Anti-Masonic Party

If you remember that, if you want to talk about conspiracies, are you familiar with the William Morgan affair? No, tell us.

So that William Morgan affair was a Masonic plot affair that took place in upstate New York that created the anti-Masonic party.

And it was the disappearance of William Morgan.

I actually read that into the record, too.

But Seward was from New York, and he was right neck deep into this kind of disappearance of William Morgan, which created this anti-Masonic fervor.

And it was right around, strangely, right around the time as Mormonism was starting to grow through, they called it the burnt-over district of northern America.

new york and which is also heavily masonic so you see these same masonic kind of things whether it's kog uh william morgan abduction and disappearance they never found his body but uh uh so so seward's there he's they're talking about the knights of uh golden circle in congress he's aware of that there's also a letter to uh abraham lincoln he says to discover the parties connected with the secret society called the knights of the golden circle there are strong suspicions of their existence in this city i think it's from philadelphia and i've informed the attorney and you know basically be careful for them um and then there's yeah Allow me to suggest to your excellency the propriety of using a portion of the Secret Service money placed at your disposal to discover these parties.

And then, I mean, the scares went on so much so that in the 1820s, we had a big anti-Masonic movement.

movement, so much so that there was a political party called the Anti-Masonic Party that was the first party to actually hold a national convention.

And so about 1826, the Phi Beta Kappa at Harvard went public instead of being a secret group.

And then in 1832, the Phi Beta Kappa group in Yale started the Order of Skull and Bones, Alonzo Taft and William Huntington Russell.

If you remember that, if you want to talk about conspiracies, are you familiar with the William Morgan affair? No, tell us.

So that William Morgan affair was a Masonic plot affair that took place in upstate New York that created the anti-Masonic party.

And it was the disappearance of William Morgan.

I actually read that into the record, too.

But Seward was from New York, and he was right neck deep into this kind of disappearance of William Morgan, which created this anti-Masonic fervor.

And it was right around, strangely, right around the time as Mormonism was starting to grow through, they called it the burnt-over district of northern America.

new york and which is also heavily masonic so you see these same masonic kind of things whether it's kog uh william morgan abduction and disappearance they never found his body but uh uh so so seward's there he's they're talking about the knights of uh golden circle in congress he's aware of that there's also a letter to uh abraham lincoln he says to discover the parties connected with the secret society called the knights of the golden circle there are strong suspicions of their existence in this city i think it's from philadelphia and i've informed the attorney and you know basically be careful for them um and then there's yeah Allow me to suggest to your excellency the propriety of using a portion of the Secret Service money placed at your disposal to discover these parties.

So, uh, I, I suppose you'd call a kinda like ideological boomerang effect.

And, you know, List is important because he was able to, I guess, have these ideas spread in ways that the American Academy had no interest in spreading the ideas of their ideological opponents, the protectionists in the United States, uh, I guess variously the Federalists, the Republicans, the Whigs, uh, the Anti-Masons, and then the modern Republican Party.

[chuckles] Um, they had a, a fairly short run.

They were never interested in dominating the academy or making inroads there beyond the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, which becomes mostly shored up as a protectionist institution by, again, the, the boomerang that comes back from the German historical school.

...

it coincides perfectly with the Cold War, and you get people like McCarthy, Senator Joseph McCarthy, who was very similar to some of these other previous anti-Catholics or anti-Masonic, uh, uh, people.

But, um-

And it turns out that it wasn't necessarily the Masons who were behind everything, but it was just your everyday, you know, Virginia planters.

Smith also writes of Indiana military lodges meeting upon the mountaintops and in the valley on numerous occasions.

According to the same historian, a few of the older Indiana lodges are said to have resorted to secluded outdoor spots during the anti-Masonic hysteria of the 1830s.

As Masonic groups have eagerly pursued this link with the past, lodge meetings have been held in caves, quarries, and gravel pits.

Masonic degrees have been conferred in forests, on hills, and on mountaintops.

And he was murdered, kidnapped by a local lodge, and basically tortured, and the book didn't come out.

But it sparked what's known as the first third party in American history, the anti-Masonic party.

and they created the political mechanism of conventions and primaries

to

You need some means of support.

support.Thurlow Weed and the Anti-Masons are thrilled.

He has his headline.

They have a martyr to rally behind.

They say, "Hey, you know, what are you gonna do now? You don't have a dead Morgan." And he says to them, and this is something that follows him for the rest of his life, he says, "It's a good enough Morgan until the election."

Though Weed insists he is misquoted, his Morgan proves to be more than good enough.

In their first test of political power, the Anti-Masons make a splash.

They take 15 seats in the New York State Assembly and sweep town and county offices across Western New York.