The Disappearance of William Morgan and the Rise of the Anti-Masonic Political Party

The Disappearance of William Morgan and the Rise of the Anti-Masonic Political Party

   At the turn of the 19th century a man named William Morgan set off to work as a bricklayer in upstate New York. He often referred to himself as Captain William Morgan, making the claim that he served as a captain in the War of 1812. Along with other details of his life, this one is in dispute. Historians have checked the military registries from the War of 1812 and found several enlistees by that name but none of them ever served in the rank of captain.

   Nonetheless, after arriving in the northern state and settling in to work, William Morgan tried several times to associate himself with various Masonic lodges. He was  rejected by them each time. He claimed to have been initiated into a lodge in Rochester where he rose to the rank of Master Mason. This raised some disputes with the Masons of the area because they were unable to locate his name on any official documents. Also finding him to be a habitual liar of low moral character he repeatedly got turned away. In anger Morgan claimed to have written a book exposing the secretive Masonic ceremonies and a publisher named David Cade Miller, who had once been a Mason himself,  agreed to publish it.

   This infuriated the Masons since initiates are required to take an oath not to reveal the secrets of their fraternal order. The police chief of Batavia, who was also a Mason, had Morgan arrested on trumped-up charges and thrown into debtor’s prison in nearby Canadaigua. Upon hearing of the arrest, the publisher Miller paid off his debt and got Morgan freed from jail. On their way out, three men attacked Morgan and pushed him into an enclosed carriage in the presence of several eye-witnesses who later identified them as Masons. William Morgan was apparently never heard-from or seen again.

   Rumor has it that the three Masons took him in a boat and drowned him in Lake Ontario. Several months later, a corpse washed ashore and the people declared it to be that of William Morgan. This set off a wave of Anti-Masonic hysteria. The murder was loudly condemned by the Masonic order themselves but this did nothing to cause people to back off from their claim that Freemasons were an evil secret society that intended to destroy America. The dead body was later identified as that of a Canadian man who had drowned a while ago but this evidence also did nothing to stop the hysteria.

   In response to this crisis, the police chief and the three other Masons who were responsible for the kidnapping were arrested and sentenced to prison. They claimed they had paid William Morgan $500 to disappear and stay quiet, then left him on the shore of Ontario. After that, people claimed to have met up with him in Canada, Albany, Turkey, and the Cayman Islands where some say he was hanged for involvement in piracy. None of these claims have ever been substantiated. In addition, the book he said to have written exposing Masonic secrets was also never found.

The public outcry against the Freemasons led to the establishment of the Anti-Masonic Party, a political party whose only issue was to rid American society of the Masons. They were successful in getting several politicians and the president John Quincy Adams elected. After unsuccessfully running a candidate for president, they faded in popularity with their members either merging with the Whigs or moving on to other political issues. By the start of the Civil War, they had become a minor footnote in American political history.

Ridley, Jasper. The Freemasons: A History of the World’s Most Powerful Secret      Society. Arcade Publishing, 2011.