igan, was making ready the stroke which was to
unhorse the great and popular Cass; and Benjamin F. Wade, of Ohio,
joined Chase and Giddings, thus making up the trio which was to rule
that State for years to come. The young and vigorous Republican party of
the Northwest, guided by this company of ambitious "new" politicians,
readily effected the union of East and Northwest which Adams and Clay
had long striven in vain to perfect. The work of Chase, Seward, Lincoln,
and Sumner of these years paralleled that of Calhoun, Jackson, and
Benton in 1828; and as a result the Democrats lost their hold on the
legislatures of nearly all the States above the Ohio and the Missouri
Rivers, and their overwhelming majority in the Federal House of
Representatives disappeared as if overnight.

While the new Republican party, almost wholly sectional in its origin
and perhaps in its purposes, was winning leadership in the country, the
more conservative Whigs of the East sought to affiliate with a small
organization of nativists who called themselves Americans and whose
slogan was "America for Americans." Foreigners should be barred from
citizenship and Catholics should be ostracized. In the South most
followers of Clay and in the East many admirers of Webster avoided a
complete surrender to the Democrats by stopping in this halfway house.
The "Know-Nothings," as the party was called in derision of their
failure to answer questions about their platform, gained so many
followers from the dissatisfied elements of the older parties that in
1855 it seemed likely they would sweep the country. In Virginia they
made their most spectacular campaign. Henry A. Wise, a Whig who had
gone into the Democratic party with Stephens, was their greatest
opponent, and in the gubernatorial campaign of 1855 he completely
discomfited them; in Georgia they likewise lost their contest. The South
was accepting the Democratic leadership and becoming solid, as Calhoun
had prayed that it might become. In the East, Seward and Weed persuaded
most of the Whigs to unite with the Republicans, and when the first
national convention of the Americans met in 1856, it was clear that its
leaders could not hold the Southern and Eastern wings together on the
slavery question. The anti-slavery Americans bolted, and the remnant
which remained nominated ex-President Fillmore, who in the succeeding
election received a majority in only one State, Maryland, though his
popular vote was near