In the Southern States the great majority of people welcomed, supported, and defended the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, it being consonant with their pro-slavery feelings, and apparently favorable to their pro-slavery interests. The Democratic party in the South, controlling a majority of slave States, was of course a unit in its favor. The Whig party, however, having carried two slave States for Scott in 1852, and holding a strong minority in the remainder, was not so unanimous. Seven Southern Representatives and two Southern Senators had voted against the Nebraska bill, and many individual voters condemned it as an act of bad faith--as the abandonment of the accepted "finality," and as the provocation of a dangerous antislavery reaction. But public opinion in that part of the Union was fearfully tyrannical and intolerant; and opposition dared only to manifest itself to Democratic party organization--not to these Democratic party measures. The Whigs of the South were therefore driven precipitately to division. Those of extreme pro-slavery views, like Dixon, of Kentucky,--who, when he introduced his amendment, declared, "Upon the question of slavery I know no Whiggery and no Democracy,"--went boldly and at once over into the Democratic camp, while those who retained their traditional party name and flag were sundered from their ancient allies in the Northern States by the impossibility of taking up the latter's antislavery war-cry. At this juncture the political situation was further complicated by the sudden rise of an additional factor in politics, the American party, popularly called the "Know-Nothings." Essentially, it was a revival of the extinct "Native-American" faction, based upon a jealousy of and discrimination against foreign-born voters, desiring an extension of their period of naturalization, and their exclusion from office; also based upon a certain hostility to the Roman Catholic religion. It had been reorganized as a secret order in the year 1853; and seizing upon the political disappointments following General Scott's overwhelming defeat for the presidency in 1852, and profiting by the disintegration caused by the Nebraska bill, it rapidly gained recruits both North and South. Operating in entire secrecy, the country was startled by the sudden appearance in one locality after another, on election day, of a potent and unsuspected political power, which in many instances pushed both the old organizations not only to disastrous but even to ridiculous defeat. Both North and South its forces were recruited mainly from the Whig party, though malcontents from all quarters rushed to group themselves upon its narrow platform, and to participate in the exciting but delusive triumphs of its temporary and local ascendency.