Catholics in American culture and elections dramatically changed as a result of the mass immigration of Catholics from Europe, especially from Germany and Ireland. By 1840, there were about 600,000 Catholics in the United States. In the 1840s, 200,000 Irish immigrated to escape poverty. The Great Famine of Ireland which lasted from 1845–1852 caused the Irish population in America to number 962,000, the number doubled in the next ten years. Even larger numbers of immigrants came from traditionally Catholic regions of Germany and traditionally Catholic regions of other parts of Europe. Because most of these new arrivals lived in ethnic communities, they typically joined the local Catholic church that was in communion with Rome through the local diocese; how many of them cut their ties with the Catholic Church is a matter of speculation. The Irish Catholics took controlling positions in the Catholic Church, labor unions, and Democratic organizations in the big cities, thus forming overlapping centers of strength. The sudden new arrival of so many Catholics, charges of political corruption, and fears of papal interference caused anti-Catholicism to grow, including the short-lived Know Nothings party in the 1850s which demanded a purification of elections and statutes from Catholic influence. Many Catholics served in the Civil War armies, they served in both the North and the South, and the bishops rejected the antiwar and anti-draft sentiments of some Catholics. The rapid rise of the Irish out of poverty, and the continuing growth in membership, especially in industrial and urban areas, made the church the largest denomination in the U.S. Distrusting public schools which were dominated by Protestants, Catholics built their own network of parochial elementary schools (and, later, they built high schools), as well as colleges, and public funding of parochial schools was a controversial issue. As the Bennett Law episode in 1890 in Wisconsin demonstrated, Catholics were willing to cooperate politically with German Lutherans to protect their parochial schools. A distinct Catholic vote existed, however; in the late 19th century, 75% of Irish and German Catholics in America voted for Democratic presidential candidates. The Irish increasingly controlled the Democratic party machinery in major cities. Religious lines were sharply drawn in the North in the Third Party System that lasted from the 1850s to the 1890s. (In the South the Catholics voted the same as Protestants, with race as the main dividing line.) Methodists, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Scandinavian Lutherans and other