This party grew up almost overnight and became a strong force in the politics of the nation. The party was a secret organization which had as its principal theories the idea that the government of the United States should be in the hands of "Native Americans," that no one should be permitted to become a citizen until after a very long period of probation, and that Catholics should be excluded from all offices. The party gained its largest number of votes in 1854 and declined rapidly after that time, being dead in less than three years after its victories in 1854 and 1855. Such an organization, of course, could have very little welcome for a group of French socialists and, in the main, would be openly hostile toward them.
The rather sensitive and alert Considerant quickly sensed the change. He immediately issued a statement concerning the attitude of himself and his colonists in which he stated:
I by no means intend to criticize or to approve this political movement, or to pass judgment upon it in any manner whatever. God forbid that I should follow the example of those new comers who, having scarcely set foot on a great country where they find hospitality, freedom, and an immense field open to their activity, hasten to take part in its internal affairs, mixing themselves up in questions of which they cannot yet understand the first elements, speaking, judging and deciding, right or wrong, on all sorts of subjects, which demand long study and profound knowledge of things in order to be comprehended.
No! my friends and myself, I am authorized to say, are men of common sense. We do not come to America in order to enlist in parties, of which we know neither the principles, the traditions, nor the exciting causes.
It is undoubtedly our earnest desire to attain, as soon as possible, the dignity of American citizens. But we will patiently wait the time when the law shall accord to us this title of nobility (whatever delay it may prescribe us to-day or establish to-morrow). We hold this title in high esteem, sufficiently to understand that the law, before conferring it on foreigners, should require them to become worthy of the privileges; and for ourselves, we do not pretend to see farther than the Americans into their own affairs. So far from aspiring to give them lessons of political conduct, we know that on all questions of this nature they are our superiors and masters, and it is our part to place ourselves on the seat of instruction. We feel ourselves far more urgently called to cultivate the earth, to erect buildings, and to establish various branches of industry, workshops, and schools, than to swell the ranks of any political party, to deposit our votes in the ballot box, or to place ourselves in either a scale of the political balance in the United States, Know-Nothingism, and Anti-Know-Nothingism--American Democracy Whiggism, Abolitionism, Pro-Slaveryism, with all the other isms of the same nature, are as yet to us only words expressing ideas, interests, and principles on which we are not ashamed to confess our ignorance, and to declare our perfect incompetence. All these questions, we think, are essentially American, concerning Americans alone, and in which no foreigner can reasonably take part until after he has been thoroughly Americanized; and,--this is not the work of a day.[3]