The Inconsiderate Years

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF RIP FORD

Part 17: The Inconsiderate Years[i]

by Bob Heinonen

American politics was to influence Rip Ford in what he later determined was a negative way. “In the 1850’s, a burgeoning coalition of self-proclaimed nativists, the Know-Nothings, swept into office and called out for radical change.”[ii]

The Know Nothing Party derived its name from the fact it was founded on a society whose members were sworn to secrecy. When asked about the lodges of which they were a member, they responded by saying “I know nothing.” It was originally founded based on anti-immigration fever.

“For in the early 1850s a specter was haunting America. It was the specter of immigration. From 1820 to 1845 the country had been used to a steady flow of newcomers – 10,000 to 100,000 a year – and took only passing notice of them, particularly since most could fend for themselves, hailed from the British Isles and practiced the same Protestant religion as the founders of the Republic But starting in 1846, [the year Texas entered the Union] two great social upheavals in Europe – the potato famine in Ireland and pressing economic woes and unrest in Germany – had unleashed a tide of immigrants. In 1849 the rush for gold in California began adding to these numbers.

The mere sight and sound of most new arrivals was unsettling, as they poured out of steerage after a month-long ocean crossing. They were dirty, disheveled and had little or no English (in rural Ireland before the famine, Gaelic was still the spoken tongue). A majority were Roman Catholics owing allegiance to a foreign potentate, the Pope, who to Americans generally was a symbol of oppression. Clearly Catholic immigrants lurked at the heart of a vast plot against the United States, as Samuel F. B. Mores, inventor of the telegraph, asserted in another widely read title of the day, Foreign Conspiracy Against the United States.”[iii]

In 1854, the Know Nothings formed a third political party called the American Party and submitted several hundred candidates for state and national offices. Its planks were anti-Catholicism and anti-immigration. By 1855, Know Nothing membership was estimated at over 1 million.

“An air of unreality surrounds the entire Know-Nothing phenomenon in Texas. The group undoubtedly fed on the destruction of the Whigs and on the underlying unease gripping the country as a whole. There were almost no Catholics in Texas, and the foreign, heavily Catholic elements that existed, Germans and Mexicans, were politically inert. There never were any potato-famine Irish, such as triggered the Know-Nothings in the East. The Party really had alittle to sink its teeth in, in Texas. Yet it aroused great excitement and attracted a considerable number of prominent men.”[iv]

And Rip Ford and Sam Houston were two of them.

Of joining the Know Nothings, Rip Ford said “The act of joining was one of those inconsiderate things men do sometimes. The Know Nothing or American Party did not take well in Texas. General Houston was its great high priest in the Lone Star State. He made many eloquent speeches in advocacy of its principles. The Democratic Party made war upon its doctrines and finally crushed the party out.”[v]

During this time, Ford’s politics turned to the radical right. He joined the Order of the Lone Star of the West and within months was one of its leaders. He is rumored to have joined the Knights of the Golden Circle. Both were secret societies that favored establishing slave empires in Cuba and Mexico.

But Ford finally returned to reality --- no one knows why. In May, 1857, Ford returned to Austin and “announced that a wayward son had returned to the Democratic party…..from this day on, he promised the Democrats, ‘Your country is my country, and your God is my God.’”[vi]

John Salmon Ford returned to the good graces of his Texas just in time to take up the next cause.

Next Month - Part 18: Texas Secedes

Bob Heinonen is founder of Texas Heroes and has been portraying Rip Ford since 1993.