The Know-Nothing Political Party

The depiction of the United States of America as a nation of immigrants has always been more propaganda than fact. If it wasn’t for immigrants, the United States would not be as great of a country that it is today. The reason for this statement started during the early 1850’s when “The Know-Nothing” political party came onto the scene in the United States trying to promote a nativist country when Americans started to become alarmed due to a high volume of immigrants entering. A majority of these immigrants were Catholics from Ireland and Germany. The Know-Nothing’s were best known for their strong holdings in being anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic. The nineteenth century was a time when immigrants were not welcome to America at all even though
the people who were already there had come from immigrants. The Know-Nothing party, also known as the “American party” began as a secret society whose members when asked about anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic activities in their neighborhood always responded, “I know nothing” (Ness and Ciment 305). Many of their supporters were Protestant Americans who became fearful when Catholicism started to get more attention from other Americans because Catholics followed the teachings of the Pope. When it came to politics, the Know-Nothing party enforced harsh rules on foreigners which prevented them from voting, trying to hold a position in office, placing a twenty-one-year period of residency, and demanded electoral college registry laws to keep the qualified voters pure. In the mid-1800’s, more than half of the Irish population and an identical amount of Germans immigrated to the United States.
Once coming over, a lot of them made huge contributions especially with labor on America’s soil. The type of employment they did were mainly working on constructing railroads and canals. The first set of German immigrants came to the United States from the 1840’s all the way up to the American Revolution. German immigration to America increased drastically subsequent to the eighteenth century after the European Revolutions of 1848 within the German states in which rebels battled for the unification of the German people. Due to failure, political refugees fled to the United States and they were known as the “Forty-Eighters” and they helped to create the beer and wine production in the United States. Many of the German immigrants settled primarily in Pennsylvania. Their reason for migrating to America just like all the other European nations was because they suffered from severe crop failures which led to destitution. A little less than 1 million German immigrants entered the United States during this time frame. However, the Germans came with more money compared to the Irish because they were not as poor. When the American Civil War broke out, the migration came to a cease and then resumed after the war in 1873 which introduced the second wave. The second wave of German immigrants was known to be farmers and agricultural laborers. German farmers were encountered by an influx due to Americans having cheaper wheat which caused an immense downfall on grain prices. Many of Germany’s farms had suffered and plenty of farmers became jobless. Over 1.3 million farmers left Germany for a better farming opportunity in the United States but that came to a halt when the Long Depression came into
effect.