The Know Nothing Party
The History and Legacy of America’s Most Notorious Nativist Political Party
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Narrated by:
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Kelly McGee
About this listen
“Immigration during the first five years of the 1850s reached a level five times greater than a decade earlier. Most of the new arrivals were poor Catholic peasants or laborers from Ireland and Germany who crowded into the tenements of large cities. Crime and welfare costs soared. Cincinnati's crime rate, for example, tripled between 1846 and 1853, and its murder rate increased sevenfold. Boston's expenditures for poor relief rose threefold during the same period.” (James McPherson)
It is not uncommon that a failed movement or group from the past might be cited as a “cautionary” example for the world today. In the wake of contemporary debates over immigration, the “Know Nothings” have been regularly cited as an example of how dangerous nativist attitudes can become and, indeed, have proven to be in America’s history.
Several columnists, for instance, have striven to make comparisons between the Know Nothings of antebellum America and President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, helping, in part, to generate modern interest in a political party that many Americans have heard of, but tend to know little about.
The Know Nothing movement can actually be tied to a number of violent episodes and ethnically charged riots that occurred during the last 1850s. The debate over immigration in the 1850s was more than a clash of worldviews - it touched upon the core of America’s values.
While nativists, like the Know Nothings, believed that immigrants who embraced politics from their native lands represented a threat to America’s values, those who opposed them argued that it was precisely America’s values that made immigration a necessity and a valuable component of American life.
As the Republicans and Know Nothings spread from the ashes of the Whig Party, the Republicans, led by President Lincoln, rejected nativism and embraced a kind of American exceptionalism. Lincoln did not believe that America was “better” or even more “moral” than other nations, but his brand of exceptionalism advanced the view that America represented a great experiment, one that proposed that a society based on the ideals of the Declaration of Independence (i.e. life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness). Should it fail, Lincoln believed it would shatter the hopes of the rest of the world, as people sought to overcome despotic and tyrannical forms of rule. Thus, to the Republicans, when it came to the issue of immigration, America’s economy and democracy itself were at stake.
At the same time, there was quite a bit more to the background of this short-lived, but widely impactful “third party” than xenophobia and religious intolerance. In places like Boston, where the Know Nothings took over nearly all of the city’s elected offices, including capturing the state’s governorship in 1854, the Know Nothings were largely viewed as a progressive party.
While the North’s Know Nothings supported the party’s national anti-immigrant positions, it also embraced an anti-slavery policy, supported an expansion of the rights of women, believed that industries should be more heavily regulated, and supported a variety of measures intended to support the labor class.
Accordingly, in order to understand the Know Nothing party’s nativism, it requires more nuance than simply condemning them as xenophobes. It is typical in the contemporary media and in political commentary to cite a caricature of the Know Nothings as an example of “hate” and a dark xenophobic history, but the movement grew out of the controversial political landscape of the mid-19th century, and the party achieved prominence and power across wide sections of the society.
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James Madison
- America's First Politician
- By: Jay Cost
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 14 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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How do you solve a problem like James Madison? The fourth president is one of the most confounding figures in early American history; his political trajectory seems almost intentionally inconsistent. He was both for and against a strong federal government. He wrote about the dangers of political parties in the Federalist Papers and then helped to found the Republican Party just a few years later. This so-called Madison problem has occupied scholars for ages.
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Good listen
- By James Shannon on 06-27-22
By: Jay Cost
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American Dialogue
- The Founders and Us
- By: Joseph J. Ellis
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 8 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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The story of history is a ceaseless conversation between past and present, and in American Dialogue, Joseph J. Ellis focuses the conversation on the often-asked question "What would the Founding Fathers think?" He examines four of our most seminal historical figures through the prism of particular topics, using the perspective of the present to shed light on their views and, in turn, to make clear how their now centuries-old ideas illuminate the disturbing impasse of today's political conflicts.
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A fine work, even with the editorializing
- By Casey Kerrick on 11-24-18
By: Joseph J. Ellis
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The Nation That Never Was
- Reconstructing America's Story
- By: Kermit Roosevelt
- Narrated by: Kermit Roosevelt III
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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We face a dilemma these days. We want to be honest about our history and the racism and oppression that Americans have both inflicted and endured. But we want to be proud of our country, too. In The Nation That Never Was, Roosevelt shows how we can do both those things by realizing we’re not the country we thought we were. Reconstruction, Roosevelt argues, was not a fulfillment of the ideals of the Founding but rather a repudiation: we modern Americans are not the heirs of the Founders but of the people who overthrew and destroyed that political order.
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A Necessary Book.
- By Jason Baumbach on 01-30-24
By: Kermit Roosevelt
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Apostles of Disunion
- Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War: Fifteenth Anniversary Edition
- By: Charles B. Dew
- Narrated by: Mitchell Dorian
- Length: 4 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Charles Dew’s Apostles of Disunion has established itself as a modern classic and an indispensable account of the Southern states’ secession from the Union. Addressing topics still hotly debated among historians and the public at large more than a century and a half after the Civil War, the book offers a compelling and clearly substantiated argument that slavery and race were at the heart of our great national crisis.
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Racist Take - Leaves our a lot of information
- By naw74 on 04-15-21
By: Charles B. Dew
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The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution: 1763-1789
- By: Robert Middlekauff
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 26 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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The first book to appear in the illustrious Oxford History of the United States, this critically-acclaimed volume - a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize - offers an unsurpassed history of the Revolutionary War and the birth of the American republic.
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Strong History Rich With Behind The Scenes Details
- By John on 10-06-11
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The Constitution
- An Introduction
- By: Michael Stokes Paulsen, Luke Paulsen
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 14 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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From war powers to health care, freedom of speech to gun ownership, religious liberty to abortion, practically every aspect of American life is shaped by the Constitution. This vital document, along with its history of political and judicial interpretation, governs our individual lives and the life of our nation. Yet most of us know surprisingly little about the Constitution itself, and are woefully unprepared to think for ourselves about recent developments in its long and storied history.
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The Constitution-A must reading for All Americans
- By Robert on 06-12-15
By: Michael Stokes Paulsen, and others
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The Problem with Lincoln
- By: Thomas J. DiLorenzo
- Narrated by: John McLain
- Length: 8 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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So many thousands of books deifying Abraham Lincoln have been published that it is nearly impossible for the average citizen to learn much of anything that is truthful about Lincoln’s presidency. You’ll learn that the real reason why Lincoln launched an invasion of his own country (he never admitted that secession was legal or legitimate) was to destroy the voluntary union of the founders and replace it with a coerced union held together by violence and threats of violence, much more like the old Soviet Union than the original American union.
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Not sure about this guy
- By Luis Renta on 07-26-20
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Fears of a Setting Sun
- The Disillusionment of America's Founders
- By: Dennis C. Rasmussen
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 9 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Americans seldom deify their Founding Fathers any longer, but they do still tend to venerate the Constitution and the republican government that the founders created. Strikingly, the founders themselves were far less confident in what they had wrought, particularly by the end of their lives. In fact, most of them - including George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson - came to deem America's constitutional experiment an utter failure that was unlikely to last beyond their own generation.
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A different perspective on the founders
- By kpa on 03-04-24
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The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America
- The Thom Hartmann Hidden History Series
- By: Thom Hartmann
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 4 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Taking his typically in-depth, historically informed view, Thom Hartmann asks: What if the Supreme Court didn't have the power to strike down laws? According to the Constitution, it doesn't. From the founding of the republic until 1803, the Supreme Court was the final court of appeals, as it was always meant to be. So where did the concept of judicial review start? As so much of modern American history, it began with the battle between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists, and with Marbury v. Madison.
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A must read to understand why voting is essential.
- By Brandon WIlliams on 10-05-19
By: Thom Hartmann
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Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- H.B.
- 12-20-20
good book, not so good narrator
Charles River Editors audios are usually very good and informative: this one is no exception, BUT the narration is awful: her voice is raspy and she mispronounces many words.
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