In the years between 1830 and 1860, anti-Catholicism in America became unprecedentedly virulent. In 1834, the Ursuline convent in Charlestown, Massachusetts, was burned to the ground by an angry mob, touched off in large part by the anti-Catholic sermons of Lyman Beecher and rumors of convent abuses spread by Rebecca Reed. The following years saw several attempts by State governments to legislate against convents as well as numerous incidents of violence. In 1839, thousands of people in Baltimore rioted for three days and threatened to destroy a Carmelite convent. Five years later, rioting mobs in Philadelphia killed thirteen people and left blocks of Catholic homes and two Catholic churches smoldering in ruins. And, throughout the 1850's, a political party called the Know-Nothings convulsed the nation with its violent hostility toward Catholics. The worst incidents occurred in St. Louis, where ten people were killed in 1854, and in Louisville, where twenty were killed in 1855. The Know-Nothings diminished in popularity only with the turmoil of the Civil War.