"A Know Nothing" (Anonymous)
Excerpt from the Know Nothing Platform
About 1855
An upstart political party reveals its platform
"The 'Order of Know Nothings' … are Americans by birth, the descendants of those who laid the foundation of our national greatness, and therefore feel that it is a pious duty devolved upon them to transmit the liberties of our country unimpaired, to the remotest posterity."
In the mid-1840s, the United States witnessed a sudden increase in the number of immigrants from Europe, particularly from Germany and Ireland. Political strife and widespread crop failures in Germany sent tens of thousands of immigrants to the United States. In Ireland, a devastating failure of the potato crop resulted in starvation for thousands; those who could afford a ticket out of Europe sailed to the United States, many virtually penniless.
The Irish immigrants in particular were overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, the Christian church headed by the pope in Rome, Italy. The arrival of the Irish immigrants in eastern cities like New York, Boston, and Philadelphia marked the first significant number of Catholics in a country that previously had been primarily Protestant. This sudden inflow of immigrants sparked a sharp reaction among some Americans, who feared that the character of the United States might change dramatically if large numbers of Catholics became citizens.
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