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The Know-nothing party, the protestant evangelical community and American national identity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Richard Carwardine
Richard Carwardine*
Affiliation:
University of Sheffield
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Extract

By the mid-nineteenth century, two generations after the revolution and the creation of an independent state, Americans were still unsure of the ultimate limits and character of their nation. If there was too much evident optimism over the country’s prospects to write of the nation’s suffering a crisis of identity, it is equally clear that the major questions of the 1840s and 1850s—territorial expansion, the future of slavery, and massive immigration—provided issues the precise resolution of which would fundamentally affect the future direction of the Union. Over the first two of these the evangelical protestant community, the dominant and most influential opinion-forming religious group in American society, found itself seriously divided; indeed by the eve of the civil war the slavery question had split all the major evangelical denominations. In contrast, this same community appeared to show much more cohesion and unanimity in defending the nation’s evangelicalism against the swollen tide of foreign immigrants, three million of whom poured into American ports between 1845 and 1854, the vast majority victims of Irish famine and refugees from the European revolutions of 1848. The immediate danger to American nationality, as evangelicals defined it, lay not in the immigrants’ poverty and foreignness, but in their Catholicism. The Lutheran minister, Frederick Anspach, likened the American nation to a virgin who should ‘sacredly guard her honor’ against catholic vampires who ‘would convert her into a courtezan for the Pope.’

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 18: Religion and National Identity , 1982 , pp. 449 - 463
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1982

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References

1 Anspach, [Frederick R.] [,The Sons of the Sires: A History of the Rise, Progress and Destiny of the American party . . .] (Philadelphia 1855) p 171 Google Scholar.

2 There is a considerable secondary literature on anti-catholicism and the know-nothing party which cannot, for reasons of space, be considered here. Strangely little of it considers tensions within the evangelical community and this is what in part this paper seeks to do.

3 [Boynton, Charles B.,] Oration [,delivered on the Fifih of July, 1847, before the Native Americans of Cincinnati] (Cincinnati 1847) pp 14–16 Google Scholar.

4 Ibid pp 7-10; [Boynton, Charles B.,] Our Country[,the Herald of a New Era. A lecture . . .] (Cincinnati 1853) p 20 Google Scholar; Stuart, [J. P.] [,America and the Americans versus the Papacy and the Catholics. A lecture . . .] (Cincinnati 1853) pp 12–18 Google Scholar. Particularly helpful in understanding the American sense of mission are Tuveston, Ernest L., Redeemer Nation: The Idea of America’s Millennial Role (Chicago 1968)Google Scholar and Bercovitch, Sacvan, The American Jeremiad (Madison, Wisconsin 1978)Google Scholar.

5 C[hristian] W[atchman and] R[eflector] (Boston) 26 November 1857; Hickok, Laurens P., A Nation Saved from its Prosperity only by the Gospel. A Discourse . . . (New York 1853) pp 8–9 Google Scholar.

6 Our Country p 4; Mason, Erskine, ‘Signs of the Times’. A sermon . . . (New York 1850) pp 12–20 Google Scholar.

7 See, for example, CWR 8 May 1856. The most authoritative treatment of American anti-catholic arguments in this period is Billington, [Ray Allen] [,The Protestant Crusade 1800-1860] (New York 1938 Google Scholar and Chicago 1964; citations are to the latter edition).

8 Anspach p 35; CWR 10 April 1856; Boynton, Charles B., Address before the Citizens of Cincinnati delivered on the Fourth Day of July, 1855 (Cincinnati 1855) pp 5 Google Scholar, 15-16; W[estern] C[hristian] A[dvocate] (Cincinnati) 12 and 19 June 1850, 30 April, 7 May 1851.

9 C[hristian] A[dvocate and] J[ournal] (New York) 18 June 1857; [Atwood, Charles R., ‘The American Movement’, in Our Country (New York 1854), ed Ryder, W.H.], pp 53–61 Google Scholar.

10 Kendall, Edmund H., A Sermon on the Primitive State of the Christian Church, the Usurpations of the Bishop of Rome, and the Corruptions and Abuses of the Papal Hierarchy (Boston 1853) pp 21-2Google Scholar; Stuart pp 5, 13, 19-20; Anspach pp 26-7, 34; CAJ 8 January, 27 August, 5 November 1857.

11 CWR 17 April 1856, 3 September 1857.

12 Billington pp 289-300.

13 Oration p 24; Benson, Lee, The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy: New York as a Test Case (Princeton 1961) pp 278-87Google Scholar; Formisano, Ronald P., The Birth of Mass Political Parties: Michigan, 1827-1861 (Princeton 1971) pp 137-64Google Scholar; [The] Know-Nothing Almanac[; or True Americans’ Manual for 1855] pp 52-6.

14 Billington pp 380-5; Mulkern, [John Raymond] [, ‘The Know Nothing Party in Massachusetts’], unpubl PhD thesis (Boston University 1963) pp 33–44 Google Scholar.

15 Joseph Wright to Matthew Simpson, 23 October 1854 [Library of Congress] M[atthew] S[impson] P[apers, transcripts kindly lent by Dr. W. E. Gienapp]; Forney, [John W.][, Address on Religious Intolerance and Political Proscription, delivered at Lancaster, Pa . . .] (Washington 1855) pp 27-8Google Scholar; Baker, [Jean H.] [, Ambivalent Americans: The Know-Nothing Party in Maryland] (Baltimore 1977) p 69 Google Scholar.

16 Billington pp 327, 416; CWR 15 May 1856; Mulkern pp 8-9.

17 Know-Nothing Almanac; Anspach pp 75-7, 105, 175.

18 Anspach p 175.

19 Dixon, James, Personal Narrative of a Tour through a part of the United States and Canada . . . (New York 1849) p 143 Google Scholar.

20 Brownlow, William G., Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy, in the light of Reason, History and Scripture . . . (Nashville, Tennessee 1856) p 6 Google Scholar.

21 See, for example, [History of the] Rise, Progress and Downfall of Know-Nothingism [in Lancaster County. By Two Expelled Members] (Lancaster, Pennsylvania 1856) p 10 and passim.

22 Mulkern pp 162-95; CWR 8 May 1856.

23 Longstreet, Augustus B., Letter from President Longstreet to the Know-Nothing Preachers of the Methodist Episcopal Church South (New Orleans 1855) pp 6–7 Google Scholar; Coming Journal 27 October 1854 (transcript kindly lent by Dr W. E. Gienapp).

24 CWR 17 April 1856, 1 January 1857; Broussard, James H., ‘Some Determinants of Know-Nothing Electoral Strength in the South, 1856’, Louisiana History 7 (Lafayette, La., 1966) pp 5–20 Google Scholar.

25 The Duty of Native Americans in the Present Crisis (np 1856); J. C. Fremont’s Record. Proof of his Romanism. Proof of his Pro-slavery Acts (np 1856). For an example of a northern Methodist who left Fillmore for Fremont in 1856, see Law, George and Shaffer, Chauncey, Geo. Law and Chauncey Shaffer’s reasons for repudiating Fillmore and Donelson (New York 1856) pp 7–8 Google Scholar.

26 Blanchard, [Jonathan][, Secret Societies, An Argument . . .] (Chicago 1851) pp 5 Google Scholar, 7, 9, 23-4.

27 Godwin, [P.] [, ‘Secret Societies—The Know Nothings’], Putnam’s Monthly Magazine 5 (New York 1855) p 85 Google Scholar.

28 Joseph Wright to Matthew Simpson, 23 October 1854, MSP.

29 [‘A] Calm Discussion [of the Know-Nothing Question’,] Southern Literary Messenger 20 (Richmond, Va. 1854) p 542; Blanchard pp 6-7, 10-11, 16, 28; ‘Know-Nothingism’, Democratie Review 37 (Washington 1856) p 492.

30 Baker pp 69-71.

31 Blanchard p 9 and passim; WCA 12 June, 23 October 1850, 28 May 1851; McKivigan, John R., ‘Abolitionism and the American Churches 1830-1865: A Study in Attitudes and Tactics’, unpubl PhD thesis (Ohio State University 1977) p 184 Google Scholar.

32 Ryder p vi; Ely, [Alfred B.] [, American Liberty: its sources, its dangers, and means of preservation. An oration . . .] (New York 1850) p 17 Google Scholar; Oration p 16.

33 Ryder p vii; WCA 23 January 1850.

34 Forney p 35; Godwin p 96.

35 ‘Know-Nothingism’ pp 490-1.

36 WCA 5 February 1851; Swierenga, Robert P., ‘The Ethnic Voter and the First Lincoln Election’, Civil War History 11 (Iowa City 1965) pp 27–43 Google Scholar.

37 Rusell, George B., ‘Unended Controversy’, Mercersburg Review 7 (Lancaster, Pa., 1855) p 235 Google Scholar. Hudson, [Winthrop S.][, The Great Tradition of the American Churches] (New York 1953)Google Scholar examines the voluntary system, without considering the know-nothing movement. Billington, too, is oddly silent on this issue.

38 Anspach pp 28-32; Henry W. Davis, The Origin, Principles and Purposes of the American Party (np 1855) pp 26-37.

39 Ely pp 10-12.

40 ‘Calm Discussion’ p 541.

41 Article 6 of the constitution specified that no religious test should be required as a qualification for political office. That one and a half million American catholics were native-born made the attempts to exclude them from office seem particularly proscriptive. Forney pp 22, 32; Buchanan and Breckinridge: The Democratic Handbook . . . recommended by the Democratic National Committee (Washington 1856) compiled by Cluskew, Michael W., pp 33-4Google Scholar.

42 WCA 29 January, 4 May, 20 August 1851.

43 ‘Calm Discussion’ pp 541-2. See also, Dawson, John L., Speech . . . before the great Democratic mass meeting at Waynesburg, Greene County, Pennsylvania, August 21, 1856 (Washington 1867) p 34 Google Scholar.

44 For a discussion of ‘right-wing’ puritanism and its commitment to a ‘Standing Order’, and of ‘left-wing’ puritanism, which was sceptical about the reliance of the church on secular institutions, see Hudson pp 42-62.

45 ‘Know-Nothingism’ pp 495-6. See also Fitzgerald, Oscar P., Judge Longstreet: a Life Sketch (Nashville, Tennessee 1891) pp 109-27Google Scholar.

46 Coles, George, My First Seven Years in America (New York 1852) p 37 Google Scholar; CWR 10 April, 1 and 15 May 1856.

47 Hickok p 13.

48 Carwardine, Richard, ‘The Religious Revival of 1857-8 in the United States’, SCH 15 (1978) pp 404-5Google Scholar.

49 The Pope’s Bull and the Words of Daniel O’Connell (New York 1856) p 6.

50 Rise, Progress and Downfall of Know-Nothingism p 29.