Know Nothings and the Bloody Monday Riots in Louisville, Ky

[alfredo]

It seems the Tea Party is the rightful heir of the Know Nothings.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Monday

Bloody Monday was the name given the election riots of August 6, 1855, in Louisville, Kentucky. These riots grew out of the bitter rivalry between the Democrats and supporters of the Know-Nothing Party. Rumors were started that foreigners and Catholics had interfered with the process of voting. A street fight occurred, twenty-two people were killed, scores were injured and much property was destroyed by fire.


http://www.bryansbush.com/hub.php?page=articles&layer=a0709

The smoldering embers of hate and prejudice soon caught fire over several incidents leading up to August 6, 1855. On July 8, 1855, a large mob gathered around the Catholic Church on Fifth Street. A rumor circulated that the Irish stored arms in the church and prepared to use them in the upcoming state elections. The mob found out that the church did not contain any arms. A few days later, the Louisville Public School Board fired all the Catholic teachers except for one. The newspapers such as the Louisville Democrat and the Louisville Daily Journal attacked each other and fanned the flames. The Journal portrayed the Democrats as the destroyers of the Union and the American Party as the one true savior of the nation. Prentice stated the nation must deal “with the foreign hordes.” He stated that the Pope sought to “rule this country.” The Democrat struck back stating that the Know-Nothings were the worse class of voters. On the day before the August elections, Prentice published the following advertisement: “Let the foreigners keep their elbows to themselves to-day at the polls. Americans are you all ready? We think we hear you shout 'ready,' 'well fire!' and may heaven have mercy on the foe.” Just before the election, the Know-Nothings held a 1,500 man torchlight procession through the streets of Louisville, hoping to intimidate the foreigners. At midnight the Know Nothings took control of the polls and the city’s police officers backed them up.

On August 6, 1855, the polls opened at 6 a.m. and closed at 7 p.m. Most of the polling stations had thugs at the doors, asking for a yellow ticket, which was a sign for the Know-Nothing party and asked foreigners if they had their naturalization papers. The first person to lose his life during the riots was George Berg, who was beaten to death on the street by a group of angry Irishmen. During the course of the day, two large riots erupted in the city. The first riot took place in the German district at 4 p.m., which was located in the First Ward on the east end of Louisville. The second riot occurred from 6 p.m. until midnight in the Irish district, in the Eight Ward in the western section of town.

[Itchinjim]

1. The Teabaggers have ancestors.

[alfredo]

2. and Cellulite.

[MikeMc]

3. + 1. All right, Al.

This stuff has been going on since the Whiskey Rebellion, right after America was founded. America's blue-blood WASPs hate all minorities, even catholics that look like WASPs.

'Thugs at the doors of the polling stations' is true in America, today. The thug is always a repug. (Philly 'Panthers' are Farrakhan's 'paper-panthers'; they don't count.)

Those angry Irishmen in Aug of '55 were Scots-Presbyterians, like 5 of America's Presidents. (Daniel Day Lewis's 'Bill the Butcher' character, from Scorcese's movie 'The Gangs of New York'.) Only one Irish Catholic was ever president. But he was a quitter, because he stopped working in late Nov. of '63.

During the Depression, the Klan was very active in Indiana. They threw a big jamboree in South Bend. But a bunch of Notre Dame alumni didn't like the (Dan Quayle John Birch Society style) efforts of the know nothing repugs. So the Irish Catholics went to the train station and met the know nothing wasp repugs. They escorted the repug klan members from the train station, to some down town bars in South Bend. Then they beat the repugs' asses, and threw them out the back door into the alley. Zero recorded deaths on the action. The Fighting Irish.

I remember that Fredrick Douglass and Sitting Bull both stood up for low income white people (a lot of Irish Catholic non-Wasps were among the people that Douglass and Bull helped out.) So non-underground (legally acceptable) actions, that favor Democratic minorities, in modern-day America, are clearly in order... Angela Davis sez.

[alfredo]

4. Peaceful resistance. We need to be teaching the

lessons of Gandhi and MLK. Non cooperation with the corporatist.

[MikeMc]

5. Well, that leads to General Strike (for the DEMs), I think.

I'm currently unemployed (work out of a union hall, local #5 IBEW, Pgh., PA). So I have a lot of time on hand to 'make some fun' as Jello brand gelatin sez.

I already gave Working America $100, so they could e-mail me with an annoying poll about 'Worst Boss Stories'.

This strategy was called a 'sitzkreig', the last time we beat the nazis.

[alfredo]

6. I'm getting good at sitting now that the "Arthur" has taken

me down, but I can help in other ways than manning the barricades.

[TheKentuckian]

7. There is no conscience to appeal to this time. The MLK/Gandhi model is not a universal tool

because no such thing exists.

I think we'll have to more closely follow the Russian solution to the Czars, they could care less about our signs, protests, and strikes.

There are no hearts and minds to win this time.

[alfredo]

8. The easiest way to fail is to play by their rules.

[pampango]

9. The Know-Nothings were the original "We want our country back" party.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_Nothing

"The Know Nothing movement was a nativist American political movement of the 1840s and 1850s. It was empowered by popular fears that the country was being overwhelmed by German and Irish Catholic immigrants...

Mainly active from 1854 to 1856, it strove to curb immigration and naturalization, though its efforts met with little success. Membership was limited to Protestant males of British lineage over the age of twenty-one. There were few prominent leaders, and the largely middle-class and entirely Protestant membership...

Their platform in 1854:

1. Severe limits on immigration, especially from Catholic countries.
2. Restricting political office to native-born Americans of English and/or Scottish lineage and Protestant persuasion.
3. Mandating a wait of 21 years before an immigrant could gain citizenship.
4. Restricting public school teacher positions to Protestants.
5. Mandating daily Bible readings in public schools.
6. Restricting the sale of liquor.
7. Restricting the use of languages other than English."

Teabaggers focus on Hispanic and Muslim immigrants rather than German and Irish Catholics, but their attitude towards immigrants is the same.

The Know-Nothing platform would work quite well for teabaggers today (except for #6 I would guess. :) )

[alfredo]

10. That's spooky

[MikeMc]

12. Thanks for the OP, by the way. I had never heard of the incident.

Thanks to pamp for the 'Know Nothing' post, also.

[alfredo]

14. I'm originally from Louisville and I never heard of it when

I was a kid. It wasn't taught in school, or mentioned. I see there are historic markers in Louisville, but I haven't lived there since the signs were erected.

[MikeMc]

19. Ludlow, Colorado Massacre was mentioned by Kurt Vonnegut

in one of his novels (Either 'God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater', or 'Bluebeard'. Maybe both novels.) Jimmy Breslin mentioned it also, in one of his novels. ('The Gang that Couldn't Shoot Straight'. Organized crime saw the Ludlow Massacre, and said 'No can match'.)

I regularly pass historic markers in Pittsburgh, that discuss the 1877 Great Railway Strike, and the Homestead Steel Strike. Big Pgh. civilian body counts in both instances. The signs depict a fight between normal Americans and repug Rail and Steel corporations. One mentions Pinkerton involvement, under Mellon flunkies Carnegie and Frick.

The Wobblies, the Panthers, the WWI vet Bonus March, etc. John Sayle's movie 'Matewan' is pretty good, though he romanticizes CPUSA in it. (Chris Cooper is the lead.)

Never mind.

We'll win, Al.

[alfredo]

20. Look for "Harlan County USA." One of my favorite union movies.

[MikeMc]

21. Oh boy, I could talk to you all day, al f.

Thanks for the Harlan county lead.

I loved the Pittston coal strikers' action in '89. Slow rolling caravans, camo gear, non-teabag union members who exercised their '2nd Amendment remedies', like the Panthers.

David Strathairn's portrayal of Sid Hatfield in 'Bloody Mingo' West Virginia (1920), raised some hoots, hollars, and yeehaws from the audience. (That might just have been me, though. I'm pretty noisy, sometimes). The bad guys in the movie were 'Baldwin-Felts agents,instead of Pinkertons, Brinks, Wackenhuts, Blackwater-Xes, etc., but still, fan effin tastic filming that showed 'art imitates life'.

I remember the Tony Boyle hit on Jock and his family. (I was just 4 when Yablonsky died, but saw the news coverage of the investigation, first run, during the following years.) Simon and Garfunkel's cover of the song 'Silent Night' also discusses it. Boyle's hired hit-men were from Cleveland, and all ran back there after the hit. The CIA and the chicago mob alliance is the issue, on this one (I think).

[alfredo]

23. Ohio is showing what can be accomplished if we stand strongq

against the corporatist.

[MikeMc]

24. Wisconsin also.

[alfredo]

26. The Republicans are using disaster capitalism against us.

[MikeMc]

27. Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine"

[alfredo]

28. Exactly!

[MikeMc]

30. Post 29, al f. nt.

[Eddie Haskell]

11. Did they carry small American flags,

sport bean bag butts, a pouch over their belt, and chant USA, USA, USA?

[JHB]

13. They had their equivalents...

Check out an 1860 political cartoon from shortly after Lincoln's election. How many caricatures are familiar?

charisma/celebrity obsessed
"sexual deviant" (the "free love element")
"religious deviant" (here, ironically, Mormons)
"grasping minorities" (relying on severely distorted racial stereotypes)
"feminazis"
"shiftless do-nothings"
criminals
violent radicals

[alfredo]

16. Having difficulty reading the captions on the image.

[JHB]

17. Here they are:

Title: The Republican Party going to the right House

Year: 1860

Creator: Currier & Ives

Description: Abraham Lincoln's supporters are portrayed as radicals and eccentrics of various stripes. The satire is loosely based on an anti-Fremont cartoon from the previous presidential race, "The Great Republican Reform Party" (no. 1856-22), also issued by Nathaniel Currier.

Here Lincoln, sitting astride a wooden rail borne by Horace Greeley, leads his followers toward a lunatic asylum. Greeley instructs him, "Hold on to me Abe, and we'll go in here by the unanimous consent of the people."
Lincoln exhorts his followers, "Now my friends I'm almost in, and the millennium is going to begin, so ask what you will and it shall be granted."

http://www.abrahamlincolnsclassroom.org/Cartoon_Corner/index3.asp?ID=31&TypeID=1

Woman with hat: "Oh! what a beautiful man he is, I feel a passionate attraction' every time I see his lovely face."

Bearded man: "I represent the free love element, and expect to have free license to carry out its principles."

Man with hat, mustache, and short beard: "I want religion abolished and the book of Mormon made the standard of morality."

Extra-caricatured black man: "De white man hab no rights dat cullud pussons am bound to spect' I want dat understood."

Short woman with hood: "I want womans rights enforced, and man reduced in subjection to her authority."

Grungy man holding bottle: "I want everybody to have a share of everybody elses property."

Barefoot man: "I want a hotel established by government, where people that aint inclined to work, can board free of expense, and be found in rum and tobacco."

Tall hat man: "I want guaranteed to every Citizen the right to examine every other citizen's pockets without interruption by Policemen."

Man at the end: "I want all the stations houses burned up, and the M.P.s killed, so that the bohoys can run with the machine and have a muss when they please."

Higher resolution version available:
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/cph.3a05729/

[alfredo]

18. Thanks. Only part of the image showed and it was squashed.

[MikeMc]

22. Wow. Thank you, JHB. NT.

[Scurrilous]

15. K & R

:thumbsup:

[Romulox]

25. Counterpoint: many of the Democrats of that day supported slavery.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Democratic_Party_(United_States)#Young_America

[MikeMc]

29. Current General Strikes in UK and Greece,

Remember the 'Mollies' in 1870's Schuylkill County, PA. Remember when Hennessey sided with the Provenzanos, New Orleans, 1890, and some Southern Concerned Citizens lynched innocent 'Eye-Ties' following this event. Remember the Feds vs. AIM at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, mid '70's -- long past time for Peltier to be released. Et cetera, et cetera.

I just heard today that Fat Karl Rove's Westboro Phelps cult was getting paid to 'brief' Feds on 'radicals'. Surprising that a man of Mueller's integrity would countenance a subsidy for that kind of nut-job terrorist. (Honestly, I could hardly remember Eric Holder existed, let alone Robert Mueller.) But there you have it.