The minority Whig party relied on conservative merchants, bankers and prosperous farmers, and especially on pietistic, moralistic Protestants from evangelical churches. Nationally, the Whig party collapsed in the 1850s as compromise proved impossible between the anti-slavery Northerners, and the pro-slavery Southerners. For a few years in the mid-1850s, nativist fears of foreign immigrants, especially Catholic Irishmen and Germans, motivated the Know-Nothing movement. It had little success beyond a brief control of city government in Marshall, Pontiac, Battle Creek, Mt. Clemens, Kalamazoo, and Grand Rapids.