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Capitalizing on Anxiety: The Native American Party of the
1850s
A Documents Based Question by Peter Anderson
History 530a, Fall 2005
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Directions
The following question is based on the accompanying documents. The
question is designed to test your ability to work with historic documents.
Part A requires you to analyze and interpret the documents, and answer the
related questions. Part B requires you to develop an essay that
incorporates the documents in Part A, as well your own knowledge.
Some of these documents have been edited for the purposes of
these exercises; base your answer(s) on the document as presented. As you
analyze the documents, take into account the authors point of view and
your prior knowledge of American History.
Historical Context
Beginning in the 1840s, a large anti-immigration and anti-Roman Catholic
sentiment began to rise in the United States. A rising tide of
immigrants, primarily Germans in the Midwest and Irish in the East, seemed
to pose a threat to the economic and political security of native-born
Protestant Americans. Nativists, those Americans who agreed with these
sentiments, formed the Native American, or Know Nothing, party in order to
politically change these developments. The party relied heavily on the
print media to persuade other native-born Americans to their cause. As
the sectional conflicts leading to the Civil War heightened, certain
sections of the Native American party began advocating that slavery should
not be extended into new territories. The short existence of the Native
American Party reveals not only the role of a third party in the American
political system, but the extent to which strong nativist feelings
existing in the population could affect national politics in the United
States.
Task
Using information from the documents and your knowledge of United States
history, answer the questions that follow each document in Part A. Your
answers to the questions will help you write the Part B essay, in which
you will be asked to:
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