The Pledge_ A History of the Pledge of Allegiance - Jeffrey Owen Jones [13]
Why should the Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into our Settlements, and by herding together, establish their Language and Manners, to the Exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them . . . ?
This passage from a revered founding father is an early example of a mind-set that decades later came to be known as “nativism”—virulent opposition to supposedly inferior groups seen as a threat to the predominant culture. In his attack, the word-savvy Mr. Franklin used terms like “swarm” and “herding” to dehumanize the people who were the object of derision, an approach that would be typical of later nativist diatribes.
In the great wave of immigration to America during the 1830s and 1840s, the Irish outnumbered all other nationalities. Escaping famine and oppression in their own country, many found themselves crowded into disease-rife slums on this side of the Atlantic and shut out of the jobs that might lift them out of poverty. (The now infamous phrase “No Irish Need Apply” was familiar in employment postings and rental ads.) Portrayed as ignorant, dirty, and immoral, the Irish were, worst of all to their detractors, Catholic. Many Americans saw Catholics as a subversive group controlled by the pope in Rome and a threat to the governing principles of the primordially Protestant nation.
Anti-Catholicism and other nativist sentiments entered mainstream politics with the rise in the 1850s of the Know-Nothing Party. Officially called at various times the American Party or the Native American Party, the group had nothing to do with indigenous peoples and everything to do with playing on fear and prejudice for political advantage. (Originally a quasi-secret organization with hokey recognition signals, the party earned its nickname because its members, when asked about the organization, supposedly replied, “I know nothing.”) With anti-Catholic, anti-Irish tenets as their chief focus, the Know Nothings gained control of several state governments, mostly in the Northeast, and sent more than a few representatives to the U.S. Congress. The party pushed for laws limiting immigration and tightening naturalization requirements, while Know Nothing legislators set up committees to investigate alleged malfeasance in Catholic institutions. In the presidential election of 1856, former president Millard Fillmore represented the Know Nothings as a third-party candidate. Almost 900,000 Americans cast ballots for him (more than one in five voters) and he won the state of Maryland.
While its electoral successes lent the Know Nothings a veneer of legitimacy, the party attracted a thug element that favored intimidation and violence over electioneering. In 1844, nativist precursors of the Know Nothings sparked anti–Irish Catholic riots in Philadelphia that resulted in more than twenty deaths. Ten years later, in Baltimore, a gang of Know-Nothing boosters called the Plug Uglies attacked polling places on election day. Writing in 1998 in the Baltimore City Paper, Brennen Jensen described their approach:
Their methods were crude but effective. While today we vote in secrecy, voters of that era brought their marked ballots to the polls with them. Know Nothing ballots were gaudily striped and easy to spot. When a voter approached carrying Know Nothing colors, he was greeted with backslaps and smiles. When a rival ballot was spied, thugs chanted “Meet him on the ice!” and pounced like feral dogs. Fists, paving stones, and knives were part of the arsenal, but the favorite weapon was the easy-to-conceal awl. Shoemakers used these pointed tools to punch holes in leather; the Know Nothings used them to punch holes in their rivals.
On election day 1854, the Plug Uglies triggered riots in Baltimore that left eight dead. In Louisville, Kentucky, election day 1855 became known as “Bloody Monday” after Know-Nothing mobs attacked Germans and Irish