The Order of the Star Spangled Banner (OSSB) was an oath-bound
secret society in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
. It was created in 1849 by
Charles B. Allen to protest the rise of
Irish
Irish may refer to:
Common meanings
* Someone or something of, from, or related to:
** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe
***Éire, Irish language name for the isle
** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...
,
Catholic
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
, and
German immigration into the United States.
To join the Order, a man had to be at least 21 years old, a
Protestant
Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to b ...
, and willing to obey the Order's dictates without question. Members were
Nativists
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 ...
, 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 "establish" the Catholic church at the expense of Protestantism and would introduce "popish idols." The noisier American "nativists" rallied for political action. ... They promoted a lurid literature of exposure, much of it pure fiction. The authors, sometimes posing as escaped nuns, described the shocking sins they imagined the cloisters concealed, including the secret burial of babies. One of these sensational books – Maria Monk's ''Awful Disclosures'' (1836) – sold over 300,000 copies.
See also
*
Anti-Catholicism in the United States
Anti-Catholicism in the United States concerns the anti-Catholic attitudes first brought to the Thirteen Colonies by Protestant European settlers, composed mostly of English Puritans, during the British colonization of North America (16th–17 ...
References
Further reading
* Anbinder, Tyler. ''Nativism and Slavery: The Northern Know Nothings and the politics of the 1850s'' (1992)
Online version; also online at ACLS History e-Book* Billington, Ray A. ''The Protestant Crusade, 1800–1860: A Study of the Origins of American Nativism'' (1938), standard scholarly survey
* Parmet, Robert D. "Connecticut's Know-Nothings: A Profile," ''Connecticut Historical Society Bulletin'', 1966, Vol. 31 Issue 3, pp 84–90, analyses membership of Order of the Star Spangled Banner in Connecticut, where most were farmers and Congregationalists
{{DEFAULTSORT:Order Of The Star Spangled Banner
Far-right organizations in the United States
Irish-American history
Know Nothing
Political history of New York City
Secret societies in the United States