The Party of Lincoln is the Party That Shot Lincoln

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After the Speech: What Trump Did as the Capitol Was Attacked: New evidence emerged in the impeachment trial about what President Donald J. Trump did from roughly 1 to 6 p.m. the day of the Capitol attack. But many questions remain unanswered.
by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Martin
New York Times
Feb. 13, 2021

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The impeachment trial of former President Donald J. Trump largely focused on his actions leading up to the violent attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6. But there was a crucial period that day of nearly five hours — between the end of Mr. Trump’s speech at the Ellipse urging his supporters to march to the Capitol and a final tweet telling his followers to remember the day forever — that remains critical to his state of mind.

Evidence emerged during the trial about what Mr. Trump was doing during those hours, including new details about two phone calls with lawmakers that prosecutors said clearly alerted the president to the mayhem on Capitol Hill. Prosecutors said the new information was clear proof of Mr. Trump’s intent to incite the mob and of his dereliction to stop the violence, even when he knew that the life of Vice President Mike Pence was in danger.

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader who on Saturday voted to acquit Mr. Trump but offered a sweeping endorsement of the prosecutors’ case, backed them up: “There’s no question — none — that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day. No question about it.”

Still, many crucial questions remain unanswered about the president’s actions and mood from roughly 1 to 6 p.m. Jan. 6. Here is what is known so far:

Mr. Trump concluded his incendiary speech on the Ellipse at 1:11 p.m. He had repeatedly told the crowd that the election was stolen from him and urged his supporters to march to the Capitol in a last-ditch effort to stop President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory from being certified. Mr. Trump said twice that he would go with them. And days before the march, he had told advisers that he wanted to join his supporters, but aides told him that people in the crowd were armed and that the Secret Service would not be able to protect him.

Six minutes later, Mr. Trump’s motorcade began heading back to the White House. He arrived there at 1:19 p.m. as the crowd was making its way up Pennsylvania Avenue and beginning to swarm around the Capitol. Television news footage showed the mob as it moved closer to the doors.

At some point, Mr. Trump went to the Oval Office and watched news coverage of a situation that was growing increasingly tense.

At 1:34 p.m., Mayor Muriel Bowser of Washington made a formal request for assistance in a phone call with the Army secretary, Ryan D. McCarthy. At 1:49 p.m., as the Capitol Police asked Pentagon officials for help from the National Guard, Mr. Trump tweeted a video of his incendiary rally speech.

It was around this time that some of Mr. Trump’s allies publicly called on him to do something. Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, told ABC News that Mr. Trump needed to say something to stop the rioting.

At 2:12 p.m., the same moment that the mob breached the building itself, Mr. Pence — who had defied the president by saying he planned to certify Mr. Biden’s victory — was rushed off the Senate floor. A minute later, the Senate session was recessed. Two minutes after that, at 2:15 p.m., groups of rioters began to chant, “Hang Mike Pence!”

Nine minutes later, at 2:24 p.m., Mr. Trump tweeted a broadside at Mr. Pence for moving ahead to certify Mr. Biden’s win: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”

At 2:26 p.m., after Mr. Pence had been whisked away, a call was placed from the White House to Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, according to call logs that the senator provided during the impeachment proceedings.

The president had made the call, but he was actually looking for Senator Tommy Tuberville, Republican of Alabama. Mr. Lee gave the phone to Mr. Tuberville, who has told reporters that he informed Mr. Trump that Mr. Pence had just been escorted out as the mob got closer to the Senate chamber.

“I said, ‘Mr. President, they just took the vice president out, I’ve got to go,’” Mr. Tuberville recounted to Politico.

This was a significant new piece of information. House prosecutors used it to argue that Mr. Trump was clearly aware that the vice president was in danger and that he had a callous disregard for Mr. Pence’s safety. On Friday, Mr. Trump’s defense team had insisted that Mr. Trump was not aware of any peril facing Mr. Pence.

Back at the White House, advisers were trying to get Mr. Trump to do something, but he rebuffed calls to intercede, including those from people wanting to see the National Guard deployed. The president, several advisers said, was expressing pleasure that the vote to certify Mr. Biden’s win had been delayed and that people were fighting for him.

“According to public reports, he watched television happily — happily — as the chaos unfolded,” Mr. McConnell said on Saturday. “He kept pressing his scheme to overturn the election. Even after it was clear to any reasonable observer that Vice President Pence was in serious danger, even as the mob carrying Trump banners was beating cops and breaching perimeters, the president sent a further tweet attacking his own vice president.”

“Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a close Republican ally of the president’s, told The Washington Post that he called Ivanka Trump, Mr. Trump’s eldest daughter, to try to get her to reason with her father. Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, also called Ms. Trump to see if she could talk to her father. A short time later, she arrived in the Oval Office, urging Mr. Trump to issue a statement.

The White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, hammered at Mr. Trump to understand that he had potential legal exposure for what was taking place.

Finally, at 2:38 p.m., Mr. Trump tweeted, “Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful!”

A short time later, at 3:13 p.m., Mr. Trump added a note, “I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence! Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order – respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you!”

Ms. Trump quoted her father’s tweet when she sent out her own, telling “American Patriots” to follow the law. She quickly deleted it and replaced it when she faced blowback on Twitter for appearing to praise the rioters as “patriots.”

Around 3:30 p.m., Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House Republican leader and another ally of Mr. Trump’s, told CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell that he had spoken that afternoon with Mr. Trump as the Capitol was under siege.

“I told him he needed to talk to the nation,” Mr. McCarthy said. “I told him what was happening right then.”

The call became heated, according to a Republican congresswoman, Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington State, who said that Mr. McCarthy told her that Mr. Trump had sided with the mob as the Capitol attack unfolded, suggesting he had made a choice not to stop the violence.

In a statement on Friday night that was admitted into evidence in the trial on Saturday, Ms. Herrera Beutler recounted that Mr. McCarthy had a shouting match with Mr. Trump during the call.

Mr. McCarthy had told Mr. Trump that his own office windows were being broken into. “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are,” Mr. Trump said, according to a report by CNN that the congresswoman confirmed.

“Who do you think you’re talking to?” Mr. McCarthy fired back at one point, CNN reported, including an expletive.

Meanwhile, the violence continued. At 4:17 p.m., Mr. Trump posted a video on Twitter of him speaking directly to the camera in the Rose Garden. “I know your pain,” Mr. Trump said. “I know you’re hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us, it was a landslide election, and everyone knows it, especially the other side. But you have to go home now.”

He added, “We have to have peace. We have to have law and order. We have to respect our great people in law and order. We don’t want anybody hurt.”

The violence continued. Well before the Capitol Police announced at 8 p.m. that the building had been secured, Mr. Trump put out a final tweet at 6:01 p.m.: “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!”

The Trump Impeachment: What You Need to Know

A trial was held to decide whether former President Donald J. Trump is guilty of inciting a deadly mob of his supporters when they stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, violently breaching security measures and sending lawmakers into hiding as they met to certify President Biden’s victory.

The House voted 232 to 197 to approve a single article of impeachment, accusing Mr. Trump of “inciting violence against the government of the United States” in his quest to overturn the election results. Ten Republicans joined the Democrats in voting to impeach him.

The Senate acquitted Mr. Trump of the charges by a vote of 57 to 43, falling short of the two-thirds majority required for a conviction.

Without a conviction, the former president is eligible to run for public office once again. Public opinion surveys show that he remains by far the most popular national figure in the Republican Party.

Maggie Haberman is a White House correspondent. She joined The Times in 2015 as a campaign correspondent and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for reporting on President Trump’s advisers and their connections to Russia. @maggieNYT

Jonathan Martin is a national political correspondent. He has reported on a range of topics, including the 2016 presidential election and several state and congressional races, while also writing for Sports, Food and the Book Review. He is also a CNN political analyst. @jmartnyt

A version of this article appears in print on Feb. 14, 2021, Section A, Page 21 of the New York edition with the headline: After the Speech: What Trump Did While the Capitol Was Attacked.

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Part 1 of 2

Know Nothing
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 2/16/21


Know Nothing
Uncle Sam's youngest son, Citizen Know Nothing, an 1854 print
Other name: Native American Party (before 1855); American Party (after 1855)
First Leader: Lewis Charles Levin
Founded: 1844; 177 years ago
Dissolved: 1860; 161 years ago
Preceded by: American Republican Party; Whig Party
Succeeded by: Constitutional Union Party; North American Party
Headquarters: New York City
Secret wing: Order of the Star Spangled Banner
Ideology: American nationalism; Nativism; Populism; Republicanism
Religion: Protestantism
Colors: Red White Blue

The Know Nothing movement, formally known as the Native American Party (at that time meaning descendants of colonists or settlers, rather than Indigenous Americans) before 1855 and the American Party after 1855, was a nativist political party and movement in the United States, which operated nationwide in the mid-1850s, originally starting as a secret society. It was primarily an anti-Catholic, Anti-Irish, anti-immigration, populist and xenophobic movement, although it was also progressive in its stances on "issues of labor rights, opposition to slavery, and the need for more government spending"[1] as well as for its "support for an expansion of the rights of women, regulation of industry, and support of measures designed to improve the status of working people."[2] It was also a forerunner to the temperance movement in the United States and its nativist spirit is seen in both the American Protective Association and the Ku Klux Klan.[3]

The American Protective Association (APA) was an American anti-Catholic secret society established in 1887 by Protestants. The organization was the largest anti-Catholic movement in the United States during the later part of the 19th century, showing particular regional strength in the Midwest. The group grew rapidly during the early 1890s before collapsing just as abruptly in the aftermath of the election of 1896.

Unlike the more powerful Know Nothing movement of the 1850s, the APA did not establish its own independent political party, but rather sought to exert influence by boosting its supporters in campaigns and at political conventions, particularly those of the Republican Party. The organization was particularly concerned about Roman Catholic influence in the public school system as well as unfettered Catholic immigration and what was seen as growing Catholic control of the political establishments of major American cities.

Attaining a six-figure membership at its peak in early 1896, the organization's collapse was rapid, with only a hollow shell remaining by 1898. The rump organization was finally terminated in 1911 with the death of its founder.

Establishment

On the afternoon of Sunday, March 13, 1887, a meeting was called in the Clinton, Iowa law office of Henry F. Bowers to discuss the recent electoral defeat of incumbent mayor Arnold Walliker, which Bowers and others blamed on the organized efforts of Roman Catholics in the local organized labor movement.[1] Seven men were in attendance, including the defeated former mayor and his brother.[2] The decision was made by the seven men to establish a new political society to combat Catholic political influence, to be called the American Protective Association, and a constitution and Masonic-influenced ritual was drawn up for this new organization.[3]

Bowers was elected the group's first "Supreme President." Aside from Bowers himself, there were six other founding members. Bowers would later relate that this "First Council" was composed of three Republicans, two Democrats, one Populist, and one Prohibitionist.[4] The religious make-up of the First Council was said by Bowers to include members of the Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, Congregationalist, and Lutheran religious denominations, as well as "one of no religion."[4]...

The years 1892 and 1893 initiated a period of dramatic growth in the size of the APA, and the secret society began capturing headlines in newspapers around the country. By September 1893 the head of the Buffalo, New York local council of the APA — formerly a Loyal Orange Institution member from Toronto — boasted of more than 800 members in that city alone, and promised that "we are going to run this city just as the APA runs Kansas City, Detroit, Saginaw, and other cities of the West."[8]...

Growth of the APA during the early 1890s was spurred by the circulation of forged documents, including in particular a set of purported “instructions to Catholics” advising the faithful against "keeping faith with heretics," and another alleged Papal encyclical over the signature of Pope Leo XIII calling for Catholics to "exterminate all heretics" on or about St. Ignatius Day [September 5], 1893.[10]

The Canadian-born W. J. H. Traynor, past Supreme Grand Master of the Loyal Orange Institution of the United States[11] and editor of a weekly anti-Catholic newspaper from Detroit, The Patriotic American,[12] succeeded Bowers as Supreme President in 1893.[4] It would be he who would lead the group during its period of greatest influence during the mid-1890s.[4] Traynor, the son of a building contractor, had joined the Orange Order at the age of 17 and maintained membership and connections with a host of religious and nationalist secret societies, including the Illustrious Order of the Knights of Malta, the American Patriot League, the American Protestant Association, and other similar organizations.[13]...

The Loyal Orange Institution, commonly known as the Orange Order, is an international Protestant fraternal order based in Northern Ireland. It also has lodges in England, Scotland and the Republic of Ireland, as well as throughout the British Commonwealth and the United States.[1][2][3] The Orange Order was founded in County Armagh in 1795, during a period of Protestant–Catholic sectarian conflict, as a Masonic-style fraternity sworn to maintain the Protestant Ascendancy. It is headed by the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland, which was established in 1798. Its name is a tribute to the Dutch-born Protestant Parliament-supported prince William of Orange's defeat of Catholic English king James II in the Williamite–Jacobite War (1688–1691). The order is best known for its yearly marches, the biggest of which is held on or around 12 July (The Twelfth).

The Orange Order is a conservative unionist organisation,[4][5] with links to Ulster loyalism. It campaigned against Scottish independence in 2014.[6] The Order sees itself as defending Protestant civil and religious liberties, whilst critics accuse the Order of being sectarian, triumphalist,[7][8][9][10] and supremacist.[10][11][12][13] As a strict Protestant society, it does not accept non-Protestants as members unless they convert and adhere to the principles of Orangeism, nor does it accept Protestants married to Catholics.[14][15][16] Although many Orange marches are without incident, marches through mainly Catholic and Irish nationalist neighbourhoods are controversial and have often led to violence.[17][18]

-- Orange Order, by Wikipedia

The Association took an active part in the mid-term election of 1894 and off-year elections of 1895, in some jurisdictions running its own ticket, but more often supporting candidates from the main parties who agreed with its agenda. It often took credit for Republican victories, especially in the GOP landslide year of 1894. Thus it took credit with the election of John W. Griggs to the governorship of New Jersey, by bringing up his opponent's, Alexander T. McGill support of a Catholic protection bill in 1875. It also claimed it had an influence in the elections in Upstate New York during the same period.[13] Its leader Traynor said the APA had twenty members of Congress as members; he boasted that one hundred members had been elected by it.[9]

Decline and extinction

In December 1895, the APA played a dominant role in the organization of a convention of patriotic organizations to coordinate efforts in the upcoming 1896 electoral campaign.[17] Joining the APA were representatives of the Loyal Orange Institution, the Junior Order of United American Mechanics, the Society for Protection of American Institutions, and other related groups — organizations which together fancifully claimed some 3 million adherents.[17] The convention adopted a platform calling for restricted immigration, a halt to public money spent for ostensibly sectarian purposes, limitation of the vote to citizens alone, and equal taxation of all except public property, and formed committees to attend the national conventions of the various political parties in an effort to gain commitments for these principles into national party platforms.[18]...

Ideology and program


APA propaganda depicting the Pope as the master decision-maker controlling the White House, Congress, and federal financial and publishing institutions. (Art from an 1894 book.)

While the Association said it did not have any conflict with Catholicism or the Irish per se, they believed that the Roman Catholic Church was making inroads into the government of the United States with the goal of controlling it. They said that Catholics had congregated in areas of large cities, preventing the election of non-Catholics in those areas, that 60% to 90% of government employees were Catholic, often illiterate and current and hired on the basis of patronage, attacks on the public school system, the "remarkable" increase in untaxed church property and the "fact" that the army, navy "were almost entirely Romanized", "frequent desecration" of the American flag by priests and the federal government was controlled by the Jesuits. They said that Roman Catholics were under the complete political control of the Pope and were to required to obey its laws when they were in conflict with those of the state, citing the Papal encyclical issued by Leo XIII on January 10, 1890, Sapientiae Christianae.[21]

The APAs program and stated aims included the "perpetual" separation of Church and State; maintenance of a free, non-sectarian public school system; prohibition of any government grant or special privilege to sectarian bodies; establishment of an educational qualification to vote, "purification of the ballot"; suspension of further immigration, and its resumption on guarantees of residence and educational qualifications; public inspections of all private schools, convents, monasteries, hospitals, educational and reformatory institutions. In New Jersey they were able to sponsor a "School Flag Act" and an act forbidding students from wearing religious garb in school.[22]

Representatives of the group also made public announcements that the Roman Catholic Church had instigated the Civil War, during which they said Catholics and Irish made up large numbers of deserters, and that both Grover Cleveland and William McKinley were controlled by the Church.[23]

Although a veil of secrecy cloaked early doctrinal documents, which later said to have only "feebly indicated" the APA's organizational aims,[24] the 1894 national convention approved a 13-point statement of principles which was made public and published.[25] This platform stated that "loyalty to true Americanism, which knows neither birthplace, race, creed, or party" was the "first requisite for membership" in the APA, and that the organization did not control the political affiliations of its members.[26]

The group's fundamental opposition to Catholicism was spelled out in the third plank of the 1894 statement of principles, which declared that while the APA was "tolerant of all creeds," it nevertheless

"holds that subjection to and support of any ecclesiastical power, not created and controlled by American citizens, and which claims equal, if not greater, sovereignty than the government of the United States of America, is irreconcilable with American citizenship. It is therefore opposed to the holding of offices in National, State, or Municipal government by any subject or supporter of such ecclesiastical power."[26]

The program further spelled out the APA's belief that "non-sectarian free public schools" constituted the "bulwark of American institutions" and protested against employment of so-called "subjects of un-American ecclesiastical power" as public school teachers or administrators.[26] The document also called for a "prohibition of the importation of pauper labor" as a means of protecting "our citizen laborers" and for tighter standards in immigration and naturalization law.[26]

Although regarded by historians as a nativist movement,[27] the APA was not automatically hostile to immigrants — quite the contrary. Many members, perhaps a majority, were themselves foreign-born, including Irish Protestants, Britons, and Scandinavian Lutherans.[28] The organization permitted African-Americans to membership, with blacks elected representatives of their state organizations to national conventions of the organization.[29] Segregated local councils for black members were organized in the Southern States in 1895 and 1896, but local councils in the North were integrated.[19] There is no evidence of either widespread participation by Jews in the APA or official anti-Semitism as a part of organizational practice.[29]

Citing immigration figures for the decade of the 1880s, which were said to have shown that 3.25 million of 6.3 million immigrants to America were Roman Catholic, one 1894 APA apologetic moved beyond the standard rationale of Papal political manipulation in arguing for a tightening of immigration standards for reasons of public safety:

"Most all of the better class of immigrants are Protestants. It remains that, almost entirely, the lowest class are Roman Catholics.... Among these are mostly found the train wreckers, robbers, plunderers, murderers, and assassins of the country.... In the large cities criminal statistics show that while Roman Catholics furnish about four percent of the population, they produce more than one-half of the crime, if we except those cities in which there is a large percent of negro criminals."[30]

...

The APA was also active in Canada, where it is said to have worked with the Orangemen and "is said to have controlled elections in the chief cities of the Dominion in 1894 and 1895." In England they also apparently worked with the Orange Lodge.[19] They were also reportedly active in Australia.[37]

-- American Protective Association, by Wikipedia

The Know Nothing movement briefly emerged as a major political party in the form of the American Party. Adherents to the movement were to simply reply "I know nothing" when asked about its specifics by outsiders, providing the group with its common name.[4]

Supporters of the Know Nothing movement believed that an alleged "Romanist" conspiracy was being planned to subvert civil and religious liberty in the United States, and sought to politically organize native-born Protestants in what they described as a defense of their traditional religious and political values. The Know Nothing movement is remembered for this theme because of fears by Protestants that Catholic priests and bishops would control a large bloc of voters. I n most places, the ideology and influence of the Know Nothing movement lasted only a year or two before disintegrating due to weak and inexperienced local leaders, a lack of publicly declared national leaders, and a deep split over the issue of slavery. In the South, the party did not emphasize anti-Catholicism as frequently as it did in the North and stressed a neutral position on slavery,[5] but it became the main alternative to the dominant Democratic Party.[4]

The collapse of the Whig Party after the passage of the Kansas–Nebraska Act left an opening for the emergence of a new major political party in opposition to the Democratic Party. The Know Nothing movement managed to elect congressman Nathaniel P. Banks of Massachusetts and several other individuals in the 1854 elections into office, and subsequently coalesced into a new political party known as the American Party. Particularly in the South, the American Party served as a vehicle for politicians opposed to the Democrats. Many also hoped that it would stake out a middle ground between the pro-slavery positions of Democratic politicians and the radical anti-slavery positions of the rapidly emerging Republican Party. The American Party nominated former President Millard Fillmore in the 1856 presidential election, although he kept quiet about his membership, and personally refrained from supporting the Know Nothing movement's activities and ideology. Fillmore received 21.5% of the popular vote in the 1856 presidential election, finishing behind the Democratic and Republican nominees.[6]

The party entered a period of rapid decline after Fillmore's loss in the 1856 presidential election and the Dred Scott v. Sandford decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in 1857 further galvanized opposition to slavery in the North, causing many former Know Nothings to join the Republicans.[7] The remnants of the American Party largely became part of the Constitutional Union Party in 1860 and disappeared during the American Civil War.

The Constitutional Union Party was a United States third party active during the 1860 elections. It consisted of conservative former Whigs, largely from the Southern United States, who wanted to avoid secession over the slavery issue and refused to join either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. The Constitutional Union Party campaigned on a simple platform "to recognize no political principle other than the Constitution of the country, the Union of the states, and the Enforcement of the Laws".

The Whig Party had collapsed in the 1850s due to a series of sectional crises over slavery. Though some former Whigs joined the Democratic Party or the new, anti-slavery Republican Party, others joined the nativist American Party [Know Nothing Party]. The American Party entered a period of rapid decline following the 1856 elections, and in the lead-up to the 1860 elections John J. Crittenden and other former Whigs founded the Constitutional Union Party. The 1860 Constitutional Union Convention met in May 1860, nominating John Bell of Tennessee for president and Edward Everett of Massachusetts for vice president. Party leaders hoped to force a contingent election in the House of Representatives by denying any one candidate a majority in the Electoral College.

The 1860 election essentially consisted of two campaigns, as Republican nominee Abraham Lincoln competed with Northern Democratic candidate Stephen A. Douglas in the North, and Bell competed with Southern Democratic candidate John C. Breckinridge in the South. Ultimately, Lincoln won the election by winning nearly every Northern electoral vote. Bell took 12.6% of the nationwide popular vote, carried three states in the Upper South, and finished with the second highest vote total in each remaining slave state that held a popular vote. After the election, Crittenden and other Constitutional Unionists unsuccessfully sought to prevent a civil war with the Crittenden Compromise and the Peace Conference of 1861. Bell declared his support for the Confederacy following the Battle of Fort Sumter, but many other Constitutional Unionists remained loyal to the Union throughout the American Civil War.

-- Constitutional Union Party (United States), by Wikipedia

History

Anti-Catholicism had been a factor in colonial America but played a minor role in American politics until the arrival of large numbers of Irish and German Catholics in the 1840s.[8] It then reemerged in nativist attacks on Catholic immigration. It appeared in New York City politics as early as 1843 under the banner of the American Republican Party.[9]

The American Republican Party was a minor anti-Catholic, anti-immigration and nativist political organization that was launched in New York in June 1843, largely as a protest against immigrant voters and officeholders.

In 1844, the American Republican Party carried municipal elections in New York City and Philadelphia and expanded so rapidly that by July 1845 a national convention was called. This convention changed the name to the Native American Party and drafted a legislative program calling for a twenty-one-year period preceding naturalization and other sweeping reforms in the immigration policy. Failure to force congressional action on these proposals, combined with the growing national interest in the Mexican problem before the Mexican–American War, led to the party's rapid decline.

Its founders included Lewis Charles Levin, Samuel Kramer, "General" Peter Sken Smith, James Wallace, and John Gitron.

-- American Republican Party (1843), by Wikipdia

The movement quickly spread to nearby states using that name or Native American Party or variants of it. They succeeded in a number of local and Congressional elections, notably in 1844 in Philadelphia, where the anti-Catholic orator Lewis Charles Levin, who went on to be the first Jewish congressman, was elected Representative from Pennsylvania's 1st district. In the early 1850s, numerous secret orders grew up, of which the Order of United Americans[10] and the Order of the Star Spangled Banner[11] came to be the most important. They emerged in New York in the early 1850s as a secret order that quickly spread across the North, reaching non-Catholics, particularly those who were lower middle class or skilled workmen.[12]

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 "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.

-- Order of the Star Spangled Banner, by Wikipedia

The name Know Nothing originated in the semi-secret organization of the party. When a member was asked about his activities, he was supposed to reply, "I know nothing." Outsiders derisively called them "Know Nothings", and the name stuck. In 1855, the Know Nothings first entered politics under the American Party label.[13][14]

Underlying issues

The immigration of large numbers of Irish and German Catholics to the United States in the period between 1830 and 1860 made religious differences between Catholics and Protestants a political issue. Violence occasionally erupted at the polls. Protestants alleged that Pope Pius IX had put down the failed liberal Revolutions of 1848 and that he was an opponent of liberty, democracy and republicanism. One Boston minister described Catholicism as "the ally of tyranny, the opponent of material prosperity, the foe of thrift, the enemy of the railroad, the caucus, and the school".[15][16] These fears encouraged conspiracy theories regarding papal intentions of subjugating the United States through a continuing influx of Catholics controlled by Irish bishops obedient to and personally selected by the Pope.

In 1849, an oath-bound secret society, the Order of the Star Spangled Banner, was created by Charles B. Allen in New York City. At its inception, the Order of the Star Spangled Banner only had about 36 members. Fear of Catholic immigration led to a dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party, whose leadership in many cities included Catholics of Irish descent. Activists formed secret groups, coordinating their votes and throwing their weight behind candidates sympathetic to their cause:

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.[17]

Rise

In spring 1854, the Know Nothings carried Boston and Salem, Massachusetts, and other New England cities. They swept the state of Massachusetts in the fall 1854 elections, their biggest victory. The Whig candidate for mayor of Philadelphia, editor Robert T. Conrad, was soon revealed as a Know Nothing as he promised to crack down on crime, close saloons on Sundays and to appoint only native-born Americans to office—he won by a landslide. In Washington, D.C., Know Nothing candidate John T. Towers defeated incumbent Mayor John Walker Maury, causing opposition of such proportion that the Democrats, Whigs, and Freesoilers in the capital united as the "Anti-Know-Nothing Party". In New York, in a four-way race the Know Nothing candidate ran third with 26%. After the 1854 elections, they exerted decisive influence in Maine, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and California, but historians are unsure about the accuracy of this information due to the secrecy of the party, as all parties were in turmoil and the anti-slavery and prohibition issues overlapped with nativism in complex and confusing ways. They helped elect Stephen Palfrey Webb as mayor of San Francisco and J. Neely Johnson as governor of California. Nathaniel P. Banks was elected to Congress as a Know Nothing candidate, but after a few months he aligned with Republicans. A coalition of Know Nothings, Republicans and other members of Congress opposed to the Democratic Party elected Banks to the position of Speaker of the House.

The results of the 1854 elections were so favorable to the Know Nothings, up to then an informal movement with no centralized organization, that they formed officially as a political party called the American Party, which attracted many members of the now nearly defunct Whig party as well as a significant number of Democrats. Membership in the American Party increased dramatically, from 50,000 to an estimated one million plus in a matter of months during that year.[18]

The historian Tyler Anbinder concluded:

The key to Know Nothing success in 1854 was the collapse of the second party system, brought about primarily by the demise of the Whig Party. The Whig Party, weakened for years by internal dissent and chronic factionalism, was nearly destroyed by the Kansas–Nebraska Act. Growing anti-party sentiment, fueled by anti-slavery sentiment as well as temperance and nativism, also contributed to the disintegration of the party system. The collapsing second party system gave the Know Nothings a much larger pool of potential converts than was available to previous nativist organizations, allowing the Order to succeed where older nativist groups had failed.[19]

In San Francisco, a Know Nothing chapter was founded in 1854 to oppose Chinese immigration—members included a judge of the state supreme court, who ruled that no Chinese person could testify as a witness against a white man in court.[20]


Fillmore–Donelson campaign poster

In the spring of 1855, Know Nothing candidate Levi Boone was elected mayor of Chicago and barred all immigrants from city jobs. Abraham Lincoln was strongly opposed to the principles of the Know Nothing movement, but did not denounce it publicly because he needed the votes of its membership to form a successful anti-slavery coalition in Illinois.[21][22] Ohio was the only state where the party gained strength in 1855. Their Ohio success seems to have come from winning over immigrants, especially German-American Lutherans and Scots-Irish Presbyterians, both hostile to Catholicism. In Alabama, Know Nothings were a mix of former Whigs, discontented Democrats and other political outsiders who favored state aid to build more railroads. Virginia attracted national attention in its tempestuous 1855 gubernatorial election. Democrat Henry Alexander Wise won by convincing state voters that Know Nothings were in bed with Northern abolitionists. With the victory by Wise, the movement began to collapse in the South.[23][24]

Know Nothings scored victories in Northern state elections in 1854, winning control of the legislature in Massachusetts and polling 40% of the vote in Pennsylvania. Although most of the new immigrants lived in the North, resentment and anger against them was national and the American Party initially polled well in the South, attracting the votes of many former southern Whigs.[25]

The party name gained wide but brief popularity. Nativism became a new American rage: Know Nothing candy, Know Nothing tea, and Know Nothing toothpicks appeared. Stagecoaches were dubbed "The Know Nothing". In Trescott, Maine, a shipowner dubbed his new 700-ton freighter Know Nothing.[26] The party was occasionally referred to, contemporaneously, in a slightly pejorative shortening, "Knism."[27]

Leadership and legislation

Historian John Mulkern has examined the party's success in sweeping to almost complete control of the Massachusetts legislature after its 1854 landslide victory. He finds the new party was populist and highly democratic, hostile to wealth, elites and to expertise, and deeply suspicious of outsiders, especially Catholics. The new party's voters were concentrated in the rapidly growing industrial towns, where Yankee workers faced direct competition with new Irish immigrants. Whereas the Whig Party was strongest in high income districts, the Know Nothing electorate was strongest in the poor districts. They expelled the traditional upper-class, closed, political leadership, especially the lawyers and merchants. In their stead, they elected working-class men, farmers and a large number of teachers and ministers. Replacing the moneyed elite were men who seldom owned $10,000 in property.[28]

Nationally, the new party leadership showed incomes, occupation, and social status that were about average. Few were wealthy, according to detailed historical studies of once-secret membership rosters. Fewer than 10% were unskilled workers who might come in direct competition with Irish laborers. They enlisted few farmers, but on the other hand they included many merchants and factory owners.[29] The party's voters were by no means all native-born Americans, for it won more than a fourth of the German and British Protestants in numerous state elections. It especially appealed to Protestants such as the Lutherans, Dutch Reformed and Presbyterians.[30]

The most aggressive and innovative legislation came out of Massachusetts, where the new party controlled all but three of the 400 seats—only 35 had any previous legislative experience. The Massachusetts legislature in 1855 passed a series of reforms that "burst the dam against change erected by party politics, and released a flood of reforms."[31] Historian Stephen Taylor says that in addition to nativist legislation, "the party also distinguished itself by its opposition to slavery, support for an expansion of the rights of women, regulation of industry, and support of measures designed to improve the status of working people".[2]

It passed legislation to regulate railroads, insurance companies and public utilities. It funded free textbooks for the public schools and raised the appropriations for local libraries and for the school for the blind. Purification of Massachusetts against divisive social evils was a high priority. The legislature set up the state's first reform school for juvenile delinquents while trying to block the importation of supposedly subversive government documents and academic books from Europe. It upgraded the legal status of wives, giving them more property rights and more rights in divorce courts. It passed harsh penalties on speakeasies, gambling houses and bordellos. It passed prohibition legislation with penalties that were so stiff—such as six months in prison for serving one glass of beer—that juries refused to convict defendants. Many of the reforms were quite expensive; state spending rose 45% on top of a 50% hike in annual taxes on cities and towns. This extravagance angered the taxpayers, and few Know Nothings were reelected.[32]

The highest priority included attacks on the civil rights of Irish Catholic immigrants. After this, state courts lost the power to process applications for citizenship and public schools had to require compulsory daily reading of the Protestant Bible (which the nativists were sure would transform the Catholic children). The governor disbanded the Irish militias and replaced Irish holding state jobs with Protestants. It failed to reach the two-thirds vote needed to pass a state constitutional amendment to restrict voting and office holding to men who had resided in Massachusetts for at least 21 years. The legislature then called on Congress to raise the requirement for naturalization from five years to 21 years, but Congress never acted.[33] The most dramatic move by the Know Nothing legislature was to appoint an investigating committee designed to prove widespread sexual immorality underway in Catholic convents. The press had a field day following the story, especially when it was discovered that the key reformer was using committee funds to pay for a prostitute. The legislature shut down its committee, ejected the reformer, and saw its investigation become a laughing stock.[34][35][36][37]

The Know Nothings also dominated politics in Rhode Island, where in 1855 William W. Hoppin held the governorship and five out of every seven votes went to the party, which dominated the Rhode Island legislature.[38] Local newspapers such as The Providence Journal fueled anti-Irish and anti-Catholic sentiment.[38]

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Part 2 of 2

Violence


Know Nothing Party ticket naming party candidates for state and county offices (at the bottom of the page are voting instructions)

Fearful that Catholics were flooding the polls with non-citizens, local activists threatened to stop them. On 6 August 1855, rioting broke out in Louisville, Kentucky, during a hotly contested race for the office of governor. Twenty-two were killed and many injured. This "Bloody Monday" riot was not the only violent riot between Know Nothings and Catholics in 1855.[39] In Baltimore, the mayoral elections of 1856, 1857, and 1858 were all marred by violence and well-founded accusations of ballot-rigging.[citation needed] In the coastal town of Ellsworth Maine in 1854, Know Nothings were associated with the tarring and feathering of a Catholic priest, Jesuit Johannes Bapst. They also burned down a Catholic church in Bath, Maine.[40]

South

In the Southern United States, the American Party was composed chiefly of ex-Whigs looking for a vehicle to fight the dominant Democratic Party and worried about both the pro-slavery extremism of the Democrats and the emergence of the anti-slavery Republican party in the North.[25] In the South as a whole, the American Party was strongest among former Unionist Whigs. States-rightist Whigs shunned it, enabling the Democrats to win most of the South. Whigs supported the American Party because of their desire to defeat the Democrats, their unionist sentiment, their anti-immigrant attitudes and the Know Nothing neutrality on the slavery issue.[41]

David T. Gleeson notes that many Irish Catholics in the South feared the arrival of the Know-Nothing movement portended a serious threat. He argues:

The southern Irish, who had seen the dangers of Protestant bigotry in Ireland, had the distinct feeling that the Know-Nothings were an American manifestation of that phenomenon. Every migrant, no matter how settled or prosperous, also worried that this virulent strain of nativism threatened his or her hard-earned gains in the South and integration into its society. Immigrants fears were unjustified, however, because the national debate over slavery and its expansion, not nativism or anti-Catholicism, was the major reason for Know-Nothing success in the South. The southerners who supported the Know-Nothings did so, for the most part, because they thought the Democrats who favored the expansion of slavery might break up the Union.[42]

In 1855, the American Party challenged the Democrats' dominance. In Alabama, the Know Nothings were a mix of former Whigs, malcontented Democrats and other political misfits; they favored state aid to build more railroads. In the fierce campaign, the Democrats argued that Know Nothings could not protect slavery from Northern abolitionists. The Know Nothing American Party disintegrated soon after losing in 1855.[43]

In Virginia, the Know Nothing movement came under sharp attack from both established parties. Democrats published a 12,000-word, point-by-point denunciation of Know Nothingism. The Democrats nominated ex-Whig Henry A. Wise for governor. He denounced the "lousy, godless, Christless" Know Nothings and instead he advocated an expanded program of internal improvements.[44][45][46]

In Louisiana and Maryland, the Know Nothings enlisted native-born Catholics.[47] In Maryland, the party was dead but its past leaders remained active in other parties. The American Party's Governor and later Senator Thomas Holliday Hicks, Representative Henry Winter Davis, and Senator Anthony Kennedy, with his brother, former Representative John Pendleton Kennedy, all supported the Union in a border state. Historian Michael F. Holt argues that "Know Nothingism originally grew in the South for the same reasons it spread in the North—nativism, anti-Catholicism, and animosity toward unresponsive politicos—not because of conservative Unionism". Holt cites William B. Campbell, former governor of Tennessee, who wrote in January 1855: "I have been astonished at the widespread feeling in favor of their principles—to wit, Native Americanism and anti-Catholicism—it takes everywhere".[48]

Louisiana

Despite the national American Party's anti-Catholicism, the Know Nothings found strong support in Louisiana, including in largely Catholic New Orleans.[49] The Whig Party in Louisiana had a strong anti-immigrant bent, making the Native American Party the natural home for Louisiana's former Whigs.[50] Louisiana Know Nothings were pro-slavery and anti-immigrant, but, in contrast to the national party, refused to include a religious test for membership.[51] Instead, the Louisiana Know Nothings insisted that "loyalty to a church should not supersede loyalty to the Union."[50] Know Nothing congressman John Edward Bouligny, a Catholic Creole, was the only member of the Louisiana congressional delegation who refused to resign his seat after the state seceded from the Union.[52]

Decline


Results by county indicating the percentage for Fillmore in each county

The party declined rapidly in the North after 1855. In the presidential election of 1856, it was bitterly divided over slavery. The main faction supported the ticket of presidential nominee Millard Fillmore and vice presidential nominee Andrew Jackson Donelson. Fillmore, a former president, had been a Whig and Donelson was the nephew of Democratic President Andrew Jackson, so the ticket was designed to appeal to loyalists from both major parties, winning 23% of the popular vote and carrying one state, Maryland, with eight electoral votes. Fillmore did not win enough votes to block Democrat James Buchanan from the White House. During this time, Nathaniel Banks decided he was not as strongly for the anti-immigrant platform as the party wanted him to be, so he left the Know Nothing Party for the more anti-slavery Republican Party. He contributed to the decline of the Know Nothing Party by taking two-thirds of its members with him.

Many were appalled by the Know Nothings. Abraham Lincoln expressed his own disgust with the political party in a private letter to Joshua Speed, written 24 August 1855. Lincoln never publicly attacked the Know Nothings, whose votes he needed:

I am not a Know-Nothing—that is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except negroes." When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equals, except negroes and foreigners and Catholics." When it comes to that I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty—to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.[53]

Historian Allan Nevins, writing about the turmoil preceding the American Civil War, states that Millard Fillmore was never a Know Nothing nor a nativist. Fillmore was out of the country when the presidential nomination came and had not been consulted about running. Nevins further states:

[Fillmore] was not a member of the party; he had never attended an American [Know-Nothing] gathering. By no spoken or written word had he indicated a subscription to American [Party] tenets.[54]

After the Supreme Court's controversial Dred Scott v. Sandford ruling in 1857, most of the anti-slavery members of the American Party joined the Republican Party. The pro-slavery wing of the American Party remained strong on the local and state levels in a few southern states, but by the 1860 election they were no longer a serious national political movement. Most of their remaining members supported the Constitutional Union Party in 1860.[7]

Electoral history

Congressional elections

United States House of Representatives

Election year No. of
overall seats won +/– Presidency
1844
6 / 227
Increase 6 James K. Polk
1846
1 / 230
Decrease 5
1848
1 / 233
Steady Zachary Taylor
1850
0 / 233
Decrease 1 Millard Fillmore
1852
0 / 234
Steady Franklin Pierce
1854
52 / 234
Increase 52
1856
14 / 237
Decrease 38 James Buchanan
1858
6 / 238
Decrease 8
1860
0 / 239
Decrease 6 Abraham Lincoln

United States Senate

Election year No. of
overall seats won +/– Presidency
1844
0 / 58
Steady James K. Polk
1846
0 / 60
Steady
1848
0 / 62
Steady Zachary Taylor
1850
0 / 62
Steady Millard Fillmore
1852
0 / 62
Steady Franklin Pierce
1854
1 / 62
Increase 1
1856
5 / 66
Increase 4 James Buchanan
1858
2 / 66
Decrease 3
1860
0 / 68
Decrease 2 Abraham Lincoln

Presidential elections

Election Candidate Running mate Votes Vote % Electoral votes +/- Outcome of election
1852 Jacob Broom engraving.jpg
Jacob Broom NPG-S NPG 91 126 29 BCoates Coates-000002 (cropped).jpg
Reynell Coates 2,566 0.1
0 / 294
Steady Democratic victory
1856 Millard Fillmore by Brady Studio 1855-65-crop (3x4 cropp).jpg
Millard Fillmore Andrew J. Donelson portrait.jpg
Andrew Jackson Donelson 873,053 21.5
8 / 294
Increase8 Democratic victory

Legacy

The nativist spirit of the Know Nothing movement was revived in later political movements such as the American Protective Association of the 1890s and the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s.[55] In the late 19th century, Democrats called the Republicans "Know Nothings" in order to secure the votes of Germans as in the Bennett Law campaign in Wisconsin in 1890.[56][57] A similar culture war took place in Illinois in 1892, where Democrat John Peter Altgeld denounced the Republicans:

The spirit which enacted the Alien and Sedition laws, the spirit which actuated the "Know-nothing" party, the spirit which is forever carping about the foreign-born citizen and trying to abridge his privileges, is too deeply seated in the party. The aristocratic and know-nothing principle has been circulating in its system so long that it will require more than one somersault to shake the poison out of its bones.[58]

Some historians and journalists "have found parallels with the Birther and Tea Party movements, seeing the prejudices against Latino immigrants and hostility towards Islam as a similarity".[3] Historians Steve Fraser and Joshue B. Freeman lend their opinion on the Know Nothing and the Tea Party movements, arguing:

Tea Party populism should also be thought of as a kind of identity politics of the right. Almost entirely white, and disproportionately male and older, Tea Party advocates express a visceral anger at the cultural and, to some extent, political eclipse of an America in which people who looked and thought like them were dominant (an echo, in its own way, of the anguish of the Know-Nothings). A black President, female speaker of the house, and a gay head of the House Financial Services Committee are evidently almost too much to bear. Though the anti-immigration and Tea Party movements so far have remained largely distinct (even with growing ties), they share an emotional grammar: the fear of displacement.[3]

Know Nothing has become a provocative slur, suggesting that the opponent is both nativist and ignorant. George Wallace's 1968 presidential campaign was said by Time to be under the "neo-Know Nothing banner". Fareed Zakaria wrote that politicians who "encourage[d] Americans to fear foreigners" were becoming "modern incarnations of the Know-Nothings".[55] In 2006, an editorial in The Weekly Standard by neoconservative William Kristol accused populist Republicans of "turning the GOP into an anti-immigration, Know-Nothing party".[59] The lead editorial of the 20 May 2007 issue of The New York Times on a proposed immigration bill referred to "this generation's Know-Nothings".[60] An editorial written by Timothy Egan in The New York Times on 27 August 2010 and titled "Building a Nation of Know-Nothings" discussed the birther movement, which falsely claimed that Barack Obama was not a natural-born United States citizen, which is a requirement for the office of president of the United States.[61]

In the 2016 United States presidential election, a number of commentators and politicians compared candidate Donald Trump to the Know Nothings due to his anti-immigration policies.[62][63][64][65][66][67]

In popular culture

The American Party was represented in the 2002 film Gangs of New York, led by William "Bill the Butcher" Cutting (Daniel Day-Lewis), the fictionalized version of real-life Know Nothing leader William Poole. The Know Nothings also play a prominent role in the historical fiction novel Shaman by novelist Noah Gordon.

Notable Know Nothings

• Nathaniel P. Banks, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from Massachusetts and Union Army general
• Levi Boone, mayor of Chicago
• John Wilkes Booth, actor at Ford's Theatre who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln
• John Edward Bouligny, congressman from Louisiana
• Henry Winter Davis, congressman from Maryland
• Andrew Jackson Donelson, Washington D.C. newspaper editor, diplomat to Texas and Prussia, and Andrew Jackson's nephew
• Millard Fillmore, 13th president of the United States
• Thomas Holliday Hicks, governor of Maryland
• William W. Hoppin, governor of Rhode Island[38]
• Sam Houston, senator from Texas[68]
• J. Neely Johnson, governor of California
• Anthony Kennedy, senator from Maryland
• Lewis Charles Levin, politician and social activist
• Samuel Morse, politician, painter and inventor of morse code and the telegraph
• William Poole, politician and a founder and leader of the New York City criminal Nativist gang the Bowery Boys
• Thaddeus Stevens, congressman from Pennsylvania
• Stephen Palfrey Webb, mayor of San Francisco
• Henry Wilson, 18th vice president of the United States

See also

• 71st Infantry Regiment (New York)
• John J. Crittenden
• James Greene Hardy
• Samuel Hinks
• Know-Nothing Riot of 1856
• Philadelphia Nativist Riots
• Thomas Swann
• Third Party System

References

1. Kierdorf, Douglas (10 January 2016). "Getting to know the Know-Nothings - The Boston Globe". bostonglobe.com. The Boston Globe.
2. Taylor, Stephen (2000). "Progressive Nativism: The Know-Nothing Party in Massachusetts". Historical Journal of Massachusetts. 28 (2): 167–84.
3. "Library Exhibits :: Know Nothings". exhibits.library.villanova.edu. Villanova University.
4. Boissoneault, Lorraine. "How the 19th-Century Know Nothing Party Reshaped American Politics". Smithsonian Magazine. Smithsonian Institute. Retrieved 13 January 2020.
5. Farrell, Robert N. (2017). No Foreign Despots on Southern Soil: The American Party in Alabama and South Carolina, 1850-1857 (MA). University of Southern Mississippi. Retrieved 1 October 2020.
6. Kemp, Bill (17 January 2016). "'Know Nothings' Opposed Immigration in Lincoln's Day". The Pantagraph. Retrieved 11 April 2016.
7. Anbinder, Tyler (1992). Nativism and Slavery: The Northern Know Nothings and the Politics of the 1850s. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 270. ISBN 9780195072334. OCLC 925224120.
8. Francis D. Cogliano, No King, No Popery: Anti-Catholicism in Revolutionary New England (Greenwood 1995).
9. Ira M. Leonard, "The Rise and Fall of the American Republican Party in New York City, 1843–1845." New-York Historical Society Quarterly 50 (1966): 151–92.
10. Louis D. Scisco, Political Nativism in New York State (1901) p. 267.
11. Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Know Nothing Party" . Encyclopædia Britannica. 15(11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 877.
12. Levine, Bruce (2001). "Conservatism, Nativism, and Slavery: Thomas R. Whitney and the Origins of the Know-Nothing Party". The Journal of American History. 88 (2): 455–488. doi:10.2307/2675102. JSTOR 2675102.
13. Sean Wilentz. pp. 681–2, 693.
14. Ray A. Billington. pp. 337, 380–406.
15. Ray A. Billington. The Protestant Crusade, 1800–1860 (1938) p. 242.
16. John T. McGreevey. Catholicism and American Freedom: A History (2003) pp. 22–5, 34 (quotation).
17. James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 131.
18. Anbinder, Nativism and Slavery, pp. 75–102.
19. Tyler Anbinder. Nativism and Slavery, p. 95.
20. Michael C. LeMay (2012). Transforming America: Perspectives on U.S. Immigration. ABC-CLIO. p. 150. ISBN 978-0-313-39644-1.
21. Richard Lawrence Miller (2012). Lincoln and His World: Volume 4, The Path to the Presidency, 1854–1860. McFarland. pp. 63–4. ISBN 9780786488124.
22. Springfield, Mailing Address: 413 S. 8th Street; Us, IL 62701 Phone:492-4241 Contact. "Lincoln on the Know Nothing Party - Lincoln Home National Historic Site (U.S. National Park Service)". http://www.nps.gov. Retrieved 17 December 2019.
23. Allan Nevins, Ordeal of the Union: A House Dividing 1852–1857 (1947) 2:396–8.
24. John David Bladek, "'Virginia Is Middle Ground': The Know Nothing Party and the Virginia Gubernatorial Election of 1855". Virginia Magazine of History and Biography(1998): 35–70. JSTOR 4249690.
25. Carey, Anthony Gene (1995). "Too Southern to Be Americans: Proslavery Politics and the Failure of the Know-Nothing Party in Georgia, 1854–1856". Civil War History. 41 (1): 22–40. doi:10.1353/cwh.1995.0023. ISSN 1533-6271.
26. David Harry Bennett, The Party of Fear: From Nativist Movements to the New Right in American History (1988), p. 15.
27. William E. Gienapp. Salmon P. Chase, Nativism, and the Formation of the Republican Party in Ohio, pp. 22, 24. Ohio History, p. 93.
28. John R. Mulkern (1990). The Know-Nothing Party in Massachusetts: The Rise and Fall of a People's Movement. University Press of New England. pp. 74–89. ISBN 9781555530716.
29. Anbinder, Nativism and Slavery, pp. 34–43.
30. Gienapp, William E. (1987). Origins of the Republican Party 1852–1856. pp. 538–542.
31. Formisano, Ronald P. (1983). The Transformation of Political Culture: Massachusetts Parties, 1790s–1840s. p. 332.
32. Taylor, "Progressive Nativism: The Know-Nothing Party in Massachusetts" pp. 171–2.
33. Mulkern (1990). The Know-Nothing Party in Massachusetts: The Rise and Fall of a People's Movement. pp. 101–2. ISBN 9781555530716.
34. Tyler Anbinder, Nativism and Slavery (1992), p. 137
35. John R. Mulkern, "Scandal Behind the Convent Walls: The Know-Nothing Nunnery Committee of 1855." Historical Journal of Massachusetts 11 (1983): 22–34.
36. Oates, Mary J. (1988). "'Lowell': An Account of Convent Life in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1852–1890". New England Quarterly. 61 (1): 101–18. doi:10.2307/365222. JSTOR 365222. reveals the actual behavior of the Catholic nuns.
37. Robert Howard Lord, et al., History of the Archdiocese of Boston in the Various Stages of Development, 1604 to 1943 (1944) pp. 686–99 for more details.
38. McLoughlin, William G. (1986). Rhode Island: A History. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. pp. 141–142. ISBN 0-393-30271-7.
39. Charles E. Deusner. "The Know Nothing Riots in Louisville", Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 61 (1963), pp. 122–47.
40. Maine Historical Society, Maine: A History, (1919) Volume 1, lsworth&f=false pp. 304–5 online.
41. Broussard, James H. (1966). "Some Determinants of Know-Nothing Electoral Strength in the South, 1856". Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association. 7 (1): 5–20. JSTOR 4230880.
42. David T. Gleeson, The Irish in the South, 1815–1877 (2001) p. 78.
43. Frederick, Jeff (2002). "Unintended Consequences: The Rise and Fall of the Know-Nothing Party in Alabama". Alabama Review. 55 (1): 3–33. Retrieved 23 January2017.[dead link]
44. John David Bladek, "'Virginia Is Middle Ground': The Know Nothing Party and the Virginia Gubernatorial Election of 1855." Virginia Magazine of History and Biography(1998), pp. 35-70 online p. 45.
45. Philip Morrison Rice, "The Know-Nothing Party in Virginia, 1854-1856." Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (1947) 55#1: 61-75, at p. 66 online.
46. Philip Morrison Rice, "The Know-Nothing Party in Virginia, 1854-1856 (Concluded)," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 55#2 (1947), pp. 159-167 online.
47. Anbinder, Tyler (1992). Nativism and Slavery: The Northern Know Nothings and the Politics of the 1850s. New York, New York: Oxford University Press. p. 167. ISBN 978-0-19-507233-4.
48. Holt, Michael F. (1999). The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War. New York, New York: Oxford University Press. p. 856. ISBN 978-0-19-516104-5.
49. Hall, Ryan M. (2015). A Glorious Assemblage: The Rise of the Know-Nothing Party in Louisiana (MA). Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University. Retrieved 4 August 2020.
50. Tarver, Jerry L. (1964). A Rhetorical Analysis of Selected Ante-Bellum Speeches by Randell Hunt (PhD). Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University. Retrieved 20 October 2020.
51. "American Convention". The South-Western. Shreveport, Louisiana. 5 September 1855. p. 1. Retrieved 20 October 2020 – via Newspapers.com. That while we resist all encroachments of spiritual power upon our political rights, we disclaim the calumnious charge of our own opponents that we require a religious test to qualify native born citizens to hold office or enjoy the full rights of citizenship.
52. Bouligny, John Edward (5 February 1861). Feb. 5, 1861: Secession of Louisiana(PDF) (Speech). Speech in the House of Representatives. Washington, D.C. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2 February 2017. Retrieved 23 January 2017.
53. Browne, Francis Fisher (1914). The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln: A Narrative and Descriptive Biography with Pen-pictures and Personal Recollections by Those Who Knew Him. Browne & Howell. p. 153. Retrieved 28 August 2015.
54. Allan Nevins, Ordeal of the Union: A House Dividing 1852–1857 (1947), 2:467
55. William Safire. Safire's Political Dictionary (2008) pp. 375–76
56. Richard J. Jensen. The Winning of the Midwest: Social and Political Conflict, 1888–96 (1971) pp. 108, 147, 160.
57. Louise Phelps Kellogg. "The Bennett Law in Wisconsin", Wisconsin Magazine of History, Volume 2, #1 (September 1918), p. 13.
58. Jensen. The Winning of the Midwest, p. 220.
59. Craig Shirley. "How the GOP Lost Its Way", The Washington Post, 22 April 2006, p. A21.
60. "The Immigration Deal", The New York Times, 20 May 2007.
61. Egan, Timothy. "Building a Nation of Know-Nothings", The New York Times, 27 August 2010.
62. John Cassidy, "Donald Trump Isn't a Fascist; He's a Media-Savvy Know-Nothing", The New Yorker, 28 December 2015, 16 January 2016.
63. James Nevius "Donald Trump is an immigration Know-Nothing, and dangerous for Republicans", The Guardian, 15 August 2015, 16 January 2016.
64. Helen Raleigh "Is Trump Turning the GOP Into the 'Know Nothing' Party?", Townhall, 19 September 2015, Retrieved on 16 January 2016.
65. Laura Reston "Donald Trump Isn't The First Know Nothing to Capture American Hearts", The New Republic, 30 July 2015, Retrieved on 16 January 2016.
66. Scott Eric Kaufman "Former NY Governor George Pataki: Donald Trump is the 'Know Nothing' candidate of the 21st Century", Salon, 16 December 2015, Retrieved on 16 January 2016.
67. Kiedrowski, Jay (9 September 2016). "Trump: A throwback to the Know-Nothing Party of the 1850s". MinnPost. Retrieved 15 November 2017.
68. Cantrell, Gregg (January 1993). "Sam Houston and the Know-Nothings: A Reappraisal". The Southwestern Historical Quarterly. 96 (3): 327–343. JSTOR 30237138.

Bibliography

• 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, the standard scholarly study
• Anbinder, Tyler. "Nativism and prejudice against immigrants," in A companion to American immigration, ed. by Reed Ueda (2006) pp. 177–201 online excerpt
• Baker, Jean H. (1977), Ambivalent Americans: The Know-Nothing Party in Maryland, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins.
• Baum, Dale. "Know-Nothingism and the Republican Majority in Massachusetts: The Political Realignment of the 1850s." Journal of American History 64 (1977–78): 959–86. in JSTOR
• Baum, Dale. The Civil War Party System: The Case of Massachusetts, 1848–1876(1984) online
• Bennett, David Harry. The Party of Fear: From Nativist Movements to the New Right in American History (1988)
• Billington, Ray A. The Protestant Crusade, 1800–1860: A Study of the Origins of American Nativism (1938), standard scholarly survey; online
• Bladek, John David. "'Virginia Is Middle Ground': the Know Nothing Party and the Virginia Gubernatorial Election of 1855." Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 1998 106(1): 35–70. in JSTOR
• Cheathem, Mark R. "'I Shall Persevere in the Cause of Truth': Andrew Jackson Donelson and the Election of 1856". Tennessee Historical Quarterly 2003 62(3): 218–237. ISSN 0040-3261 Donelson was Andrew Jackson's nephew and K–N nominee for Vice President
• Dash, Mark. "New Light on the Dark Lantern: the Initiation Rites and Ceremonies of a Know-Nothing Lodge in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania" Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 2003 127(1): 89–100. ISSN 0031-4587
• Gienapp, William E. "Nativism and the Creation of a Republican Majority in the North before the Civil War," Journal of American History, Vol. 72, No. 3 (Dec., 1985), pp. 529–559 in JSTOR
• Gienapp, William E. The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852–1856 (1978), detailed statistical study, state-by-state
• Gillespie, J. David. Challengers To Duopoly : Why Third Parties Matter in American Two-Party Politics. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 2012. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 4 Dec. 2014.
• Gleeson, David T. The Irish in the South, 1815–1877 Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001 online
• Holt, Michael F. The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party (1999) online
• Holt, Michael F. Political Parties and American Political Development: From the Age of Jackson to the Age of Lincoln (1992)
• Holt, Michael F. "The Antimasonic and Know Nothing Parties", in Arthur Schlesinger Jr., ed., History of United States Political Parties (1973), I, 575–620.
• Hurt, Payton. "The Rise and Fall of the 'Know Nothings' in California," California Historical Society Quarterly 9 (March and June 1930).
• Levine, Bruce. "Conservatism, Nativism, and Slavery: Thomas R. Whitney and the Origins of the Know-nothing Party" Journal of American History 2001 88(2): 455–488. in JSTOR
• McGreevey, John T. Catholicism and American Freedom: A History (W. W. Norton, 2003)
• Maizlish, Stephen E. "The Meaning of Nativism and the Crisis of the Union: The Know-Nothing Movement in the Antebellum North." in William Gienapp, ed. Essays on American Antebellum Politics, 1840–1860 (1982) pp. 166–98 online edition
• Melton, Tracy Matthew. Hanging Henry Gambrill: The Violent Career of Baltimore's Plug Uglies, 1854–1860. Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society (2005).
• Mulkern, John R. The Know-Nothing Party in Massachusetts: The Rise and Fall of a People's Movement. Boston: Northeastern UP, 1990. excerpt
• "Nathaniel P. Banks." National Archives and Records Administration. Ed. National Archives. National Archives and Records Administration, n.d. Web. 17 Nov. 2014.
o Nevins, Allan. Ordeal of the Union: A House Dividing, 1852–1857 (1947), overall political survey of era
• Overdyke, W. Darrell. The Know-Nothing Party in the South (1950) online
• Taylor, Steven. "Progressive Nativism: The Know-Nothing Party in Massachusetts" Historical Journal of Massachusetts (2000) 28#2 online
• Voss-Hubbard, Mark. Beyond Party: Cultures of Antipartisanship in Northern Politics before the Civil War (2002)
• Parmet, Robert D. "Connecticut's Know-Nothings: A Profile," Connecticut Historical Society Bulletin (1966), 31 #3, pp. 84–90
• Rice, Philip Morrison. "The Know-Nothing Party in Virginia, 1854–1856." Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (1947): 61–75. in JSTOR
• Scisco, Louis Dow. Political Nativism in New York State (1901) full text online, pp. 84–202
• Wilentz, Sean. The Rise of American Democracy. (2005); ISBN 0-393-05820-4
• ""The First General Order Issued by the Father of His Country after the Declaration of Independence Indicates the Spirit in Which Our Institutions Were Founded and Should Ever Be Defended."" Nathaniel Prentiss (Prentice) Banks. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Nov. 2014.

Primary sources

• Anspach, Frederick Rinehart. The Sons of the Sires: A History of the Rise, Progress, and Destiny of the American Party. Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo & Co., 1855. Work by K–N activist.
• Busey, Samuel Clagett (1856). Immigration: Its Evils and Consequences.
• Carroll, Anna Ella (1856). The Great American Battle: Or, The Contest Between Christianity and Political Romanism.
• Fillmore, Millard; Frank H. Severance (ed.)(1907). Millard Fillmore Papers
• One of Them. The Wide-Awake Gift: A Know Nothing Token for 1855. New York: J.C. Derby, 1855.
o Bond, Thomas E. "The 'Know Nothings'", from The Wide-Awake Gift: A Know Nothing Token for 1855. New York: J. C. Derby, 1855; pp. 54–63.

External links

• Nativism in the 1856 Presidential Election
• Nativism By Michael F. Holt, PhD
• Lager Beer Riot, Chicago 1855
• "Knownothingism". Catholic Encyclopedia.
• American Party from the Handbook of Texas Online
• Millard Fillmore Was A Know-Nothing
• Texts on Wikisource:
o Know Nothing Platform 1856
o "Know-Nothings". New International Encyclopedia. 1905.

[admin]

Knights of the Golden Circle
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 2/16/21


Knights of the Golden Circle
An alleged secret history of the Knights of the Golden Circle published in 1863
Abbreviation: KGC
Formation: July 4, 1854
Dissolved: 1863
Type: Paramilitary
Purpose: Southern nationalism; Annexation of the Golden circle; Secession
Headquarters: Cincinnati, Ohio, United States
Official language: English
Leader: George W. L. Bickley

The Knights of the Golden Circle (KGC) was a secret society founded in 1854, whose existence was in fact no secret. The original objective of the KGC was to create a new country, where slavery would be legal, out of the Southern United States and a "golden circle" of territories in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean.[1] It would have been centered in Havana, and the circle would have been 2,400 miles (3,900 km) in diameter.[2] It grew out of previous unsuccessful proposals to annex Cuba (Ostend Manifesto), parts of Central America (Filibuster War), and all of Mexico (All of Mexico Movement). Except for Cuba, where the issue was complicated by the desire of many in colony Cuba for independence from Spain, people living in these countries were not consulted; Mexico and Central America had no interest in being part of the United States, and said so.

As abolitionism in the United States increased after the Dred Scott Decision of 1857, the members proposed a separate confederation of slave states, with U.S. states south of the Mason-Dixon line to secede and to align with other slave states to be formed from the "golden circle". In either case, the goal was to increase the power of the Southern slave-holding upper class to such a degree that it could never be dislodged.[3]

During the American Civil War, some Southern sympathizers in the Union or Northern states, such as Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa, were accused of belonging to the Knights of the Golden Circle, and in some cases, such as that of Lambdin P. Milligan, they were imprisoned for their activities.

Early history

George W. L. Bickley, a doctor, editor, and adventurer who lived in Cincinnati, founded the association.[4] Records of the KGC convention held in 1860 state that the organization "originated at Lexington, Kentucky, on the fourth day of July 1854, by five gentlemen who came together on a call made by Gen. George Bickley".[5] He organized the first castle, or local branch, in Cincinnati in 1854. Hounded by creditors, he left Cincinnati in the late 1850s and traveled through the East and South, promoting an expedition to Mexico. The group's original goal was to provide a force to colonize the northern part of Mexico and the West Indies. This would extend pro-slavery interests. In August 1861 the New York Times described the order as a successor to the Order of the Lone Star, which had been organized for the purpose of conquering Cuba and Nicaragua, succeeding in the latter cause in 1856 under William Walker before being driven out by a coalition of neighboring states. At that time the order's prime objective was said to be to raise an army of 16,000 men to conquer and "Southernize" Mexico, which meant making slavery again legal in Mexico (it was not), while supporting the Knights of the Columbian Star for public office.[6]

Plans to seize Lincoln and inaugurate Breckinridge as president

Several members of President James Buchanan's administration were members of the order,[7] as well as Virginia's secessionist Senator James M. Mason.[1]:102–104 The Secretaries of War and Treasury, John Floyd and Howell Cobb respectively, were members of the circle, in addition to Vice President John Breckenridge. Floyd received instructions from the Order to "seize Navy-yards, Forts, etc. while KGC members were still Cabinet officers and Senators".[7] The plan was to prevent Lincoln from reaching Washington by capturing him in Baltimore. Then they would occupy the District of Columbia, and install Breckinridge as president instead of Lincoln.[1] Floyd used his position as Secretary of War to move munitions and men to the South towards the end of Buchanan's presidency. His plot was discovered, and led to greater distrust of secret societies and Copperheads in general. This distrust was the result of a confirmed plot to overthrow the federal government, rather than general discontent.

Civil War

Southwest

In 1859, future Confederate States Army brigadier general Elkanah Greer established KGC castles in East Texas and Louisiana.[8] Although a Unionist, United States Senator Sam Houston introduced a resolution in the U.S. Senate in 1858 for the "United States to declare and maintain an efficient protectorate over the States of Mexico, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, and San Salvador." This measure, which supported the goal of the KGC, failed to be adopted.[8] In the spring of 1860, Elkanah Greer had become general and grand commander of 4,000 Military Knights in the KGC's Texas division of 21 castles. The Texas KGC supported President of the United States James Buchanan's policy of, and draft treaty for, protecting routes for U.S commerce across Mexico, which also failed to be approved by the U.S. Senate.[9]

With the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, the Texas KGC changed its emphasis from a plan to expand U.S. territory into Mexico in order to focus its efforts on providing support for the Southern States' secession from the Union.[10] On February 15, 1861, Ben McCulloch, United States Marshal and former Texas Ranger, began marching toward the Federal arsenal at San Antonio, Texas, with a cavalry force of about 550 men, about 150 of whom were Knights of the Golden Circle (KGC) from six castles.[11] As volunteers continued to join McCulloch the following day, United States Army Brevet Maj. Gen. David E. Twiggs decided to surrender the arsenal peacefully to the secessionists. Twiggs was appointed a major general in the Confederate States Army on May 22, 1861.[12]

KGC members also figured prominently among those who, in 1861, joined Lt. Col. John Robert Baylor in his temporarily successful takeover of southern New Mexico Territory.[13] In May 1861, members of the KGC and the Confederate Rangers attacked a building which housed a pro-Union newspaper, the Alamo Express, owned by J. P. Newcomb, and burned it down.[14] Other KGC members followed Brig. Gen. Henry Hopkins Sibley on the 1862 New Mexico Campaign, which sought to bring the New Mexico Territory into the Confederate fold. Both Baylor and Trevanion Teel, Sibley's captain of artillery, had been among the KGC members who rode with Ben McCulloch.

North

In early 1862, Radical Republicans in the Senate, aided by Secretary of State William H. Seward, suggested that former president Franklin Pierce, who was greatly critical of the Lincoln administration's war policies, was an active member of the Knights of the Golden Circle. In an angry letter to Seward, Pierce denied that he knew anything about the KGC, and demanded that his letter be made public. California Senator Milton Latham subsequently did so when he entered the entire Pierce–Seward correspondence into the Congressional Globe.

Appealing to the Confederacy's friends in both the North and the border states, the Order spread to Kentucky as well as the southern parts of such Union states as Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri. It became strongest among Copperheads, who were Democrats who wanted to end the Civil War via settlement with the South. Some supported slavery and others were worried about the power of the federal government. In the summer of 1863, Congress authorized a military draft, which the administration soon put into operation. Loyalist Leaders of the Democratic Party opposed to Abraham Lincoln's administration denounced the draft and other wartime measures, such as the arrest of seditious persons and the president's temporary suspension of the writ of habeas corpus.

During the 1863 Gettysburg Campaign, scam artists in south-central Pennsylvania sold Pennsylvania Dutch farmers $1 paper tickets purported to be from the Knights of the Golden Circle. Along with a series of secret hand gestures, these tickets were supposed to protect the horses and other possessions of ticket holders from seizure by invading Confederate soldiers.[15] When Confederate Maj. Gen. Jubal Early's infantry division passed through York County, Pennsylvania, they took what they needed anyway. They often paid with Confederate States dollars or with drafts on the Confederate government. The Confederate cavalry commander J.E.B. Stuart also reported the alleged KGC tickets when documenting the campaign.

That same year, Asbury Harpending and California members of the Knights of the Golden Circle in San Francisco outfitted the schooner J. M. Chapman as a Confederate privateer in San Francisco Bay, with the object of raiding commerce on the Pacific Coast and capturing gold shipments to the East Coast. Their attempt was detected and they were seized on the night of their intended departure.[16][17][18]

In late 1863, the KGC reorganized as the Order of American Knights. In 1864, it became the Order of the Sons of Liberty, with the Ohio politician Clement L. Vallandigham, most prominent of the Copperheads, as its supreme commander. In most areas only a minority of its membership was radical enough to discourage enlistments, resist the draft, and shield deserters. The KGC held numerous peace meetings. A few agitators, some of them encouraged by Southern money, talked of a revolt in the Old Northwest, with the goal of ending the war.[19]

Survival conspiracy theory

See also: Neo-Confederate

The Los Angeles Times noted that one theory, among many, on the origin of the Saddle Ridge Hoard of gold coins is that it was cached by the KGC, which "some believe buried millions in ill-gotten gold across a dozen states to finance a second Civil War".[20]

Alleged members

• Confederados (some)
• Buckner Stith Morris[21]
• George W. L. Bickley
• Jefferson Davis
• John Surratt[1]:104
• Nathan Bedford Forrest
• Lambdin P. Milligan
• John Wilkes Booth[22]
• Jesse James[23]
• Samuel Mudd
• Thomas Lubbock

In popular culture

• The Night of the Iron Tyrants (1990–1991), written by the novelist Mark Ellis and drawn by Darryl Banks, is a four-part comic book miniseries based on The Wild Wild West television series. It features the Knights of the Golden Circle in an assassination plot against President Ulysses S. Grant and Dom Pedro II of Brazil during the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition of 1876.
• The KGC are the villains of the graphic novel Batman: Detective No. 27 (2003) by Michael Uslan and Peter Snejbjerg.
• The KGC are portrayed as conspirators in the Lincoln assassination in the Disney movie National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007).
• In the William Martin novel The Lincoln Letter (2012), the KGC are a group of conspirators in Washington, DC, during the Civil War.
• The KGC and their potential involvement in President Lincoln's assassination are discussed in an episode of the History Channel series America Unearthed.[24]
• The KGC are the antagonists in a story which is featured in the Atomic Robo web comic.[25]
• The KGC are referenced during a discussion concerning a potential assassination plot in the PBS television series Mercy Street.
• The KGC are the subject of a historical fiction novel by Steve Berry which is entitled The Lost Order, released April 4, 2017. [26]

See also

• Camp Douglas Conspiracy
• Confederados
• Confederate colonies
• Filibuster (military)
• Judah P. Benjamin
• Slave Power

References

Notes

1. Gawalt, Gerard W (2015). Clashing dynasties : Charles Francis Adams and James Murray Mason in the fiery cauldron of civil war. North Charleston, South Carolina: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. ISBN 151934791X.
2. Campbell, Randolph B., "Knights of the Golden Circle", Handbook of Texas, Texas State Historical Association, retrieved January 11, 2021
3. Woodward, Colin American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America New York:2011 Penguin Page 207
4. Bridges, C. A. (January 1941). "The Knights of the Golden Circle: A Filibustering Fantasy". Southwestern Historical Quarterly. 44 (3): 287–302. JSTOR 30235905.
5. Campbell, Randolph B. "Knights of the golden circle". Handbook of Texas Online. Retrieved December 13, 2011.
6. "The Knights of the Golden Circle". New York Times. 1861-08-30. Retrieved October 6, 2019.
7. Keehn, David (February 2014). "Avowed enemies of the country". Civil War Times. 53: 60–65 – via ProQuest.
8. Hudson, Linda S. "The Knights of the Golden Circle in Texas, 1858–1861: An Analysis of the First (Military) Degree Knights", p. 53, in Howell, Kenneth W., ed. The Seventh Star of the Confederacy: Texas during the Civil War. University of North Texas Press: Denton, Texas, 2009. ISBN 978-1-57441-259-8. – via Questia (subscription required)
9. Hudson, 2009, p. 54.
10. Hudson, 2009, pp. 55-56.
11. Keehn, David C. Knights of the Golden Circle: Secret Empire, Southern Secession, Civil War. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2013. ISBN 978-0-8071-5004-7.
12. Warner, Ezra J. (1959). Generals in Gray: Lives of the Confederate Commanders. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press. p. 312. ISBN 978-0-8071-0823-9.
13. Thompson, Jerry D. Colonel John Robert Baylor: Texas Indian Fighter and Confederate Soldier. Hillsboro, Tex: Hill Junior College Press, 1971. ISBN 978-0-912172-14-9.
14. Speck, Ernest B. "NEWCOMB, JAMES PEARSON | The Handbook of Texas Online&#124". Tshaonline.org; Texas State Historical Association (TSHA). Retrieved 2016-10-15.
15. Cassandra Morris Small letters, York County (PA) Heritage Trust files
16. "California Naval History: The Pacific Squadron of 1861-1866". Militarymuseum.org. 2016-02-08. Retrieved 2016-10-15.
17. "The Pacific Squadron of 1861–1866", in Aurora Hunt, The Army of the Pacific; Its Operations in California, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Plains Region, Mexico, etc. 1860–1866
18. Boessenecker, John (1993). Badge and Buckshot: Lawlessness in Old California. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. pp. 135–136. ISBN 9780806125107. Retrieved 15 October 2016.
19. William B. Hesseline, Lincoln and the War Governors, Alfred A. Knopf, 1948. OCLC 445066. p. 312.
20. Schaefer, Samantha (March 4, 2014). "Gold coins found by California couple unlikely stolen from U.S. Mint". Los Angeles Times. Tribune Company. Retrieved May 4, 2014.
21. "The great north-western conspiracy in all its startling details" (PDF). Retrieved 2016-10-15.
22. Bob Brewer Shadow of the Sentinel, p. 67, Simon & Schuster, 2003 ISBN 978-0-7432-1968-6
23. Michael Benson Inside Secret Societies, p. 86, Kensington Publishing Corp., 2005 ISBN 978-0-8065-2664-5
24. "Watch Lincoln's Secret Assassins Full Episode - America Unearthed". History. Retrieved 2016-10-15.
25. "v9ch5 Page 28". Atomic Robo. Retrieved 2016-10-15.
26. "Synopsis - Steve Berry".
Bibliography
• Crenshaw, Ollinger (October 1941). "The Knights of the Golden Circle: The Career of George Bickley". American Historical Review. 47 (1): 23–50. doi:10.2307/1838769. JSTOR 1838769.
• Curry, Richard O. (1964). A House Divided. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: University of Pittsburgh Press.
• Dunn, Roy S. (April 1967). "The KGC in Texas, 1860–1861". Southwestern Historical Quarterly. 70: 543–573.
• Frazier, Donald S.; Shaw Frazier (1995). Blood and Treasure: Confederate Empire in the Southwest. College Station, Texas: Texas A&M University Press. ISBN 0-89096-639-7.
• Getler, Warren; Bob Brewer (2003). Shadow of the Sentinel: One Man's Quest to find the Hidden Treasure of the Confederacy. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-7432-1968-6. (currently published under the title of Rebel Gold ISBN 978-0-7432-1969-3)
• Hicks, Jimmie (July 1961). "Some Letters Concerning the Knights of the Golden Circle in Texas, 1860–1861". Southwestern Historical Quarterly. 65: 80–86.
• Keehn, David (2013). Knights of the Golden Circle: Secret Empire, Southern Secession, Civil War. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.
• Knights of the Golden Circle (2016). Rules, Regulations and Principles of the K. G. C. Carrollton, Texas: (C. Lyons, Ed. & Illustrator) printed by CreateSpace. ISBN 978-1535176392.original work published 1859.
• May, Robert E. (1973). The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire, 1854–1861. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press.
• Milton, George F. (1942). Abraham Lincoln and the Fifth Column. New York City: Vanguard Press. OCLC 816967.
• Mingus, Scott L. (2009). Flames Beyond Gettysburg: The Gordon Expedition. Columbus, Ohio: Ironclad Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9673770-8-7.
• Schrader, Del (1975). Jesse James Was One of His Names. Arcadia, California: Santa Anita Press.

External links

• Sons of Liberty (American Civil War)

****************************

Golden Circle (proposed country)
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 2/16/21


Map of the Golden Circle with its possible subdivisions. The rest of the United States is in light/pale-green because the Knights of the Golden Circle originally planned to have the US take over these areas.

The Golden Circle (Spanish: Círculo Dorado) was an unrealized 1850s proposal by the Knights of the Golden Circle to expand the number of slave states. It envisioned the annexation of several areas — Mexico (which was to be divided into 25 new slave states), Central America, northern parts of South America, Cuba, and the rest of the Caribbean — into the United States, in order to vastly increase the number of slave states and thus the power of the slave-holding Southern upper classes. After the Dred Scott Decision (1857) increased anti-slavery agitation, the Knights of the Golden Circle advocated that the Southern United States should secede, forming their own confederation, and then invade and annex the area of the golden circle to vastly expand the power of the South.[1]

Background

European colonialism and dependence on slavery had declined more rapidly in some countries than others. The Spanish possessions of Cuba and Puerto Rico and the Empire of Brazil continued to depend on slavery, as did the Southern United States. In the years prior to the American Civil War, the rise of support for abolition of slavery was one of several divisive issues in the United States. The slave population there had continued to grow due to natural increase even after the ban on international trade. It was concentrated in the Deep South, on large plantations devoted to the commodity crops of cotton and sugar cane, but it was the basis of agricultural and other labor throughout the southern states.

Development

Proponents argued that their proposed Golden Circle would bring together jurisdictions that depended on slavery. In 1854 George W. L. Bickley, a Virginia-born doctor, editor, and adventurer living in Cincinnati, Ohio, formed the Knights of the Golden Circle, a U.S. organization which aimed to promote and help create a Pan-American union of states. Membership increased slowly until 1859 and reached its height in 1860. The membership, scattered from New York to California and into Latin America, was never large. Some Knights of the Golden Circle active in northern states, such as Illinois, were accused of anti-Union activities after the American Civil War began (1861).[2] Robert Barnwell Rhett, called by some the "father of secession", said a few days after Lincoln's election:

"We will expand, as our growth and civilization shall demand – over Mexico – over the isles of the sea – over the far-off Southern tropics – until we shall establish a great Confederation of Republics – the greatest, freest and most useful the world has ever seen."[3]

Description

The Golden Circle was to be centered in Havana and was 2,400 miles (3,900 km) in diameter. It included northern South America, most of Mexico, all of Central America, Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic, most other Caribbean islands, and the American South. In the United States, the circle's northern border roughly coincided with the Mason-Dixon line, and within it were included such cities as Washington D.C., St. Louis, Mexico City, and Panama City.

Representation in media

• The alternate history novel Bring the Jubilee and the similarly themed movie C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America explore the results of a Southern victory in the Civil War. Both works posit the Golden Circle as a plan enacted after the war.[4] Both also have the Confederacy take over all of South America rather than the northern portion of the continent. However, in the former, the Confederacy annexes both Hawaii and Alaska, and in the latter the Confederacy also annexes all of the continental United States.
• In the Southern Victory Series, the Confederacy's post-war territorial expansion into Latin America amounts only to the purchase of Cuba from Spain and the purchase of Sonora and Chihuahua from the Mexican Empire for the purposes of constructing a transcontinental railway and establishing a Confederate naval presence in the Pacific. Following the Confederacy's defeat in the Second Great War, Cuba, Sonora and Chihuahua along with the rest of the CSA are annexed to the United States.

See also

• Adams-Onís Treaty
• All of Mexico Movement
• American imperialism
• Antebellum South
• Confederate colonies
• Linconia
• Manifest Destiny
• Republic of Sonora
• Republic of Yucatán
• Second Mexican Empire
• Slave Power
• Slavery in the United States
• Walker affair

References

1. Woodward, Colin American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America New York:2011 Penguin Page 207
2. Simon, John Y. (2006-04-07). "Judge Andrew D. Duff of Egypt". Springhouse Magazine. Retrieved 2008-07-03.
3. Adam Goodheart (2010-12-16). "The Happiest Man in the South".
4. C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America, Official Website, archived link

Further reading

• May, Robert E. (1973). The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire, 1854-1861. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 0-8071-0051-X.
• An Authentic Exposition of the “K.G.C.” “Knights of the Golden Circle,” or, A History of Secession from 1834 to 1861, by A Member of the Order (Indianapolis, Indiana: C. O. Perrine, Publisher, 1861).
• Donald S. Frazier, Blood & Treasure: Confederate Empire in the Southwest (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1996).
• Warren Getler and Bob Brewer, Rebel Gold: One Man’s Quest to Crack the Code Behind the Secret Treasure of the Confederacy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004).
• Dion Haco, ed., The Private Journal and Diary of John H. Surratt, The Conspirator (New York: Frederic A. Brady, Publisher, 1866).
• Joseph Holt, Report of the Judge Advocate General on “The Order of American Knights,” alias "The Sons of Liberty." A Western Conspiracy in aid of the Southern Rebellion (Washington, D.C.: Union Congressional Committee, 1864).
• James D. Horan, Confederate Agent: A Discovery in History (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1954).
• Jesse Lee James, Jesse James and the Lost Cause (New York: Pageant Press, 1961).
• K.G.C., Records of the KGC Convention, 1860, Raleigh, N.C.[permanent dead link], Gun Show on the Net Website