There is a certain amount of comfort in the consistency of life as we know it; or in some case refuse to understand it. We take it for granted that the sun will rise in the East every morning; that the swallows will return to Capistrano; that Halley’s Comet will be whipping into view in 2061; and that some political party will spiral down into stupidity.

In the late 1850s the Whig party began to disintegrate. Zachary Taylor was the last elected Whig president. However, when he died on July 9, 1850 the presidency passed to Millard Fillmore who has the honor to be the last Whig president.
There are several scientific maxims that can apply to social situations. Matter cannot be created or destroyed. It can be transformed into other states. In the case of the Whig party it disintegrated and started to morph into the American Republican Party, which quickly became an anti-immigrant party soon to be known as the Know Nothings. Although not all former Whigs found this party to their liking. Abraham Lincoln was one such Whig.
The American Republican Party was founded in New York in 1843 and was associated with a secret organization: The Order of the Star-Spangled Banner Society. Their not so secret response that members would give to identify each other was “I know nothing.”

It is easy to understand why it started in New York. More than 70 percent of country’s immigrants came into America through New York City’s Castle Garden depot or the “Golden Door.” Seven and-a-half- million immigrants came to America from 1820 to 1870. This influx was more than the entire population of the United States in 1810. One third of the immigrants came from Ireland and another third came from Germany. In most cases they were Catholics coming to Protestant country.

 

There may have been a real concern among nativists that besides taking jobs from the locals the Pope would be holding Mass in the Capitol. In the middle half of the nineteenth century, more than one-half of the population of Ireland immigrated to the United States.
There was some violence associated with the Know Nothings campaigns as nativists battled Irish immigrants. Catholic Churches and schools were burnt and at least 20 people were killed in one riot. The Know Nothings did have some local success and some members of Congress claimed they were affiliated with the Know Nothings.

However, one politician of the time  did not join their ranks. In an 1855 letter to his good friend Joshua Speed Abraham Lincoln wrote:
I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can anyone who abhors the oppression of Negroes, be in favor or degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that “all men are created equal.” We now practically read it “all men are created equal, except Negroes” When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read “all men are created equal, except Negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.” When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty — to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.
The American Republican Party nominated none other than Millard Fillmore and Andrew Jackson’s nephew as their standard bearers for the 1856 presidential election and managed to carry Maryland in the general election. The party, like the country, fell apart in the face of slavery as abolitionist flocked to the newly formed Republican Party and pro-slavery men moved to the Democratic Party.

It may be that stupidly, like matter cannot be created or destroyed.  This is a disheartening concept to think that there is an finite amount of stupidity that covers the Earth much like water. There also appears to be some logic to it all.  Just like the swallows returning to Capistrano, stupidity too, is seasonal phenomenon. It cycles itself every four years peaking on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November.