Beyond party : cultures of antipartisanship in northern politics before the Civil War
Captivating disgruntled voters, third parties have often complicated the American political scene. In the years before the Civil War, third-party politics took the form of the Know Nothings, who mistrusted established parties and gave voice to anti-government sentiment. Originating about 1850 as a nativist fraternal order, the Know Nothing movement soon spread throughout the industrial North. In Beyond Party, Mark Voss-Hubbard draws on local sources in three different states where the movement was especially strong to uncover its social roots and establish its relationship to actual public policy issues. Voss-Hubbard applies the insights of social history and social movement theory to politics in arguing that we need to understand Know Nothing rhetoric and activism as part of a wider tradition of American suspicion of "politics as usual"―even though, of course, this antipartyism served agendas that included those of self-interested figures seeking to accumulate power. (from book jacket)
eBook, English, 2002
Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2002