The Platform of the Anti-Masonic Party of John Quincy Adams and Millard Filmore, including the Corvallis, Oregon Area
(Also Known as the KnowNothings or American Party or Anti-immigrant Party)
The American political experience is very nearly predictable: Against the backdrop of nagging international dramas, immigrants become noticeably more present. The displacement of the prevailing Order of Things results in a series of laws and organizations designed to suppress the newcomers, to ensure that every one knows his or her place and embraces orthodoxy.
Some incident occurs. It doesn't matter what the incident is. "Incidents", as Bundy said after the 'Pleiku incident' which he and Lyndon Johnson used as a pretext for invading Vietnam, "are like taxicabs. If you wait long enough, one will come along." The reaction is draconian, and often is responsible for even greater calamities a generation or more later. The invasion of Japan in 1853 (click here) is a vivid case in point.
The reaction usually involves restrictions on immigration, on the rights of immigrants within the country, and most often involves religion.
The first such episode occurred after the French Revolution when the avowed monarchist, John Adams, expressed his fears of Thomas Jefferson' Democratic Republican Party and French immigrants by passing the Alien and Sedition Acts through Congress.
The second occurred in the early 19th century when the 'patriotic' group, the Secret Order of the Star Spangled Banner became the AntiMasonic or Know Nothing Party (members agreed to respond by saying, when asked about the group, that they knew nothing) after the disappearance of William Morgan (see left). The irony of the antiMasons is that they were linking and attacking both Masons and Catholic Irish immigrants, among whom the Masons were anathema. Logic, however, plays no role in such movements.
The fight against slavery disrupted the Party as it did most of the conventionalm organizations. After the Civil War, the Know Noyhings were replaced by the Orange and Black Orders. The extent of their influence in Corvallis may be judged by the faculty's replacement of OSU's navy blue and white colors with the black and orange of the Protestant lodges.
| "It would be objectively a grave sin for a Catholic to join a Masonic lodge. The prohibition from receiving Holy Communion is meant to highlight the gravity of the situation." |
| Rev. Thomas C. Anslow, C.M., J.C.L. Judicial Vicar. February 2002 |
Platform of the Know Nothing Party
Click for full scale version
Locally, the Know nothings held meetings in Summit until well after the Civil War. A leader of the Know Nothing Party was Zenas Ferry Moody, of nearby Brownsville who was eventually elected governor of the state, having migrated to the Whig and then the Republican Party.
 |
| Zenas Ferry Moody |