During the riots, German-Americans erected barricades in the streets leading into their Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, and fired a cannon over the heads of a mob of nativists attacking them.

Taylor's inflammatory attacks on immigrants caused rising tension in the city, with fighting breaking out on election day.

Words could but faintly translate the abhorence we feel that the ark of our safety, the very covenant of our freedom, should be ruthlessly seized by sacrilegious hands, and destroyed before our very eyes".

The Columbus Statesman described the nativists as "the reckless, midnight, oath-bound order" and asked "Has the Protestant religion come to so low a condition that it requires such means to give it character and support?

The election violence and failure of the nativists to form an alliance with anti-slavery activists discredited the party in the eyes of many citizens and led to the demise of the movement.