How One Man’s Disappearance Launched America’s First Third Party
In this episode we take a very irreverent dive into the history of the Freemasons, focusing on the kidnapping and alleged murder of William Morgan—the mysterious man who wrote a book exposing their secrets in 1826. The conspiracy to protect those involved and the intense public backlash led to the first third party in America, the Anti-Masonic Party. Though short-lived, the party managed to rack up a few electoral votes in the Election of 1832 with William Wirt as their reluctant presidential nominee.
It’s a tale of two Williams, one missing skull, and a prime example of the Streisand effect.
Listen now:
Sources:
The Power of Perception: The Failure of the Morgan Trials and the Formation of the AntiMasonic Party by
Breanna Boss
The William Morgan Mystery by Wayne D. Anderson
Letters on the Masonic Institution by John Quincy Adams
Morgan’s Freemasonry Exposed and Explained by William Morgan
William Wirt, Virginian by Joseph C. Robert, The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 80, no. 4 (1972): 387–441
A Narrative of the Facts and Circumstances Relating to the Kidnapping and Presumed Murder of William Morgan, 1827
The Thirty-Third Degree and the Skull Oath by Mark E. Koltko-Rivera, Ph.D., Discovering The Lost Symbol: The Blog
Memoirs Of The Life Of William Wirt Volume II
by John P. Kennedy
What the Freemasons Taught the World About the Power of Secrecy by John Dickie, Time Magazine
