Anti-Masonic Party - Political Conventions

Political Conventions

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. 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 1836.

The party conducted the first presidential nominating convention in U.S. history in the 1832 elections, nominating William Wirt (a former Mason) for President and Amos Ellmaker for Vice President in Baltimore. 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 Republicans 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.

Following the election of Joseph Ritner as Governor of Pennsylvania in 1835, a state convention was held in Harrisburg on December 14–17, 1835 to choose Presidential Electors for the 1836 election. The convention nominated William Henry Harrison for President and Francis Granger for Vice President. The Vermont state Anti-Masonic convention followed suit on February 24, 1836. National Anti-Masonic leaders were unable to obtain assurance from Harrison that he was not a Mason, so they called a national convention. The second Anti-Masonic National nominating convention was held in Philadelphia on May 4, 1836. The convention was divisive, but a majority of the delegates were able to restate that purpose of the party as strictly anti-Masonry and to officially state that the party was not sponsoring a national ticket for the presidential election of 1836.

Although Harrison was not elected, his strength throughout the North was hailed by Anti-Masonic leaders because the party was the first to officially place his name in contention. The party held a conference in September 1837 to discuss its situation; one delegate was former President John Quincy Adams. The third Anti-Masonic National nominating convention was held in Temperance Hall, Philadelphia, on November 13–14, 1838. By this time, the party had been almost entirely engulfed by the Whig Party. In any case, the AMP convention unanimously nominated William Henry Harrison for President and Daniel Webster for Vice President. When the Whig National Convention nominated Harrison and Tyler, the Anti-Masonic Party did not make an alternate nomination and vanished.

A later political organization called the Anti-Masonic Party was active from 1872 until 1888. This second group had a more religious basis for its anti-Masonry and was closely associated with Jonathan Blanchard of Wheaton College.

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, not only was a former Mason but also even supposedly 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.