‘The Anti-Mason library’

    

Haaswurth Books

There are Masonic libraries (I have one), and there are Masonic libraries (my Grand Lodge has one). Then there is this. Haaswurth Books, way up in Binghamton, is offering a stunning trove of literature from the start of the Anti-Masonic hysteria of the 1820s and ’30s.

You’ve heard of some of these books, and you have read reprints of a few, but this amazing cache contains first editions. I imagine the tactile experience of turning these pages might transport readers back to the birth of the American fear of Freemasonry. It was an ugly time. Americans in some rural areas (the contagion didn’t impact the cities much) started to wonder if the Freemasons holding public offices and other powerful jobs were ruling the new republic according to some secret design. Of course we hear that kind of blather even today. You know the panic was detonated by the alleged murder of a man calling himself William Morgan in 1826, but what rocked the Northeast of the country was a not wholly irrational fear of Freemasonry. After seeing the preponderance of Masons involved in the trials of the accused killers, people began to take notice of the high ranking Masons in the pinnacle of political life.

Top officials of the era in Albany and Washington were prominent Freemasons: Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, Daniel Tompkins, DeWitt Clinton, and plenty others were not united in political views—nor even within their respective political parties—but were members of this one fraternity. And Freemasonry at this time was not quite the same as the Freemasonry of the Founding. Early American Freemasonry was a workshop in self-governance, with the man on the street attending lodge and casting ballots to elect leaders, choose how funds were disbursed, and make numerous decisions as needed. By 1830 or so, however, things were changing. The simple lodge was in competition with other Masonic groups, chiefly the Scottish Rite and Royal Arch, which offered its members grandiose titles that might tickle the public funny bone today, but weren’t considered amusing by some back then. Americans didn’t overthrow a monarchial colonial system and establish a republic with democratic elections so that the local mayor, banker, newspaper publisher, and other elites could address each other with royal, ecclesiastic, and other nicknames of pageantry.

Wariness of the Craft wasn’t exactly brand new. In the 1730s, a New York City newspaper expressed skepticism of an organization that exacted secret oaths from its members while sequestering itself in a private meeting room replete with an armed sentry outside the door. But suspicion didn’t grip society, birth a political movement, and cause the near disappearance of Freemasonry. All that would come in the 1830s, as documented in these books for sale here.

I have been meaning to post this for two years, but forgot somehow. At this point, the books are available for sale individually, so if you or your favorite Masonic institution seek to start or augment a collection of original anti-Masonic material, maybe this is the way to go.