Know Nothing Victory

Lateknight

Banned
How the know nothing party become a major national party instead the place of the Republican party? A couple of broad things I can think are if the Republicans were more openly abolitionist I think that could help and if the know nothing somehow got the support of the richer bunnisses demographic there probably better specific PODs though.

edit:wrong forum I PM'ed a mod to move it
 
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How the know nothing party become a major national party instead the place of the Republican party? A couple of broad things I can think are if the Republicans were more openly abolitionist I think that could help and if the know nothing somehow got the support of the richer bunnisses demographic there probably better specific PODs though.

edit:wrong forum I PM'ed a mod to move it

I'm afraid a Presidential victory is out of the question, without some sort of truly radical POD; the good majority of the Know-Nothings weren't actual committed abolitionists anyway. Sure, some did indeed jump on to that bandwagon(namely, quite a few of the Northerners) after all, abolitionism was rapidly becoming more and more of a popular subject of debate in the 1850s up North......but the Know-Nothings' real forte, first and foremost, was that of anti-Catholicism and anti-immigrant sentiment in general. The only major reason they fell apart, really, is because they were divided on slavery; there were a fair number of Southerners in the movement before it died as well, and quite a few of them supported slavery, or at least did not oppose the institution.

There is one surefire way to save the party for another decade or so.....but it involves jettisoning the abolitionists. Yes, you read this right: to save the Know-Nothing Party, the abolitionists are going to have to be shoved out(and into the Republican Party). Once that happens, though, they stand a much better chance of keeping their support alive down South and could, under the right circumstances, even become a plurality or even majority Southern-supported significant party(do remember that the South was fairly anti-immigrant, particularly anti-Catholic in many places, even before the Civil War; it's part of the reason why the Klan became so popular). It might involve delaying the Civil War for a decade or so, but it could still be pulled off even without that.
 
The Know Nothings were a far right wing party more in line with the Democrats. Replacing the Republicans with the Know Nothings as the second major political party would mean that the US had shifted politically way to the right. A major Know Nothing party where anti-immigrant and Catholic laws are a popular platform probably means that American politics looks like the city of Columbia from Bioshock II.

Without a dramatic change in American values probably with a pre-1776 POD I don't think that the Know Nothings could ever be more than a minor party. Their underlying philosophy of Puritanical style religion, anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic makes them wildly unpopular with a huge segment of the population while some of their members' anti-slavery stance makes them unpopular with Southerners. I think that their apparent popularity was only due to the collapse of the Whig party and that they were sidelined as soon as a viable alternative was found.
 
I'm afraid a Presidential victory is out of the question, without some sort of truly radical POD; the good majority of the Know-Nothings weren't actual committed abolitionists anyway. Sure, some did indeed jump on to that bandwagon(namely, quite a few of the Northerners) after all, abolitionism was rapidly becoming more and more of a popular subject of debate in the 1850s up North......but the Know-Nothings' real forte, first and foremost, was that of anti-Catholicism and anti-immigrant sentiment in general. The only major reason they fell apart, really, is because they were divided on slavery; there were a fair number of Southerners in the movement before it died as well, and quite a few of them supported slavery, or at least did not oppose the institution.

There is one surefire way to save the party for another decade or so.....but it involves jettisoning the abolitionists. Yes, you read this right: to save the Know-Nothing Party, the abolitionists are going to have to be shoved out(and into the Republican Party). Once that happens, though, they stand a much better chance of keeping their support alive down South and could, under the right circumstances, even become a plurality or even majority Southern-supported significant party(do remember that the South was fairly anti-immigrant, particularly anti-Catholic in many places, even before the Civil War; it's part of the reason why the Klan became so popular). It might involve delaying the Civil War for a decade or so, but it could still be pulled off even without that.

Well, the "national" Americans in OTL *did* repudiate the abolitionists--they advocated retaining all existing laws on slavery (which presumably included the Kansas-Nebraska Act) and nominated Fillmore for president (remember that in 1852 Fillmore had been the favorite of the southern Whigs to get the nomination; Scott had the support of most northern Whigs). This led most northern Know Nothings (except for some conservatives, especially in New York) to secede and form the "North Americans" who ultimately were absorbed into the Republican Party. Although Fillmore privately wanted to repeal the pro-slavery laws passed by the Kansas territorial legislature, in public he kept silent about them, fearing to lose southern support.

And what was their reward for all this pro-southernness on their part? Fillmore carried exactly *one* southern state--Maryland. Granted, he did respectably in some other southern states. One can even conceive him winning Tennessee, Kentucky, and Louisiana, and thus sending the election into the House. But that is as far as he will go. True, he could theoretically be elected in the House if all the Republicans throw their support to him as a lesser evil than Buchanan, but most of them did not look on him that way. More likely would be a deadlock in the House--which would allow Buchanan's running mate Breckinridge become Acting President (since he would be chosen as Vice President by the Senate).

So what puzzles me is that you are asking the American Party to do exactly what it did in OTL, without success! To be sure, many former Whigs and Americans were elected as "Oppositionists" in the South from 1857 to 1860, and in 1860 they carried a number of southern states for Bell. But again they got nowhere in the North, and even in the South they were no more than a respectable minority.

Sorry, but you can't win a national election, when *at best* you might get *near*-parity in a *minority* section of the country. And Fillmore and Bell never were successful in appealing to northern Old Line Whigs. The more anti-slavery ones went with the Republicans; the more conservative were generally satisfied enough with the Democrats.

And note by the way that by the late 1850's even 1856 Fillmore men in the South were no longer calling themselves either Whigs (which stood for a dead party) or Americans (nativism was already going out of style) but Oppositionists or Constitutional Unionists. But whatever they were, they had no chance of surviving as a *national* party and were probably doomed to minority status even in the South.
 
How the know nothing party become a major national party instead the place of the Republican party? A couple of broad things I can think are if the Republicans were more openly abolitionist I think that could help and if the know nothing somehow got the support of the richer bunnisses demographic there probably better specific PODs though.

edit:wrong forum I PM'ed a mod to move it

Why would the rich pro-business types be against cheap labor coming in from abroad?
 

Lateknight

Banned
Why would the rich pro-business types be against cheap labor coming in from abroad?

I think they could be won over if the Know Nothings were more about controlling immigrants then elimationing immigration. They sort of already viewed the irish(and others) as subhuman I am wondering how you can make such a view official policy.
 

Japhy

Banned
I think they could be won over if the Know Nothings were more about controlling immigrants then elimationing immigration. They sort of already viewed the irish(and others) as subhuman I am wondering how you can make such a view official policy.

If it was about control rather than elimination it wouldn't be the Know-Nothing movement.
 
First, the American Party of the 1850's was not exclusively one that found itself supporting slavery. It could be said that there were two major factions within the American Party when it came to the slavery issue:

  • The Abolitionist Wing - Made up an overwhelming majority of the party's strength in the Free States, with the possible exception of New York.
  • The "Compromise" Wing - Made up of an overwhelming majority of the party's strength in the Slave States. For the sake of simplicity, I am also lumping in the Pro-Slavery delegations here.
The Abolitionist Wing had many votes behind it but it remained a minority, and this was made firmly clear when the Ohio delegation was effectively booted and replaced with those who were of the Compromise Wing. And so the Abolitionist Wing left the convention, intent on endorsing John Fremont for the Presidency on a separate "North American" ticket, were he not to have been nominated by the Republican Party. What would have been a rather contentious nomination (relatively) ended up being little more than a coronation for Millard Fillmore, and attempts to patch up the divide failed miserably on account of the divide in regards to slavery.

Second, as the above illustrates, the American Party was simply too volatile to remain a single entity as long as the slavery issue was at the forefront of the public debate. Still, had the Convention not acted as it did in regards to the Ohio delegation there might have been a tense yet not volatile atmosphere, with some abolitionist Americans voting Republican but the core, including the leadership, remain faithful to the party rather than defecting wholesale. That might be enough to net them second-place in the popular vote, with electoral victories in places like Massachusetts and maybe (though a bit of a stretch) New York.

Overall though, rather heavy lifting needs to be done in order to allow the party to maintain its national presence. It would involve the Democratic Party nominating Franklin Pierce a second time and the Republican nomination going to Salmon Chase.
 
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