American civil religion

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American civil religion is a sociological theory that a nonsectarian quasi-religious faith exists within the United States with sacred symbols drawn from national history. Scholars have portrayed it as a cohesive force, a common set of values that foster social and cultural integration. The ritualistic elements of ceremonial deism found in American ceremonies and presidential invocations of God can be seen as expressions of the American civil religion. The very heavy emphasis on pan-Christian religious themes is quite distinctively American and the theory is designed to explain this.

The concept goes back to the 19th century, but in current form, the theory was developed by sociologist Robert Bellah in 1967 in his article, "Civil Religion in America". The topic soon became the major focus at religious sociology conferences and numerous articles and books were written on the subject. The debate reached its peak with the American Bicentennial celebration in 1976. There is a viewpoint that some Americans have come to see the document of the United States Constitution, along with the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights as cornerstones of a type of civic or civil religion or political religion. Political sociologist Anthony Squiers argues that these texts act as the sacred writ of the American civil religion because they are used as authoritative symbols in what he calls the politics of the sacred. The politics of the sacred, according to Squiers are "the attempt to define and dictate what is in accord with the civil religious sacred and what is not. It is a battle to define what can and cannot be and what should and should not be tolerated and accepted in the community, based on its relation to that which is sacred for that community."

According to Bellah, Americans embrace a common "civil religion" with certain fundamental beliefs, values, holidays, and rituals, parallel to, or independent of, their chosen religion. Presidents have often served in central roles in civil religion, and the nation provides quasi-religious honors to its martyrs—such as Abraham Lincoln and the soldiers killed in the American Civil War. Historians have noted presidential level use of civil religion rhetoric in profoundly moving episodes such as World War II, the Civil Rights Movement, and the September 11th attacks.

In a survey of more than fifty years of American civil religion scholarship, Squiers identifies fourteen principal tenets of the American civil religion:

1. Filial piety
2. Reverence to certain sacred texts and symbols of the American civil religion (The Constitution, The Declaration of Independence, the flag, etc.)
3. The sanctity of American institutions
4. The belief in God or a deity
5. The idea that rights are divinely given
6. The notion that freedom comes from God through government
7. Governmental authority comes from God or a higher transcendent authority
8. The conviction that God can be known through the American experience
9. God is the supreme judge
10. God is sovereign
11. America's prosperity results from God's providence
12. America is a "city on a hill" or a beacon of hope and righteousness
13. The principle of sacrificial death and rebirth
14. America serves a higher purpose than self-interests

In an examination of over fifty years of political discourse, Squiers finds that filial piety, reference to certain sacred texts and symbols of the American civil religion, the belief in God or a deity, America is a "city on a hill" or a beacon of hope and righteousness, and America serves a higher purpose than self-interests are the most frequently referenced. He further found that there are no statistically significant differences in the amount of American civil religious language between Democrats and Republicans, incumbents and non-incumbents nor Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates.

This belief system has historically been used to reject nonconformist ideas and groups. Theorists such as Bellah hold that American civil religion can perform the religious functions of integration, legitimation, and prophecy, while other theorists, such as Richard Fenn, disagree.

Development of concept

Alexis de Tocqueville believed that Christianity was the source of the basic principles of liberal democracy, and the only religion capable of maintaining liberty in a democratic era. He was keenly aware of the mutual hatred between Christians and liberals in 19th-century France, rooted in the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. In France, Christianity was allied with the Old Regime before 1789 and the reactionary Bourbon Restoration of 1815-30. However he said Christianity was not antagonistic to democracy in the United States, where it was a bulwark against dangerous tendencies toward individualism and materialism, which would lead to atheism and tyranny.

Also important were the contributions of French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) and French sociologist Émile Durkheim (1858–1917).

The American case

Most students of American civil religion follow the basic Bellah/Durkheimian interpretation. Other sources of this idea include philosopher John Dewey who spoke of "common faith" (1934); sociologist Robin Murphy Williams' American Society: A Sociological Interpretation (1951) which stated there was a "common religion" in America; sociologist Lloyd Warner's analysis of the Memorial Day celebrations in "Yankee City" (1953 [1974]); historian Martin Marty's "religion in general" (1959); theologian Will Herberg who spoke of "the American Way of Life" (1960, 1974); historian Sidney Mead's "religion of the Republic" (1963); and British writer G. K. Chesterton, who said that the United States was "the only nation ... founded on a creed" and also coined the phrase "a nation with a soul of a church".

In the same period, several distinguished historians such as Yehoshua Arieli, Daniel Boorstin, and Ralph Gabriel "assessed the religious dimension of 'nationalism', the 'American creed', 'cultural religion' and the 'democratic faith'".

Premier sociologist Seymour Lipset (1963) referred to "Americanism" and the "American Creed" to characterize a distinct set of values that Americans hold with a quasi-religious fervor.

Today, according to social scientist Ronald Wimberley and William Swatos, there seems to be a firm consensus among social scientists that there is a part of Americanism that is especially religious in nature, which may be termed civil religion. But this religious nature is less significant than the "transcendent universal religion of the nation" which late eighteenth century French intellectuals such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Alexis de Tocqueville wrote about.

Evidence supporting Bellah

Ronald Wimberley (1976) and other researchers collected large surveys and factor analytic studies which gave support to Bellah's argument that civil religion is a distinct cultural phenomenon within American society which is not embodied in American politics or denominational religion.

Examples of civil religious beliefs are reflected in statements used in the research such as the following:

• "America is God's chosen nation today."
• "A president's authority ... is from God."
• "Social justice cannot only be based on laws; it must also come from religion."
• "God can be known through the experiences of the American people."
• "Holidays like the Fourth of July are religious as well as patriotic."
• "God Bless America"

Later research sought to determine who is civil religious. In a 1978 study by James Christenson and Ronald Wimberley, the researchers found that a wide cross section of American citizens have civil religious beliefs. In general though, college graduates and political or religious liberals appear to be somewhat less civil religious. Protestants and Catholics have the same level of civil religiosity. Religions that were created in the United States, the Latter Day Saints movement, Adventists, and Pentecostals, have the highest civil religiosity. Jews, Unitarians and those with no religious preference have the lowest civil religion. Even though there is variation in the scores, the "great majority" of Americans are found to share the types of civil religious beliefs which Bellah wrote about.

Further research found that civil religion plays a role in people's preferences for political candidates and policy positions. In 1980 Ronald Wimberley found that civil religious beliefs were more important than loyalties to a political party in predicting support for Nixon over McGovern with a sample of Sunday morning church goers who were surveyed near the election date and a general group of residents in the same community. In 1982 James Christenson and Ronald Wimberley found that civil religion was second only to occupation in predicting a person's political policy views.

Coleman has argued that civil religion is a widespread theme in history. He says it typically evolves in three phases: undifferentiation, state sponsorship in the period of modernization, differentiation. He supports his argument with comparative historical data from Japan, Imperial Rome, the Soviet Union, Turkey, France and The United States.

Civil religion in practice

American Revolution

The American Revolution was the main source of civil religion. It produced a Moses-like leader (George Washington), prophets (Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine), apostles (John Adams, Benjamin Franklin) and martyrs (Boston Massacre, Nathan Hale), as well as devils (Benedict Arnold), sacred places (Valley Forge), rituals (raising the Liberty Tree), flags (the Betsy Ross flag), sacred holidays (July 4th) and a holy scripture (The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution).

Ceremonies in the early Republic

The Apotheosis of Washington, as seen looking up from the capitol rotunda

The elitists who ran the Federalists were conscious of the need to boost voter identification with their party. Elections remained of central importance but for the rest of the political year celebrations, parades, festivals, and visual sensationalism were used. They employed multiple festivities, exciting parades, and even quasi-religious pilgrimages and "sacred" days that became incorporated into the American civil religion. George Washington was always its hero, and after his death he became a sort of demigod looking down from heaven to instill his blessings on the party.

At first the Federalists focused on commemoration of the ratification of the Constitution; they organized parades to demonstrate widespread popular support for the new Federalist Party. The parade organizers, incorporated secular versions of traditional religious themes and rituals, thereby fostering a highly visible celebration of the nation's new civil religion.

The Fourth of July became a semi-sacred day—a status it maintains in the 21st century. Its celebration in Boston proclaimed national over local patriotism, and included orations, dinners, militia musters, parades, marching bands, floats and fireworks. By 1800, the Fourth was closely identified with the Federalist party. Republicans were annoyed, and stage their own celebrations on the fourth—with rival parades sometimes clashing with each other. That generated even more excitement and larger crowds. After the collapse of the Federalists starting in 1815, the Fourth became a nonpartisan holiday.

President as leader of civil religion

Since the days of George Washington presidents have assumed one of several roles in American civil religion, and that role has helped shape the presidency. Linder argues that:

Throughout American history, the president has provided the leadership in the public faith. Sometimes he has functioned primarily as a national prophet, as did Abraham Lincoln. Occasionally he has served primarily as the nation's pastor, as did Dwight Eisenhower. At other times he has performed primarily as the high priest of the civil religion, as did Ronald Reagan. In prophetic civil religion, the president assesses the nation's actions in relation to transcendent values and calls upon the people to make sacrifices in times of crisis and to repent of their corporate sins when their behavior falls short of the national ideals. As the national pastor, he provides spiritual inspiration to the people by affirming American core values and urging them to appropriate those values, and by comforting them in their afflictions. In the priestly role, the president makes America itself the ultimate reference point. He leads the citizenry in affirming and celebrating the nation, and reminds them of the national mission, while at the same time glorifying and praising his political flock.

Charles W. Calhoun argues that in the 1880s the speeches of Benjamin Harrison display a rhetorical style that embraced American civic religion; indeed, Harrison was one of the credo's most adept presidential practitioners. Harrison was a leader whose application of Christian ethics to social and economic matters paved the way for the Social Gospel, the Progressive Movement and a national climate of acceptance regarding government action to resolve social problems.

Linder argues that President Bill Clinton's sense of civil religion was based on his Baptist background in Arkansas. Commentator William Safire noted of the 1992 presidential campaign that, "Never has the name of God been so frequently invoked, and never has this or any nation been so thoroughly and systematically blessed." Clinton speeches incorporated religious terminology that suggests the role of pastor rather than prophet or priest. With a universalistic outlook, he made no sharp distinction between the domestic and the foreign in presenting his vision of a world community of civil faith.

Brocker argues that Europeans have often mischaracterized the politics of President George W. Bush (2001–2009) as directly inspired by Protestant fundamentalism. However, in his speeches Bush mostly actually used civil religious metaphors and images and rarely used language specific to any Christian denomination. His foreign policy, says Bocker, was based on American security interests and not on any fundamentalist teachings.

Hammer says that in his 2008 campaign speeches candidate Barack Obama portrays the American nation as a people unified by a shared belief in the American Creed and sanctified by the symbolism of an American civil religion.

Would-be presidents likewise contributed to the rhetorical history of civil religion. The speeches of Daniel Webster were often memorized by student debaters, and his 1830 endorsement of "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable" was iconic.

Symbolism of the American flag

According to Adam Goodheart, the modern meaning of the American flag, and the reverence of many Americans towards it, was forged by Major Robert Anderson's fight in defense of the flag at the Battle of Fort Sumter, which opened the American Civil War in April 1861. During the war the flag was used throughout the Union to symbolize American nationalism and rejection of secessionism. Goodheart explains the flag was transformed into a sacred symbol of patriotism:

Before that day, the flag had served mostly as a military ensign or a convenient marking of American territory ... and displayed on special occasions like the Fourth of July. But in the weeks after Major Anderson's surprising stand, it became something different. Suddenly the Stars and Stripes flew ... from houses, from storefronts, from churches; above the village greens and college quads. ... [T]hat old flag meant something new. The abstraction of the Union cause was transfigured into a physical thing: strips of cloth that millions of people would fight for, and many thousands die for.

Soldiers and veterans

An important dimension is the role of the soldiers, ready to sacrifice their lives to preserve the nation. They are memorialized in many monuments and semi-sacred days, such as Veterans Day and Memorial Day. Historian Jonathan Ebel argues that the "soldier-savior" is a sort of Messiah, who embodies the synthesis of civil religion, and the Christian ideals of sacrifice and redemption. In Europe, there are numerous cemeteries exclusively for American soldiers who fought in world wars. They have become American sacred spaces.

Pacifists have made some sharp criticisms. For example, Kelly Denton-Borhaug, writing from the Moravian peace tradition, argues that the theme of "sacrifice" has fueled the rise of what she calls "U.S. war culture." The result is a diversion of attention from what she considers the militarism and the immoral, oppressive, sometimes barbaric conduct in the global American war on terror. However, some Protestant denominations such as the Churches of Christ, have largely turned away from pacifism to give greater support to patriotism and civil religion.

Pledge of Allegiance

Kao and Copulsky argue the concept of civil religion illuminates the popular constitutional debate over the Pledge of Allegiance. The function of the pledge has four aspects: preservationist, pluralist, priestly, and prophetic. The debate is not between those who believe in God and those who do not, but it is a dispute on the meaning and place of civil religion in America.

Cloud explores political oaths since 1787 and traces the tension between a need for national unity and a desire to affirm religious faith. He reviews major Supreme Court decisions involving the Pledge of Allegiance, including the contradictory Minersville School District v. Gobitis (1940) and West Virginia v. Barnette (1943) decisions. He argues that the Pledge was changed in 1954 during the Cold War to encourage school children to reject communism's atheistic philosophy by affirming belief in God.

School rituals

Adam Gamoran (1990) argues that civil religion in public schools can be seen in such daily rituals as the pledge of allegiance; in holiday observances, with activities such as music and art; and in the social studies, history and English curricula. Civil religion in schools plays a dual role: it socializes youth to a common set of understandings, but it also sets off subgroups of Americans whose backgrounds or beliefs prevent them from participating fully in civil religious ceremonies.

Ethnic minorities

The Bellah argument deals with mainstream beliefs, but other scholars have looked at minorities outside the mainstream, and typically distrusted or disparaged by the mainstream, which have developed their own version of U.S. civil religion.

White Southerners

Wilson, noting the historic centrality of religion in Southern identity, argues that when the White South was outside the national mainstream in the late 19th century, it created its own pervasive common civil religion heavy with mythology, ritual, and organization. Wilson says the "Lost Cause"—that is, defeat in a holy war—has left some southerners to face guilt, doubt, and the triumph of what they perceive as evil: in other words, to form a tragic sense of life.

Black and African Americans

Woodrum and Bell argue that black people demonstrate less civil religiosity than white people and that different predictors of civil religion operate among black and white people. For example, conventional religion positively influences white people's civil religion but negatively influences black peoples' civil religion. Woodrum and Bell interpret these results as a product of black American religious ethnogenesis and separatism.

Japanese Americans

Iwamura argues that the pilgrimages made by Japanese Americans to the sites of World War II-era internment camps have formed a Japanese American version of civil religion. Starting in 1969 the Reverend Sentoku Maeda and Reverend Soichi Wakahiro began pilgrimages to Manzanar National Historic Site in California. These pilgrimages included poetry readings, music, cultural events, a roll call of former internees, and a nondenominational ceremony with Protestant and Buddhist ministers and Catholic and Shinto priests. The event is designed to reinforce Japanese American cultural ties and to ensure that such injustices will never occur again.

Hispanic and Latino Americans

Mexican-American labor leader César Chávez, by virtue of having holidays, stamps, and other commemorations of his actions, has practically become a "saint" in American civil religion, according to León. He was raised in the Catholic tradition and using Catholic rhetoric. His "sacred acts," his political practices couched in Christian teachings, became influential to the burgeoning Chicano movement and strengthened his appeal. By acting on his moral convictions through nonviolent means, Chávez became sanctified in the national consciousness, says León.

Enshrined texts

The National Archives Building in Washington, DC.

Christian language, rhetoric, and values helped colonists to perceive their political system as superior to the corrupt British monarchy. Ministers' sermons were instrumental in promoting patriotism and in motivating the colonists to take action against the evils and corruption of the British government. Together with the semi-religious tone sometimes adopted by preachers and such leaders as George Washington, and the notion that God favored the patriot cause, this made the documents of the Founding Fathers suitable as almost-sacred texts.

The National Archives Building in Washington preserves and displays the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Pauline Maier describes these texts as enshrined in massive, bronze-framed display cases. While political scientists, sociologists, and legal scholars study the Constitution and how it is used in American society, on the other hand, historians are concerned with putting themselves back into a time and place, in context. It would be anachronistic for them to look at the documents of the "Charters of Freedom" and see America's modern "civic religion" because of "how much Americans have transformed very secular and temporal documents into sacred scriptures". The whole business of erecting a shrine for the worship of the Declaration of Independence strikes some academic critics looking from point of view of the 1776 or 1789 America as "idolatrous, and also curiously at odds with the values of the Revolution." It was suspicious of religious iconographic practices. At the beginning, in 1776, it was not meant to be that at all.

On the 1782 Great Seal of the United States, the date of the Declaration of Independence and the words under it signify the beginning of the "new American Era" on earth. Though the inscription, Novus ordo seclorum, does not translate from the Latin as "secular", it also does not refer to a new order of heaven. It is a reference to generations of society in the western hemisphere, the millions of generations to come.

Even from the vantage point of a new nation only ten to twenty years after the drafting of the Constitution, the Framers themselves differed in their assessments of its significance. Washington in his Farewell Address pleaded that "the Constitution be sacredly maintained."' He echoed Madison in "Federalist No. 49" that citizen "veneration" of the Constitution might generate the intellectual stability needed to maintain even the "wisest and freest governments" amidst conflicting loyalties. But there is also a rich tradition of dissent from "Constitution worship". By 1816, Jefferson could write that "some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched." But he saw imperfections and imagined that potentially, there could be others, believing as he did that "institutions must advance also".

Regarding the United States Constitution, the position of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) is that it is a divinely inspired document.

Seventh-Day Adventists

While the civil religion has been widely accepted by practically all denominations, one group has always stood against it. Seventh-Day Adventists deliberately pose as "heretics", so to speak, and refuse to treat Sundays as special, due to their adherence to the Ten Commandments dictating that Saturday is the holy day. Indeed, says Bull, the denomination has defined its identity in contradistinction to precisely those elements of the host culture that have constituted civil religion.

Making a nation

The American identity has an ideological connection to these "Charters of Freedom". Samuel P. Huntington discusses common connections for most peoples in nation-states, a national identity as product of common ethnicity, ancestry and experience, common language, culture and religion. Levinson argues:

It is the fate of the United States, however, to be different from "most peoples," for here national identity is based not on shared Proustian remembrances, but rather on the willed affirmation of what Huntington refers to as the "American creed," a set of overt political commitments that includes an emphasis on individual rights, majority rule, and a constitutional order limiting governmental power.

The creed, according to Huntington, is made up of (a) individual rights, (b) majority rule, and (c) a constitutional order of limited government power. American independence from Britain was not based on cultural difference, but on the adoption of principles found in the Declaration. Whittle Johnson in The Yale Review sees a sort of "covenanting community" of freedom under law, which, "transcending the 'natural' bonds of race, religion and class, itself takes on transcendent importance".

Becoming a naturalized citizen of the United States requires passing a test covering a basic understanding of the Declaration, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, and taking an oath to support the U.S. Constitution. Hans Kohn described the United States Constitution as "unlike any other: it represents the lifeblood of the American nation, its supreme symbol and manifestation. It is so intimately welded with the national existence itself that the two have become inseparable." Indeed, abolishing the Constitution in Huntington's view would abolish the United States, it would "destroy the basis of community, eliminating the nation, [effecting] ... a return to nature."

As if to emphasize the lack of any alternative "faith" to the American nation, Thomas Grey in his article "The Constitution as scripture", contrasted those traditional societies with divinely appointed rulers enjoying heavenly mandates for social cohesion with that of the United States. He pointed out that Article VI, third clause, requires all political figures, both federal and state, "be bound by oath or affirmation to support this Constitution, but no religious test shall ever be required ..." This was a major break not only with past British practice commingling authority of state and religion, but also with that of most American states when the Constitution was written.

Escape clause. Whatever the oversights and evils the modern reader may see in the original Constitution, the Declaration that "all men are created equal"—in their rights—informed the Constitution in such a way that Frederick Douglass in 1860 could label the Constitution, if properly understood, as an antislavery document. He held that "the constitutionality of slavery can be made out only by disregarding the plain and common-sense reading to the Constitution itself. [T]he Constitution will afford slavery no protection when it shall cease to be administered by slaveholders," a reference to the Supreme Court majority at the time. With a change of that majority, there was American precedent for judicial activism in Constitutional interpretation, including the Massachusetts Supreme Court, which had ended slavery there in 1783.

 

Accumulations of Amendments under Article V of the Constitution and judicial review of Congressional and state law have fundamentally altered the relationship between U.S. citizens and their governments. Some scholars refer to the coming of a "second Constitution" with the Thirteenth Amendment, we are all free, the Fourteenth, we are all citizens, the Fifteenth, men vote, and the Nineteenth, women vote. The Fourteenth Amendment has been interpreted so as to require States to respect citizen rights in the same way that the Constitution has required the Federal government to respect them. So much so, that in 1972, the U.S. Representative from Texas, Barbara Jordan, could affirm, "My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total ...".

After discussion of the Article V provision for change in the Constitution as a political stimulus to serious national consensus building, Sanford Levinson performed a thought experiment which was suggested at the bicentennial celebration of the Constitution in Philadelphia. If one were to sign the Constitution today, whatever our reservations might be, knowing what we do now, and transported back in time to its original shortcomings, great and small, "signing the Constitution commits one not to closure but only to a process of becoming, and to taking responsibility for the political vision toward which I, joined I hope, with others, strive."

Know Nothing

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Know Nothing
Uncle Sam's youngest son, Citizen Know Nothing, an 1854 print
Other name	Native American Party American Party
First Leader	Lewis Charles Levin
Founded	1844
Dissolved	1860
Preceded by	Whig Party
Succeeded by	Constitutional Union Party
Headquarters	New York City
Secret wing	Order of the Star Spangled Banner
Ideology	American nationalism Anti-Catholicism Nativism Republicanism Right-wing populism White nationalism
Religion	Protestantism colors=     Red      White      Blue
Politics of United States Political parties Elections

The Know Nothing movement, formally known as the Native American Party, and the American Party from 1855 onwards, was a nativist political party and movement in the United States, which operated nationwide in the mid-1850s. It was primarily an anti-Catholic, anti-immigration, and xenophobic movement, originally starting as a secret society. The Know Nothing movement also briefly emerged as a major political party in the form of the American Party. Adherents to the movement were to simply reply "I know nothing" when asked about its specifics by outsiders, providing the group with its common name.

Supporters of the Know Nothing movement believed that an alleged "Romanist" conspiracy was being planned to subvert civil and religious liberty in the United States, and sought to politically organize native-born Protestants in what they described as a defense of their traditional religious and political values. The Know Nothing movement is remembered for this theme because of fears by Protestants that Catholic priests and bishops would control a large bloc of voters. In most places, the ideology and influence of the Know Nothing movement lasted only a year or two before disintegrating due to weak and inexperienced local leaders, a lack of publicly declared national leaders, and a deep split over the issue of slavery. In the South, the party did not emphasize anti-Catholicism as frequently as it did in the North, but it became the main alternative to the dominant Democratic Party.

The collapse of the Whig Party after the passage of the Kansas–Nebraska Act left an opening for the emergence of a new major political party in opposition to the Democratic Party. The Know Nothing movement managed to elect congressman Nathaniel P. Banks of Massachusetts and several other individuals in the 1854 elections into office, and subsequently coalesced into a new political party known as the American Party. Particularly in the South, the American Party served as a vehicle for politicians opposed to the Democrats. Many also hoped that it would stake out a middle ground between the pro-slavery positions of Democratic politicians and the radical anti-slavery positions of the rapidly emerging Republican Party. The American Party nominated former President Millard Fillmore in the 1856 presidential election, although he kept quiet about his membership, and personally refrained from supporting the Know Nothing movement's activities and ideology. Fillmore received 21.5% of the popular vote in the 1856 presidential election, finishing behind the Democratic and Republican nominees.

The party entered a period of rapid decline after Millard Fillmore's loss in the 1856 election, and the controversial Dred Scott v. Sandford decision made by the Supreme Court in 1857 further galvanized opposition to slavery in the North, causing many former Know Nothings to join the Republicans. Most of the remaining members of the party supported the Constitutional Union Party in the 1860 presidential election, which subsequently lost to Abraham Lincoln of the Republican Party, and said defeat ultimately led to the final dissolution of the Know Nothing movement that same year.

History

Anti-Catholicism had been a factor in colonial America but played a minor role in American politics until the arrival of large numbers of Irish and German Catholics in the 1840s. It then reemerged in nativist attacks on Catholic immigration. It appeared in New York City politics as early as 1843 under the banner of the American Republican Party. The movement quickly spread to nearby states using that name or Native American Party or variants of it. They succeeded in a number of local and Congressional elections, notably in 1844 in Philadelphia, where the anti-Catholic orator Lewis Charles Levin, who went on to be the first Jewish congressman, was elected Representative from Pennsylvania's 1st district. In the early 1850s, numerous secret orders grew up, of which the Order of United Americans and the Order of the Star Spangled Banner came to be the most important. They emerged in New York in the early 1850s as a secret order that quickly spread across the North, reaching non-Catholics, particularly those who were lower middle class or skilled workmen.

Name

The name "Know Nothing" originated in the semi-secret organization of the party. When a member was asked about his activities, he was supposed to reply, "I know nothing." Outsiders derisively called them "Know Nothings", and the name stuck. In 1855, the Know Nothings first entered politics under the American Party label.

Underlying issues

The immigration of large numbers of Irish and German Catholics to the United States in the period between 1830 and 1860 made religious differences between Catholics and Protestants a political issue. Violence occasionally erupted at the polls. Protestants alleged that Pope Pius IX had put down the failed liberal Revolutions of 1848 and that he was an opponent of liberty, democracy and republicanism. One Boston minister described Catholicism as "the ally of tyranny, the opponent of material prosperity, the foe of thrift, the enemy of the railroad, the caucus, and the school". These fears encouraged conspiracy theories regarding papal intentions of subjugating the United States through a continuing influx of Catholics controlled by Irish bishops obedient to and personally selected by the Pope.

In 1849, an oath-bound secret society, the Order of the Star Spangled Banner, was created by Charles B. Allen in New York City. At its inception, the Order of the Star Spangled Banner only had about 36 members. Fear of Catholic immigration led to a dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party, whose leadership in many cities included Catholics of Irish descent. Activists formed secret groups, coordinating their votes and throwing their weight behind candidates sympathetic to their cause:

Immigration during the first five years of the 1850s reached a level five times greater than a decade earlier. Most of the new arrivals were poor Catholic peasants or laborers from Ireland and Germany who crowded into the tenements of large cities. Crime and welfare costs soared. Cincinnati's crime rate, for example, tripled between 1846 and 1853 and its murder rate increased sevenfold. Boston's expenditures for poor relief rose threefold during the same period.

— James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 131

Rise

In spring 1854, the Know Nothings carried Boston and Salem, Massachusetts, and other New England cities. They swept the state of Massachusetts in the fall 1854 elections, their biggest victory. The Whig candidate for mayor of Philadelphia, editor Robert T. Conrad, was soon revealed as a Know Nothing as he promised to crack down on crime, close saloons on Sundays and to appoint only native-born Americans to office—he won by a landslide. In Washington, D.C., Know Nothing candidate John T. Towers defeated incumbent Mayor John Walker Maury, causing opposition of such proportion that the Democrats, Whigs, and Freesoilers in the capital united as the "Anti-Know-Nothing Party". In New York, in a four-way race the Know Nothing candidate ran third with 26%. After the 1854 elections, they exerted decisive influence in Maine, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and California, but historians are unsure about the accuracy of this information due to the secrecy of the party, as all parties were in turmoil and the anti-slavery and prohibition issues overlapped with nativism in complex and confusing ways. They helped elect Stephen Palfrey Webb as mayor of San Francisco and J. Neely Johnson as governor of California. Nathaniel P. Banks was elected to Congress as a Know Nothing candidate, but after a few months he aligned with Republicans. A coalition of Know Nothings, Republicans and other members of Congress opposed to the Democratic Party elected Banks to the position of Speaker of the House.

The results of the 1854 elections were so favorable to the Know Nothings, up to then an informal movement with no centralized organization, that they formed officially as a political party called the American Party, which attracted many members of the now nearly defunct Whig party as well as a significant number of Democrats. Membership in the American Party increased dramatically, from 50,000 to an estimated one million plus in a matter of months during that year.

The historian Tyler Anbinder concluded:

The key to Know Nothing success in 1854 was the collapse of the second party system, brought about primarily by the demise of the Whig Party. The Whig Party, weakened for years by internal dissent and chronic factionalism, was nearly destroyed by the Kansas–Nebraska Act. Growing anti-party sentiment, fueled by anti-slavery sentiment as well as temperance and nativism, also contributed to the disintegration of the party system. The collapsing second party system gave the Know Nothings a much larger pool of potential converts than was available to previous nativist organizations, allowing the Order to succeed where older nativist groups had failed.

In San Francisco, a Know Nothing chapter was founded in 1854 to oppose Chinese immigration—members included a judge of the state supreme court, who ruled that no Chinese person could testify as a witness against a white man in court.

Fillmore–Donelson campaign poster

In the spring of 1855, Know Nothing candidate Levi Boone was elected mayor of Chicago and barred all immigrants from city jobs. Abraham Lincoln was strongly opposed to the principles of the Know Nothing movement, but did not denounce it publicly because he needed the votes of its membership to form a successful anti-slavery coalition in Illinois. Ohio was the only state where the party gained strength in 1855. Their Ohio success seems to have come from winning over immigrants, especially German-American Lutherans and Scots-Irish Presbyterians, both hostile to Catholicism. In Alabama, Know Nothings were a mix of former Whigs, discontented Democrats and other political outsiders who favored state aid to build more railroads. Virginia attracted national attention in its tempestuous 1855 gubernatorial election. Democrat Henry Alexander Wise won by convincing state voters that Know Nothings were in bed with Northern abolitionists. With the victory by Wise, the movement began to collapse in the South.

Know Nothings scored victories in Northern state elections in 1854, winning control of the legislature in Massachusetts and polling 40% of the vote in Pennsylvania. Although most of the new immigrants lived in the North, resentment and anger against them was national and the American Party initially polled well in the South, attracting the votes of many former southern Whigs.

The party name gained wide but brief popularity. Nativism became a new American rage: Know Nothing candy, Know Nothing tea, and Know Nothing toothpicks appeared. Stagecoaches were dubbed "The Know Nothing". In Trescott, Maine, a shipowner dubbed his new 700-ton freighter Know Nothing. The party was occasionally referred to, contemporaneously, in a slightly pejorative shortening, "Knism."

Leadership and legislation

Historian John Mulkern has examined the party's success in sweeping to almost complete control of the Massachusetts legislature after its 1854 landslide victory. He finds the new party was populist and highly democratic, hostile to wealth, elites and to expertise, and deeply suspicious of outsiders, especially Catholics. The new party's voters were concentrated in the rapidly growing industrial towns, where Yankee workers faced direct competition with new Irish immigrants. Whereas the Whig Party was strongest in high income districts, the Know Nothing electorate was strongest in the poor districts. They expelled the traditional upper-class, closed, political leadership, especially the lawyers and merchants. In their stead, they elected working class men, farmers and a large number of teachers and ministers. Replacing the moneyed elite were men who seldom owned $10,000 in property.

Nationally, the new party leadership showed incomes, occupation, and social status that were about average. Few were wealthy, according to detailed historical studies of once-secret membership rosters. Fewer than 10% were unskilled workers who might come in direct competition with Irish laborers. They enlisted few farmers, but on the other hand they included many merchants and factory owners. The party's voters were by no means all native-born Americans, for it won more than a fourth of the German and British Protestants in numerous state elections. It especially appealed to Protestants such as the Lutherans, Dutch Reformed and Presbyterians.

The most aggressive and innovative legislation came out of Massachusetts, where the new party controlled all but three of the 400 seats—only 35 had any previous legislative experience. The Massachusetts legislature in 1855 passed a series of reforms that "burst the dam against change erected by party politics, and released a flood of reforms." Historian Stephen Taylor says:

[In addition to nativist legislation], the party also distinguished itself by its opposition to slavery, support for an expansion of the rights of women, regulation of industry, and support of measures designed to improve the status of working people.

It passed legislation to regulate railroads, insurance companies and public utilities. It funded free textbooks for the public schools and raised the appropriations for local libraries and for the school for the blind. Purification of Massachusetts against divisive social evils was a high priority. The legislature set up the state's first reform school for juvenile delinquents while trying to block the importation of supposedly subversive government documents and academic books from Europe. It upgraded the legal status of wives, giving them more property rights and more rights in divorce courts. It passed harsh penalties on speakeasies, gambling houses and bordellos. It passed prohibition legislation with penalties that were so stiff—such as six months in prison for serving one glass of beer—that juries refused to convict defendants. Many of the reforms were quite expensive; state spending rose 45% on top of a 50% hike in annual taxes on cities and towns. This extravagance angered the taxpayers, and few Know Nothings were reelected.

The highest priority included attacks on the civil rights of Irish Catholic immigrants. After this, state courts lost the power to process applications for citizenship and public schools had to require compulsory daily reading of the Protestant Bible (which the nativists were sure would transform the Catholic children). The governor disbanded the Irish militias and replaced Irish holding state jobs with Protestants. It failed to reach the two-thirds vote needed to pass a state constitutional amendment to restrict voting and office holding to men who had resided in Massachusetts for at least 21 years. The legislature then called on Congress to raise the requirement for naturalization from five years to 21 years, but Congress never acted. The most dramatic move by the Know Nothing legislature was to appoint an investigating committee designed to prove widespread sexual immorality underway in Catholic convents. The press had a field day following the story, especially when it was discovered that the key reformer was using committee funds to pay for a prostitute. The legislature shut down its committee, ejected the reformer, and saw its investigation become a laughing stock.

The Know Nothings also dominated politics in Rhode Island, where in 1855 William W. Hoppin held the governorship and five out of every seven votes went to the party, which dominated the Rhode Island legislature. Local newspapers such as The Providence Journal fueled anti-Irish and anti-Catholic sentiment.

Violence

Know Nothing Party ticket naming party candidates for state and county offices (at the bottom of the page are voting instructions)

 

Fearful that Catholics were flooding the polls with non-citizens, local activists threatened to stop them. 

On 6 August 1855, rioting broke out in Louisville, Kentucky, during a hotly contested race for the office of governor. Twenty-two were killed and many injured. This "Bloody Monday" riot was not the only violent riot between Know Nothings and Catholics in 1855. In Baltimore, the mayoral elections of 1856, 1857, and 1858 were all marred by violence and well-founded accusations of ballot-rigging. In the coastal town of Ellsworth Maine in 1854, Know Nothings were associated with the tarring and feathering of a Catholic priest, Jesuit Johannes Bapst. They also burned down a Catholic church in Bath, Maine.

South

In the Southern United States, the American Party was composed chiefly of ex-Whigs looking for a vehicle to fight the dominant Democratic Party and worried about both the pro-slavery extremism of the Democrats and the emergence of the anti-slavery Republican party in the North. In the South as a whole, the American Party was strongest among former Unionist Whigs. States-rightist Whigs shunned it, enabling the Democrats to win most of the South. Whigs supported the American Party because of their desire to defeat the Democrats, their unionist sentiment, their anti-immigrant attitudes and the Know Nothing neutrality on the slavery issue.

David T. Gleeson notes that many Irish Catholics in the South feared the arrival of the Know-Nothing movement portended a serious threat. He argues:

The southern Irish, who had seen the dangers of Protestant bigotry in Ireland, had the distinct feeling that the Know-Nothings were an American manifestation of that phenomenon. Every migrant, no matter how settled or prosperous, also worried that this virulent strain of nativism threatened his or her hard-earned gains in the South and integration into its society. Immigrants fears were unjustified, however, because the national debate over slavery and its expansion, not nativism or anti-Catholicism, was the major reason for Know-Nothing success in the South. The southerners who supported the Know-Nothings did so, for the most part, because they thought the Democrats who favored the expansion of slavery might break up the Union.

In 1855, the American Party challenged the Democrats' dominance. In Alabama, the Know Nothings were a mix of former Whigs, malcontented Democrats and other political misfits; they favored state aid to build more railroads. In the fierce campaign, the Democrats argued that Know Nothings could not protect slavery from Northern abolitionists. The Know Nothing American Party disintegrated soon after losing in 1855.

In Louisiana and Maryland, the Know Nothings enlisted native-born Catholics. Know Nothing congressman John Edward Bouligny was the only member of the Louisiana congressional delegation to refuse to resign his seat after the state seceded from the Union. In Maryland, the party's influence lasted at least through the Civil War: the American Party's Governor and later Senator Thomas Holliday Hicks, Representative Henry Winter Davis, and Senator Anthony Kennedy, with his brother, former Representative John Pendleton Kennedy, all supported the United States in a State that bordered the Confederate states. Historian Michael F. Holt argues that "Know Nothingism originally grew in the South for the same reasons it spread in the North—nativism, anti-Catholicism, and animosity toward unresponsive politicos—not because of conservative Unionism". Holt cites William B. Campbell, former governor of Tennessee, who wrote in January 1855: "I have been astonished at the widespread feeling in favor of their principles—to wit, Native Americanism and anti-Catholicism—it takes everywhere".

Decline

Results by county indicating the percentage for Fillmore in each county

The party declined rapidly in the North after 1855. In the presidential election of 1856, it was bitterly divided over slavery. The main faction supported the ticket of presidential nominee Millard Fillmore and vice presidential nominee Andrew Jackson Donelson. Fillmore, a former President, had been a Whig and Donelson was the nephew of Democratic President Andrew Jackson, so the ticket was designed to appeal to loyalists from both major parties, winning 23% of the popular vote and carrying one state, Maryland, with eight electoral votes. Fillmore did not win enough votes to block Democrat James Buchanan from the White House. During this time, Nathaniel Banks decided he was not as strongly for the anti-immigrant platform as the party wanted him to be, so he left the Know Nothing Party for the more anti-slavery Republican Party. He contributed to the decline of the Know Nothing Party by taking two-thirds of its members with him.

Many were appalled by the Know Nothings. Abraham Lincoln expressed his own disgust with the political party in a private letter to Joshua Speed, written 24 August 1855. Lincoln never publicly attacked the Know Nothings, whose votes he needed:

I am not a Know-Nothing—that is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except negroes." When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equals, except negroes and foreigners and Catholics." When it comes to that I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty—to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.

Historian Allan Nevins, writing about the turmoil preceding the American Civil War, states that Millard Fillmore was never a Know Nothing nor a nativist. Fillmore was out of the country when the presidential nomination came and had not been consulted about running. Nevins further states:

[Fillmore] was not a member of the party; he had never attended an American [Know-Nothing] gathering. By no spoken or written word had he indicated a subscription to American [Party] tenets.

After the Supreme Court's controversial Dred Scott v. Sandford ruling in 1857, most of the anti-slavery members of the American Party joined the Republican Party. The pro-slavery wing of the American Party remained strong on the local and state levels in a few southern states, but by the 1860 election they were no longer a serious national political movement. Most of their remaining members supported the Constitutional Union Party in 1860.

American ancestry

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_ancestry 

American ancestry

Total population
21,227,906 6.6% of the US population in 2017
Regions with significant populations
Southern United States and Midwestern United States
Languages
English (American English dialects)
Religion
Predominantly Christianity (Mainly Protestantism)
Related ethnic groups
American ancestries

American ancestry refers to people in the United States who self-identify their ancestral origin or descent as "American", rather than the more common officially recognized racial and ethnic groups that make up the bulk of the American people. The majority of these respondents are visibly White Americans, who either simply use this response as a political statement or are far removed from and no longer self-identify with their original ethnic ancestral origins. The latter response is attributed to a multitude of generational distance from ancestral lineages, and these tend be of English, Scotch-Irish, or other British ancestries, as demographers have observed that those ancestries tend to be seriously undercounted in U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey ancestry self-reporting estimates. Although U.S. Census data indicates "American ancestry" is commonly self-reported in the Deep South and Upland South, the vast majority of Americans and expatriates do not equate their nationality with ancestry, race or ethnicity, but with citizenship and allegiance.

Historical reference

The earliest attested use of the term "American" to identify an ancestral or cultural identity dates to the late 1500s, with the term signifying "the indigenous peoples discovered in the Western Hemisphere by Europeans." In the following century, the term "American" was extended as a reference to colonists of European descent. The Oxford English Dictionary identifies this secondary meaning as "historical" and states that the term "American" today "chiefly [means] a native (birthright) or citizen of the United States."

American westward expansion is idealized in Emanuel Leutze's famous painting Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way (1861). The title of the painting, from a 1726 poem by Bishop Berkeley, was a phrase often quoted in the era of "manifest destiny".

 

President Theodore Roosevelt asserted that an "American race" had been formed on the American frontier, one distinct from other ethnic groups, such as the Anglo-Saxons. He believed, "The conquest and settlement by the whites of the Indian lands was necessary to the greatness of the race...." "We are making a new race, a new type, in this country." Roosevelt's "race" beliefs certainly weren't unique in the 19th and early 20th century. Eric Kaufmann has suggested that American nativism has been explained primarily in psychological and economic terms to the neglect of a crucial cultural and ethnic dimension. Kauffman contends American nativism cannot be understood without reference to the theorem of the age that an "American" national ethnic group had taken shape prior to the large-scale immigration of the mid-19th century.

Nativism gained its name from the "Native American" parties of the 1840s and 1850s. In this context "Native" does not mean indigenous or American Indian but rather those descended from the inhabitants of the original Thirteen Colonies (Colonial American ancestry). These "Old Stock Americans", primarily English Protestants, saw Catholic immigrants as a threat to traditional American republican values, as they were loyal to the papacy.

Flag of the Know Nothing or American Party, c. 1850

Nativist outbursts occurred in the Northeast from the 1830s to the 1850s, primarily in response to a surge of Catholic immigration. The Order of United American Mechanics was founded as a nativist fraternity, following the Philadelphia nativist riots of the preceding spring and summer, in December 1844. The New York City anti-Irish, anti-German, anti-Catholic secret society the Order of the Star Spangled Banner was formed in 1848. Popularised nativist movements included the Know Nothing or American Party of the 1850s and the Immigration Restriction League of the 1890s. Nativism would eventually influence Congress; in 1924, legislation limiting immigration from Southern and Eastern European countries was ratified, while quantifying previous formal and informal anti-Asian previsions, such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907.

Modern usage

Statistical data

According to U.S. Census Bureau; "Ancestry refers to a person's ethnic origin or descent, 'roots,' or heritage, or the place of birth of the person or the person's parents or ancestors before their arrival in the United States".

The plurality (not majority) ancestry background in each county in the US in 2000:
German English Norwegian Dutch Finnish Irish French Italian
Mexican Native Spanish American African American Puerto Rican

According to 2000 U.S census data, an increasing number of United States citizens identify simply as "American" on the question of ancestry. The Census Bureau reports the number of people in the United States who reported "American" and no other ancestry increased from 12.4 million in 1990 to 20.2 million in 2000. This increase represents the largest numerical growth of any ethnic group in the United States during the 1990s.

In the 1980 census, 26% of United States residents cited that they were of English ancestry, making them the largest group at the time. Slightly more than half of these individuals would cite that they were of "American" ancestry on subsequent censuses when the option to do so was made available, with areas where "American" ancestry predominates on the 2000 census corresponding to places where "English" predominated on the 1980 census.

In the 2000 United States Census, 6.9% of the American population chose to self-identify itself as having "American ancestry". The four states in which a plurality of the population reported American ancestry were Arkansas (15.7%), Kentucky (20.7%), Tennessee (17.3%), and West Virginia (18.7%). Sizable percentages of the populations of Alabama (16.8%), Mississippi (14.0%), North Carolina (13.7%), South Carolina (13.7%), Georgia (13.3%), and Indiana (11.8%) also reported American ancestry.

Map showing areas in red with high concentration of people who self-report as having "American" ancestry in 2000

In the Southern United States as a whole, 11.2% reported "American" ancestry, second only to African American. American was the fourth most common ancestry reported in the Midwest (6.5%) and West (4.1%). All Southern states except for Delaware, Maryland, Florida, and Texas reported 10% or more American, but outside the South, only Missouri and Indiana did so. American was in the top five ancestries reported in all Southern states except for Delaware, in four Midwestern states bordering the South (Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, and Ohio) as well as Iowa, and six Northwestern states (Colorado, Idaho, Oregon, Utah, Washington, Wyoming), but only one Northeastern state, Maine. The pattern of areas with high levels of American is similar to that of areas with high levels of not reporting any national ancestry.

In the 2014 American Community Survey, German Americans (14.4%), Irish Americans (10.4%), English Americans (7.6%) and Italian Americans (5.4%) were the four largest self-reported European ancestry groups in the United States, forming 37.8% of the total population. However, English, Scotch-Irish, and British American demography is considered to be seriously undercounted, as the 6.9% of U.S. Census respondents who self-report and identify simply as "American" are primarily of these ancestries.

Academic analysis

Reynolds Farley writes that "we may now be in an era of optional ethnicity, in which no simple census question will distinguish those who identify strongly with a specific European group from those who report symbolic or imagined ethnicity."

Stanley Lieberson and Mary C. Waters write: "As whites become increasingly distant in generations and time from their immigrant ancestors, the tendency to distort, or remember selectively, one's ethnic origins increases.... [E]thnic categories are social phenomena that over the long run are constantly being redefined and reformulated." Mary C. Waters contends that white Americans of European origin are afforded a wide range of choice: "In a sense, they are constantly given an actual choice—they can either identify themselves with their ethnic ancestry or they can 'melt' into the wider society and call themselves American."

Professors Anthony Daniel Perez and Charles Hirschman write: "European national origins are still common among whites—almost 3 of 5 whites name one or more European countries in response to the ancestry question. ... However, a significant share of whites respond that they are simply "American" or leave the ancestry question blank on their census forms. Ethnicity is receding from the consciousness of many white Americans. Because national origins do not count for very much in contemporary America, many whites are content with a simplified Americanized racial identity. The loss of specific ancestral attachments among many white Americans also results from high patterns of intermarriage and ethnic blending among whites of different European stocks."