Excerpt from The Antimasonic Party: A Study of Political Anti-Masonry in the United States, 1827-1840 The period In the history of the United States covering the years between the administrations of John Quincy Adams and William Henry Harrison has received much attention from American historians. It is a period full of interesting and striking events. The struggle over the charter of the United States Bank, the great money crisis, the personality and polit ical methods of Andrew Jackson, the social and economic conditions of the time, invite attention and study. In spite of the great light thrown by historical research upon the period, it is nevertheless true that certain phases of the movements of the time have received but scant attention; and this neglect has tended to impair the value of research upon correlated matter. We have had, for instance, a great deal of discussion upon the origin of the national convention, and vet the fact does not seem to have struck the investigators that the party which made that political discovery first prom inent deserves to be studied. It is strange, at least, that such an interesting movement as the Antimasonic party - a move ment with which some of the greatest political leaders in the history of our country have been connected - should have escaped the attention of scholars. True, the Morgan mystery has received its share of attention, and historians have put it down as the main cause of this peculiar political organization; in fact, it is the practice of even profound historians to call the Antimasonic party merely an outgrowth of the mysterious disappearance of William Morgan. Americans are prone to create a political partv out of anything, but a moment's re ection Should convince us that a party having for its lead ers men like Thurlow Weed and Thaddeus Stevens must have had its basis in underlying causes and must have been founded on stronger reasons than those which present themselves at a casual glance. A review of the political situation at the beginning of the period we have been considering reveals to us soil well prepared for political strife. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."