The Universal Language of Freemasonry - ArchiMeD - Johannes ...

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Chapter 9 - Masonic and Anti-Masonic Literature
many people claimed to have seen him in all kinds of countries, e.g. in Smyrna,
in Asia Minor, and finally, a body was found and identified as Morgan's.
All this happened in the closing days of an exciting political campaign.
The Anti-Masonic partisans used every artifice not to have the
impression disturbed that Morgan's body had been found [...]. The vote
cast for avowedly Anti-Masonic candidates was regarded as sufficiently
encouraging to suggest the establishment of a new political party to
prevent the election of Masons, or "Mingoes" as they were nicknamed,
for public office. Here was the opportunity for Thurlow Weed to swing
himself into political leadership, which had been denied him by the
existing parties. He became the organizer, the mouthpiece, the platform
builder, the 'boss' of the new party whose venomous agitations stirred
the country for almost five years. 1823
It is a fact that the drowned body found was the one of a certain Timothy
Munroe, which became clear a few days after the interment. The Anti-Masonic
party was the first third-party movement in the United States. Its initial followers
were farmers and skilled craftsmen, many of whom were associated with
evangelicalism and the temperance movement. They maintained that the
aristocratic appearance and the secrecy of Freemasonry constituted a threat to
republican democracy. Anti-Masonry provided the opportunity for rural people
to express their resentment to the cities, and for ordinary people to protest
against their powerful, mostly Masonic leaders, who dominated the public affairs
of the nation. 1824 In 1833, Anti-Masons elected a governor of Rhode Island. They
had a significant role in local politics in Massachusetts and New York, and
controlled Vermont and Pennsylvania for several years. When in 1831, the Anti-
Masonic party nominated William Wirt to run for president, it became the first
American political party to select a presidential candidate.
Not only Masons, but also those who did not denounce Freemasonry or
sympathized with it were to be banned from the political arenas. As Mock puts
it, "The New Political broom undertook to sweep the floors clean." 1825 The
campaigns of the Anti-Masonic Party were infamous for their bitterness, as can
be seen in the following stanza from one of their campaign songs, set to the tune
of "Auld Lang Syne":
If aught on earth can men engage,
If aught can make us free,
'T is one successful war to wage
Against Free Masonry.
1823 Lang, p. 122.
1824 Cf. http://www.historychannel.com/ under the entry "Anti-Masons," cited from Eric Foner and
John A. Garraty (ed.), The Reader's Companion to American History, Houghton Mifflin Compnay,
1991.
1825 Mock, p. 147.