AMERICAN PARTY, the name of three separate political organizations in the United States.
1. The only one of great importance, usually styled °Know-Nothings.° The genesis of this party lay deep in the nature of American set tlement and history. The Constitution crystal lized political parties definitely into Federalists and Anti-Federalists : the one upholding firm government on the general European model, with the local aristocracies in the ascendant; the other desiring the least possible govern ment of any sort, and no upper-class ascend ancy. Immigrants who had left Europe because of too free indulgence in freedom of speech, thought and action, allied themselves with the Anti-Federalists, which led the incensed Fed eralists, on gaining power in 1795, to raise the term for naturalization from two to five years, and in 1798 to 14 years, besides passing the Alien and Sedition Laws (q.v.). The Republi cans, coming into power with Jefferson in 1801, in 1802 repealed the obnoxious acts and restored the term to five, swelling their ranks for years with a relay of acrid foreign democrats. Six members of the Congress which declared the War of 1812 against Great Britain were mem bers of the Society of United Irishmen; and the Federalist Hartford Convention of 1814 brought forward a provision against aliens hold ing office. Quiescent for many years, the move ment revived (1835) in New York city, where a compact and clannish foreign body of immi grants, avid of office and openly allying them selves as foreigners against the natives, was accumulating; one procession bore a transpa rency lettered °Americans shan't rule us." The religious question was also then, as since, a formidable factor in the trouble. In 1843 the Democrats carried the city by a close vote, and distributed the majority of the offices to foreigners, with the result that in the November election for state senator an °American Re publican° candidate polled nearly a fourth of the vote, and the next spring a °Native Ameri can° candidate defeated the Democrat by 4,000, and the regular Whig party nearly vanished in the city. The excitement spread to New Jersey and Philadelphia; riots between natives and foreigners cost some lives and much property, including two Catholic churches. The Whigs voted with the Native party to secure its vote for Clay ; but finding that its resulted in Native local officials and Democratic presidential ma jorities, drew off, and by 1847 the Native party had pretty much disappeared. Clay in 1844 had six Native American electoral votes, four from New York and two from Pennsylvania; and for some years the Middle States cast small votes for the party.
A new birth came to it about 1852. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 had largely dis solved and recombined both Whig and Demo cratic parties, and those of the former who wanted the status quo on slavery without public agitation cast about for a new issue to keep their organization together. The Native Ameri can issue was temptingly at hand, and indeed bad never ceased to be a sore in the Whig mind. The tremendous flood of foreign immigration set going in part by the Irish famine of 1847, in part by the revolutionary movements of 1848-50 on the Continent, had kept a• steady stream of reinforcements pouring into the Democratic party which almost swamped the Whigs and made it quite impossible to win elections except by fusions that sacrificed all political principle or consistency; they felt it a genuine wrong to the native or long-resident classes, and there was nothing in the use to which the other party put their victories to make them feel otherwise. They now de veloped a secret oath-bound society whose real name was °Sons of '76, or Order of the Star Spangled Banner°; but its name or precise object (of course they knew its general aim) was not revealed to members till the °lodges,' which they instituted in imitation of the Masons, had raised them to the higher degrees. Hence their stock answer to questions concern ing it was °I don't know,° which became the popular motto of the order and gave them the nickname of °Know-Nothings.° The evils it °viewed with alarm° were the increasing power of the Roman Catholic Church, the Vast sudden flood of immigration which was taking the control of the United States out of the hands of its citizens, and the greed of foreigners for office which greatly multiplied the danger from their actual number. Its motto, or at least the essence of its principles, was °Americans must rule America,°— doubtless with a reminiscence of the foreign motto before mentioned; and the countersign at its lodges was an order said to have been issued by Washington at some un pecified occasion, none but Americans on ward to-night.' It acted in politics, not by put ng up separate tickets, which would have kept ally on it and given the other parties a clear arget and open victory, but by endorsing select d candidates of the others in secret convention if delegates from lodges, at which every member must vote or be expelled. This could not be mown till election, and hence made havoc of ill political calculations and left the workers eating the air. The Kansas-Nebraska Bill, vhich extinguished the Whig and created the present Republican party, and made the slavery ssue one of life or death, drove into the Know iothing party a vast number of the moderate ection not yet ready to oppose the South; it row took or was given the name of the Amer can party, and came into the open field. In
854 it carried Massachusetts and Delaware and iolled over 120,000 votes in New York State. Chus far it had been almost wholly a Northern iarty; hut in 1855 it made deep inroads in the south as well, where foreigners were few and he issue was locally innocuous. In that year t elected the governors and legislatures of New -Iampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Con iecticut, New York, Kentucky and California; he controller and legislature of Maryland and he land commissioner of Texas; and narrowly missed carrying the legislature of the latter, and those of Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, Nis ;issippi and Louisiana. But even at this time, when it was sweeping all before it, and the con .ervatives of both parties were crowding into t panic-stricken to avoid the real issues hurry ng the country to the precipice, keen observers ;aw its hollow ephemerality: Horace Greeley of le New York Tribune said that "it contained about as much of the elements of permanence is an anti-cholera or an anti-potato-rot society.' With 1856 it came into the national field, and For slavery tried to substitute terrific visions of s revival of the terrors of the Inquisition; de iounced Archbishop Bedini, the papal nuncio, as an emissary of diabolic designs; and forced public discussions in which all the misdeeds 3f the medieval Christian Church before and after 1520 were recounted. February 1856 a national nominating convention was held at Philadelphia; and its outcome, to the disgust of the majority, turned on slavery after all. A secret ((grand council" held a session 19-21 February to draft a platform; and after three days of violent contention reported as part of it this curious "straddle' in later political slang: That all public offices should be given to native-born citizens, and the term before naturalization be 21 years; that "all laws" (that is, the Fugitive Slave Law) should be enforced till repealed or declared unconstitutional; that Pierce's administration be reprobated for re pealing the Missouri Compromise; and that State councils be recommended to drop their "degrees* and substitute a pledge of honor from members,— that is, that it cease to be a secret terror to other parties and be one itself. But this meant death, as did its absurd attempt to gain Northern votes by opposing the Kansas Nebraska Bill, and Southern votes by upholding the Fugitive Slave Law. In the open conven tion of 22 February, 50 Northern delegates of fered a resolution that the secret grand council could not bind the convention by a platform; and on its rejection withdrew. The convention then nominated Millard Fillmore of New York for President, and Andrew Jackson Donelson of Tennessee for Vice-President; and the Whig national convention later adopted the nomina tions, but made no reference to the platform. In the spring of 1856 the party still increased its power, there being only local issues at stake; New Hampshire and Rhode Island elected "American' governors, making eight of the 32 States in their hands. But the presidential election showed what a phantom the party was: Fillmore gained the electoral vote of but one State, Maryland, with eight electors; the popu lar vote was 874,534 out of a total of 4,053,967; and in New Hampshire it sank from 32,119 for governor in spring to 422 in face of the real issue. It elected 15 or 20 Congressmen, car ried Rhode Island and Maryland State elections in 1857, and in the Senate of December had five members. In the Congress of 1859 it had become a Border State party, with one Senator from Kentucky and one from Maryland, and 23 Congressmen,— three from Maiylafid, five from Kentucky, seven from Tennessee, one from Virginia, four from North Carolina, two from Georgia and one from Louisiana. In the campaign of 1860 its members largely made up the Constitutional Union (Bell-Everett) party, which tried to avert the war. The party was by no means without its use: it brought forward many strong leaders who did good service in the real parties when the issues had shown themselves inevitable.
2. A party directly adverse to the first in being founded on opposition to secret societies: organized by the National Christian Association at the adjournment of its convention at Oberlin, Ohio, in 1872. Organization was completed and the name adopted at a convention in Syracuse, N. Y., in 1874. At Pittsburg 9 June 1875, a platform was adopted demanding recognition of the Sabbath, introduction of the Bible into public schools, prohibition of the sale of liquors, withdrawal of the charters of secret societies and prohibition of their oaths, inter national arbitration, restriction of land monopo lies, resumption of specie payments, justice to the Indians and direct popular vote for Presi dent and Vice-President. James B. Walker of Illinois was nominated for President. In 1880 it again made nominations; in 1884 S. C. Pome roy was nominated but withdrew in favor of John P. St. John, the Prohibition candidate.
3. A party organized at a convention in Philadelphia, 16-17 Sept. 1887. Its platform de manded a 14-years' residence for naturalization; exclusion of anarchists, socialists and other dangerous characters; free schools; the build ing of a strong navy and coast fortifications, and internal improvements; prohibition of alien proprietorship; permanent separation of church and State; and enforcement of the Monroe Doctrine.