In 1855, when Lincoln was helping to form the Republican Party out of the remnants of the Whig Party around a simple moral question, the extension of slavery, a lifelong friend asked him if he was a Know-Nothing, a member of the new "American Party," which has arisen in opposition to German Catholic immigrants in the big cities.
Lincoln, who epitomizes the difference between being religious and being church-going, wrote back in 1855:
I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that “all men are created equal.'' We now practically read it “all men are created equal, except negroes.'' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read “all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics.'' When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty—to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy.
