The Whig Party was a conservative political party that existed in the United States during the mid-19th century. Alongside the slightly larger Democratic Party, it was one of the two major parties in the United States between the late 1830s and the early 1850s as part of the Second Party System. Four presidents were affiliated with the Whig Party for at least part of their terms. Other prominent members of the Whig Party include Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Rufus Choate, William Seward, John J. Crittenden, and John Quincy Adams. The Whig base of support was centered among entrepreneurs, professionals, planters, social reformers, devout Protestants, and the emerging urban middle class. It had much less backing from poor farmers and unskilled workers.
The 1856 United States presidential election was the 18th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 4, 1856. In a three-way election, Democrat James Buchanan defeated Republican nominee John C. Frémont and Know Nothing nominee Millard Fillmore. The main issue was the expansion of slavery as facilitated by the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854. Buchanan defeated President Franklin Pierce at the 1856 Democratic National Convention for the nomination. Pierce had become widely unpopular in the North because of his support for the pro-slavery faction in the ongoing civil war in territorial Kansas, and Buchanan, a former Secretary of State, had avoided the divisive debates over the Kansas–Nebraska Act by being in Europe as the Ambassador to the United Kingdom.
The Free Soil Party was a short-lived coalition political party in the United States active from 1848 to 1854, when it merged into the Republican Party. The party was largely focused on the single issue of opposing the expansion of slavery into the western territories of the United States.
The Philadelphia nativist riots were a series of riots that took place on May 6—8 and July 6—7, 1844, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States and the adjacent districts of Kensington and Southwark. The riots were a result of rising anti-Catholic sentiment at the growing population of Irish Catholic immigrants. The government brought in over a thousand militia—they confronted the nativist mobs and killed or wounded hundreds of anti-Catholic rioters.
Clan na Gael was an Irish republican organization in the United States in the late 19th and 20th centuries, successor to the Fenian Brotherhood and a sister organization to the Irish Republican Brotherhood.
NumbersUSA is an anti-immigration advocacy organization that seeks to reduce both legal and illegal immigration to the United States. It advocates for immigration reduction through user-generated fax, email, and direct mail campaigns. In November 2022, the organization announced James Massa, a former Cisco executive, as its next chief executive officer following the retirement of founder Roy Beck.
The American Protective Association (APA) was an American anti-Catholic secret society established in 1887 by Protestants. The organization was the largest anti-Catholic movement in the United States during the later part of the 19th century, showing particular regional strength in the Midwest. The group grew rapidly during the early 1890s before collapsing just as abruptly in the aftermath of the election of 1896.
Lewis Charles Levin was an American politician, newspaper editor and anti-Catholic social activist. He was one of the founders of the American Party in 1842 and served as a member of the U. S. House of Representatives representing Pennsylvania's 1st congressional district from 1845 to 1851. Levin was the first Jewish U.S. Congressman, although David Levy Yulee served as a territorial representative from Florida prior to Levin's election to the House.
Charles Naylor was an American politician from Pennsylvania who served as a Whig party member of the United States House of Representatives for Pennsylvania's 3rd congressional district from 1837 to 1841. During the Philadelphia nativist riots, he was arrested while preventing militia troops from firing on nativist rioters. He raised a company of volunteers, known as the Philadelphia Rangers, and served as captain during the Mexican-American War.
The Know Nothing movement was a nativist political movement in the United States in the mid-1850s. The national political organization of the Know Nothings was officially known as the "Native American Party" prior to 1855; thereafter, it was simply known as the "American Party". Members of the movement were required to say "I know nothing" whenever they were asked about its specifics by outsiders, providing the group with its colloquial name.
Anti-Catholicism in the United States concerns the anti-Catholic attitudes which were first brought to the Thirteen Colonies by Protestant European settlers, mostly composed of English Puritans, during the British colonization of North America. Two types of anti-Catholic rhetoric existed in colonial society and they continued to exist during the following centuries. The first type, derived from the theological heritage of the Protestant Reformation and the European wars of religion, consisted of the biblical Anti-Christ and the Whore of Babylon variety and it dominated anti-Catholic thought until the late 17th century. The second type was a variety which was partially derived from xenophobic, ethnocentric, nativist, and racist sentiments and distrust of increasing waves of Catholic immigrants, particularly immigrants from Ireland, Italy, Poland, and Mexico. It usually focused on the pope's control of bishops, priests, and deacons.
The Liberty Party was an abolitionist political party in the United States prior to the American Civil War. The party experienced its greatest activity during the 1840s, while remnants persisted as late as 1860. It supported James G. Birney in the presidential elections of 1840 and 1844. Others who attained prominence as leaders of the Liberty Party included Gerrit Smith, Salmon P. Chase, Henry Highland Garnet, Henry Bibb, and William Goodell. They attempted to work within the federal system created by the United States Constitution to diminish the political influence of the Slave Power and advance the cause of universal emancipation and an integrated, egalitarian society.
Millard Fillmore was the 13th president of the United States, serving from 1850 to 1853, the last to be a member of the Whig Party while in the White House. A former member of the U.S. House of Representatives from upstate New York, Fillmore was elected as the 12th vice president in 1848, and succeeded to the presidency in July 1850 upon the death of Zachary Taylor. Fillmore was instrumental in passing the Compromise of 1850, a bargain that led to a brief truce in the battle over the expansion of slavery. He failed to win the Whig nomination for president in 1852 but gained the endorsement of the nativist Know Nothing Party four years later and finished third in the 1856 presidential election.
Nativism is the political policy of promoting or protecting the interests of "native-born" or established inhabitants over those of immigrants, including the support of anti-immigration and immigration-restriction measures. Despite the name, and in the US in particular, this position is usually held by the descendants of immigrants themselves, and is not a movement led by Indigenous peoples, as opposited to Nativists in Europe who are descended from native peoples such as Celts, Anglo-Saxons or Norsemen. However, some anti-immigrants who hold this position maintain a different definition of "indigenous".
American ancestry refers to people in the United States who self-identify their ancestral origin or descent as "American", rather than the more common officially recognized racial and ethnic groups that make up the bulk of the American people. The majority of these respondents are visibly White Americans, who are far removed from and no longer self-identify with their original ethnic ancestral origins. The latter response is attributed to a multitude of generational distance from ancestral lineages, and these tend be Anglo-Americans of English, Scotch-Irish, Welsh, Scottish or other British ancestries, as demographers have observed that those ancestries tend to be recently undercounted in U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey ancestry self-reporting estimates.
In the politics of the United States, the radical right is a political preference that leans towards ultraconservatism, white nationalism, white supremacy, or other far-right ideologies in a hierarchical structure which is paired with conspiratorial rhetoric alongside traditionalist and reactionary aspirations. The term was first used by social scientists in the 1950s regarding small groups such as the John Birch Society in the United States, and since then it has been applied to similar groups worldwide. The term "radical" was applied to the groups because they sought to make fundamental changes within institutions and remove persons and institutions that threatened their values or economic interests from political life.
John Binns was a Dublin-born American journalist, the son of ironmonger John Binns and his wife Mary Pemberton. A grand-nephew of Irish Patriot politician and member of Dublin Corporation John Binns, he and his older brother Benjamin moved to London and became involved with city's federation of democratic clubs, the London Corresponding Society (LCS). Rising to the society's executive council and chairing its general committee in 1795, Binns pressed the society to mobilise mass support to achieve parliamentary reform.
Irish Americans are ethnic Irish who live in the United States and are American citizens. Most Irish Americans today are descendants from immigrants who moved into America during the 19th century.
Nativism in United States politics is opposition to an internal minority on the basis of its supposed “un-American” foundation. Historian Tyler Anbinder defines a nativist as:
someone who fears and resents immigrants and their impact on the United States, and wants to take some action against them, be it through violence, immigration restriction, or placing limits on the rights of newcomers already in the United States. “Nativism” describes the movement to bring the goals of nativists to fruition.
The term Know-Nothing Riot has been used to refer to a number of political uprisings of the Know Nothing Party in the United States of the mid-19th century. These anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic protests culminated into riots in Philadelphia in 1844; St. Louis in 1854, Cincinnati and Louisville in 1855; Baltimore in 1856; Washington, D.C., and New York City in 1857; and New Orleans in 1858.
