in 1841 called a state convention and founded the American
Republican, or, as it was soon called, the Native American party. Its
principles were

1. Put none but native Americans in office.

2. Require a residence of twenty-one years in this country before
naturalization.

3. Keep the Bible in the schools.

4. Protect from abuse the proceedings necessary to get naturalization
papers.

As the members would not tell what the secrets of this party were, and
very often would not say whom they were going to vote for, and when
questioned would answer "I don't know," it got the name of
"Know-nothing" party.[1]

[Footnote 1: Rhodes's _History of the United States_, Vol. II., pp.
51-58; McMaster's _With the Fathers_, pp. 87-106.]

For a time the party flourished greatly and secured six members of the
House of Representatives, then it declined in power; but the immense
increase in immigration between 1846 and 1850 again revived it, and.
somewhere in New York city in 1852 a secret, oath-bound organization,
with signs, grips, and passwords, was founded, and spread with such
rapidity that in 1854 it carried the elections in Massachusetts, New
York, and Delaware. Next year (1855) it elected the governors and
legislatures of eight states, and nearly carried six more. Encouraged by
these successes, the leaders determined to enter the campaign of 1856,
and called a party convention which nominated Millard Fillmore and
Andrew Jackson Donelson. Delegates from seven states left the convention
because it would not stand by the Missouri Compromise, and taking the
name North Americans nominated N. P. Banks. He would not accept, and the
bolters then joined the Republicans.

%394. Beginning of the Republican Party.%--As early as 1854, when the
Kansas-Nebraska Bill was before Congress, the question was widely
discussed all over the North and West, whether the time had not come to
form a new party out of the wreck of the old. With this in view a
meeting of citizens of all parties was held at Ripon, Wisconsin, at
which the formation of a new party on the slavery issue was recommended,
and the name Republican suggested. This was before the passage of the
Kansas-Nebraska Bill.

After its passage a thousand citizens of Michigan signed a call for a
state mass meeting at Jackson, where a state party was formed, named
Republican, and a state ticket nominated, on which were Free-soilers,
Whigs, and Anti-Nebraska Democrats. Similar "fusion ti