While many intellectuals and progressives at the time might have despised Know Nothings, their numbers continued to swell, as did their influence. In New York City, it reached an apex with the death of William Poole, aka “Butcher Bill,” a leader of the New York Know Nothings. Bill, who was best known for being the leader of the Bowery Boys gang, also wrote anti-immigrant poetry, featuring lines such as “Let not our country in their hands be given / and thus betray the trust received from heaven.”
