American Party has been the name of several political parties in U.S. history. The first and most successful party of that name, popularly called the Know-Nothing Party because its members were instructed to answer all questions about their activities with "I know nothing," was founded in New York City in 1849. It was a coalition of several secret fraternal organizations, including the Order of United Mechanics, the Order of the Sons of America, the United Daughters of America, the Order of United Americans, and the Order of the Star Spangled Banner. It was organized to oppose the great wave of immigrants who entered the United States after 1846. The Know-Nothings claimed that the immigrants, who were principally Irish and Roman Catholic, threatened to subvert the U.S. Constitution. Their state and national platforms demanded that immigration be limited, that officeholding be limited to native-born Americans, and that a twenty-one-year wait be imposed before an immigrant could become a citizen and vote.
The party won a number of offices at the state and congressional levels, and attracted many northern Whigs, along with a number of Democrats. Southern Whigs also joined because of growing sectional tensions caused by the reintroduction of the slavery issue into national politics in 1854. For a time, it seemed as if the Know-Nothings would be the main opposition party to the Democrats in the United States. With Millard Fillmore as its presidential candidate in 1856, the party won more than 21 percent of the popular vote and eight electoral votes. Differences over the slavery issue, however, led many members to join the Republican Party, and the American Party was spent as a national force before the election of 1860.
Among other parties so named was one organized in Philadelphia in 1887. The party platform advocated a fourteen-year residence for naturalization; the exclusion of socialists, anarchists, and other supposedly dangerous persons; free schools; a strong navy and coastal defense; continued separation of church and state; and enforcement of the Monroe Doctrine. At a convention held in Washington, D.C., on 14 August 1888, it nominated presidential candidate James L. Curtis of New York State, but he received only 1,591 votes at the November election.
Another American Party entered the 1924 election, and chose Gilbert O. Nations as its presidential candidate and C. H. Randall as its vice-presidential nominee. Despite its efforts to win support from the then-powerful Ku Klux Klan, the party received less than one percent of the vote.
In May 1969, at a gathering in Cincinnati, Ohio, yet another American Party was formed. Two years later it joined with the American Independent Party and in August 1972 the combined organization gathered in Louisville, Kentucky, to nominate U.S. representative John Schmitz for president and Thomas J. Anderson for vice president. The coalition party divided into its components in 1973, and since 1976 the American Party has run a presidential ticket in every election but has always received less than one percent of the vote.
Bibliography
Anbinder, Tyler G. Nativism and Slavery: The Northern Know Nothings and the Politics of the 1850's. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Overdyke, Darrell. Know Nothing Party in the South. Magnolia, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1968.
—Jon Roland
