symbols of Americanism: the Puritans, the Minute Men, the Founding Fathers and people who they considered true Christians. The immigrants were seen as pawns in a conspiracy to undermine America. Nativists in New York formed the American Republican Party. It merged into the Know Nothings in the 1850s. The main support for the Know Nothings was urban and working class. The party split over slavery and the northern wing merged into the Republican Party in the late 1850s. White paramilitary organizations in the Southern United States Starting in the 1870s and continuing through the late 19th century, numerous white supremacist paramilitary groups operated in the South, with the goal of organizing against and intimidating supporters of the Republican Party. Examples of such groups included the Red Shirts and the White League. American Protective Association In the Midwestern United States in 1887, the American Protective Association (APA) was formed by Irish Protestants who wanted to fight against the power of the Catholic Church in politics. It was a secret organization whose members campaigned for Protestant candidates in local elections and it opposed the hiring of Catholics for government jobs. Claiming to have secret documents which it obtained from nuns and priests who had escaped from the Catholic Church, it accused the Pope of absolving Catholics from loyalty to the United States and it also accused the Pope of asking Catholics to kill heretics. It also claimed that the Catholic Church ordered Catholics to emigrate to major U.S. cities where they could assume control and it also claimed that the civil service was dominated by Catholics who remitted part of their pay to Rome. The movement was rejected by mainstream Republicans and it faded away in the mid-1890s. An offshoot of the APA, the Protestant Protective Association (PPA) was set up in the Canadian province of Ontario in 1891. It drew support from Orangemen in the 1890s, before it went into decline. Its leaders opposed Catholic influence and supported the Imperial Federation. A PPA was also set up in Australia. Lily-white movement The lily-white movement was an all-white faction of the Republican Party in the Southern United States which opposed civil rights and African-American involvement in the party, and it was active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Second Ku Klux Klan The Second Ku Klux Klan, which was formed in 1915, combined anti-Catholicism, antisemitism, white supremacy, Protestant fundamentalism and