nt referred to made its appearance in the closing
months of 1853, and took the name of the Know-Nothing party. It
was a secret oath-bound political order, and its demand was the
proscription of Catholics and a probation of twenty-one years for
the foreigner as a qualification for the right of suffrage. Its
career was as remarkable as it was disgraceful. Thousands were
made to believe that the Romish hierarchy was about to overthrow
our liberties, and that the evils of "foreignism" had become so
alarming as to justify the extraordinary measures by which it was
proposed to counteract them. Thousands, misled by political knaves
through the arts of the Jesuits believed that the cause of freedom
was to be sanctified and saved by this new thing under the sun.
Thousands, through their unbridled credulity, were persuaded that
political hacks and charlatans were to lose their occupation under
the reign of the new Order, and that our debauched politics were
to be thoroughly purified by the lustration which it promised
forthwith to perform. Thousands, eager to bolt from the old parties,
but fearful of being shot down on the way as deserters, gladly
availed themselves of this newly devised "underground railroad" in
escaping from the service of their old masters. Under these various
influences the Whigs generally, and a large proportion of the Free
Soilers and Democrats, were enlisted in the service of this remarkable
movement. Pretending to herald a new era in our politics in which
the people were to take the helm and expel demagogues and traders
from the ship, it reduced political swindling to the certainty and
system of a science. It drew to itself, as the great festering
centre of corruption, all the known rascalities of the previous
generation, and assigned them to active duty in its service. It
was an embodied lie of the first magnitude, a horrid conspiracy
against decency, the rights of man, and the principle of human
brotherhood.

Its birth, simultaneously with the repeal of the Missouri compromise,
was not an accident, as any one could see who had studied the
tactics of the slave-holders. It was a well-timed scheme to divide
the people of the free States upon trifles and side issues, while
the South remained a unit in defense of its great interest. It
was the cunning attempt to balk and divert the indignation aroused
by the repeal of the Missouri restriction, which else would spend
its force upon the aggression