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The Cleveland News was a daily and Sunday American newspaper in Cleveland , Ohio . It was published from 1905 until 1960 when it was absorbed by the rival paper The Cleveland Press .

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63-632: The Cleveland News traces its antecedents to 1868, when The Cleveland Leader titled its late edition the Evening News . When a rival newspaper, the Cleveland Herald , ended publication in 1885, the Leader acquired rights to the name and retitled its evening edition the News & Herald . In 1905, investment banker and commodities broker Charles Augustus Otis, Jr. — who the previous year had purchased

126-499: A Catholic church in Bath, Maine . The most aggressive and innovative legislation came out of Massachusetts, where the new party controlled all but three of the 400 seats—only 35 had any previous legislative experience. The Massachusetts legislature in 1855 passed a series of reforms that "burst the dam against change erected by party politics, and released a flood of reforms." The period from 1854 to 1857 saw among Massachusetts Know Nothings

189-478: A decline in the traditional nativist wing of the party and the rise of the group of abolitionists and reformers, including former Massachusetts Senate President Henry Wilson , looking to redirect the focus of the party. Historian Stephen Taylor says that in addition to nativist legislation, "the party also distinguished itself by its opposition to slavery, support for an expansion of the rights of women, regulation of industry, and support of measures designed to improve

252-466: A field day following the story, especially when it was discovered that the key reformer was using committee funds to pay for a prostitute. The legislature shut down its committee, ejected the reformer, and saw its investigation become a laughing stock. The Know Nothings scored a landslide in New Hampshire in 1855. They won 51% of the vote, including 94% of the anti-slavery Free Soilers , and 79% of

315-624: A fourth of the German and British Protestants in numerous state elections. It especially appealed to Protestants such as the Lutherans, Dutch Reformed and Presbyterians. Fearful that Catholics were flooding the polls with non-citizens, local activists threatened to stop them. On August 6, 1855, rioting broke out in Louisville, Kentucky , during a hotly contested race for the office of governor. Twenty-two were killed and many injured. This " Bloody Monday " riot

378-571: A large bloc of voters. In most places, the ideology and influence of the Know Nothing movement lasted only one or two years before it disintegrated due to weak and inexperienced local leaders, a lack of publicly proclaimed national leaders, and a deep split over the issue of slavery . In parts of the South, the party did not emphasize anti-Catholicism as frequently as it emphasized it in the North and it stressed

441-404: A neutral position on slavery, but it became the main alternative to the dominant Democratic Party . The Know Nothings supplemented their xenophobic views with populist appeals. At the state level, the party was, in some cases, progressive in its stances on "issues of labor rights and the need for more government spending" and furnished "support for an expansion of the rights of women ,

504-583: A new major political party in opposition to the Democratic Party. The Know Nothing movement managed to elect congressman Nathaniel P. Banks of Massachusetts and several other individuals into office in the 1854 elections , and it subsequently coalesced into a new political party which was known as the American Party. Particularly in the South , the American Party served as a vehicle for politicians who opposed

567-672: A number of local and Congressional elections, notably in 1844 in Philadelphia, where the anti-Catholic orator Lewis Charles Levin was elected Representative from Pennsylvania's 1st district. In the early 1850s, numerous secret orders grew up, of which the Order of United Americans and the Order of the Star Spangled Banner came to be the most important. They emerged in New York in the early 1850s as

630-451: A political issue. Violence occasionally erupted at the polls. Protestants alleged that Pope Pius IX had contributed to the failure of the liberal Revolutions of 1848 in Europe and they also alleged that he was an enemy of liberty, democracy and republicanism . One Boston minister described Catholicism as "the ally of tyranny, the opponent of material prosperity, the foe of thrift, the enemy of

693-407: A political party called the American Party, which attracted many members of the by then nearly defunct Whig party as well as a significant number of Democrats. Membership in the American Party increased dramatically, from 50,000 to an estimated one million plus in a matter of months during that year. The historian Tyler Anbinder concluded: The key to Know Nothing success in 1854 was the collapse of

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756-422: A secret order that quickly spread across the North, reaching non-Catholics, particularly those who were lower middle class or skilled workers. The name Know Nothing originated in the semi-secret organization of the party. When a member of the party was asked about his activities, he was supposed to say, "I know nothing." Outsiders derisively called the party's members "Know Nothings", and the name stuck. In 1855,

819-460: A white man in court. In the spring of 1855 , Know Nothing candidate Levi Boone was elected mayor of Chicago and barred all immigrants from city jobs. Abraham Lincoln was strongly opposed to the principles of the Know Nothing movement, but did not denounce it publicly because he needed the votes of its membership to form a successful anti-slavery coalition in Illinois. Ohio was the only state where

882-721: The American Civil War . Anti-Catholicism was widespread in colonial America , but it played a minor role in American politics until the arrival of large numbers of Irish and German Catholics started in the 1840s. It then emerged in nativist attacks. It appeared in New York City politics as early as 1843 under the banner of the American Republican Party . The movement quickly spread to nearby states using that name or Native American Party or variants of it. They succeeded in

945-721: The Cleveland World — bought both the News & Herald and the Evening Plain Dealer , and merged the trio into the single afternoon daily paper, the World-News , which debuted June 12, 1905. It became the Cleveland News on September 13, 1905. Daniel R. Hanna Sr., who had bought the morning newspaper the Cleveland Leader in 1910, bought the Cleveland News from Otis two years later, and consolidated operations in

1008-755: The Leader had been sold to the Plain Dealer , just four years after moving into the Leader Building in 1913. Know-Nothing The Know Nothings were a nativist political movement in the United States in the 1850s, officially known as the Native American Party before 1855, and afterwards simply the American Party . Members of the movement were required to say "I know nothing" whenever they were asked about its specifics by outsiders, providing

1071-546: The Leader . From a program celebrating the opening of the Leader Building in 1913, "In 1847 an anti-slavery Whig paper which had been published for about a year in Olmsted Falls , now, as then, a small village, was moved to Cleveland and changed from a weekly to a daily, retaining the name of "True. Democrat." That event is commonly reckoned the beginning of the Cleveland Leader ..." The Leader's initial editorial bias

1134-655: The Press ' 314,000. The latter paper was renamed the Cleveland Press and News . The Plain Dealer moved into the former News headquarters. The Cleveland Leader The Cleveland Leader was a newspaper published in Cleveland from 1854 to 1917. The Cleveland Leader was created in 1854 by Edwin Cowles , who merged a variety of abolitionist , pre-Republican Party titles under

1197-530: The second party system , brought about primarily by the demise of the Whig Party. The Whig Party, weakened for years by internal dissent and chronic factionalism, was nearly destroyed by the Kansas–Nebraska Act . Growing anti-party sentiment, fueled by anti-slavery sentiment as well as temperance and nativism, also contributed to the disintegration of the party system. The collapsing second party system gave

1260-401: The 1850s reached a level five times greater than a decade earlier. Most of the new arrivals were poor Catholic peasants or laborers from Ireland and Germany who crowded the tenements of large cities. Crime and welfare costs soared. Cincinnati's crime rate, for example, tripled between 1846 and 1853 and its murder rate increased sevenfold. Boston's expenditures for poor relief rose threefold during

1323-621: The 1855 fall elections the Know Nothings again swept New Hampshire against the Democrats and the small new Republican party. When the Know Nothing "American Party" collapsed in 1856 and merged with the Republicans, New Hampshire now had a two party system with the Republicans edging out the Democrats. The Know Nothings also dominated politics in Rhode Island, where in 1855 William W. Hoppin held

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1386-616: The American party protested. Foreign allies have decided the government of the country – men naturalized in thousands on the eve of the election. Again in the fierce struggle for supremacy, men have forgotten the ban which the Republic puts on the intrusion of religious influence on the political arena. These influences have brought vast multitudes of foreign-born citizens to the polls, ignorant of American interests, without American feelings, influenced by foreign sympathies, to vote on American affairs; and those votes have, in point of fact, accomplished

1449-429: The Democrats and the emergence of the anti-slavery Republican party in the North. In the South as a whole, the American Party was strongest among former Unionist Whigs. States-rightist Whigs shunned it, enabling the Democrats to win most of the South. Whigs supported the American Party because of their desire to defeat the Democrats, their unionist sentiment, their anti-immigrant attitudes and the Know Nothing neutrality on

1512-452: The Democrats. Many of the American Party's members and supporters also hoped that it would stake out a middle ground between the pro-slavery positions of Democratic politicians and the radical anti-slavery positions of the rapidly emerging Republican Party . The American Party nominated former President Millard Fillmore in the 1856 presidential election , but he kept quiet about his membership in it, and he personally refrained from supporting

1575-692: The Know Nothing candidate Daniel Ullman came in third in a four-way race for governor by gathering 26% of the vote. After the 1854 elections, they exerted a large amount of political influence in Maine, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and California, but historians are unsure about the accuracy of this information due to the secrecy of the party, because all parties were in turmoil and the anti-slavery and prohibition issues overlapped with nativism in complex and confusing ways. They helped elect Stephen Palfrey Webb as mayor of San Francisco and they also helped elect J. Neely Johnson as governor of California. Nathaniel P. Banks

1638-594: The Know Nothing movement's activities and ideology . Fillmore received 21.5% of the popular vote in the 1856 presidential election, finishing behind the Democratic and Republican nominees. Henry Winter Davis , an active Know-Nothing, was elected on the American Party ticket to Congress from Maryland. He told Congress that "un-American" Irish Catholic immigrants were to blame for the recent election of Democrat James Buchanan as president, stating: The recent election has developed in an aggravated form every evil against which

1701-400: The Know Nothings a much larger pool of potential converts than was available to previous nativist organizations, allowing the Order to succeed where older nativist groups had failed. In San Francisco , a Know Nothing chapter was founded in 1854 to oppose Chinese immigration—members included a judge of the state supreme court, who ruled that no Chinese person could testify as a witness against

1764-486: The Know Nothings first entered politics under the American Party label. Defunct Newspapers Journals TV channels Websites Other Economics Gun rights Identity politics Nativist Religion Watchdog groups Youth/student groups Miscellaneous Other The immigration of large numbers of Irish and German Catholics to the United States in the period between 1830 and 1860 made religious differences between Catholics and Protestants

1827-476: The Order of the Star Spangled Banner only had about 36 members. Fear of Catholic immigration caused some Protestants to become dissatisfied with the Democratic Party , whose leaders included Catholics of Irish descent in many cities. Activists formed secret groups, coordinating their votes and throwing their weight behind candidates who were sympathetic to their cause: Immigration during the first five years of

1890-459: The South and integration into its society. Immigrants fears were unjustified, however, because the national debate over slavery and its expansion, not nativism or anti-Catholicism, was the major reason for Know-Nothing success in the South. The southerners who supported the Know-Nothings did so, for the most part, because they thought the Democrats who favored the expansion of slavery might break up

1953-606: The Sunday and daily Cleveland News , which in 1926 moved to a new publishing plant at East 18th Street and Superior Avenue. After barely surviving the beginnings of the Great Depression , the News in 1932 was transferred by Hanna's heirs to the newly formed Forest City Publishing Company , which had also taken control of The Plain Dealer . Forest City ceased publishing the Sunday News on January 3, 1933, while continuing to publish

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2016-491: The Union. In 1855, the American Party challenged the Democrats' dominance. In Alabama, the Know Nothings were a mix of former Whigs, malcontented Democrats and other political misfits; they favored state aid to build more railroads. In the fierce campaign, the Democrats argued that Know Nothings could not protect slavery from Northern abolitionists. The Know Nothing American Party disintegrated soon after losing in 1855. In Virginia,

2079-422: The Whig Party was strongest in high income districts, the Know Nothing electorate was strongest in the poor districts. They expelled the traditional upper-class, closed, political leadership, especially the lawyers and merchants. In their stead, they elected working-class men, farmers and a large number of teachers and ministers. Replacing the moneyed elite were men who seldom owned $ 10,000 in property. Nationally,

2142-472: The Whigs, plus 15% of Democrats and 24% of those who abstained in the previous election for governor the year before. In full control of the legislature, the Know Nothings enacted their entire agenda. According to Lex Renda, they battled traditionalism and promoted rapid modernization. They extended the waiting period for citizenship to slow down the growth of Irish power; they reformed the state courts. They expanded

2205-584: The civil rights of Irish Catholic immigrants. After this, state courts lost the power to process applications for citizenship and public schools had to require compulsory daily reading of the Protestant Bible (which the nativists were sure would transform the Catholic children). The governor disbanded the Irish militias and replaced Irish holding state jobs with Protestants. However, Know Nothing lawmakers failed to reach

2268-468: The daily, staunchly Republican Cleveland News . Forest City announced the sale of the News to the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain, owner of the Cleveland Press , on January 23, 1960. As Sterling E. Graham, president of Forest City, characterized his paper, "Ever since its beginning 55 years ago, the News ' fate was to be a third newspaper." Its net circulation at the time was 134,550, compared with

2331-410: The election by a landslide. In Washington, D.C., Know Nothing candidate John T. Towers defeated incumbent Mayor John Walker Maury , triggering opposition of such a high proportion that the Democrats, Whigs, and Freesoilers in the capital united as the "Anti-Know-Nothing Party". In New York, where James Harper had been elected mayor of New York City as an American Republican almost a decade before,

2394-486: The finest examples of late Victorian American poster art. Despite the marketing efforts, the Leader continued its decline. Charles Otis began a consolidation of local newspapers with the Cleveland World in 1904, and the Leader in 1905. Through Otis, ownership of the Leader passed through various hands in the famous Hanna family, via Marcus Hanna 's son-in-law Medill McCormick , married to Ruth Hanna McCormick , then to Daniel R. Hanna, Marcus Hanna's son. By 1917,

2457-479: The governorship and five out of every seven votes went to the party, which dominated the Rhode Island legislature. Local newspapers such as The Providence Journal fueled anti-Irish and anti-Catholic sentiment. In the Southern United States, the American Party was composed chiefly of ex-Whigs looking for a vehicle to fight the dominant Democratic Party and worried about both the pro-slavery extremism of

2520-490: The group with its colloquial name. Supporters of the Know Nothing movement believed that an alleged " Romanist " conspiracy to subvert civil and religious liberty in the United States was being hatched by Catholics . Therefore, they sought to politically organize native-born Protestants in defense of their traditional religious and political values. The Know Nothing movement is remembered for this theme because Protestants feared that Catholic priests and bishops would control

2583-451: The importation of supposedly subversive government documents and academic books from Europe. It upgraded the legal status of wives, giving them more property rights and more rights in divorce courts. It passed harsh penalties on speakeasies, gambling houses and bordellos. It passed prohibition legislation with penalties that were so stiff—such as six months in prison for serving one glass of beer—that juries refused to convict defendants. Many of

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2646-691: The meeting, which resulted in the consolidation of the Know-Nothing , Whig , and Free Soil Parties into the Republican Party." The Leader quickly became the most influential newspaper in Ohio. "By 1875 its circulation of 13,000 was double that of the Herald and 5 times that of the Plain Dealer . Cowles kept the paper technologically up to date, importing Cleveland's first perfecting press in 1877 and pioneering

2709-528: The new Leader Building at East 6th Street and Superior Avenue. The Plain Dealer in turn bought the Cleveland Leader from Hanna in 1917, and the Sunday Leader became the Sunday News-Leader and later the Sunday News . Hanna remained involved, and in an effort to compete with the more successful Cleveland Press after World War I , he hired Arthur B. "Mickey" McBride as circulation manager for

2772-468: The new party leadership showed incomes, occupation, and social status that were about average. Few were wealthy, according to detailed historical studies of once-secret membership rosters. Fewer than 10% were unskilled workers who might come in direct competition with Irish laborers. They enlisted few farmers, but on the other hand they included many merchants and factory owners. The party's voters were by no means all native-born Americans, for it won more than

2835-406: The number and power of banks; they strengthened corporations; they defeated a proposed 10-hour workday law. They reformed the tax system; increased state spending on public schools; set up a system to build high schools; prohibited the sale of liquor; and they denounced the expansion of slavery in the western territories. The Whigs and Free Soil parties both collapsed in New Hampshire in 1854–55. In

2898-567: The party gained strength in 1855. Their Ohio success seems to have come from winning over immigrants, especially German-American Lutherans and Scots-Irish Presbyterians, both hostile to Catholicism. In Alabama, Know Nothings were a mix of former Whigs, discontented Democrats and other political outsiders who favored state aid to build more railroads. Virginia attracted national attention in its tempestuous 1855 gubernatorial election. Democrat Henry Alexander Wise won by convincing state voters that Know Nothings were in bed with Northern abolitionists. With

2961-513: The party supported a Jewish candidate for governor, Daniel Ullman , in 1854. In the spring of 1854, the Know Nothings carried Boston and Salem, Massachusetts, and other New England cities. They swept the state of Massachusetts in the fall 1854 elections, their biggest victory. The Whig candidate for mayor of Philadelphia, editor Robert T. Conrad , was soon revealed as a Know Nothing as he promised to crack down on crime, close saloons on Sundays and only appoint native-born Americans to office—he won

3024-505: The party's success in sweeping to almost complete control of the Massachusetts legislature after its 1854 landslide victory. He finds the new party was populist and highly democratic, hostile to wealth, elites and to expertise, and deeply suspicious of outsiders, especially Catholics. The new party's voters were concentrated in the rapidly growing industrial towns, where Yankee workers faced direct competition with new Irish immigrants. Whereas

3087-599: The present result. The party entered a period of rapid decline after Fillmore's loss. In 1857 the Dred Scott v. Sandford pro-slavery decision of the Supreme Court of the United States further galvanized opposition to slavery in the North, causing many former Know Nothings to join the Republicans. The remnants of the American Party largely joined the Constitutional Union Party in 1860 and they disappeared during

3150-466: The railroad, the caucus, and the school". These fears encouraged conspiracy theories regarding papal intentions of subjugating the United States through a continuing influx of Catholics controlled by Irish bishops obedient to and personally selected by the Pope. In 1849, an oath-bound secret society , the Order of the Star Spangled Banner , was founded by Charles B. Allen in New York City. At its inception,

3213-480: The reforms were quite expensive; state spending rose 45% on top of a 50% hike in annual taxes on cities and towns. This extravagance angered the taxpayers, and few Know Nothings were reelected. These successes at enacting reform legislation came at the expense of the traditional nativist priorities of the party, causing some national Know Nothing leaders, like Samuel Morse, to question the Massachusetts party's aims. The Massachusetts Know Nothings did advance attacks on

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3276-463: The regulation of industry, and support of measures which were designed to improve the status of working people." It was a forerunner of the temperance movement in the United States . The Know Nothing movement briefly emerged as a major political party in the form of the American Party. The collapse of the Whig Party after the passage of the Kansas–Nebraska Act left an opening for the emergence of

3339-592: The same period. Unlike later antisemitic nativist groups in the U.S. , and despite their zealous xenophobia and religious bigotry, the Know Nothings did not focus their ire on Jews or Judaism. Prioritizing a zealous disdain for Irish and German Catholic immigrants, the Know Nothing Party "had nothing to say about Jews", according to historian Hasia Diner , reportedly because its backers believed Jews, unlike Catholics, did not allow "their religious feelings to interfere with their political views." In New York ,

3402-606: The slavery issue. David T. Gleeson notes that many Irish Catholics in the South feared that the arrival of the Know-Nothing movement portended a serious threat. He argues: The southern Irish, who had seen the dangers of Protestant bigotry in Ireland, had the distinct feeling that the Know-Nothings were an American manifestation of that phenomenon. Every migrant, no matter how settled or prosperous, also worried that this virulent strain of nativism threatened his or her hard-earned gains in

3465-435: The status of working people". It passed legislation to regulate railroads, insurance companies and public utilities. It funded free textbooks for the public schools and raised the appropriations for local libraries and for the school for the blind. Purification of Massachusetts against divisive social evils was a high priority. The legislature set up the state's first reform school for juvenile delinquents while trying to block

3528-501: The two-thirds majority needed to pass a state constitutional amendment to restrict voting and office holding to men who had resided in Massachusetts for at least 21 years. The legislature then called on Congress to raise the requirement for naturalization from five years to 21 years, but Congress never acted. The most dramatic move by the Know Nothing legislature was to appoint an investigating committee designed to prove widespread sexual immorality underway in Catholic convents. The press had

3591-473: The use of electrotype plates in Ohio." After Cowles' death in 1890, the Leader began a swift decline, as competition from the Plain Dealer and other newspapers took advantage of the huge void left by Cowles personal control. Many examples of the Leader's poster art from the period immediately after Cowles' death in the 1890s are included in a collection at the New York Public Library as some of

3654-513: The victory by Wise, the movement began to collapse in the South. Know Nothings scored victories in Northern state elections in 1854, winning control of the legislature in Massachusetts and polling 40% of the vote in Pennsylvania. Although most of the new immigrants lived in the North, resentment and anger against them was national and the American Party initially polled well in the South, attracting

3717-431: The votes of many former southern Whigs. The party name gained wide, but brief, popularity: Know Nothing candy, tea, and toothpicks appeared, and the name was given to stagecoaches, buses, and ships. In Trescott , Maine, a shipowner dubbed his new 700-ton freighter Know-Nothing. The party was occasionally referred to, contemporaneously, in a slightly pejorative shortening, "Knism". Historian John Mulkern has examined

3780-488: Was elected to Congress as a Know Nothing candidate, but after a few months he aligned with Republicans. A coalition of Know Nothings, Republicans and other members of Congress opposed to the Democratic Party elected Banks to the position of Speaker of the House . The results of the 1854 elections were so favorable to the Know Nothings, up to then an informal movement with no centralized organization, that they formed officially as

3843-545: Was explicitly political from its founding. Cowles' March 5, 1890 New York Times obituary claims, "In the Winder ;[ sic ] of 1854-5 the germ of the Republican Party was formed in the Leader editorial rooms as a meeting was held there which resulted in the first Republican Convention, which was held at Pittsburg. Col. R. C. Parsons , Joseph Medill , John C. Vaughn, Judge R. P. Spaulding, and J. F. Keeler, were at

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3906-404: Was not the only violent riot between Know Nothings and Catholics in 1855. In Baltimore , the mayoral elections of 1856, 1857, and 1858 were all marred by violence and well-founded accusations of ballot-rigging. In the coastal town of Ellsworth, Maine , in 1854, Know Nothings were associated with the tarring and feathering of a Catholic priest, Jesuit Johannes Bapst . They also burned down

3969-595: Was reflective of the antebellum period in Ohio; pro-Union, anti-slavery, but also according to several sources, virulently anti-Catholic. The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History notes, "Cowles was as outspoken a nativist as he was a Republican, heading the Cleveland chapter of the anti-Catholic Order of the American Union, and carrying on an editorial war with Manly Tello, editor of the Catholic Universe ." The Leader

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