The Anti-Masonic Party (also known as the Anti-Masonic Movement) was a 19th
century minor political party in the United
States. It strongly opposed Freemasonry, and was founded as a single-issue party, aspiring to become a major party.
It introduced important innovations to American politics, such as nominating conventions and the adoption of party platforms.
History
The Anti-Masonic Party was formed in upstate New York in 1826, and was the first third party
in American national politics.
Many people feared the Masons, believing that it was a powerful, secret society that was trying to rule the country in
defiance of republican principles. Other objections were to Freemasonry's links to the occult,
witchcraft, and ceremonial magic.[citation needed] They came together to form a political party after the Morgan incident
convinced them the Masons were murdering their opponents. The key episode was the mysterious disappearance, in 1826, of
William Morgan (c. 1775-c. 1826), a Freemason of Batavia, New York, who had become
dissatisfied with his Order and claimed he was going to publish secrets about the local lodge. When his purpose became known to
the lodge, Morgan was subjected to frequent annoyances, and finally in September 1826 he was seized and surreptitiously taken to
Fort Niagara, after which he disappeared.
The event created great excitement, and led many to believe that not just the local lodge but that all Freemasonry was in
conflict with good citizenship. Because judges, businessmen, bankers, and politicians were often Masons, ordinary citizens began
to think of it as an elitist group. Moreover, many argued that the lodges' secret oaths bound the brethren to favor each other
against outsiders, in the courts as well as elsewhere. Because the trial of the Morgan conspirators was mishandled, and the
Masons resisted further inquiries, it became an article of faith[citation needed] of its opponents that Masonic judges would not sentence and Masonic juries
would fail to convict fellow members of the order. They considered the Masons to be an exclusive organization taking unfair
advantage of common folk and violating the essential principles of democracy. True Americans, they said, had to organize and
defeat this conspiracy.
Opposition to Masonry was taken up by the churches as a sort of religious crusade, and it also became a local political issue
in western New York, where, early in 1827, the citizens in many mass meetings resolved to support no mason for public office.
In New York at this time the National Republicans, or
"Adams men," were a very feeble organization, and shrewd political leaders at once determined to utilize the strong anti-Masonic
feeling in creating a new and vigorous party to oppose the rising Jacksonian Democracy. In this effort they were aided by the
fact that Andrew Jackson was a high-ranking Mason and frequently spoke in praise of the
Order. The alleged remark of political organizer Thurlow Weed, that a corpse found floating
in the Niagara River was "a good enough Morgan" till after the election, summarized the value of the crime for the opponents of
Jackson. In the elections of 1828 the new party proved unexpectedly strong, and after this year it practically superseded the
National Republican party in New York. In 1829 it broadened its issues base when it became a champion of internal improvements
and of the protective tariff. The party published 35 weekly newspapers in New York. Soon one became preeminent, the Albany
Journal, edited by Thurlow Weed.
The party invented the convention, a system whereby locally elected delegates would choose state candidates and pledge their
loyalty. Soon the Democrats and Whigs recognized the convention's value in building a party, and held their own conventions. The
newspapers reveled in partisanship. One brief Albany Journal paragraph on Martin Van
Buren included the words "dangerous," "demagogue," "corrupt," "degrade," "pervert," "prostitute," "debauch" and
"cursed."
By 1832 the movement had lost its focus on Masonry, and had spread to neighboring states, becoming especially strong in
Pennsylvania and Vermont. A national organization was
planned as early as 1827, when the New York leaders attempted, unsuccessfully, to persuade
Henry Clay who was a Mason, to renounce the Order and head the movement. In 1831, William A. Palmer was elected governor of Vermont on an
Anti-Masonic ticket, an office he held until 1835.
The party conducted the first U.S. presidential nominating
convention in the U.S. at Baltimore, in the 1832
elections, nominating William Wirt (a former Mason) for President
and Amos Ellmaker for Vice
President. Wirt won 7.78 percent of the popular vote, and the seven electoral votes from Vermont. The highest elected
office ever held by a member of the party was that of a governor: besides Palmer in Vermont, Joseph Ritner was the governor of Pennsylvania from 1835 to 1838.
This was the high tide of its prosperity; in New York in 1833 the organization was moribund, and
its members gradually united with the National Republican
Party and other opponents of Jacksonian Democracy in forming the Whig
Party. The Whigs' great New York boss, Thurlow Weed, began his political career as
an Anti-Mason. In other states, the party survived somewhat longer, but by 1836 most of its members
had united with the Whigs. Its last act in national politics was to nominate William
Henry Harrison for president and John Tyler for vice-president at a convention in
Philadelphia in November 1836.
The growth of the anti-Masonic movement was due more to the political and social conditions of the time than to the Morgan
episode, which was merely the catalyst. Under the banner of "Anti-Masons" able leaders united those who were discontented with
existing political conditions. The fact that William Wirt, their choice
for the presidency in 1832, was not only a Mason but even defended the Order in a speech before the
convention that nominated him, indicates that mere opposition to Masonry was by no means the central premise of the political
order.
Candidates
See also
References
- Holt, Michael F. "The Antimasonic and Know Nothing Parties," in History of U.S. Political Parties, ed. Arthur M.
Schlesinger Jr. (4 vols., New York, 1973), vol I, 575-620.
- Charles McCarthy, The Antimasonic Party: A Study of Political Anti-Masonry in the United States, 1827-1840, in the
Report of the American Historical Association for 1902 (1903) online at JSTOR
- Hans L. Trefousse; Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian University of North Carolina Press. 1997.
- Vaughn, William Preston (1983) The Antimasonic Party in the United States, 1826-1843. University Press of Kentucky.
ISBN 0-8131-1474-8, the standard history
- Van Deusen, Glyndon G.
Thurlow Weed, Wizard of the Lobby (1947)
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia
Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public
domain.
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