AHC: Surviving American Party

Perhaps Fillmore does a bit better in '56 and the Party stays a bit more relevant into the 1860 Election. If the Democrats then don't split and win convincingly then they could absorb part of the Republican voting bloc, similar to how the National Republicans collapsed and the Whigs formed. This is just a guess however, I'm a little rusty on the Antebellum Era.
 
A good way to do this is to increase their presence as the southern acceptable opposition to the democrats. That's the area they had the most success in OTL so continuing that streak may mean they stick around much longer.
 
Randy McDonald's massive Tripartite Alliance Earth world/timeline has this happening as an aside, but he mentions a few things about it.

1840: Martin Van Buren is reelected president despite the economic depression in his first term and the attempts of the Whigs to criticize his economic policies.

1850: In Congressional elections, the American Party manages to win almost a quarter of the seats in the House of Representatives, and a third of the seats in the Senate. This explicitly xenophobic party has managed to gain substantial popular support through its populist calls for restriction of all foreign immigration, particularly of non-Anglophones, in the name of the American worker.

1853: The Immigration Act of 1853 passes both houses of Congress, and avoids a threatened veto. This act prohibits all further immigration from southern and eastern Europe and the Austrian Empire. In coming decades, the scope of the act is widened to exclude or otherwise restrict immigration from France and Belgium (1865), Canada (1886), the Scandinavian states (1889), the German Empire and the Netherlands (1904) and even the British Isles (1907). Industrialists in the east lament the shortfall of labour in its growing industrial centres, but native-born white Americans profit from a tight labour market.

1861: The US Civil War begins as the slaveholding southern states secede to form the Confederate States of America. Louisiana, though, with a large population firmly opposed to slavery, refuses to join the Confederates and opts for the Union. Louisiana falls under heavy attack; by the end of the year, it looks like it will fall to the Confederates.

HOSPERGER: "Well, I learned things, about my country and what it could have been. One of my professors had a theory that my country was on the right path with liberal markets and open door immigration until the 1840s when something went horribly wrong. The American Party captured the presidency and stopped immigration. Then our economy stalled and they blamed it on the immigrants. Because of the tightening of immigration laws it took nearly a decade longer than it should have to complete the transcontinental railroad. This corruption of the American republic caused decades of social, political, and economic retardation."

... late President Grover Cleveland spoke out against a ban on immigration as an impediment to farming and industry. That allowed the continuation of Hispanic immigration. The farmers and industry wanted open immigration. As the federal government embraced nationalism and racism. state's-rights factions within the Northeastern States and the southern states pushed for new parties.

Granted, it's at times a low butterfly zone, like the Draka series. The civil war happens on schedule because Lincoln was elected, even after the massive change caused by Know Nothings getting elected to power. And like Draka has explicit end goals that skew the plausibility. But it's an interesting choice to cause the U.S. to become less developed by the 20th century.
 
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