But the Know-Nothingism of 1855 was regarded by the Democratic party as sinister because, as that party professed to believe, it had got itself incorporated as an important if not controlling element in the new Republican party. This the Republican leaders and organs denied with vigor, but it is true that the general council of the _American_ party in this state urged the support of the Republican candidates and professed to have contributed 20,000 votes toward the election of Bashford. The Republicans had no objection to Know-Nothing votes, but they feared that the endorsement of their ticket by the Know-Nothings would cost them more foreign born votes than it would gain them nativists. It was tactically wise for the Democrats, and especially the German Democratic press, to keep the “Republican-Know-Nothing” idea before their people--and they made the best use of the opportunity. “Temperance,” after all, was regarded by the Germans as merely a manifestation of Puritan fanaticism, which must be opposed in the interest of personal liberty. Much as they disliked it, their opposition does not seem to have developed excessive bitterness against the believers in or practicers of temperance. But nativism, which demanded that the suffrage be limited to citizens; that naturalization be made more difficult; that in some departments, as in the army, natives be favored to the exclusion of the foreign born, this they felt to be a deliberate and vicious attack upon the rights of the foreign born as a class. The advocacy of these principles involved much discussion of the unfitness of foreigners, their ignorance, their sordidness, their “un-American” habits and customs, in one important respect their “anti-American” religion. All of this inevitably roused a bitter, fighting resentment on the part of all foreigners, as it did among radical natives also, and it is well known that many parts of the country suffered in consequence from riots and other manifestations of a class war. In Wisconsin there was less overt hostility than in some states where the foreign elements were not so powerful.[64] The Know-Nothing party as such functioned seriously only in the one year 1855, and its propaganda was relatively mild-mannered.[65] Its chief objects of attack were the foreign born Catholics, which class included a majority of the Irish but only a fraction of the Germans, most of whom--probably--were either Lutheran or Reformed, with an appreciable number of non-churchmen or “free-thinkers.”[66] Nevertheless, nativism, as entangled in the political psychology of this eventful year, had its full share in producing a tragedy in this state also.