The beginning of this party was obscure enough.  One Morgan in Western New York was abducted and murdered for revealing the alleged secrets of Freemasonry.  These were in reality of small importance, but Morgan had mortally offended a great secret society of which he was a member, by bringing it into public contempt.  His punishment was greater than his crime, which had been not against morality, but against a powerful body of men who never did any harm, but rather much good in the way of charities.  The outrage aroused public indignation,—­that a man should be murdered for making innocent revelations of mere ceremonies and pretensions of small moment; and as the Masons would make no apologies, and no efforts to bring the offenders to justice, it was inferred by the credulous public that Masons were not fit to be entrusted with political office.  The outrage was seized upon by cunning politicians to make political capital.  Jackson was a Mason.  Hence the new party of Anti-Masons made war against him.  As they had been his supporters, the Democratic party of the State of New York was divided.

The leading Democratic leaders had endeavored to suppress this schism; but it daily increased, founded on popular ignorance and prejudice, until it became formidable.  In 1830, four years after the murder, the Anti-Masons had held conventions and framed a political platform of principles, the chief of which was hostility to all secret societies.  The party, against all reason, rapidly spread through New York, Pennsylvania, and New England,—­its stronghold being among the farmers of Vermont.  Ambitious politicians soon perceived that a union with this party would favor their interests, and men of high position became its leaders.  In 1831 the party was strong enough to assemble a convention in Baltimore to nominate candidates for the presidency, and William Wirt, the great Maryland lawyer, was nominated, not with any hope of election, but with the view of dividing the ranks of the Democratic party, and of strengthening the opposition headed by Clay,—­the National Republican party, which in the next campaign absorbed all the old Federalist remnants, and became the Whig party.

All opposition to Jackson, however, was to no purpose.  He was elected for his second term, beginning in 1833.  The Anti-Masonic movement subsided as rapidly as it was created, having no well-defined principles to stand upon.  It has already passed into oblivion.

I have now presented the principal subjects which made the administrations of Jackson memorable.  There are others of minor importance which could be mentioned, like the removal of the Indians to remote hunting-grounds in the West, the West India trade, the successful settlement of the Spoliation Claims against France, which threatened to involve the country in war,—­prevented by the arbitration of England; similar settlements with Denmark, Spain, and Naples; treaties of commerce with Russia and Turkey;