Another sign of the times was the sympathy manifested for the operations of what was called the Underground Railroad.  It was, of course, not a railroad at all, but an organization by which slaves escaping from their masters were aided in getting across the free states to Canada.

%391.  Breaking up of Old Parties.%—­Thus matters stood when, in 1856, the time came to elect a President, and found the old parties badly disorganized.  The political events of four years had produced great changes.  The death of Clay[1] and Webster[2] deprived the Whigs of their oldest and greatest leaders.  The earnest support that party gave to the Compromise of 1850 and the execution of the fugitive-slave law estranged thousands of voters in the free states.  The Kansas-Nebraska Bill, opposed as it was by every Northern Whig, completed the ruin and left the party a wreck.

[Footnote 1:  June 29, 1852.]

[Footnote 2:  October 24, 1852.]

But the Democrats had also suffered because of the Kansas-Nebraska law and the repeal of the Compromise of 1820.  No anti-extension-of-slavery Democrat could longer support the old party.  Thousands had therefore broken away, and, acting with the dissatisfied Whigs, formed an unorganized opposition known as “Anti-Nebraska men.”

%392.  The Movement against Immigrants.%—­Many old Whigs, however, could not bring themselves to vote with Democrats.  These joined the American or Know-nothing party.  From the close of the Revolution there had never been a year when a greater or less number of foreigners did not come to our shores.  After 1820 the numbers who came each twelvemonth grew larger and larger, till they reached 30,000 in 1830, and 60,000 in 1836, while in the decade 1830-1840 more than 500,000 immigrants landed at New York city alone.

As the newcomers hurried westward into the cities of the Mississippi valley, the native population was startled by the appearance of men who often could not speak our language.  In Cincinnati in 1840 one half the voters were of foreign birth.  The cry was now raised that our institutions, our liberties, our system of government, were at the mercy of men from the monarchical countries of Europe.  A demand was made for a change in the naturalization law, so that no foreigner could become a citizen till he had lived here twenty-one years.

%393.  The American Republicans or Native Americans.%—­Neither the Whigs nor the Democrats would endorse this demand, so the people of Louisiana in 1841 called a state convention and founded the American Republican, or, as it was soon called, the Native American party.  Its principles were

1.  Put none but native Americans in office.

2.  Require a residence of twenty-one years in this country before naturalization.

3.  Keep the Bible in the schools.

4.  Protect from abuse the proceedings necessary to get naturalization papers.

As the members would not tell what the secrets of this party were, and very often would not say whom they were going to vote for, and when questioned would answer “I don’t know,” it got the name of “Know-nothing” party.[1]