Bloody Monday

Bloody Monday was a series of riots on August 6, 1855, in Louisville, Kentucky, an election day, when Protestant mobs attacked Irish and German Catholic neighborhoods. These riots grew out of the bitter rivalry between the Democrats and the Nativist Know-Nothing Party. Multiple street fights raged, leaving twenty-two people dead, scores injured, and much property destroyed by fire. Five people were later indicted, but none were convicted, and the victims were not compensated. Causes Bloody Monday was sparked by the Know Nothing political party (officially known as the American Party), fed in large part by the radical, inflammatory anti-immigrant writings, especially those of the editor of the Louisville Journal, George D. Prentice. Irish and Germans were recent arrivals and now comprised a third of the city's population. Like other major cities on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, Louisville grew rapidly in the previous two decades because of heavy immigration from Ireland and Germany. There were 11,000 immigrants out of a white population of 36,000. Most were Roman Catholics, but there was also a large German Lutheran element. The vast majority were Democrats. Election day According to the Louisville Daily Journal by Monday morning the city was "...in possession of an armed mob, the base passions of which were infuriated to the highest pitch by the incendiary appeals of the newspaper organ and the popular leaders of the Know Nothing party." The Know-Nothings formed armed groups to guard the polls on election day. Hundreds were deterred from voting by direct acts of intimidation, others through fear of consequences. In the Sixth Ward William Thomasson, a former Congressman from the district, while appealing to the maddened crowd to cease their acts of disorder and violence was struck from behind and beaten.