The Order of the Star Spangled Banner (OSSB) was an oath-bound secret society in New York City.
It was created in 1849 by Charles B. Allen to protest the rise of Irish and German Catholic immigration into the United States.
Members invariably responded to questions about the OSSB by claiming that they "knew nothing".
The OSSB would eventually form the nucleus of the nativist Know Nothing movement which ran candidates in 1855–56 under the American Party ticket.
The authors, sometimes posing as escaped nuns, described the shocking sins they imagined the cloisters concealed, including the secret burial of babies.