The Anti-Masonic Party

The first two organized political parties in the United States were the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans. Reflecting regional, class, and ideological divisions that were evident during the debate over constitutional ratification, these two parties contended for power in both congressional and presidential elections until 1816, when the Federalists all but disintegrated as a result of their opposition to the War of 1812. The Republicans (having dropped the "Democratic" prefix) dominated the political landscape for the next eight years, but the election of 1824 saw the Republicans divide into several internal factions. By 1828, these factions had reorganized themselves as the Democratic Party, still in existence today, and the National Republicans, who went on to become the Whigs in 1834.

It was against this background that the Anti-Masonic Party emerged in 1827 as the first "third party" in American politics. The previous year, a bricklayer in western New York by the name of William Morgan had threatened to expose the inner workings of the Society of Freemasons, a secretive fraternal order whose members once included George Washington, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and Benjamin Franklin. After being jailed on a trumped-up charge, Morgan was kidnapped and presumably murdered, although his body was never found.

The blame for Morgan's disappearance naturally fell on the Masons, and this gave rise to an anti-Masonic movement in western New York. In the fall of 1827, several candidates were elected to local and statewide office on a platform opposed to Masonry, charging that the fraternal order was a bastion of immorality, vice, and privilege. By 1831, the anti-Masonic movement had spread to Pennsylvania, Ohio, and parts of New England, and dozens of anti-Masonic newspapers circulated throughout the region. That year, the Anti-Masonic party held the first-ever political party convention and nominated William Wirt, a former U.S. attorney general, as its presidential candidate.

The Anti-Masonic party was also the first party to adopt a written platform, which consisted mainly of appeals for moral virtue and anti-elitism (see the Visual Literacy exercise in this chapter for a discussion of present-day platforms).

However, Wirt carried only the state of Vermont and its seven electoral votes in the 1832 presidential election, as Democratic Party leader Andrew Jackson was decisively elected to a second term. After the election, the moralistic impulses behind the Anti-Masonic Party were soon channeled into the abolitionist movement, and many of the party's leaders went on to participate in the creation of the Whig Party in 1834.