Originating about 1850 as a nativist fraternal order, the Know Nothing movement spread throughout the industrial North. This text draws on local sources in three states where the movement was especially strong to uncover its social roots and establish its relationship to public policy issues.

Voss-Hubbard applies the insights of social history and social movement theory to politics in arguing that we need to understand Know Nothing rhetoric and activism as part of a wider tradition of American suspicion of "politics as usual" - even though, of course, this antipartyism served agendas that included those of self-interested figures seeking to accumulate power.