The SECRET Party That Tried to Stop Immigrants

In the 1850s, a secret society nearly took over America on a single promise: stop the immigrants.

Waves of Irish and German Catholic immigrants were arriving in crowded American cities, and many native-born Protestants feared these newcomers would never truly belong, or would take their jobs.

Out of that fear rose a secret political order. When members were asked about it, they were told to answer, 'I know nothing.' The press started calling them the Know-Nothings.

They burst into the open as the American Party, demanding that immigrants wait twenty-one years before they could vote and that no Catholic ever hold public office. By 1855 they had elected governors, mayors, and dozens of congressmen.

In 1856 their candidate, former president Millard Fillmore, ran for the White House and won a state. Then the party shattered over slavery, but its anti-immigrant playbook never fully disappeared.

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