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American Party /
Know-Nothing Party

The repeal of the Missouri Compromise caused a great political revolution in the Northern States. The old Whig party had become extinct, and that its former adherents, together with many old Democrats, began building up a new party. This was the so-called Know-Nothing party, which, although it professed to be purely American, was the legitimate two-fold result of the entire defeat of the Whig party and the repeal of the Compromise. Shrewd Southern politicians did not fail to see the strong Free-soil element which was gradually developing in this party. The sweeping victory which the K.N.'s achieved in the congressional and state elections of 1854 opened the eyes of the Southern Democrats to the fact that the old national party of which they had presumed they had almost complete control, was not so invincible as had been supoosed.

The question before the country after the election of 1854 was whether an anti-slavery party should win the support of northern voters, or whether the old Whig party, comprising southern as well as northern members, should be revived under some new form. old political traditions tended to draw men into organizations which claimed to be national rather than sectional, and which avoided the old danger of arousing the south and endangering the stability of the Union. These feelings worked strongly against the Republican party in the year 1855, and aided a vigorous effort, which now began, to create a successor to the old Whig party through the expansion of the Know Nothings into a national organization.

The Know-Nothing or American Party came to the fore in American politics in the 1850s. The Know-Nothings, so-called because members responded "I know nothing" when asked about their party's positions, sprang from nativist sentiments that became increasingly common in reaction to the influx of immigrants resulting from the Irish potato famine (1845-1851). Nativists believed that the United States should be reserved for those born here (i.e., natives). They opposed immigration and were anti-Catholic, arguing that Catholics were loyal to a foreign power (the pope).

The Know Nothing or American Party was a secret order with a complex position on slavery. Some were against slavery extension as they feared African American competition for jobs (some of these members were former Whigs). The Know-Nothing Party was formed in 1849 to challenge new immigrants and make holding office or becoming a citizen more challenging. The new party was especially anti-Catholic wanting to keep the Irish and Catholic immigrants out of public office. Some Know-Nothings who joined the Republican Party in oppostion to the Democratic support of slavery extension, later left the party because Indiana Republicans accepted Catholics and immigrants.

The spring 1855 elections turned over Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Connecticut into the hands of the Know-Nothings, but the Virginia campaign in May, 1855, showed that in the south the Know-Nothings were merely the Whigs under a new name. Although it was seen that it could not revolutionize the south, its control of the north was not yet disproved.

The attitude of its northern and southern members was fundamentally different on slavery matters. The New England Know-Nothings were anti-slavery men, and when they gained control of a state they enacted laws to obstruct the return of fugitive slaves, passed resolutions denouncing the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and elected antislavery men to the United States Senate. But the southern Know-Nothings, although old e "Cotton Whigs", and strongly Unionist, were equally pro-slavery, and the order stood committed to the familiar policy of expressly conciliating the south.

In the meeting of Congress from December 1855, the regular administration Democrats numbered only seventy-five in place of the one hundred and fifty-nine who controlled the previous Congress, and their candidate was Richardson. The opposition, elected in the political whirlwind of 1854, was too heterogeneous to combine. The largest single group comprised about one hundred and seventeen Americans [Know-Nothing Party], leaving about forty "straight" Republicans and a number of independents. But the Know-Nothing party, shattered as a congressional group, also broke into pieces as a political organization. Sectional passions were too strong to enable men from north and south to stand on a common platform ignoring slavery, and the party was moribund before it was two years old.