Nativism and the Creation of a Republican Majority in the North before the Civil War

Gienapp, William E.

doi:10.2307/1904303

Cited by 14 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…By contrast, William Giennap (1985) and Joel Silbey (1982) have challenged this view, drawing attention to ethnic and religious antagonisms as independent variables. Silbey (1982, 201-202), for example, writes that Far from being … directly related to slavery and the sectional crisis, mass political conflicts in the 1840s and 1850s were primarily rooted in a complex interaction of social and political perceptions and religious, national, and racial prejudices and divisions, all brought together under the heading of ethnocultural conflict.…”

Section: Why the Know Nothing Party Disintegratedmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…William Brock (1979) and Tyler Anbinder (1992) emphasize antislavery sentiment as the decisive issue leading to the reshaping of the political party system in the 1850s. By contrast, William Giennap (1985) and Joel Silbey (1982) have challenged this view, drawing attention to ethnic and religious antagonisms as independent variables. Silbey (1982, 201–202), for example, writes thatFar from being … directly related to slavery and the sectional crisis, mass political conflicts in the 1840s and 1850s were primarily rooted in a complex interaction of social and political perceptions and religious, national, and racial prejudices and divisions, all brought together under the heading of ethnocultural conflict.Along the same lines, Michael Holt has argued that slavery alone cannot account for the reshuffling of the political deck in the 1850s (Holt 1973, 309), and, by extension, internal divisions over slavery — as important as they were in fracturing the party — are not the whole story.…”

Section: Why the Know Nothing Party Disintegratedmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Know Nothing Party: Three Theories about its Rise and Demise

Ramet

Hassenstab

2013

Politics and Religion

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The 19th century was a time of rapid population growth in the United States, and much of it was due to immigration from Europe. In the 1840s and 1850s, the largest proportion of immigrants came from Ireland and Germany, and most were Catholic. The Germans spread across small communities as far west as Wisconsin and Texas, but the Irish concentrated in the larger cities on the eastern seaboard, especially Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. Local third-and fourth-generation Protestant immigrants from England resented the new arrivals and organized "Nativist" associations. Among these was the anti-Catholic American Party, better known as the Know Nothing Party, which enjoyed spectacular success in Massachusetts and other states during 1854-1855. But, by 1862, the party was dead. This article examines how moral panic theory, the theory of persistent cultural patterns and cycles, and revitalization theory may offer insights into the Know Nothing Party. Each of these theories explains both the emergence of the party and its rapid demise, and suggest that each can make a contribution to understanding anti-Catholicism in nineteenthcentury America, and the Know Nothing Party in particular.

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Section: Why the Know Nothing Party Disintegratedmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Why the Know Nothing Party Disintegratedmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Know Nothing Party: Three Theories about its Rise and Demise

Ramet

Hassenstab

2013

Politics and Religion

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“…The epithet 'know-nothing' was originally applied to the nativist secret societies among the forerunners of the Republican Party in the 1840s: members were instructed to respond to questions about those organizations with the answer that they knew nothing. 13 But the phrase rapidly adopted another, intellectually disreputable, meaning, and the Republicans have continued for a century and half to place intellectual disrepute, and its associated anti-foreign, anti-elitist, antiliberal, and anti-eastern establishment resentments at the center of their appeals to Midwestern, Southern, working class and rural voters. Attempts to construct a 'liberal Republicanism', a combination of Lincoln's egalitarianism with intellectual sophistication, failed in Horace Greeley's disastrous campaign of 1872, and such people were the direct object of Theodore Roosevelt's favorite derogatory epithet, 'mugwump', which meant an impractical and over-privileged eastern aristocrat.…”

Section: 'The Stupid Party': a Thought Reflex In Modern Politicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘The stupid party’: Intellectual repute as a category of ideological analysis

Proudman¹

2005

Journal of Political Ideologies

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This article contends that the notion that some ideologies, usually on the left, are inherently more sophisticated than others has run through the politics of the Anglo-Saxon world over the past two centuries. The famous insult 'the stupid party', almost without exception applied to conservatives, points to the opposing archetypes of the stupid backwoods conservative and the sophisticated metropolitan progressive. In allusion to Veblen's concept of repute, the persistent attribution of intelligence and sophistication to some ideologies, and their denial to others, is named 'intellectual repute'. The article concludes by speculating that notions of intellectual respectability point to the influence of classes which base their self-image and their claims to class power on claims to superior intelligence: repute is, following Veblen, an artefact of class. The phenomenon of intellectual repute therefore speaks of the influence and class character of the intelligentsia.The notion that some political ideologies are more naturally than others the home of intelligent, free-thinking, broad-minded, and culturally sophisticated people runs through our politics. This article argues that the feeling, and sometimes the articulate thought, that conservatives are 'the stupid party' is deeply imbricated in modern politics, as is the obverse idea that the political left is the natural home of intelligence, and it contends that these notions go back to the beginning of the period in which the defining oppositions between conservative and progressive, or right and left, became not merely intelligible but unavoidable and even necessary. The archetype, a term I shall use without Jungian intent, of the stupid conservative, like the opposite figure of the progressive intellectual, permeates our politics. The archetype of 'the stupid party'-this convenient and clichéd epithet, a familiar and well-worn piece of mental furniture, a conventional image, a habitual attribution-is often alluded to, though seldom analyzed. It is the departure point for the speculations that follow.Students of ideologies should have names for the attributes they study, however intangible and at times indistinct those attributes and associated archetypes, opinions,

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Immigrant America and the Civil War

Gleeson¹

2019

The Cambridge History of the American Civil War

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Nativism and the Creation of a Republican Majority in the North before the Civil War

Cited by 14 publications

References 1 publication

The Know Nothing Party: Three Theories about its Rise and Demise

The Know Nothing Party: Three Theories about its Rise and Demise

‘The stupid party’: Intellectual repute as a category of ideological analysis

Immigrant America and the Civil War

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