Know-Nothings

Cultural  

1. A party opposed to the holding of public office by immigrants or Roman Catholics. The Know-Nothings, also known as “nativists,” insisted that only true, “native” Americans should serve in the government. The party was quite successful in the 1850s but split over the slavery question. Its official name was the American party. It picked up the “Know-Nothing” tag because its members, maintaining secrecy about the party's activities, customarily answered questions with, “I know nothing.”

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Today, the term know-nothing is usually applied to bigots.

Example Sentences

That created multiple political factions within the Democratic and Republican parties, like the Northern Whigs, Southern Whigs and the Know-Nothings, with slavery even creating internal divides within those very factions.

From Slate • Jan. 5, 2023

The resulting backlash took the form of a new political party, officially the American Party, better known by its nickname, the Know-Nothings.

From Washington Post • Jul. 15, 2019

The new name caught on, and the Republican Party spread rapidly across the North in 1854 and 1855, absorbing other anti-Nebraska groups and often supplanting the Whigs where the Know-Nothings lacked support.

From Textbooks • Jan. 18, 2018

First the Know-Nothings, or American party, whose xenophobia and anti-Catholicism got them elected in droves in New England in the early 1850s.

From The Guardian • Aug. 20, 2017

Number 105-1/2 Sacramento Street was a three-story barn-like structure that had been built by a short-lived political party called the "Know-Nothings."

From The Forty-Niners A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado by White, Stewart Edward