Mason vs. Anti-Mason

When I chose the topic of Anti-Masons for this week's post, I thought I would write about one aspect of the events surrounding Noyes Academy. Instead it turned out to be a thread that unraveled the whole. So while I do talk about Masons and Anti-Masons, this post seems to have wandered into larger topics.

William Wallace tells us over and over again in his History of Canaan, NH that Noyes Academy was destroyed because Jacob Trussell was a Mason and several of the founders of Noyes had become Anti-Masons and he was so consumed with anger that he used Noyes Academy to punish them.

Page 279

Had it not been for Trussell and the foreign element which rode over and insulted us for two days, we know that the Academy would never have been touched.

Jacob Trussell is an intolerant bigot, opinionated, unforgiving, not a drop of warm blood in his veins except what is warmed by the passions that animate him. He never forgave an injury and he never had a friend. He never performed an act of pure charity, and he never forgot to be selfish.

He is a member of the Congregational Church and of the Lodge of Masons here, and into each of these memberships he carries the obdurate obstinacy of his nature. His hatred of George Kimball, Nat Currier and Hubbard Harris, is an unquenchable fire in his breast. These men are all Anti-masons, the two last are seceding Masons. And here is the secret of the destruction of our Academy. He has been the moving spirit through it all

(paragraph breaks added)

In a moment, we will turn to the Anti-Masons, a group you have likely never heard about, but who you will find instantly familiar. But to understand them, you first have to understand the Masons. And here, we run headlong into my limitations and the limitations of this format.

William Allen Wallace, Freemason, Gary Hamel, 2024

This blog is about the story of Noyes Academy as told in a book written by William Allen Wallace. I felt compelled to write about it because the more I came to understand what was going on in Canaan in 1835, the more I saw it as weirdly analogous to what is happening in America in 2024.

We are horribly divided and I can’t even explain what the issues are that we’re fighting about. Everyone has yet another thing they want to go to war over. I am almost 70 years old. Until recently, it never occurred to me that my neighbors could be dangerous because of how they voted. But somehow today, we’ve driven so far into the ditch that this thinking is commonplace. Whatever side you might be on, I want you to know that the other side is just as convinced that they are correct and full of goodness as you are. And you’re both right. It’s just hard to see that now.

Canaan in 1835 was as split in two as a town can get. Once stirred to action, the result was an explosion of violence that shocked the community. Wallace told this story of 1835 from the distance of 1870. By that time, the warring factions had long since come together. Slavery had ended. The Union had held.

The opponents of the school were right; if the North pushed the South on the issue of slavery, the South would have seceded. That’s exactly what happened in 1861. But in 1835, the North would have lost the Civil War. The Union would have dissolved. America would have been over.

The supporters were right. Slavery was wrong; it had to end. To us, that is self-evident. But in 1835 it was dangerous. Not the slavery is wrong part. Even in 1835, everyone knew that. The dangerous part was the ending it. What were you going to do with millions of Black people who had been treated horribly?

The abolitionists set out to prove that Black people were not a threat to the rest of the population, even former slaves. Between 1835 and 1861, the abolitionists did so much good work in this vein that Lincoln felt safe issuing the Emancipation Proclamation in the middle of the Civil War. The abolitionists changed minds. They added information to the public discourse and they were persuasive.

1835 was as complicated as today, but it is not a time that has captured public imagination. Popular history doesn't have much to say about about the issues that animated the first half of the 19th century. We have reduced that period, in our common thinking, as the build-up to freeing the slaves. But at the time, they had no idea that was what they were doing. They were just trying to do the right thing. All of them.

The Masons are woven throughout American history in ways so meaningful and so unexpected that I don’t feel at all confident summarizing it. The topic is enormous. So for the purposes of this blog, I’m going to discuss the Masons in a way that is much simpler than reality.

We tend to lump the Masons in with other fraternal service organizations like the Rotary Club or the Lions. But Masonry is different. Freemasons have been players in world affairs since the Fourteenth Century. Their history in Europe is long and their animosity towards the Catholic Church is still a source of conflict.

Freemasonry was one of the forces that shaped America. As many as 21 of the 56 signers of our Declaration of Independence were Masons. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights echo the Masonic “civil religion,” which focuses on freedom, free enterprise, and a limited role for the state. For many in colonial America, Masonry was an embodiment of the Christian church

In the North, the elites were worrying over their mortal souls and the fate of the country because their nation contained within it slavery. In the South, a civic religion was being created that was used to provide moral cover for slave owners.

Masonry has a perspective on religion that can be thought of as Diest. They imagine a Christian God who watches over his creation (hence the eye atop the pyramid on the dollar bill, a Masonic symbol) but does not actively interfere in the affairs of men.

In this light, the Masons could be seen as a group of highly influential men who believed that no-one, including God, could tell them what to do. Whether or not they owned slaves was irrelevant to their moral standing. They were elite and if they owned other human beings, then it was because God wished them to do so. They had no time for Puritan busybodies from New England stirring up trouble.

The Anti-Masons were a group who stirred up trouble. They were more or less conspiracy nuts, but Anti-Masons became the Whigs became the Republican Party, became the Emancipation Proclamation. Trussell was right to see them as his enemy.

So, back to the Anti-Masons.

There are always people willing to believe that some group secretly rules the world. They disagree on who’s involved, but usually included in the mix are the Illuminati, the Jews, Skull and Bones, and the Masons.

At different moments, any of these, and other groups, can be shoved to the front and declared to be secretly controlling everything.

In 1826, the Masons, with their secret handshakes, rituals, brotherhood, and elite membership, were under great suspicion. When a bricklayer from western New York, William Morgan, announced that he was publishing a book containing the secret rites of the Masonic Lodge, people went nuts. The building where the book was being printed was set on fire. Morgan himself was arrested on trumped up charges, bailed out by a Mason and was seen outside the police station struggling with his rescuers and crying murder. He was never seen again.

Morgan may well have been murdered. Or he might have been living on a farm in Canada purchased for him by the Masons. People have looked into this and come to different conclusions. But what's not in question is that the fervor surrounding Morgan's disappearance was over the top. People's suspicions about the Masons tipped into insanity.

All this angry energy coalesced into a new political party, the Anti-Masons.

To be clear. The Masons didn’t then, and never have, ruled the world. That people became frantically suspicious of them is about the same as people today believing that a satanic sex cult operates out of the basement of a pizza parlor in Washington D.C. Looney tunes both.

For men like Jacob Trussell, the Masons were one of the foundations of civilized society. It was ridiculous to imagine that Masons were engaged in worshiping satan or whatever they were suspected of. It was one thing for men like N.P. Rogers and George Kimball to argue for educating Blacks, but attacking the Masons was, in Trussell's mind, insane.

Anti-Masonry bled into abolitionism in obtuse ways. Anti-Masons were not necessarily abolitionists, but they did have a common enemy.

In 1835, the North had an inferiority complex. They were the poor cousins of the fabulously wealthy slave-owning class. They weren’t, at that point, terribly stirred up about the plight of Black slaves. They were disgusted by slavery and wanted Black people to magically disappear. Abolitionists took things many steps further. They not only wanted to end slavery, they wanted Black people to become citizens.

In the South, this was terrifying. They were holding millions of men and women against their will and inflicting upon them unspeakable horrors. Letting them loose was their nightmare. Not only that, their wealth was entirely tied up in the value of these men and women. When Southern enslavers needed a bank loan, they didn’t pledge their land as collateral. They pledged their slaves.

Those slave mortgages were underwritten in the North and were an investment vehicle sought out in both the US and Europe as people scrambled to profit from the cotton boom.

The abolitionists based their argument on the inherent morality and rightness of their position. They weren’t popular anywhere. They were seen as puritanical fanatics. A stated abolitionist never held national elected office before the Civil War. I don’t know about after, but by then, it was moot.

The abolitionists were too pure of spirit to engage in politics, and likely too unpopular on just a personal basis. Their ideas were adopted by others who were less reluctant to engage in the antics of getting things done.

Wallace, in his History, laments that both George Kimball and his mentor N.P. Rogers got swept up in the emotional conspiracy mongering among the Anti-Masons. Again, I have added paragraph breaks:

Page 264

In those days there existed a class of men, whose minds were constantly seizing upon new and unheard of horrors, with which to influence and arouse the indignation of such as are always shocked at the recital of outrage and wrong.

Wallace is pointing out that some people can be whipped up emotionally. I love the tumble of his words, but when he gets going, it helps to take a breath.

This class of persons like to pass from one state of indignation into another with abruptness, and always find the succeeding condition more intense than the preceding.

This morbid feeling had been strained to a high tension, by the recital of the outrages and murder committed upon William Morgan, by the Masons of New York, and by the revelations of imaginary horrors, that were daily transpiring, within the guarded recesses of the lodge room.

It was not difficult to transfer the sympathies of these awful imaginings to the actual horrors which were being daily recited, in relation to the black slaves. Their wrongs were visible, tangible realities, and seemed to cry to Heaven for redress. That cry was heard in every hamlet and village in New England, and awoke the sympathies of philanthropists into sudden and some times unhealthy activity.

I have spent more time with this passage than any other in the book. For one thing, I had to learn a whole lot about Anti-Masons. But more, it is Wallace’s saying that Anti-Masonry “awoke the sympathies of philanthropists into sudden and sometimes unhealthy activity.” Emphasis mine.

Wallace more than once hints that he believes the founders of Noyes were so far in advance of public sentiment that they were deluded in thinking success even possible. He clearly admired them. His mother and brother were among the defenders of the school. But he counts them as being somewhat culpable for what happened because they were impractical and didn’t play their hand well.

But others were very practical and played their hands very well. Those are the politicians who saw the energy created by the revolt against elites that was the Anti-Mason movement. They harnessed it towards very practical ends and through compromise, politicking, and patience, achieved their end.

The Anti-Masons became the Whigs became the Republican Party became the Emancipation Proclamation. It took over 30 years. But by the end, both sides got exactly what they wanted. The Union held. The slaves were freed. I hope it does not take as long for our own wounds to heal.