The Know Nothings in Louisiana

Marius M. Carriere

• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781496816849
• eBook ISBN:
  9781496816856
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

In the 1850s, a startling new political party appeared on the American scene. Both its members and its critics called the new party by various names, but to most it was known as the Know Nothing Party. It reignited political fires over nativism and anti-immigration sentiments. At a time of political uncertainty, with the Whig party on the verge of collapse, the Know Nothings seemed destined to replace them and perhaps become a political fixture.Historian Marius M. Carriere Jr. tracks the rise and fall of the Know Nothing movement in Louisiana, outlining not only the history of the party as it is usually known, but also explaining how the party's unique permeation in Louisiana contrasted with the Know Nothings' expansion nationally and elsewhere in the South. For example, many Roman Catholics in the state joined the Know Nothings, even though the party was nationally known as anti-Catholic.While historians have largely concentrated on the Know Nothings' success in the North, Carriere furnishes a new context for the evolution of a national political movement at odds with its Louisiana constituents. Through statistics on various elections and demographics of Louisiana politicians, Carriere forms a detailed account of Louisiana's Know Nothing Party. The national and rapidly changing Louisiana political landscape yielded surprising, credible leverage for the Know Nothing movement. Slavery, Carriere argues, also played a crucial difference between southern and northern Know Nothing ideals. Carriere delineates the eventual downfall of the Know Nothing Party, while offering new perspectives on a nativist movement, which has appeared once again in a changing, divided country.

NOTES

ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE ENDNOTES

HNOC—Historic New Orleans Collection

LSU—Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collection, Louisiana State University

UT—University of Texas, Center for American History

ICPR—Inter-University Consortium for Political Research, The Institute for Social Research Center for Political Studies, The University of Michigan

INTRODUCTION

1. Avery O. Craven, The Growth of Southern Nationalism: 1848–1862 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1953), 238; W. Darrell Overdyke, The Know-Nothing Party in the South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1950), 51.

2. Arthur C. Cole, The Irrepressible Conflict: 1850–1865 (New York: Macmillan Co., 1934), 146; Marc Kruman, Parties and Politics in North Carolina: 1836–1865 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1983).

3. Arthur C. Cole, The Whig Party in the South (reprinted; Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1962), 309–310.

4. Ray Allen Billington notes that nativism was a significant part of the success of the American Party in the South, including Louisiana. Ray Allen Billington, The Protestant Crusade: 1800–1860 (New York: Macmillan Co., 1934), 393. W. Darrell Overdyke is of the same opinion. He describes Louisiana as a “veritable hotbed of nativism.” Overdyke, The Know-Nothing Party in the South, 13.

5. W. Darrell Overdyke, “History of the American Party in Louisiana,” Louisiana Historical Quarterly, 16 (October 1932), passim, 581–88.

6. Robert C. Reinders, “The Louisiana American Party and the Catholic Church,” Mid-America, 40 (1958), 218–21.

7. Michael F. Holt, “The Politics of Impatience: The Origins of Know Nothingism,” Journal of American History, 60 (September 1973), 313, 322; William J. Evitts, A Matter of Allegiances: Maryland from 1850 to 1861 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), 76–7. Holt and Evitts held to this similar view of voters being “distraught over the moral and social climate they saw around them.”

8. Evitts, A Matter of Allegiances, 82; Holt, “The Politics of Impatience,” 315–19. While Holt has refined his view of the Know Nothings (he no longer identifies its rise with a sudden social and economic upheaval), he agrees with Robert Fogel’s Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1994), 354–80, that the recession of 1854–55 caused Native American laborers to fear increased competition from unemployed immigrants, but Holt now includes political, as well as social sources, for Know Nothings’ rise. Michael F. Holt, Political Parties and American Political Development from the Age of Jackson to the Age of Lincoln (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992), 9–10; Frank Towers, The Urban South and the Coming of the Civil War (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2004), 73. However, Towers also says “former Whigs ran the American party, and their wealth and occupations resembled those of the leaders of the old parties.”

9. William E. Gienapp, “Nativism and the Creation of a Republican Majority in the North before the Civil War,” Journal of American History, 72 (December 1985), 529–59; Paul Kleppner, The Third Electoral System, 1854–1892: Parties, Voters, and Political Cultures (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979), 70–72; John Ashworth, Slavery, Capitalism, and Politics in the Antebellum Republic: Vol. 2: The Coming of the Civil War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 345.

10. Kleppner, The Third Electoral System, 1854–1872, 70–72. Kleppner sees this anti-party movement wanting to act “beyond the bounds of party.”

11. Tyler Anbinder, Nativism and Slavery: The Northern Know Nothings and the Politics of the 1850s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), xiii.

12. Ibid., xiv.

13. The only statewide study of any detail is W. Darrell Overdyke’s published MA thesis, “History of the American Party in Louisiana, “Louisiana Historical Quarterly, 15, 16 (October 1932, January, April, July, October 1933) and Marius M. Carriere, “The Know Nothing Movement in Louisiana” PhD diss., LSU, 1977. John David Bladek, “America for Americans: the Southern Know Nothing Party and the Politics of Nativism, 1854–1856,” PhD diss., University of Washington, 1998, while about southern Know Nothings, offers very little on Louisiana Know Nothingism. Finally, John Sacher devotes a small part of his recent book on Louisiana politics to Know Nothingism and concludes they are not simply Whigs in disguise. However, he does not go into much detail about the party in the state. John Sacher, A Perfect War of Politics: Parties, Politicians, and Democracy in Louisiana, 1824–1861 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007), 237, 239–40.

14. With the exception of a few well-known Americans (Know Nothings) such as Charles Gayareé, Christian Roselius, George Eustis, and John Edward Bouligny, few personal records remain of Know Nothing leaders’ involvement during the short-time the American Party existed in the state.

CHAPTER 1

1. Fred B. Kniffen and Sam Bowers Hilliard, ed., Louisiana Its Land and People (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1968), rev. ed., 5–10, 34–57.

2. Roger W. Shugg, Origins of Class Struggle in Louisiana: A Social History of White Farmers and Laborers during Slavery and After (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1939), 8–12.

3. Ibid., 11–13.

4. The exact definition of the word “Creole” continues to perplex historians, sociologists, and contemporaries of the nineteenth century. Some would include all non-Anglo native Louisianians (including African Americans), while others limit the use of the word to the descendants of the French and Spanish colonials. Joseph Tregle makes a distinction between Latin Creoles and foreign French. He defines Latin Creoles as those whose heritage can be traced to colonial days and he includes the Acadians (descendants of the French Canadians) in this group. The foreign French were those Louisiana residents, according to Tregle, who immigrated to Louisiana during and after the French Revolution. Joseph George Tregle Jr., Louisiana in the Age of Jackson: A Clash of Cultures and Personalities (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1999), 37–41, 337–43.

For the purposes of my study, I will use the word “Creole” to refer to those descendants of colonial Louisianians and the French immigrants. Although Tregle correctly noted the differences between the Latin Creoles and the foreign French, the similarities of culture and politics were sufficient to bring them together culturally and politically in opposition to the immigrating Anglo-Americans.

5. There are no census reports extant for the years between 1788 and 1803. In 1803, the United States consul at New Orleans, working with the best documents available, reported that the total population of Louisiana was 49,473. The population figure included residents of areas that did not become part of the state of Louisiana, and when that number is deducted the population of what is known today as Louisiana was 41,803. By 1810 the population had increased to 76,556 and it is estimated the Creoles still outnumbered the Anglo-Americans at this time by at least two-to-one. Francois-Xavier Martin, The History of Louisiana, from the Earliest Period (New Orleans: James A. Gresham Publisher, 1882), 300, 347.

It is difficult to estimate the population of Creoles and Anglo-Americans after 1810 since census figures regarding nativities are sketchy at best. One historian estimates that even as late as 1830 the Creoles outnumbered the Americans by a two-to-one ratio. L. W. Newton, “Creoles and Anglo-Americans,” Southwestern Social Science Quarterly, 14 (1933), 34.

6. Shugg, Origins of Class Struggle, 18–19.

7. Bureau of the Census, Seventh Census of the U.S., 1850: Compendium of the Seventh Census, Louisiana Statistics (Washington: Robert Armstrong, 1853), 473.

8. Ibid., 482; Shugg, Origins of Class Struggle, 62–64.

9. Alcee Fortier, A History of Louisiana, 4 vols. (New York, 1904), 3: 217–18; Joseph G. Tregle Jr., “Henry S. Johnson,” and “Andre Bienvenu Roman,” in The Louisiana Governors: From Iberville to Edwards, ed. Joseph G. Dawson III. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990), 98–103, 108–113; Judith F. Gentry, “Pierre Auguste Bourguignon Derbigny,” 103–108, ibid.

10. Richard P. McCormick, The Second American Party System: Party Formation in the Jacksonian Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1966), 313.

11. Tregle, Louisiana in the Age of Jackson, 466. For a more detailed discussion of Louisiana politics during the 1820s through the mid-1830s, Tregle’s Louisiana in the Age of Jackson should be consulted.

12. In 1835 the Whig-Creole candidate for governor, Edward Douglas White, defeated the Democrat, John B. Dawson. White received most of his support from south Louisiana and New Orleans, both of which were Creole strongholds. Dawson garnered majorities in heavily Anglo-American north Louisiana and the Florida parishes. In the presidential election of 1836, there was a general lack of enthusiasm for both White and Van Buren. Perry H. Howard, Political Tendencies in Louisiana, rev. ed. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971), 37–38.

13. McCormick, The Second American Party System, 317–18; Judith F. Gentry, “Alexandre Mouton,” in The Louisiana Governors, 118–22.

14. Shugg, Origins of Class Struggle, 123–24.

15. Benjamin Wall Dart, ed., Constitutions of the State of Louisiana and Selected Federal Laws (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1932), 508; Judith K. Schafer, “Reform or Experiment? The Louisiana Constitution of 1845,” in In Search of Fundamental Law: Louisiana’s Const...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• One: Early Political Nativism in Louisiana: 1832–49
• Two: Resurgence of Nativism: 1850–55
• Three: Know Nothingism at Its Peak: 1854–55
• Four: The Decline of Know Nothingism: 1856–57
• Five: Nativism Struggles: 1858–60
• Epilogue
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• Appendix C
• Appendix D
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index