Anti‐Masonic Party. This political party arose in New York in response to the 1826 disappearance of William Morgan, a Mason. His lodge was suspected of murdering him in revenge for his publication of the organization's secrets. When state and local officials, mostly proto‐Democrats, procrastinated in the investigation, angry citizens formed a political party and in 1827 won several New York legislative seats. By 1829 Anti‐Masonry had spread throughout much of the Northeast, with its greatest political impact in Pennsylvania. Between 1828 and 1838, Anti‐Masons elected seventy‐six candidates to Congress. In 1832, Anti‐Masonic party candidates won 10 percent of all House races, and the party's Presidential candidate, William Wirt, carried Vermont and won almost 8 percent of the popular vote nationally.
Anti‐Masons owed some of their popularity to the religious
revivalism of the 1820s. The role of economic factors is more problematic. While some studies show that the party had the support of the emerging middle class, others indicate that economically declining groups voted for it. By 1836, most Anti‐Masons had joined the
Whig party because Democratic President Andrew
Jackson had vigorously defended the
Masonic order. In addition, Anti‐Masons opposed his Sunday mail transportation policies. Anti‐Masons gave the Whigs an evangelical, populist dimension, as well as gifted leaders and political operatives such as Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania and Thurlow Weed of New York. Anti‐Mason inspired social policies favored by Whigs, such as liquor and sabbatarian legislation, funding of educational and reformatory institutions, and to some extent the
antislavery impulse of the party's northern wing.
See also
Antebellum Era;
Temperance and Prohibition.
Bibliography
Kathleen S. Kutolowski , Antimasonry Reexamined: Social Bases of the Grassroots Party, Journal of American History 71 (1984): 269–93.
Paul Goodman , Towards a Christian Republic: Antimasonry and the Great Transition in New England, 1826–1836, 1988.
Michael F. Holt , Political Parties and American Political Development from the Age of Jackson to the Age of Lincoln, 1992.
Lex Renda