From Encyclopedia Americana is the following description of Know Nothings: “Despite their strength and appeal, the Know-Nothings were already in decline as a national party by 1856. Beset by differences over the slavery issue, many members joined the Republican party, which seemed sympathetic to much of their nativism and offered additional appeals on other important issues. Know-Nothing parties remained strong in a number of Northern states in the late 1850s, but the party was spent as a national force before the election of 1860.

The Know-Nothing movement illustrated two things: a persistent ethnoreligious hostility in American life that often intruded into politics and the potentiality for political disruption when existing parties fail to deal adequately with volatile social and political tensions. Although the movement quickly lost out to the Republicans, its ideas did not, and they formed one aspect of the Republican appeal for more than a generation to come.”

A LOT more than a generation to come…