Pennsylvania Antimasons and the Emergence of the National Nominating Convention, 1835-1839

Battleground: Pennsylvania Antimasons and the Emergence of the National Nominating Convention, 1835-1839 N DECEMBER 1839 the first working national nominating convention of a major American political party—the emerging Whigs, Isuccessors to the National Republicans—convened in Harrisburg's "beautiful and spacious" newly rebuilt Old Zion Lutheran Church. In a bruising contest lasting four days, the convention's leaders (with what Richard P. McCormick calk "amazing technical ingenuity") selected Ohio's General William Henry Harrison over the country's leading Whig, Kentucky senator Henry Clay. The outcome was due in part to the efforts of determined and persistent Pennsylvania Antimasons to regain control of their state. Previous nominating conventions had been ceremonial, called to approve choices already agreed upon. In 1839, however, the Pennsylvania Antimasons helped to change this, thereby making a major, albeit then unrecognized, contribution to the workings of American politics.1 Antimasonry began in the so-called "infected" or "burned-over district" of western New York during the second quarter of the nineteenth century in reaction to the kidnapping and alleged murder of one William Morgan, an ex-Freemason who planned to publish the secrets of that fraternal order. The movement soon spread to New England, northern Ohio, and 1 Harrisburg Chronicle, cited by The North American (Phila.), Nov. 27, 1839. The changing role of the national nominating convention is thoughtfully presented in Roy F. Nichols, The Invention of the American Political Parties (New York, 1967), see especially 333-41. Nichols uses the important designation "working" to apply to the Whig national convention in 1839. Richard P. McCormick, The Second American Party System (Chapel Hill, 1966), is indispensable for the study of political parties during this period, for quotation, see 341. THE PENNSYLVANIA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY Vol. CXXII, Nos. 1/2 Qanuary/April 1998) 78 JOHN J. REED January/April Pennsylvania (where it filled "a particular kind of political void")2 and entered politics as the country's first third party, participating in the nation's first presidential nominating convention in 1831 when it won Vermont's seven electoral votes. The party's last political stand, which came about because of the exigencies of that state's politics, was in Pennsylvania in the late 1830s. There is no consensus today among historians as to how the Antimasonic experience should be evaluated and how certain fundamental questions should be answered. Why did this phenomenon arise when and where it did? Why did it persist longer in some areas than in others? How did it relate to the broad currents of the time, such as Jacksonian democracy? There has been no lack of effort to deal with these questions. Charles McCarthy's 1902 study is still useful. More recently, good general accounts have been written by William Vaughn, Michael Holt, and Edward Pessen. The roots of Antimasonry in evangelical Christianity have been explored by Whitney Cross, while Lee Benson has emphasized its egalitarian nature, and Richard Hofstadter has tried to relate it to what he called "the paranoid style of American politics." There are good state studies of Vermont and Connecticut that deal with Antimasonry as well as regional studies of New England by Ronald Formisano and Paul Goodman. Of major importance is the work of Kathleen Smith Kutalowski who, beginning with a thorough study of Antimasonry's roots in Genessee County, New York, the birthplace of Morgan's activities, has caused many older assumptions about Antimasonry to be challenged.3 2 McCormick, Second American Party System, 337. 3 Charles McCarthy, "The Antimasonic Party: A Study of Political Antimasonry in the United States, 1827-1840," American Historical Association, Annual Report for 1902 (2 vols., Washington, 1903), 1:365-574; William Preston Vaughn, The Antimasonic Party in the United States, 1826-1843 (Lexington, Ky., 1983); Michael F. Holt, "The Antimasonic and Know Nothing Parties," in Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., ed., History of U.S. Political Parties (4 vols., New York, 1973), 1:575-93; Edward Pessen, Jacksonian America: Society, Personality, and Politics (rev. ed., Homewood, 111., 1978); Whitney R. Cross, The Burned-over District: The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York (New York, 1950); Lee Benson, The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy: New York as a Test Case (Princeton, N.J., 1961); Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays (New York, 1965), 14-18, 34-35, and passim. Useful state studies include Dorothy Ann Lipson, Freemasonry in Federalist Connecticut (Princeton, N.J., 1977); David Ludlum, Social Ferment in Vermont, 1791-1850 (New York, 1939); Robert O. Rupp, "Social Tension and Political Mobilization in Jacksonian Society: A Case Study of the Antimasonic Party in New York, Pennsylvania, and Vermont, 1827-1840," Ph.D. diss., Syracuse University, 1983, who discusses the basis for the appeal of the Antimasons in Pennsylvania; Ronald P. Formisano, The Transformation of Political Culture, Massachusetts Parties, 1998 PENNSYLVANIA ANTIMASONS 79 This essay attempts to supplement the work of these and other authors by showing how Harrison's victory over Clay at Harrisburg in December 1839 arose in large part from the efforts of determined and persistent Pennsylvania Antimasons (aided by sympathetic New York allies) to regain control of their state government. As noted, these efforts helped to change the nature of the national nominating convention, making it quite different from earlier ones, thus contributing significantly to the evolution of American politics. How and why this came about when it did is the subject of this essay which presents Pennsylvania Antimasons in a new light, not as crusaders, zealots, ideologues, or fanatics but as pragmatic politicians doing what all politicians must do: fight for office. Responding in 1830 to a request for his views on the then fledgling Antimasonic party, Clay wrote, "The leaders of Anti-Masonry are in the pursuit of power: the great body of their party are endeavoring to remove what they honestly believed to be a great evil. The former would desire power, without regard to the means of acquiring it; the latter seek it only as an instrument of effecting their paramount object. ."4 This quotation might well be taken as the text for this essay which, through a review of pivotal events of the 1830s, examines the quest for and the use of power by the Pennsylvania Antimasons who took advantage of the first national convention of the Whigs to attain their goal: the election of a candidate (Harrison) who could return them to power. The political situation in the Keystone State thus proved fertile soil for institutional innovation. The fact that the success of the Pennsylvania Antimasons proved ephemeral in the 1790s-1840s (New York, 1983); and Paul Goodman, Toward a Christian Republic: Antimasonry and the Great Transition in New England, 1826-1836 (New York, 1988). Of special interest is Kathleen Smith Kutalowski's "The Social Composition of Political Leadership: Genessee County, New York, 1821-1860," Ph.D. diss., University of Rochester, 1973, a detailed social and economic study of the county that gave birth to Antimasonic enthusiasm. The socioeconomic nature of Antimasonry in Pennsylvania remains to be studied. It needs to be undertaken along the lines suggested by Kutalowski, i.e., on a county-by-county basis. 4 Henry Clay to John M. Bailhache, Nov. 24, 1830, in Robert Seager II, et al., eds., The Papers of Henry Clay (hereafter, Clay Papers) (10 vols., Lexington, Ky., University Press of Kentucky, 1959-92), 8:303-4. 80 JOHN J REED January/April face of the emerging Whigs does not diminish the historical importance of their activity in the 1830s.5 The presidential nominating convention was a very young institution in the 1830s. For almost a quarter of a century nominations had been made by congressional caucus, a procedure that fell into disuse following the four- way election of 1824. There was some talk in the Jackson camp of having a national convention prior to the election of 1828, but the first national nominating convention was that of the Antimasons who met in Baltimore in September 1831. More than one hundred delegates attended—most chosen by state conventions or caucuses from thirteen of the twenty-four states. The larger delegations—from New York, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania—dominated the proceedings. The convention rules required a three-quarters vote for presidential and vice presidential nominations, with secret ballots deposited individually. A number of candidates, including Pennsylvania's Richard Rush and former president John Quincy Adams, had been considered, but well before the convention met the party leaders had settled on John McLean, associate justice of the United States Supreme Court. McLean accepted, presumably making the task of the convention simply one of ratification, but at the last minute he withdrew. An informal meeting of the convention, called a "caucus," decided after four ballots to nominate William Wirt, former attorney general and a Mason. Wirt assured the delegates that he was not an active Mason and was in sympathy with Antimasonic principles. He was vigorously opposed by Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania who, correctly, considered him an opportunist, but after a long night's discussion with New York's William Seward, Stevens was converted to Wirt's

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