The Know-Nothing Party in Massachusetts: The Rise and Fall of A People's Movement (review)

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 particularly 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 272CIVIL WAR HISTORY 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 urbanrooted populist reforms demands, as well as its natural nativism. "The true essence of Know-Nothingism," therefore, went well beyond appearance 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 emergence 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 KnowNothing 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...