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Know-nothing
The Know Nothing party was a nativist political party and movement in the United States in the mid-1850s. The party was officially known as the "Native American Party" prior to 1855 and thereafter, it was simply known as the "American Party". 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. Supporters of the Know Nothing movement believed that an alleged " Romanist" conspiracy by Catholics to subvert civil and religious liberty in the United States was being hatched. Therefore, they sought to politically organize native-born Protestants 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 d ...
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Know Nothing
The Know Nothing party was a nativist political party and movement in the United States in the mid-1850s. The party was officially known as the "Native American Party" prior to 1855 and thereafter, it was simply known as the "American Party". 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. Supporters of the Know Nothing movement believed that an alleged " Romanist" conspiracy by Catholics to subvert civil and religious liberty in the United States was being hatched. Therefore, they sought to politically organize native-born Protestants 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 d ...
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Whig Party (United States)
The Whig Party was a political party in the United States during the middle of the 19th century. Alongside the slightly larger Democratic Party, it was one of the two major parties in the United States between the late 1830s and the early 1850s as part of the Second Party System. Four presidents were affiliated with the Whig Party for at least part of their terms. Other prominent members of the Whig Party include Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Rufus Choate, William Seward, John J. Crittenden, and John Quincy Adams. The Whig base of support was centered among entrepreneurs, professionals, planters, social reformers, devout Protestants, and the emerging urban middle class. It had much less backing from poor farmers and unskilled workers. The party was critical of Manifest Destiny, territorial expansion into Texas and the Southwest, and the Mexican-American War. It disliked strong presidential power as exhibited by Jackson and Polk, and preferred Congressional dominance in lawma ...
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1856 United States Presidential Election
The 1856 United States presidential election was the 18th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 4, 1856. In a three-way election, Democrat James Buchanan defeated Republican nominee John C. Frémont and Know Nothing nominee Millard Fillmore. The main issue was the expansion of slavery as facilitated by the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854. Buchanan defeated President Franklin Pierce at the 1856 Democratic National Convention for the nomination. Pierce had become widely unpopular in the North because of his support for the pro-slavery faction in the ongoing civil war in territorial Kansas, and Buchanan, a former Secretary of State, had avoided the divisive debates over the Kansas–Nebraska Act by being in Europe as the Ambassador to the United Kingdom. Slavery was the main issue, and with it the question of survival of the United States as it then existed. The Democrats were seen as the pro-slavery party; the new Republican party, though hostile to slavery, ...
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Lewis Charles Levin
Lewis Charles Levin (November 10, 1808 – March 14, 1860) was an American politician, newspaper editor and anti-Catholic social activist. He was one of the founders of the Know Nothing, American Party in 1842 and served as a member of the United States House of Representatives, U. S. House of Representatives representing Pennsylvania's 1st congressional district from 1845 to 1851. Levin is considered to be the first Jewish U.S. Congressman, although David Levy Yulee served as a territorial representative from Florida prior to Levin's election to the House. Levin supported the Nativism (politics), nativist American nationalism, Americanism ideology espoused by some northern Protestants at the expense of Catholics. He was a dynamic orator on Temperance movement, temperance and political issues; however, many of his speeches spread xenophobia. Levin played a leading role in inciting the Philadelphia nativist riots which led to the killing of over 20 Irish Americans; the burning of m ...
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Anti-Irish Sentiment
Anti-Irish sentiment includes oppression, persecution, discrimination, or hatred of Irish people as an ethnic group or a nation. It can be directed against the island of Ireland in general, or directed against Irish emigrants and their descendants in the Irish diaspora. This sentiment can also be called Hibernophobia. It is traditionally rooted in the Middle Ages, the Early Modern Age and the Age of Enlightenment and it is also evidenced in Irish immigration to Great Britain, North America, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. Anti-Irish sentiment can include social, racial and cultural discrimination in Ireland itself, such as sectarianism or cultural, religious and political conflicts such as the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Perspective The most famous example of Anti-Irish sentiment comes from 1190 with the Norman chronicler Giraldus Cambrensis, also known as Gerald of Wales. To justify the Norman invasion of Ireland in line with the goals of Henry II, he wrote dispar ...
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Nativism (politics)
Nativism is the political policy of promoting or protecting the interests of native or indigenous inhabitants over those of immigrants, including the support of immigration-restriction measures. In scholarly studies, ''nativism'' is a standard technical term, although those who hold this political view do not typically accept the label. Arguments presented for immigration restriction According to Joel S. Fetzer, opposition to immigration commonly arises in many countries because of issues of national, cultural, and religious identity. The phenomenon has been studied especially in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States, as well as in continental Europe. Thus nativism has become a general term for opposition to immigration based on fears that immigrants will "distort or spoil" existing cultural values. In situations where immigrants greatly outnumber the original inhabitants, nativist movements seek to prevent cultural change. Immigration ...
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Anti-German Sentiment
Anti-German sentiment (also known as Anti-Germanism, Germanophobia or Teutophobia) is opposition to or fear of Germany, its inhabitants, its culture, or its language. Its opposite is Germanophilia. Anti-German sentiment largely began with the mid-19th-century unification of Germany, which made the new nation a rival to the great powers of Europe on economic, cultural, geopolitical, and military grounds. However, the German atrocities during World War I and World War II greatly strengthened anti-German sentiment. Before 1914 United States In the 19th century, the mass influx of German immigrants made them the largest group of Americans by ancestry today. This migration resulted in nativist reactionary movements not unlike those of the contemporary Western world. These would eventually culminate in 1844 with the establishment of the American Party, which had an openly xenophobic stance. One of many incidents described in a 19th century account included the blocking of a fun ...
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Anti-Catholicism
Anti-Catholicism is hostility towards Catholics or opposition to the Catholic Church, its clergy, and/or its adherents. At various points after the Reformation, some majority Protestant states, including England, Prussia, Scotland, and the United States, turned anti-Catholicism, opposition to the Pope (anti-Papalism), mockery of Catholic rituals, and opposition to Catholic adherents into major political themes. The anti-Catholic sentiment which resulted from this trend frequently led to religious discrimination against Catholic communities and individuals and it occasionally led to the religious persecution of them (frequently, they were derogatorily referred to as "papists" or " Romanists" in Anglophone and Protestant countries.) Historian John Wolffe identifies four types of anti-Catholicism: constitutional-national, theological, popular and socio-cultural. Historically, Catholics who lived in Protestant countries were frequently suspected of conspiring against the state ...
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Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party, also referred to as the GOP ("Grand Old Party"), is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States. The GOP was founded in 1854 by anti-slavery activists who opposed the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which allowed for the potential expansion of chattel slavery into the western territories. Since Ronald Reagan's presidency in the 1980s, conservatism has been the dominant ideology of the GOP. It has been the main political rival of the Democratic Party since the mid-1850s. The Republican Party's intellectual predecessor is considered to be Northern members of the Whig Party, with Republican presidents Abraham Lincoln, Rutherford B. Hayes, Chester A. Arthur, and Benjamin Harrison all being Whigs before switching to the party, from which they were elected. The collapse of the Whigs, which had previously been one of the two major parties in the country, strengthened the party's electoral success. Upon its founding, it supported c ...
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Order Of The Star Spangled Banner
The Order of the Star Spangled Banner (OSSB) was an oath-bound secret society in New York City. It was created in 1849 by Charles B. Allen to protest the rise of Irish, Catholic, and German immigration into the United States. To join the Order, a man had to be at least 21 years old, a Protestant, and willing to obey the Order's dictates without question. Members were Nativists, citizens opposed to immigration, especially by Catholics. They saw Catholics as dangerous, illegal voters under the control of the Pope in Rome. Members invariably responded to questions about the OSSB by claiming that they "knew nothing." This practice caused newspaper editor Horace Greeley to label them "Know Nothings." The OSSB would eventually form the nucleus of the nativist Know Nothing movement which ran candidates in 1855–56 under the American Party ticket. According to ''The American Pageant'': Older-stock Americans ... professed to believe that in due time the "alien riffraff" would "est ...
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History Of The Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of the two major political parties of the United States political system and the oldest existing political party in that country founded in the 1830s and 1840s. It is also the oldest voter-based political party in the world. The party has changed significantly during its nearly two centuries of existence. Known as the party of the "common man," the early Democratic Party stood for individual rights and state sovereignty, and opposed banks and high tariffs. In the first decades of its existence, from 1832 to the mid-1850s (known as the Second Party System), under Presidents Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren and James K. Polk, the Democrats usually bested the opposition Whig Party by narrow margins. Before the American Civil War the party supported or tolerated slavery; and after the war until the Great Depression the party opposed civil rights reforms in order to retain the support of Southern voters. During this second period (1865-1932), the ...
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Nativism In The United States
Nativism is the political policy of promoting or protecting the interests of native or indigenous inhabitants over those of immigrants, including the support of immigration-restriction measures. In scholarly studies, ''nativism'' is a standard technical term, although those who hold this political view do not typically accept the label. Arguments presented for immigration restriction According to Joel S. Fetzer, opposition to immigration commonly arises in many countries because of issues of national, cultural, and religious identity. The phenomenon has been studied especially in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States, as well as in continental Europe. Thus nativism has become a general term for opposition to immigration based on fears that immigrants will "distort or spoil" existing cultural values. In situations where immigrants greatly outnumber the original inhabitants, nativist movements seek to prevent cultural change. Immigration r ...
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