Anti-Catholic secret societies multiplied in the 1880s across scattered localities.

Evidence

A whole crop of secret, anti-Catholic societies sprang up, none of more than local consequence but scattered in many localities. Regardless of actual size, they usually aspired to become a dominant force in American politics. It is noteworthy that one of the earliest of the new groups arose in Chicago in 1886. Named at first the United Order of Deputies and later the American League, it attracted ten or fifteen thousand from the lower-middle and working classes; it demanded that employers discharge all Romanists, but never realized its grandiose political ambitions. … In the same year a New York political adventurer formed the Minute Men of 1886, campaigning for the public school system and against immieration. [he next four years saw the appearance of the Red, White and Blue (a super-secret little group formed by an impecunious bookseller to meet the perils described in Josiah Strong’s Our Country), the United Order of Native Americans, the American Patriotic League, the Get There American Benefit Association, and the Loyal Men of American Liberty. — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 369

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Anti-Catholic panic surged across the South and Midwest by 1920 — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 1760