removed from the New York branch.

Biddle remonstrated, because there was no authority of law for the order, and the Auditor had refused to accept such an order as a voucher in a previous case. Secretary Cass revoked the order, March 1, 1832. In the message of 1831 Jackson referred to the Bank question as one on which he had discharged his duty and freed his responsibility. The Secretary of the Treasury, McLane, in his annual report, December, 1831, made a long and strong argument in favor of the Bank. If we may judge from the tone of the message of 1831, Jackson was willing to allow the Bank question to drop, at least until the presidential election should be over. There is even room for a suspicion that McLane's argument in favor of the Bank was a sort of "hedging; for although the Secretary's report was not necessarily submitted to the President,1 Jackson was hardly the man to allow a report to be sent in of which he disapproved.

1 See page 353.

CHAPTER IX

THE CAMPAIGN OF 1832

CLAY was the leading man in the opposition, but the opposition was by no means united. A new factor had been gaining importance in politics for the last few years. The politicians had ignored it and sneered at it, but it had continued to grow, and was now strong enough to mar, if it could not make, a national election.

In 1826 a bricklayer, named William Morgan, who lived at Batavia, N. Y., and was very poor, thought that he could earn something by writing an exposure of the secrets of free-masonry, he being a mason. The masons learned that he had written such a book. They caused his arrest and imprisonment over Sunday on a frivolous civil complaint, and searched his house for the manuscript during his absence. A month later he was arrested again for a debt of $2.10, and imprisoned under an execution for $2.69, debt and costs. The next day the creditor declared the debt satisfied. Morgan was released, passed at the prison door into the hands of masked men, was placed in

1 Report of the Special Agent of the State of New York. 5 Ann. Reg. 537.

a carriage, taken to Fort Niagara, and detained there. A few days later a body was found floating in the river, which was identified as Morgan's body. The masons always denied that this identification was correct. Morgan has never been seen or heard of since. In January, 1827, certain

persons were tried for conspiracy and abduction. They pleaded guilty, and so prevented a disclosure of details. The masons confessed and admitted abduction, but declared that Morgan was not dead. The opinion that Morgan had been murdered, and that the body found was his, took possession of the minds of those people of western New York who were not masons. Popular legend and political passion have become so interwoven with the original mystery that the truth cannot now be known.

The outrage on Morgan aroused great indignation in western New York, then still a simple frontier country. Public opinion acted on all subjects. A committee appointed at a mass-meeting undertook an extra-legal investigation, and soon brought the matter into such shape that no legal tribunal ever after had much chance of unravelling it. After the fashion of the time, and of the place also, a political color was immediately given to the affair. As Spencer, the special agent appointed by the State to investigate the matter, declared in his report, the fact of this political coloring was disastrous to the cause of justice. The politicians

1 2 Hammond, 376. See, however, the trial reported 4 Ann. Reg. 68.

tried to put down the whole excitement, because it traversed their plans and combinations. They asked, with astonishment and with justice, what the affair had to do with politics. The popular feeling, however, was very strong, and it was fed by public meetings, committee reports, etc. The monstrous outrage deserved that a strong public opinion should sustain the institutions of justice in finding out and punishing the perpetrators. Some of the officers were too lax and indifferent in the discharge of their duties to suit the public temper. They were masons. Hence the inference that a man who was a mason was not fit or competent to be entrusted with public duties. The political connection was thus rendered logical and at least plausible. Many persons resolved not to vote for any one who was a mason for any public office. Moreover, the excitement offered an unexampled opportunity to the ambitious young orators and politicians of the day. It was a case where pure heat and emphasis were the only requirements of the orator. He need not learn anything, or have any ideas. A number of men rose to prominence on the movement who had no claims whatever to public influence. They of course stimulated as much as they could the popular excitement against masonry, which furnished them their opportunity and their capital. Many masons withdrew from the order. Others foolishly made light of the outrage itself. For the most part, however, the masons argued that masonry was no more respon

sible, as an institution, for the outrage on Morgan than the Christian church is responsible for the wrongs done in its name by particular persons and groups. These discussions only sharpened the issue, and masons and anti-masons came to be a division which cut across all the old party lines in the State of New York. In 1828 the anti-masons were the old Clintonians,1 the rump of the federalists, and many buck-tails, with whom horror at the Morgan outrage was a controlling motive. Jackson, Clinton, and Van Buren were then allied. Jackson and Clinton were masons. The Clintonians who would not follow Clinton to the support of Jackson, either because they disliked the man, or because he was a mason, and the buck-tails who would not vote for a mason, were Adams men. The great body of the buck-tails (amongst whom party discipline was stronger than in any other faction), the Clintonians who followed Clinton into the Jackson camp, and the masons who let defence of the order control their politics, were Jackson men. Hence the New York vote (which was taken by districts in 1828) was divided.

The regency buck-tail democrats, being in control of the State government, tried to put down the excitement by indirect means, because of its disorganizing effects. This made them appear to suppress inquiry, and to be indifferent to the outrage. It only fanned the flame of popular indignation, and strengthened anti-masonry.

1 Clinton died February 11, 1828.

The