The Know-Nothing Party in Massachusetts: The Rise and Fall

of A People's Movement (review)

Joel H. Silbey

Civil War History, Volume 37, Number 3, September 1991, pp. 271-273 (Review)

Published by The Kent State University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/cwh.1991.0079

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/420798/summary

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 BOOK REVIEWS271

with Mrs. Custis evolved into the kind of mutual respect and confidence
which ought to have existed between husband and wife" (242). The
influence of Thomas Connelly's The Marble Man is evident in these
pages.
Nagel's book is successful as popular history. The average reader may
do some page-thumbing in the chapters on lesser-known family members,
but the author's style is graceful and his tone assured. Most readers will
believe their time and money well spent. I am less certain about the
work's value for scholars. Like the author's previous books on the Adams
family, Descent from Glory and The Adams Women, this one is without
notes. The essay on sources is helpful but general. Understandably, Nagel
wanted to avoid the kind of labored academic book that makes reading
akin to walking in deep sand. On the other hand, the risk in jettisoning
the paraphernalia of scholarship is scholarly irrelevance.
Ted Tunnell
Virginia Commonwealth University

The Know-Nothing Party in Massachusetts: The Rise and Fall of A

People's Movement. By John R. Mulkhearn. (Boston: Northeastern
University Press, 1990. Pp. ix, 236. $35.00.)
The Know-Nothing Party won power in only one state—Massachusetts—
and that briefly, in 1854-55. Its triumph was due, Mulkhearn argues,
less to its original anti-Irish and anti-Catholic nativism, as stressed by
many scholars of the movement there and elsewhere, than to its broad
populist-reformist appeal. In the early 1850s, Massachusetts was partic-
ularly affected by the widespread social turbulence and disruptions of
"modernization": urban growth, industrialization, rapid population
shifts, increasing and hardening economic disparities, as well as the great
growth of the alien hordes. In the largest urban areas, as well as in the
Connecticut River mill towns, many of those affected demanded a
political response to these crushing changes. But a Whig oligarchy ruled
in the state and refused to consider proposals for a ten hour day and a
secret ballot which reformers saw as basic policies needed to stabilize
conditions. The minority Democrats were no better, rooted as they were
in their traditional rural enclaves, and largely unaffected by the reformist
side of Jacksonian era democracy as practiced in other states. The
unresponsive political scene was ripe for an explosion.
When Know-Nothingism came along, therefore, it quickly moved
beyond its roots, even though virulent nativism was to reach "a pandemic
stage among the lower socioeconomic orders" in Massachusetts (67).
The Know-Nothing party's sweeping victory stemmed from its success
in presenting itself as a democratic and reformist alternative to the
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existing party oligarchies, particularly among those urban classes most

caught up in the disruption underway.
Everything that the party did, as Mulkhearn traces its journey through
the mid- 1850s, emphasized democratic control, reform politics, and
populist institutions. In its lodges and other meetings, the party practiced
democratic procedures and emphasized a popular control unknown in
the older parties. And the Know-Nothings' program included the urban-
rooted populist reforms demands, as well as its natural nativism. "The
true essence of Know-Nothingism," therefore, went well beyond ap-
pearance and claims. It lay in "its faith in the ability of the people to
rule themselves" (180). It successfully attracted many to it who, until
then, had had little to do with electoral politics.
But, alas, once in power, wily, hard-nosed, and ambitious politicians
from the established partisan camps were able to manipulate their way
into the party's top ranks, weaken its populism, temper its reformism,
and move toward coalition with other less populist groups in order to
solidify their own power. Their success led to the withdrawal of many
of those originally attracted to the Americans and, ultimately, the emer-
gence of the Republican Party as the real winner in the decade's political
turmoil.
This is, in the main, a useful book. Mulkhearn has read widely in
the Bay State newspapers and manuscript collections. He is well informed
on current historiography and puts it to good use. He takes the Know-
Nothing movement seriously and makes a clear and pointed case. (One
of his presentation strategies is to repeat his main points frequently and
with great conviction.) He effectively outlines the party's evolution,
activities, and decline, particularly the manipulations of those, such as
Henry Wilson and Henry J. Gardner, who successfully shaped the
populist storm into more traditional political channels. He is right in
his belief that focussed, state-level studies such as this are necessary in
order to understand the dynamics of the political realignment of the
185Os, and he is furthering an important analytic tradition.
At the same time, I wish that he had done more within the boundaries
he has set for himself. The Know-Nothing episode and the centrality of
nativism in shaping American politics in the 185Os remains problematic
to many historians, although William Gienapp's brilliant analysis of the
political changes of the decade settles, it seems to me, many of the
points in contention. Mulkhearn successfully opens up a number of
ideas and suggests some directions to follow that supplement Gienapp's
work. But he is not persuasive in all of his claims. It is not that I think
he is wrong in stressing the revolt against politics as more important
than a fundamental nativism in explaining events in this particular state,
or that his argument for populist democracy is not plausible. But more
is needed in support than is offered here. While frequent assertions of
 BOOK REVIEWS273

one's point of view are helpful in making an argument clear, they do

not prove the assertions made.
Mulkhearn does not throw as much light as he seems to believe on
the sources of party support, its appeal, its organizational activities, or
its legislative history. More rigorous attention to some of the problems
of measuring support, as well as more extended, in-depth discussion
and texturing of the party's "populist" activities at the local level
(including its campaign and legislative operations), would have been
most helpful and added a great deal to this study.
Joel H. Silbey
Cornell University

Westward the Texans: The Civil War Journal ofPvt. William R. Howell.
Edited by Jerry D. Thompson. (El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1990.
Pp. 184. $20.00.)
The Civil War in the western territories generally receives much less
attention than the better known battles in the East. New Mexico seems
a long way from the Virginia battlefields, and historians historically have
tended to shy away from a subject that has limited popular appeal and
is more difficult to research because of the paucity of primary materials.
However, in the summer of 1987 with the discovery of the remains of
thirty-three Confederates in a mass grave near Glorieta, New Mexico,
the public began to ask questions. Who were these men, and what really
happened in the foothills east of Santa Fe 125 years before? Moreover,
uncovering these bodies set off a modern day battle between officials
in the state of New Mexico, who wanted to bury the men where they
had died, and officials in Texas who insisted that the bodies, since they
were Texans, be interred in the Texas State Cemetery at Austin alongside
the remains of their Confederate comrades.
Although the fighting in the western territories still remains an obscure
footnote in American history, the dispute over where the men should be
laid to rest stirred an interest in the region. Most Americans consider
the war in the territories as insignificant, but Jerry Don Thompson in
Westward the Texans: The Civil War Journal ofPrivate William Randolph
Howell asserts that the New Mexico campaign of 1861-62 "was unde-
niably one of the most important of the Civil War." Moreover, he claims,
"Had the overall objectives of the expedition been realized, the history
of the Southern Confederacy might have been radically altered" (1).
Thompson's belief that the Confederate nation could have maintained
any real control over the vast area from Texas to California is difficult
to accept. The overwhelming problems of administering to such an
enormous region would have made chances of its success doubtful, and
it is unlikely that Lincoln would have ever allowed Confederates to gain