the full rights of citizenship.}}</ref> Instead, the Louisiana Know Nothings insisted that "loyalty to a church should not supersede loyalty to the Union."<ref name="Tarver1964" /> Similarly, the broader Know Nothing movement viewed Louisiana Catholics, and in particular the Creole elite who supported the American Party, as adhering to a [[Gallicanism|Gallican Catholicism]] and therefore opposed to papal authority over matters of state.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Carriere |first=Marius M. Jr. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=y35aDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT54 |title=The Know Nothings in Louisiana |date=2018 |publisher=University of Mississippi Press |isbn=978-1-4968-1688-7 |location=Jackson, Mississippi |page=46 |oclc=1021063970 |via=Google Books}}</ref>

=== Decline ===
[[File:KnowNothingPresidentialCounty1856.gif|thumb|250px|Results by county indicating the percentage for Fillmore in each county]]
The party declined rapidly in the North after 1855, in part due to the party's rejection of a clear anti-slavery platform. During the [[1856 U.S. presidential election|presidential election of 1856]], the party was bitterly divided over slavery. The main faction supported the ticket of presidential nominee [[Millard Fillmore]] and vice presidential nominee [[Andrew Jackson Donelson]]. In Massachusetts, for example, the American Party ran Republican candidate [[John C. Frémont]] as its presidential nominee.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Levine |first=Bruce |date=2001 |title=Conservatism, Nativism, and Slavery: Thomas R. Whitney and the Origins of the Know-Nothing Party |url=https://academic.oup.com/jah/article-lookup/doi/10.2307/2675102 |journal=The Journal of American History |volume=88 |issue=2 |page=484 |doi=10.2307/2675102 |jstor= 2675102 |access-date=2023-04-05|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

Fillmore, a former president, had been a Whig and Donelson was the nephew of Democratic President [[Andrew Jackson]], so the ticket was designed to appeal to loyalists from both major parties, winning 23% of the popular vote and carrying one state, Maryland, with eight electoral votes. Fillmore did not win enough votes to block Democrat [[James Buchanan]] from the White House.

Many were appalled by the Know Nothings. While [[Abraham Lincoln]] never publicly attacked the Know Nothings, whose votes he needed, he expressed his own disgust with the political party in a private letter to [[Joshua Speed]], written August 24, 1855:

{{blockquote|I am not a Know-Nothing– That is certain– How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid– As a nation, we began by declaring that "<u>all men are created equal</u>" We now practically read it "all men are created equal, <u>except negroes</u>." When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except negroes, <u>and foreigners</u>, <u>and catholics</u>". When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence {{sic}} of loving liberty– to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy– {{sic}}<ref>{{cite archive |first= Abraham |last= Lincoln |item= Letter to Joshua F. Speed, August 24, 1855 |item-url= https://papersofabrahamlincoln.org/documents/D200860b |type= |item-id= |date= 1855-08-24 |page=8 |fonds= |series= |file= |box= |collection= Papers of Abraham Lincoln Digital Library |collection-url= https://papersofabrahamlincoln.org/ |repository= |institution= Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library |location= Springfield, Illinois }} (Note: [https://www.masshist.org/database/viewer.php?item_id=456&mode=large&img_step=8&pid=3&ft=Object%20of%20the%20Month&nodesc=1#page8 Original manuscript] held by Massachusetts Historical Society.)</ref>}}

Historian [[Allan Nevins]], writing about the turmoil preceding the American Civil War, states that Millard Fillmore was never a Know Nothing nor a nativist. Fillmore was out of the country when the presidential nomination came and had not been consulted about running. Nevins further states:
{{blockquote|[Fillmore] was not a member of the party; he had never attended an American [Know-Nothing] gathering. By no spoken or written word had he indicated a subscription to American [Party] tenets.<ref>{{cite book |first=Allan |last=Nevins |author-link=Allan Nevins |title=Ordeal of the Union: A House Dividing 1852–1857 |publisher=Charles Scribner's Sons |location=New York City, New York |year=1947 |volume=2 |page=467}}</ref>}}

However, Fillmore had sent a letter for publication in 1855 that explicitly denounced immigrant influence in elections<ref>{{cite book |last=Smith |first=Elbert B. |author-link=Elbert B. Smith |title=The Presidencies of Zachary Taylor & Millard Fillmore |publisher=[[University Press of Kansas]] |year=1988 |series=The American Presidency |isbn=978-0-7006-0362-6 |pages=252–253 |url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780700603626}}</ref> and Fillmore stated that the American Party was the "only hope of forming a truly national party, which shall ignore this constant and distracting agitation of slavery."<ref>{{Cite encyclopedia |title=Fillmore, Millard (1800–1874), thirteenth president of the United States |encyclopedia=American National Biography |publisher=Oxford University Press |url=http://www.anb.org/view/10.1093/anb/9780198606697.001.0001/anb-9780198606697-e-0400374 |last=Anbinder |first=Tyler |author-link=Tyler Anbinder |date=2000 |volume=1 |language=en |doi=10.1093/anb/9780198606697.article.0400374 |isbn=978-0-19-860669-7|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

After the Supreme Court's controversial ''[[Dred Scott v. Sandford]]'' ruling in 1857, most of the anti-slavery members of the American Party joined the [[History of the United States Republican Party|Republican Party]]. The pro-slavery wing of the American Party remained strong on the local and state levels in a few southern states, but by the [[1860 U.S. presidential election|1860 election]] they were no longer a serious national political movement. Most of their remaining members supported the [[Constitutional Union Party (United States)|Constitutional Union Party]] in 1860.{{sfnp|Anbinder|1992|p=270}}

== Electoral results  ==
=== Know-Nothing winners in Congressional elections ===
{{col-begin}}
{{col-2}}
{|class=wikitable
|+United States House of Representatives
|-
!Election year
!No. of<br />overall seats won
!+/–
!Presidency
|-{{Party shading/Democratic}}
![[1844 United States House of Representatives elections|1844]]
|{{composition bar|6|227|hex=#999999}}
|{{increase}} 6
|{{Party shading/Democratic}} & rowspan="2"|[[James K. Polk]]
|-{{Party shading/Whig}}
![[1846 United States House of Representatives elections|1846]]
|{{composition bar|1|230|hex=#999999}}
|{{decrease}} 5
|-
![[1848 United States House of Representatives elections|1848]]
|{{composition bar|1|233|hex=#999999}}
|{{steady}}
|{{Party shading/Whig}} & rowspan="1"|[[Zachary Taylor]]
|-{{Party shading/Democratic}}
![[1850 United States House of Representatives elections|1850]]
|{{composition bar|0|233|hex=#999999}}
|{{decrease}} 1
|{{Party shading/Whig}} & rowspan="1"|[[Millard Fillmore]]
|-{{Party shading/Democratic}}
![[1852 United States House of Representatives elections|1852]]
|{{composition bar|0|234|hex=#999999}}
|{{steady}}
|{{Party shading/Democratic}} & rowspan="2"|[[Franklin Pierce]]
|-
![[1854 United States House of Representatives elections|1854]]
|{{composition bar|52|234|hex=#999999}}
|{{increase}} 52
|-{{Party shading/Democratic}}
![[1856 United States House of Representatives elections|1856]]
|{{composition bar|14|237|hex=#999999}}
|{{decrease}} 38
|{{Party shading/Democratic}} & rowspan="2"|[[James Buchanan]]
|-
![[1858 United States House of Representatives elections|1858]]
|{{composition bar|6|238|hex=#999999}}
|{{decrease}} 8
|-
![[1860 United States House of Representatives elections|1860]]
|{{composition bar|0|239|hex=#999999}}
|{{decrease}} 6
|{{Party shading/Republican}} & rowspan="1"|[[Abraham Lincoln]]
|}
{{col-2}}
{|class=wikitable
|+United States Senate
|-
!Election year
!No. of<br />overall seats won
!+/–
!Presidency
|-{{Party shading/Democratic}}
![[1844 United States Senate elections|1844]]
|{{composition bar|0|58|hex=#999999}}
|{{steady}}
|{{Party shading/Democratic}} & rowspan="2"|[[James K. Polk]]
|-{{Party shading/Democratic}}
![[1846 United States Senate elections|1846]]
|{{composition bar|0|60|hex=#999999}}
|{{steady}}
|-{{Party shading/Democratic}}
![[1848 United States Senate elections|1848]]
|{{composition bar|0|62|hex=#999999}}
|{{steady}}
|{{Party shading/Whig}} & rowspan="1"|[[Zachary Taylor]]
|-{{Party shading/Democratic}}
![[1850 United States Senate elections|1850]]
|{{composition bar|0|62|hex=#999999}}
|{{steady}}
|{{Party shading/Whig}} & rowspan="1"|[[Millard Fillmore]]
|-{{Party shading/Democratic}}
![[1852 United States Senate elections|1852]]
|{{composition bar|0|62|hex=#999999}}
|{{steady}}
|{{Party shading/Democratic}} & rowspan="2"|[[Franklin Pierce]]
|-{{Party shading/Democratic}}
![[1854 United States Senate elections|1854]]
|{{composition bar|1|62|hex=#999999}}
|{{increase}} 1
|-{{Party shading/Democratic}}
![[1856 United States Senate elections|1856]]
|{{composition bar|5|66|hex=#999999}}
|{{increase}} 4
|{{Party shading/Democratic}} & rowspan="2"|[[James Buchanan]]
|-{{Party shading/Democratic}}
![[1858 United States Senate elections|1858]]
|{{composition bar|2|66|hex=#999999}}
|{{decrease}} 3
|-
![[1860 United States Senate elections|1860]]
|{{composition bar|0|68|hex=#999999}}
|{{decrease}} 2
|{{Party shading/Republican}} & rowspan="1"|[[Abraham Lincoln]]
|}
{{col-end}}
{{legend0|#B0CEFF|Democratic Party}}&nbsp;&nbsp;{{legend0|#F0C862|Whig Party}}&nbsp;&nbsp;{{legend0|#FFB6B6|Republican Party}}

=== Know-Nothing candidates in presidential elections ===
{|class="sortable wikitable" style="text-align:center"
!Election
!Candidate
!Running mate
!Votes
!Vote %
!Electoral votes
!+/-
!Outcome of election
|-
![[1848 United States presidential election|1848]]
|colspan="7"|Withdrew endorsement of [[Zachary Taylor]] and [[Henry Alexander Scammell Dearborn]]<br />after Taylor's nomination at the [[1848 Whig National Convention]]
|-
![[1852 United States presidential election|1852]]
|[[File:Jacob Broom engraving.jpg|80px]]<br />[[Jacob Broom (congressman)|Jacob Broom]]
|[[File:Reynell Coates Engraving Crop.jpg|80px]]<br />[[Reynell Coates]]
|align="center"|2,566
|align="center"|0.1
|align="left"|{{composition bar|0|294|hex=#999999}}
|align="left"|{{steady}}
|align="left"|Democratic victory
|-
![[1856 United States presidential election|1856]]
|[[File:Millard Fillmore by Brady Studio 1855-65-crop (3x4 cropp).jpg|80px]]<br />[[Millard Fillmore]]
|[[File:Andrew J. Donelson portrait.jpg|80px]]<br />[[Andrew Jackson Donelson]]
|align="center"|873,053
|align="center"|21.5
|align="left"|{{composition bar|8|294|hex=#999999}}
|align="left"|{{increase}}8
|align="left"|Democratic victory
|}

== Legacy ==
{{Conservatism US}}
The nativist, anti-Catholic spirit of the Know Nothing movement was revived by later political movements such as the [[American Protective Association]] of the 1890s and the Second [[Ku Klux Klan]] of the 1920s.<ref name=Safire>{{citation |last=Safire |first=William |author-link=William Safire |title=Safire's Political Dictionary |year=2008 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=New York, New York |isbn=978-0-19-534061-7 |pages=375–76}}</ref> In the late 19th century, Democrats called the Republicans "Know Nothings" in order to secure the votes of Germans in the [[Bennett Law]] campaign in Wisconsin in 1890.<ref>{{cite book |last=Jensen |first=Richard J. |author-link=Richard J. Jensen |title=The Winning of the Midwest: Social and Political Conflict, 1888–96 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |location=Chicago, Illinois |date=1971 |isbn=0-226-39825-0 |pages=108, 147, 160}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |first=Louise Phelps |last=Kellogg |title=The Bennett Law in Wisconsin |journal=Wisconsin Magazine of History |volume=2 |issue=1 |date=September 1918 |page=13 |jstor=4630124}}</ref> A similar [[culture war]] took place in Illinois in 1892, where Democrat [[John Peter Altgeld]] denounced the Republicans:
{{blockquote|The spirit which enacted the [[Alien and Sedition Acts|Alien and Sedition laws]], the spirit which actuated the "Know-nothing" party, the spirit which is forever carping about the foreign-born citizen and trying to abridge his privileges, is too deeply seated in the party. The aristocratic and know-nothing principle has been circulating in its system so long that it will require more than one somersault to shake the poison out of its bones.{{sfnp|Jensen|1971|p=220}} }}

Some historians and journalists "have found parallels with the [[Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories|Birther]] and [[Tea Party movement]]s, seeing the [[Hispanophobia|prejudices against Latino immigrants]] and [[Islamophobia in the United States|hostility towards Islam]] as a similarity".<ref name="Villanova University">{{cite web |title=Library Exhibits {{!}} Know Nothings |url=https://exhibits.library.villanova.edu/chaos-in-the-streets-the-philadelphia-riots-of-1844/know-nothings |website=exhibits.library.villanova.edu |publisher=Villanova University}}</ref> Historians Steve Fraser and Joshue B. Freeman lend their opinion on the Know Nothing and the [[Tea Party movement]]s, arguing:
<blockquote>Tea Party populism should also be thought of as a kind of [[identity politics]] of the [[Right-wing politics|right]]. Almost entirely [[White Americans|white]], and disproportionately male and older, Tea Party advocates express a visceral anger at the cultural and, to some extent, political eclipse of an America in which people who looked and thought like them were dominant (an echo, in its own way, of the anguish of the Know-Nothings). A black President, a female speaker of the house, and a gay head of the House Financial Services Committee are evidently almost too much to bear. Though the [[Opposition to immigration|anti-immigration]] and Tea Party movements so far have remained largely distinct (even with growing ties), they share an emotional grammar: the fear of displacement.<ref name="Villanova University"/></blockquote>

''Know Nothing'' has become a provocative slur, suggesting that the opponent is both nativist and ignorant. [[George Wallace]]'s 1968 presidential campaign was said by ''Time'' to be under the "neo-Know Nothing banner". [[Fareed Zakaria]] wrote that politicians who "encourage[d] Americans to fear foreigners" were becoming "modern incarnations of the Know-Nothings".<ref name=Safire/> In 2006, an editorial in ''[[The Weekly Standard]]'' by neoconservative [[William Kristol]] accused populist Republicans of "turning the GOP into an anti-immigration, Know-Nothing party".<ref name="shirley">{{cite news |first=Craig |last=Shirley |title=How the GOP Lost Its Way |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=April 22, 2006 |page=A21}}</ref> The lead editorial of the May 20, 2007, issue of ''[[The New York Times]]'' on a proposed immigration bill referred to "this generation's Know-Nothings".<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/opinion/20sun1.html |title=The Immigration Deal |author=<!--The New York Times Editorial Board--> |work=The New York Times |date=2007-05-20}}</ref> An editorial written by [[Timothy Egan]] in ''The New York Times'' on August 27, 2010, and titled "Building a Nation of Know-Nothings" discussed the [[Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories|birther movement]], which falsely claimed that [[Barack Obama]] was not a natural-born United States citizen, which is a requirement for the office of president of the United States.<ref>{{cite news |last=Egan |first=Timothy |author-link=Timothy Egan |url=http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/25/building-a-nation-of-know-nothings |title=Building a Nation of Know-Nothings |work=The New York Times |date=2010-08-27}}</ref>

In the [[2016 United States presidential election]], a number of commentators and politicians compared candidate [[Donald Trump]] to the Know Nothings due to his anti-immigration policies.<ref>{{cite magazine |first=John |last=Cassidy |url=http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/donald-trump-isnt-a-fascist-hes-a-media-savvy-know-nothing |title=Donald Trump Isn't a Fascist; He's a Media-Savvy Know-Nothing |magazine=[[The New Yorker]] |date=2015-12-28 |access-date=2016-01-16}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |first=James |last=Nevius |url=https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/18/donald-trump-immigration-know-nothing-dangerous-republicans |title=Donald Trump is an immigration Know-Nothing, and dangerous for Republicans |work=[[The Guardian]] |date=2015-08-15 |access-date=2016-01-16}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |first=Helen |last=Raleigh |url=http://townhall.com/columnists/helenraleigh/2015/09/19/is-trump-turning-the-gop-into-the-know-nothing-party-n2054097/page/full |title=Is Trump Turning the GOP Into the 'Know Nothing' Party? |website=[[Townhall]] |date=2015-09-19 |access-date=2016-01-16 |archive-date=April 14, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160414103044/http://townhall.com/columnists/helenraleigh/2015/09/19/is-trump-turning-the-gop-into-the-know-nothing-party-n2054097/page/full |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine |first=Laura |last=Reston |url=https://newrepublic.com/article/122427/donald-trump-isnt-first-know-nothing-capture-american-hearts |title=Donald Trump Isn't The First Know Nothing to Capture American Hearts |magazine=[[The New Republic]] |date=2015-07-30 |access-date=2016-01-16}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |first=Scott Eric |last=Kaufman |url=http://www.salon.com/2015/12/16/former_ny_governor_george_pataki_donald_trump_is_the_know_nothing_candidate_of_the_21st_century/ |title=Former NY Governor George Pataki: Donald Trump is the 'Know Nothing' candidate of the 21st Century |work=[[Salon (website)|Salon]] |date=December 16, 2015 |access-date=2016-01-16}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.minnpost.com/community-voices/2016/09/trump-throwback-know-nothing-party-1850s |title=Trump: A throwback to the Know-Nothing Party of the 1850s |last=Kiedrowski |first=Jay |date=2016-09-09 |website=MinnPost |access-date=2017-11-15}}</ref>

== In popular culture ==
The fictional "Confederation of American Natives" party was represented in the 2002 film ''[[Gangs of New York]]'', led by William "Bill the Butcher" Cutting ([[Daniel Day-Lewis]]), the fictionalized version of real-life Know Nothing leader [[William Poole]]. The Know Nothings also play a prominent role in the historical fiction novel ''Shaman'' by novelist [[Noah Gordon (novelist)|Noah Gordon]].

== Notable Know Nothings ==
* [[Nathaniel P. Banks]], [[Speaker of the United States House of Representatives]] from Massachusetts and [[Union Army]] general
* [[Levi Boone]], mayor of Chicago
* [[John Wilkes Booth]], actor at [[Ford's Theatre]] who [[assassination of Abraham Lincoln|assassinated]] President [[Abraham Lincoln]]<ref>{{cite book|last=Smith|first=Gene|title=American Gothic: the story of America's legendary theatrical family, Junius, Edwin, and John Wilkes Booth|publisher=[[Simon & Schuster]]|location=New York|year=1992|isbn=0-671-76713-5|page=60 |url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780671767136/page/60 |via=Internet Archive}}</ref>
* [[John Edward Bouligny]], congressman from Louisiana; refused to resign when Louisiana seceded from the Union
* [[John J. Crittenden]], senator for Kentucky
* [[Henry Winter Davis]], congressman from Maryland
* [[Andrew Jackson Donelson]], Washington D.C. newspaper editor, diplomat to Texas and Prussia, and Andrew Jackson's nephew
* [[Millard Fillmore]], [[List of Presidents of the United States|13th president of the United States]]
* [[James Greene Hardy]], lieutenant governor of Kentucky
* [[Samuel Hinks]], mayor of Baltimore
* [[Thomas Holliday Hicks]], governor of Maryland
* [[William W. Hoppin]], governor of Rhode Island<ref name="McLoughlin" />
* [[Sam Houston]], [[United States Senate|senator]] from Texas<ref name=cantrell1>{{cite journal|last1=Cantrell|first1=Gregg|title=Sam Houston and the Know-Nothings: A Reappraisal|journal=The Southwestern Historical Quarterly|date=January 1993|volume=96|issue=3|pages=327–343|jstor=30237138}}</ref>
* [[J. Neely Johnson]], governor of California
* [[Anthony Kennedy (Maryland politician)|Anthony Kennedy]], senator from Maryland
* [[Lewis Charles Levin]], politician and social activist
* [[Charles S. Morehead]], governor of Kentucky<ref>{{cite book |last=Ramage |first=James A. |title=Kentucky's Governors |editor=Lowell H. Harrison |editor-link=Lowell H. Harrison |publisher=The University Press of Kentucky |location=Lexington, Kentucky |year=2004 |isbn=0-8131-2326-7 |page=75}}</ref>
* [[Samuel Morse]], politician, painter and inventor of [[Morse code]] and the [[telegraph]]<ref>{{Cite magazine |last=Billington |first=Ray Allen |date=1959 |title=The Know-Nothing Uproar |url=https://www.americanheritage.com/know-nothing-uproar |magazine=American Heritage |volume=10 |number=2 |language=en}}</ref>
* [[William Poole]], politician and a founder and leader of the New York City criminal Nativist gang the [[Bowery Boys (gang)|Bowery Boys]]
* [[Thaddeus Stevens]], congressman from Pennsylvania<ref>{{cite book| last=Brodie| first=Fawn| author-link=Fawn Brodie| year=1966| edition=Norton Library| orig-date=1959| title=Thaddeus Stevens: Scourge of the South| publisher=W. W. Norton & Co. Inc.| location=New York| isbn=0-393-00331-0 |page=122 |url=https://archive.org/details/thaddeusstevenss00brod |via=Internet Archive}}</ref>
* [[Thomas Swann]], mayor of Baltimore
* [[Stephen Palfrey Webb]], mayor of San Francisco
* [[Henry Wilson]], [[List of Vice Presidents of the United States|18th vice president of the United States]]<ref>{{cite book |last=Foner |first=Eric |date=1995 |title=Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Wl38uYb85DgC&pg=PA113 |location=New York, New York |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-1997-6226-2|page=113}}</ref>

== See also ==
* [[Philadelphia Nativist Riots]]
* [[Know-Nothing Riots in United States politics]] (1844–1858)
* [[Baltimore Know-Nothing riots of 1856]]
* [[71st Infantry Regiment (New York)]]
* [[Anti-Catholicism in the United States]]
* [[Nativism in United States politics]]
* [[Religious discrimination in the United States]]
* [[Xenophobia in the United States]]

==References==
===Notes===
{{notelist}}

===Citations===
{{reflist|30em}}

===Bibliography===
{{refbegin|35em}}
{{Further|Nativism (politics) in the United States#Bibliography}}
* Alsan, Marcella, Katherine Eriksson, and Gregory Niemesh. "Understanding the Success of the Know-nothing Party" (No. w28078. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2020) [https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w28078/w28078.pdf statistical analysis of anti-Irish vote in Massachuesetts online].
* [[Tyler Anbinder|Anbinder, Tyler]]. ''Nativism and Slavery: The Northern Know Nothings and the politics of the 1850s'' (1992). online at ACLS History e-Book;, the standard scholarly study' [https://collections.lancasterhistory.org/en/list?q=&p=1&ps=20&mlt=LHDO19772 summary]
* Anbinder, Tyler. "Nativism and prejudice against immigrants," in ''A companion to American immigration'', ed. by Reed Ueda (2006) pp.&nbsp;177–201 [https://books.google.com/books?id=cHZc5GJOlwIC&dq=Anbinder%3B+Tyler+nativism&pg=PA177 online excerpt]
* Baker, Jean H. (1977), ''Ambivalent Americans:  The Know-Nothing Party in Maryland'', Baltimore:  Johns Hopkins.
* Baum, Dale. "Know-Nothingism and the Republican Majority in Massachusetts: The Political Realignment of the 1850s." ''Journal of American History'' 64 (1977–78): 959–86. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/1890732 in JSTOR]
* Baum, Dale. ''The Civil War Party System: The Case of Massachusetts, 1848–1876''  (1984) 
* Bennett, David H. ''The Party of Fear: From Nativist Movements to the New Right in American History'' (1988) [https://archive.org/details/partyoffearfromn00benn online]
* Billington, Ray A. ''The Protestant Crusade, 1800–1860: A Study of the Origins of American Nativism'' (1938), standard scholarly survey; [https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.214564 online]
* Bladek, John David. "'Virginia Is Middle Ground': the Know Nothing Party and the Virginia Gubernatorial Election of 1855." ''Virginia Magazine of History and Biography'' 1998 106(1): 35–70. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/4249690 in JSTOR]
* Boissoneault, Lorraine. "How the 19th-Century Know Nothing Party Reshaped American Politics." ''Smithsonian Magazine'' (2017), heavily illustrated with editorial cartoons. [http://www.elegantbrain.com/edu4/classes/readings/depository/race/ImmigrationRaceNativism.pdf online]
* Carriere, Marius. "Political Leadership of the Louisiana Know-Nothing Party." ''Louisiana History'' (1980): 183–195. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/4231987 online]
* Cheathem, Mark R. "'I Shall Persevere in the Cause of Truth': Andrew Jackson Donelson and the Election of 1856". ''Tennessee Historical Quarterly'' 2003 62(3): 218–237. {{ISSN|0040-3261}} Donelson was Andrew Jackson's nephew and K–N nominee for Vice President
* Dash, Mark. "New Light on the Dark Lantern: the Initiation Rites and Ceremonies of a Know-Nothing Lodge in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania" ''Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography'' 2003 127(1): 89–100. {{ISSN|0031-4587}}
* Desmond, Humphrey J. ''The Know-Nothing Party'' (1905) [https://archive.org/details/knownothingparty00desm online]
* Farrell, Robert. "No Foreign Despots on Southern Soil: The Know-Nothing Party in Alabama, 1850-1857." ''Alabama Review'' 72.2 (2019): 99–122. [https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/181/article/726617/summary extract]
* Farrelly, Maura Jane. ''Anti-Catholicism in America, 1620–1860'' (Cambridge University Press, 2017) .
* Gienapp, William E. "Nativism and the Creation of a Republican Majority in the North before the Civil War," ''Journal of American History'', Vol. 72, No. 3 (Dec., 1985), pp.&nbsp;529–559 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/1904303 in JSTOR]
* Gienapp, William E. ''The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852–1856'' (1978), detailed statistical study, state-by-state
* Gillespie, J. David. ''Challengers To Duopoly : Why Third Parties Matter in American Two-Party Politics.'' Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 2012. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 4 Dec. 2014.
* Gleeson, David T. ''The Irish in the South, 1815–1877'' Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.
* Haebler, Peter. "Nativist Riots in Manchester: An Episode of Know-Nothingism in New Hampshire." ''Historical New Hampshire'' 39 (1985): 121–37.
* Holt, Michael F. ''The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party'' (1999) 
* Holt, Michael F. ''Political Parties and American Political Development: From the Age of Jackson to the Age of Lincoln'' (1992)
* Holt, Michael F. "The Antimasonic and Know Nothing Parties", in Arthur Schlesinger Jr., ed., ''History of United States Political Parties'' (1973), I, 575–620.
* Hurt, Payton. "The Rise and Fall of the 'Know Nothings' in California," ''California Historical Society Quarterly'' 9 (March and June 1930).
* Kadir, Djelal. "Agnotology and the Know-Nothing Party: Then and Now." ''Review of International American Studies'' 10.1 (2017): 117–131. [http://cejsh.icm.edu.pl/cejsh/element/bwmeta1.element.ojs-issn-1991-2773-year-2017-volume-10-issue-1-article-5410/c/5410-3673.pdf online]
* Lee, Erika. ''America for Americans: A history of xenophobia in the United States'' (Basic Books, 2019) [https://books.google.com/books?id=rI2LDwAAQBAJ&dq=Erika+Lee&pg=PT8 online].
* Levine, Bruce. "Conservatism, Nativism, and Slavery: Thomas R. Whitney and the Origins of the Know-nothing Party" ''Journal of American History'' 2001 88(2): 455–488. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/2675102 in JSTOR]
* McGreevey, John T. ''Catholicism and American Freedom: A History'' (W. W. Norton, 2003)
* Maizlish, Stephen E. "The Meaning of Nativism and the Crisis of the Union: The Know-Nothing Movement in the Antebellum North." in William Gienapp, ed. ''Essays on American Antebellum Politics, 1840–1860'' (1982) pp.&nbsp;166–98 
* Melton, Tracy Matthew.  ''Hanging Henry Gambrill: The Violent Career of Baltimore's Plug Uglies, 1854–1860''.  Baltimore:  Maryland Historical Society (2005).
* Mulkern, John R. ''The Know-Nothing Party in Massachusetts: The Rise and Fall of a People's Movement''. Boston: Northeastern UP, 1990. [https://books.google.com/books?id=KyISxp0yfG0C excerpt]
* [[Allan Nevins|Nevins, Allan]]. ''Ordeal of the Union: A House Dividing, 1852–1857'' (1947), overall political survey of era [https://archive.org/details/ordealofunion02nevi online]
* Overdyke, W. Darrell. ''The Know-Nothing Party in the South'' (1950) 
* Ramet, Sabrina P., and Christine M. Hassenstab. "The Know Nothing Party: Three Theories about its Rise and Demise." ''Politics and Religion'' 6.3 (2013): 570–595.
* [[Robert D. Parmet|Parmet, Robert D.]] "Connecticut's Know-Nothings: A Profile," ''Connecticut Historical Society Bulletin'' (1966), 31 #3, pp.&nbsp;84–90
* Rice, Philip Morrison. "The Know-Nothing Party in Virginia, 1854–1856." ''Virginia Magazine of History and Biography'' (1947): 61–75. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/4245457 in JSTOR]
* Roseboom, Eugene H. "Salmon P. Chase and the Know Nothings." ''Mississippi Valley Historical Review'' 25.3 (1938): 335–350. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/1897252 online]
* Scisco, Louis Dow. ''Political Nativism in New York State'' (1901) [https://archive.org/details/politicalnativi01scisgoog full text online], pp.&nbsp;84–202
* Taylor, Steven. "Progressive Nativism: The Know-Nothing Party in Massachusetts" ''Historical Journal of Massachusetts'' (2000) 28#2 [http://www.wsc.mass.edu/mhj/pdfs/Taylor%20summer%202000%20combined.pdf online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151210182050/http://www.wsc.mass.edu/mhj/pdfs/Taylor%20summer%202000%20combined.pdf |date=December 10, 2015 }}
* Tuska, Benjamin. "Know-Nothingism in Baltimore 1854-1860." ''Catholic Historical Review'' 11.2 (1925): 217–251. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/25012185.pdf online]
* Voss-Hubbard, Mark. ''Beyond Party: Cultures of Antipartisanship in Northern Politics before the Civil War'' (2002)
* [[Sean Wilentz|Wilentz, Sean]]. ''The Rise of American Democracy.'' (2005); {{ISBN|0-393-05820-4}}
{{refend}}

==== Primary sources ====
{{refbegin}}
* [[Frederick Rinehart Anspach|Anspach, Frederick Rinehart]]. [https://archive.org/details/sonssiresahisto01ansgoog ''The Sons of the Sires: A History of the Rise, Progress, and Destiny of the American Party'']. Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo & Co., 1855. Work by K–N activist.
* Boissoneault, Lorraine. "How the 19th-Century Know Nothing Party Reshaped American Politics." ''Smithsonian Magazine'' (2017), heavily illustrated with editorial cartoons. [http://www.elegantbrain.com/edu4/classes/readings/depository/race/ImmigrationRaceNativism.pdf online]
* [[:File:A souvenir with an autobiographical sketch of early life and selected miscellaneous addresses and communications (1896) (14581882578).jpg|Busey, Samuel Clagett]] (1856). [https://books.google.com/books?id=OCLC17693259 ''Immigration: Its Evils and Consequences''].
* [[Anna Ella Carroll|Carroll, Anna Ella]] (1856). [https://books.google.com/books?id=OCLC02013425 ''The Great American Battle: Or, The Contest Between Christianity and Political Romanism''].
* Fillmore, Millard; Frank H. Severance (ed.)(1907). [https://books.google.com/books?id=x1cOAAAAIAAJ ''Millard Fillmore Papers'']
* One of Them. [https://books.google.com/books?id=dB0fAAAAMAAJ&q=%22know+nothing%22 ''The Wide-Awake Gift: A Know Nothing Token for 1855'']. New York: J.C. Derby, 1855.
** Bond, Thomas E. [https://archive.org/details/55BondKnownothings "The 'Know Nothings{{'"}}], from ''The Wide-Awake Gift: A Know Nothing Token for 1855''. New York: J. C. Derby, 1855; pp.&nbsp;54–63.
{{refend}}

== External links ==
{{Commons category}}
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20070929122824/http://www.americanheritage.com/events/articles/web/20061104-know-nothing-nativism-american-party-immigration-catholicism.shtml Nativism in the 1856 Presidential Election]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20060831075353/http://dig.lib.niu.edu/message/ps-nativism.html Nativism By Michael F. Holt, PhD]
* [http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/703.html Lager Beer Riot, Chicago 1855]
* {{cite encyclopedia|title=Knownothingism|url=http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08677a.htm|encyclopedia=[[Catholic Encyclopedia]]}}
* {{Handbook of Texas|id=waa01|name=American Party}}
* {{Wikisource-inline|list=
** [[s:Know Nothing Platform 1856|Know Nothing Platform 1856]]
** {{cite NIE|wstitle=Know-Nothings|year=1905|short=x|noicon=x}}}}

{{historical right-wing third party presidential tickets (U.S.)}}
{{United States political parties}}
{{Whig Party (United States)}}
{{authority control}}

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