American election
| ||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||
In the 1855 Chicago mayoral election , Know Nothing candidate Levi Boone defeated Democratic incumbent Isaac Lawrence Milliken by a 5.75% margin. [1]
Contents
The election was held on March 8. [2]
| ||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||
| Elections in Illinois |
|---|
 |
In the 1855 Chicago mayoral election , Know Nothing candidate Levi Boone defeated Democratic incumbent Isaac Lawrence Milliken by a 5.75% margin. [1]
The election was held on March 8. [2]
The mayoral election was unusual in that no candidate had entered the race until five days before the day of the election. [3]
The campaign for the municipal elections of 1855 began very early in the year, before any candidates had emerged for the mayoral race. Religious, ethnic, and political leaders debated for weeks on many issues. The race quickly took a nativist tone. [4] Topics included the role of foreigners on night police duty, controversy regarding the city's school fund, bar fights. [4] Debate also arose from the split amongst Democrats around the Kansas–Nebraska Act, [4] which would take an even more prominent role in the following year's election. One of the greatest controversies was about the state legislature's decision to allow a referendum for that June regarding possible prohibition of alcoholic beverages. [4]
Boone received support from a coalition of Know-Nothing and pro-temperance voters. [5] As was typical of his party, Boone's platform was anti-immigrant, anti-alcohol, and anti-catholic. [6] [7] Boone had run for mayor once before, having been an unsuccessful candidate in the 1850 mayoral election. [8]
Boone benefitted from an article published by the Chicago Tribune that blamed Milliken for an Irish beer riot and stoked fears by warning, "Every vote given for Milliken is a vote given for whisky, Jesuitism, for Irish rule, for crime and pauperism, and for the ruin of Chicago." [9]
The management of 24 German saloons announced that their establishments would be closed on the day of the election. [3] This was a largely unprecedented move, and received praise from both by the press and from religious leaders. [3]
There were allegations that Irish and German voters from Bridgeport, which was then outside the city limits, were brought in to vote illegally for Milliken. [6]
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Know Nothing | Levi Boone | 3,185 | 52.87 | |
| Democratic | Isaac Lawrence Milliken (incumbent) | 2,839 | 47.13 | |
| Turnout | 6,024 | |||
Boone's victory was also a victory for the burgeoning Know Nothing party, which had been established the previous year.
Despite nearly half of Chicagoans being of foreign origin, Boone had won on a nativist platform. [10]
Privately, Illinois politician (and future United States President) Abraham Lincoln was vehemently opposed to the platform upon which Boone had run; however, he did not publicly denounce it out of concern that doing so would alienate the support he needed in order to build a successful anti-slavery coalition in Illinois and to win the Illinois' United States Senate election three years later. [7]
In his term as mayor, Boone cracked down on immigrants. He barred them from working for the municipal government. [7] He also enforced liquor policies which were perceived to target German immigrants, which led to the Lager Beer Riot.
In the broader context of racism against Black Americans and racism in the United States, mass racial violence in the United States consists of ethnic conflicts and race riots, along with such events as:
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.
The Lager Beer Riot occurred on April 21, 1855 in Chicago, Illinois, and was the first major civil disturbance in the city. Mayor Levi Boone, a Nativist politician, renewed enforcement of an old local ordinance mandating that taverns be closed on Sundays and led the city council to raise the cost of a liquor license from $50 per year to $300 per year, renewable quarterly. The move was seen as targeting German immigrants in particular and so caused a greater sense of community within the group.
Levi Day Boone served as mayor of Chicago, Illinois (1855–1856) for the American Party (Know-Nothings).
Isaac Lawrence Milliken served as mayor of Chicago, Illinois from 1854 to 1855. He was a member of the Democratic Party.
Politics in Chicago through most of the 20th century was dominated by the Democratic Party, and was also shaped in the 1980s by Randy Kryn. Organized crime and political corruption were persistent concerns in the city. Chicago was the political base for presidential nominees Stephen Douglas (1860), Adlai Stevenson II, and Barack Obama, who was nominated and elected in 2008.
The Know-Nothing Riots of 1856 occurred in Baltimore between September and November of that year. The Know-Nothing Party gained traction in Baltimore as native-born residents disliked the growing immigrant population. Local street gangs became divided on political grounds, with the Know-Nothing affiliated gangs clashing with Democrat affiliated gangs. The partisans were involved in widespread violence at the polls and across Baltimore during municipal and national elections that year.
The term Know-Nothing Riot has been used to refer to a number of political uprisings of the Nativist American Know Nothing Party in the United States of America during 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 in 1857, and New Orleans in 1858.
Bloody Monday was a series of riots on August 6, 1855, in Louisville, Kentucky, an election day, when Protestant mobs attacked Irish and German Catholic neighborhoods. These riots grew out of the bitter rivalry between the Democrats and the Nativist Know-Nothing Party. Multiple street fights raged, leaving twenty-two people dead, scores injured, and much property destroyed by fire. Five people were later indicted, but none were convicted, and the victims were not compensated.
The Know Nothing party was a nativist political party and movement in the United States in the mid-1850s. The party was officially known as the "Native American Party" prior to 1855 and 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.
Nativism is the political policy of promoting or protecting the interests of native or indigenous inhabitants over those of immigrants, including the support of immigration-restriction measures.
The Cincinnati Riots of 1855 were clashes between "nativists" and German-Americans. The nativists supported J. D. Taylor, the mayoral candidate for the anti-immigrant American Party, also known as the Know-Nothing Party. During the riots, German-Americans erected barricades in the streets leading into their Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, and fired a cannon over the heads of a mob of nativists attacking them.
The Chicago mayoral election of 1989 saw Democratic nominee Richard M. Daley win election to the remainder of an unexpired mayoral term with a 14% margin of victory. This marked a return for the Daley family to the office of mayor. Daley was elected over Alderman Timothy Evans, the nominee of the newly formed Harold Washington Party, and the Republican nominee Ed Vrdolyak.
In the 1856 Chicago mayoral election, Thomas Dyer defeated former mayor Francis Cornwall Sherman. The race was shaped by the divisive national political debate surrounding the issue of slavery, particularly debate surrounding the controversial Kansas–Nebraska Act, and the election was treated by many as a referendum on it. Dyer vocally supported the act, while Sherman stood in opposition to it.
In the Chicago mayoral election of 1935, incumbent Edward J. Kelly defeated Republican Emil C. Wetten and independent candidate Newton Jenkins by a landslide 60% margin of victory.
In the Chicago mayoral election of 1893, Democrat Carter Harrison Sr. won election to a (then-record) fifth non-consecutive term as mayor of Chicago.
In the Chicago mayoral election of 1911, Democrat Carter Harrison Jr. was elected to his fifth non-consecutive term as mayor, tying the then-record set by his father Carter Harrison Sr. for the most Chicago mayoral election victories. Harrison defeated Republican Charles E. Merriam and Socialist William E. Rodriguez.
In the Chicago mayoral election of 1915, Republican William H. Thompson defeated Democrat Robert Sweitzer.
In the Chicago mayoral election of 1879, Democrat Carter Harrison Sr. defeated both Republican Abner Wright and socialist Ernst Schmidt in a three-way race. Harrison had a nearly nine point margin of victory.
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.