The Know Nothing Party, Political Chaos, and the Rise of the Republicans! | Turmoil After the Whigs
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- čas přidán 11. 12. 2019
- How did the Whig Party’s collapse put the conspiratorial ant-immigrant anti-Catholic Know Nothing movement in control of the American Congress? And how did it unleash years of political chaos and national violence that sent the country careening into a bloody civil war?
In this episode, we discuss what happened after the Whig Party imploded in the election of 1852. Specifically, how America’s political leaders made every mistake possible to turn a realignment into a true national disaster.
At first, America’s leaders didn’t appreciate the gravity of what happened in 1852. The Whigs naively believed it was merely a matter of time before the Democrats blundered and America had no choice but to put them back in power. The Democrats arrogantly believed the nation’s abandoning the Whigs was an endorsement of them. Both proved wrong, and tragically.
In the next Congress, the Democrats decided to go back on the long-settled Missouri Compromise to win over southern votes to clear the way for statehood for Kansas and Nebraska. By not only reopening what they just supposedly settled in the Compromise of 1850, but also breaching the very trust necessary to make any national compromises, the Democrats had now taken their turn to outrage America. The American people crushed their party in the 1854 midterm elections, an electoral rebuke almost as terrible as the Whigs suffered in 1852.
With the American people now disgusted by both major parties, in 1854 they sent to Congress instead representatives of a host of small new parties. The largest and most powerful of these new parties was the American Party, the political vehicle of an anti-Catholic anti-immigrant Know Nothing movement that believed in a papal conspiracy to undermine American democracy with mass Catholic immigration. These smaller parties entered into an alliance called “the Opposition,” electing a Know Nothing the new Speaker of the House.
It suddenly appeared the American Party was emerging as a new major party.
Over the next few years, the two-party system broken, America suffered political and national turmoil. Open violence and murder broke out among abolitionist and pro-slavery activists in Kansas. After taking offense to a speech, a Congressman nearly beat a Senator to death in the Senate chamber. A new alliance emerged among the small anti-slavery parties in Congress, creating a new national Republican Party hoping to push the Know Nothing off the nation’s stage to become a new major party themselves.
In 1860, America elected Abraham Lincoln the first Republican president. Before he could even take office, South Carolina succeeded from the Union. It was the start of a great civil war.
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Crucial to understand history, so well presented. This is highly underrated.
I really appreciate that. Tell your friends!
VERY relevant to where we are today.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
can't believe this stuff is for free
Frank, these videos are awesome! I'm going through them while reading your book which really helps reinforce the knowledge. A minor correction to the video - it is Charles Sumner, not Sumter (although, that is the name of the fort of course...).
Thanks! (And Sumner, I'm sorry to say, is a name I often misspeak and exactly for the reason you mention, because of the fort named after a totally different guy. For obvious reasons--it would have been strange had they named a fort in South Carolina after him!)
That picture of the Know Nothing leader is Nathaniel P Banks, not Nathaniel Brooks
These are outstanding.
Great video.
I doubt I'll get an answer, but I can't find anything too concrete on this, what was the American parties views on Slavery? I'm pretty sure it wasn't officially pro or anti-slavery, but what were the most common views?
The American, or Know-Nothing, Party tried to steer its platform from slavery to issues of anti-Catholic and immigrant roles (such as, how long does it take for a person to become a citizen). It could not do this and the slavery issue divided the party into northern and southern factions. As it divided, its original, impressive gains in 1854-1855 crumbled. The 1856 American Party was really an incomplete Old Line Whig Party: it was populated by those who supported Millard Fillmore as the Whig president and sought to return him to office as an American Party president. This makes more contextual sense when seeing that the Compromise of 1850, under President Fillmore, though not sustainable and certainly on the wrong side of history, did bring sectional peace and seemed at the time to have dealt with the slavery issues brought out by the Mexican War. Fillmore's 1856 campaign speeches ( a rarity as candidates normally did not campaign) focus much more on the "Union", and do not espouse the ugly rhetoric that the Know-Nothings are often associate with. For more reading, try Michael Holt's The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party, and Eric Foner's Free soil, Free Labor, Free Men, chapter 7 :) .
"Democrats really screwed things up!". People hated Democrats and Whigs. People in the South still hate Catholics. Al Smith! Papist Conspiracy! Free Soil. Not abolitionists, yes anti-expansionist.