No doubt the politician who cultivated “the Irish vote” or “the German vote,” was obeying no higher law than his own interests; but his activities did much to promote that fusion of heterogeneous elements which has been one of the most extraordinary phenomena of American society.  With the disappearance of the Whig party, one of the two great agencies in the disciplining and educating of the immigrant was lost.

For a time the Native American party seemed likely to take the place of the moribund Whig party.  Many Whigs whose loyalty had grown cold but who would not go over to the enemy, took refuge in the new party.  But Native Americanism had no enduring strength.  Its tenets and its methods were in flat contradiction to true American precedents.  Greeley was right when he said of the new party, “It would seem as devoid of the elements of persistence as an anti-cholera or an anti-potato-rot party would be.”  By its avowed hostility to Catholics and foreigners, by its insistence upon America for Americans, and by its secrecy, it forfeited all real claims to succeed the Whig party as a national organization.

After the downfall of the Whig party, then, the Democratic party stood alone as a truly national party, preserving the integrity of its national organization and the bulk of its legitimate members.  But the events of President Pierce’s administration threatened to be its undoing.  If the Kansas-Nebraska bill served to unite outwardly the Northern and Southern wings of the party, it served also to crystallize those anti-slavery elements which had hitherto been held in solution.  An anti-Nebraska coalition was the outcome.  Out of this opposition sprang eventually the Republican party, which was, therefore, in its inception, national neither in its organization nor in its membership.

For “Know-Nothingism,” as Native Americanism was derisively called, Douglas had exhibited the liveliest antipathy.  Shortly after the triumph of the Know-Nothings in the municipal elections of Philadelphia, he was called upon to give the Independence Day address in the historic Independence Square.[508] With an audacity rarely equalled, he seized the occasion to defend the great principle of self-government as incorporated in the Nebraska bill, just become law, and to beard Know-Nothingism in its den.  Under guise of defending national institutions and American principles, he turned his oration into what was virtually the first campaign speech of the year in behalf of Democracy.  Never before were the advantages of a party name so apparent.  Under his skillful touch the cause of popular government, democracy, religious and civil liberty, became confounded with the cause of Democracy, the only party of the nation which stood opposed to “the allied forces of Abolitionism, Whigism, Nativeism, and religious intolerance, under whatever name or on whatever field they may present themselves."[509]

There can be no doubt that Douglas voiced his inmost feeling, when he declared that “to proscribe a man in this country on account of his birthplace or religious faith is revolting to our sense of justice and right."[510] In his defense of religious toleration he rose to heights of real eloquence.