Know Nothing what ifs

IOTL the Whigs essentially split into two parties, the nativist American Party and the free soil Republican Party.

In the 1856 presidential election, the Democratic candidate, James Buchanan finished first, the Republican candidate Fremont, second, and the American candidate, Fillmore, third and about 20% behind Buchanan in the popular vote. The Republicans attracted ore northern and cross-over Democratic support.

After that the American Party faded from the scene pretty quickly.

Keeping the party platforms pretty much the same, though you can change the candidates, what would it take to make the American Party one of the two major American parties, or even to have them win the 1856 presidential elections? And given the POD or PODs needed, what would be the effects?

Presumably the Democrats would be the other party and the Republicans fade away, but I'm persuadable by other ideas.
 
From what I gather, the Know Nothings suffered from the same problem that killed the Whigs: an attempt to avoid the slavery issue, or failing that, to take some sort of middle position on it. It's hard to avoid bleeding support in both directions when you refuse to take a firm stance on the main issue of the day. A lot of anti-slavery politicians who had been Know Nothings in 1854 and 1855 (including Nathaniel Banks, the Speaker of the House) switched to the Republican label for the 1856 election because their politics on the Slavery issue was incompatible with that of the Southern ex-Whigs who were a major faction of the American Party. There was even briefly a rump "North American Party" which split off from the American Party over the slavery issue and held their own convention in 1856: they wound up nominating Fremont unanimously as soon as they got word that Fremont had won the Republican convention.

To avoid this, I think the best bet would probably be to somehow arrange for the pro-slavery faction to leave the American Party instead of the anti-slavery faction. That way, the Republicans never really emerge as a major party (probably bleeding support quickly to the stronger American Party in order to avoid splitting the anti-slavery vote), you'd probably wind up with a 2.5 party system in the medium term, with an Americans vs Democrats two-party system in the North and a Democrats vs "Oppositionists" (another label widely used by Southern ex-Whigs, hearkening back to the label used by many pro-Whigs during the Jackson administration) system in the South.
 
I never finished my series "The Republican Party Stillborn, 1854-56" in soc.history.what-if but in my introduction to the series I did summarize my conclusions:

***

During the 1912 election, many of Teddy Roosevelt's supporters hoped that his new Progressive Party would become one of America's two major parties, as the Republicans had become in 1856. At first sight, the fact that TR slightly outpolled Taft in that election might have seemed to vindicate that hope. But TR knew better. As the late William E. Gienapp summarized it (in a book on which this series of posts will largely be based, *The Origins of the Republican Party 1952-1856*, p. 3):

"...Roosevelt dismissed the idea that the two parties' situations were analogous. He observed pointedly that after its first national campaign the Republican party, unlike the Progressive, controlled a number of states, had elected a sizable contingent of congressmen, and most important, was 'overwhelmingly the second party in the nation.' Because a disaffected voter's support for another party was usually only temporary, third parties that did not quickly become the second party had no long-term prospects, the defeated Progressive leader argued. 'When we failed to establish ourselves at the very outset as the second party,' he continued, 'it became overwhelmingly probable that politics would soon sink back...into a two-party system, the Republicans and Democrats alternating in the first and second place.' As Roosevelt well understood, any new party had to confront the reality that the two-party system was a fundamental fact of American politics."

Just *why* the two-party system tends to reassert itself in the US even when people are most dissatisfied with the old parties has been much discussed here and elsewhere. Part of the answer is the first-past-the-post system of election to Congreas; but similar electoral systems have not prevented long-term multi-partyism in other countries. My guess is that the real reason is the American presidential system--presidential races ultimately tend to resolve themselves into two-candidate races, because bargaining for votes in either a divided Electoral College or in Congress (if the race is sent there) has generally not been considered legitimate by popular opinion since 1824. (One can argue that there is nothing wrong with it, either legally or morally, but that is another matter.) Anyway, whatever the reason, the tendency to revert to the two-party system is there. And it means that if the Republicans had not established themselves as *the* major alternative to the Democrats by 1856, it is doubtful that they could ever have done so--they would likely have suffered the same fate as previous anti-slavery parties like the Liberty and Free Soil parties, while some other party (either a Whig party shorn of most of its southern wing or, more likely, the American party) would have become the leading party of opposition to the Democrats. And that the Republicans could so establish themselves was far from inevitable, as I will attempt to demonstrate in forthcoming posts. To summarize my basic conclusions at the beginning:

(1) It is anachronistic to see the Democratic electoral setbacks in 1854 as a "Republican" triumph. (Even excellent reference sources have contributed to this error by listing as "Republican" some 1854-5 candidates who were no such thing yet.) Indeed, the only two states where the anti-Democratic opposition united and took the title "Republican" were Michigan and Wisconsin. In the northeast in particular, the dream of an antislavery fusion party actually seemed to suffer a major setback in 1854, thanks to the stubbornness of some Whigs in resisting fusion and to the sudden emergence of the Know Nothing or "American" movement. (Incidentally, the question of whether to establish a Republican party in New York in 1854 opened up a rift between Thurlow Weed and Horace Greeley which may have been fatal to William Seward's presidential candidacy in 1860, but more about that later...)

(2) It was only the deteriorating situation in Kansas and the disruption of the national American organization in 1855 which breathed new life into the idea of a national Republican party. Yet many Americans believed that the breach in their party could be healed. In any event, in late 1855 about half the northern states did not even have Republican organizations. And in those states where the Republicans did organize and run candidates in 1855 their showing was generally poor--in direct confrontations with Know Nothings in Massachusetts and New York, the Republicans lost; in Maine, a heavily "anti-Nebraska" state, they suffered a stunning defeat as Governor Morrill lost his bid for re-election; in Pennsylvania, Americanism was so strong that the incipient Republican organization was basically taken over by the Know Nothings (and lost to the Democrats). Chase's victory in Ohio was just about the only good news for Republicans in the 1855 elections. On November 30, 1855, Theodore Parker, a committed antislavery man, lamented that there would be two northern anti-Democratic candidates in 1856, "one Republican, one Know Nothing" and that no doubt "the latter will get the most votes." The evidence at the time seemed to support this. (Incidentally, one thing that the 1855 elections show, and which I will discuss in a later post, is that voters were by no means preoccupied solely with slavery or even solely with slavery and nativism. The liquor issue was much more important than most people today realize, and was almost certainly decisive in Maine.)

(3) What saved the Republican party was the great House Speakership contest of December 1855-January 1856 which ended in the election of Nathaniel Banks as Speaker by a very narrow plurality (103-100) over Democrat William Aiken. (I will discuss various ways in which Banks could have been defeated, and how such a defeat would have deprived the Republicans of resources which were to prove invaluable in the 1856 election, such as control of congressional investigating committees.) Yet many of Banks's supporters were Know Nothings who did not yet consider themselves Republicans and might never have done so if not for subsequent events.

(4) Even after the Speakership victory, the Republicans did surprisingly poorly in northern elections in early 1856. In Connecticut, for example, Republican gubernatorial candidate Gideon Welles finished a poor third (with only ten percent of the vote!) behind the Democratic and American candidates.

(5) In short, until Spring 1856 it seemed that the Americans would outpoll the Republicans in the North. Even if one assumes that the breach between antislavery Know Nothings (the so-called North Americans) and the southern and dough-faced "South Americans" was irreparable, the North Americans were strong enough so that they might resist fusion with the Republicans--or in any event insist that the fusion be on "American" terms and include an explicit commitment to nativism.

(6) It was only two startling events on May 19-21 1856 that assured that the Republican party would survive. One of them was in Kansas, the other on the Senate floor in Washington DC. [I was referring of course to the "sack of Lawrence" and the caning of Charles Sumner--DT] And neither of them was inevitable. The unusually severe winter of 1855-6 had largely brought to an end the earlier fighting and marauding in Kansas, and if the pro-slavery party in that territory had shown a bit more sense, this lull could have continued to its advantage, and a famous speech on "The Crime Against Kansas" might never have been delivered...

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/-lAy6FF3u_U/80q02XIL7v8J
 

Thomas1195

Banned
Well, if the Know Nothing ends up dominating US politics, then the USA might have become weaker than IOTL due to lower immigration. Waving away Irish and German (and maybe also the Italian, Scandinavian and Eastern Europeans) immigration would be more than enough to have a USA with much less population (the Know Nothings were especially hostile towards Irish and German immigrants). Such thing would be a big loss for the US during their industrialization, especially when the Germans were generally well-educated (which means a great loss in human capital). Meanwhile, Irish immigrants provided essential cheap labour for industries.

Worse, if such immigrants ended up going to British Empire/Canada, then Britain would be strengthened at the expense of the US.

The US with a population 20% lower than IOTL by 1900 would not become a superpower. We would end up with a TL where Germany becomes the largest economy in the world.

Overall, the GOP was still the ideal party to drive US industrial revolution.

An easy POD: A successful 1848 revolution would cut down German immigration significantly, especially the German revolutionaries and radicals who were crucial in the formation of the GOP.
 
(3) What saved the Republican party was the great House Speakership contest of December 1855-January 1856 which ended in the election of Nathaniel Banks as Speaker by a very narrow plurality (103-100) over Democrat William Aiken. (I will discuss various ways in which Banks could have been defeated, and how such a defeat would have deprived the Republicans of resources which were to prove invaluable in the 1856 election, such as control of congressional investigating committees.) Yet many of Banks's supporters were Know Nothings who did not yet consider themselves Republicans and might never have done so if not for subsequent events.

(4) Even after the Speakership victory, the Republicans did surprisingly poorly in northern elections in early 1856. In Connecticut, for example, Republican gubernatorial candidate Gideon Welles finished a poor third (with only ten percent of the vote!) behind the Democratic and American candidates.
f(5) In short, until Spring 1856 it seemed that the Americans would outpoll the Republicans in the North.


So if President Pierce had died in Summer 1855, triggering an election in November of that year, the Republicans would have stood little chance. Consequences could have been interesting.
 
Thanks for the thoughtful and informed responses. It seems the American Party could have fulfilled the role of the Republican Party, but with the addition of immigration restrictionist policies. And the Lincoln administration gets butterfiled away.
 
Would the American Party be guaranteed to stay nativist ITTL? Lots of people who weren't particularly anti-immigrant, like Millard Fillmore, joined it as the only alternative to the Democratic and Republicans. If it became a dominant party, those people would end up making the majority of its base. It would be fun if, in the inevitable process of realignment, the Know Nothings ended up as the pro-immigration party a century or so down the line.
 
On the significance of the Speakership fight, see Eric Foner, *Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War*:

"While the Know-Nothing party was disintegrating in the states under the impact of the slavery issue, a battle was taking place in Congress which had a crucial bearing on the emergence of the national Republican party. Over thirty years ago, Fred H. Harrington showed how the long contest which resulted in the election of Nathaniel P. Banks as Speaker of the House helped to stir anti-slavery feeling in the North, forged a strong organization of Republican Congressmen, and prevented the Know-Nothing Congressmen from forming a national party organization. Although Banks was himself a member of the order, his candidacy was pushed by the anti-slavery radicals in order to destroy national Know-Nothingism and build a Congressional Republican party. By January 1856, Gamaliel Bailey, the radical editor who played a leading role in the day-to-day maneuverings, reported that of the anti-Nebraska Congressmen, thirty-five were opposed to nativism altogether, thirty to forty had some connection with the order but wished to subordinate nativism to anti-slavery, and the rest were found over the remainder of the political spectrum, all the way to bigoted xenophobia. Bailey put his finger on the main consequence of the speakership fight when he noted, “Some who came here more ‘American’ than Republican are now more Republican than American.” Northern Silver-Greys like Congressman G. G. Haven of New York, who hoped to create a national Know-Nothing party for 1856, were dismayed by the course of events. The controversy over Kansas, Haven complained to Daniel Ullmann, had irrevocably split northern from southern nativists, and many Know-Nothing Congressmen were acting as if they were Republicans..." https://archive.org/stream/freesoilfreelabo01fone/freesoilfreelabo01fone_djvu.txt
 
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