Talk:Charles B. Allen

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Searching for credible sources to cite; http://www.delanceyplace.com/view-archives.php?p=2440  from which "What emerged as the Know Nothing movement actually began years before the 1852 election. In 1849 an anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic fanatic named Charles B. Allen had tried to start a secret, superpatriotic fraternity known as the Order of the Star Spangled Banner. As of mid-1852 it had a grand membership of nine men meeting in a back alley in New York City. Then it was taken over by another nativist group known as the Order of United Americans, led by a superb organizer named James W. Barker. By the end of 1854 the membership of the order totaled somewhere between eight hundred thousand and 1.5 million men, most of them skilled, semiskilled, and unskilled laborers or lower-middle-class white-collar clerks, who were sworn by membership oaths to support the political candidates endorsed by the local lodges or wigwams of the order. Membership was supposed to remain absolutely secret, and the sobriquet 'Know Nothing' came from members' professing to know nothing about the order when questioned by outsiders. At first, the Know Nothings endorsed candidates of the major parties. But then they began to nominate their own candidates, and in the fall of 1853 and spring local elections of 1854 they startled outsiders by electing men no one else knew were even seeking office."

describes. --Wikipietime (talk) 18:52, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

Allen was a "commercial agent" from Massachusetts

"the Know Nothing movement became so popular that its name began to be used as prefix on many U.S. products(i.e. Know Nothing candy, Know Nothing tea, Know Nothing toothpicks).The Know Nothing movement thanks to its popularity had become the American Party. Millard Fillmore would run on the American Party ticket for the Presidency in 1856. Know Nothings, regardless of the region in which they lived, shared the party's anti- Catholic and anti-alien beliefs.."