# Anti-Masonic Party The Anti-Masonic Party (1828–1838) was the **first significant third party in American history** and a milestone in the machinery of US politics: it held the **first national nominating convention** (1831), pioneering the convention system that both major parties soon adopted. It arose in upstate New York from popular outrage over the 1826 disappearance and presumed murder of William Morgan, a former Mason who had threatened to expose the secret fraternity. The episode ignited a mass movement against Freemasonry as a corrupt, anti-democratic elite conspiracy operating above the law. Led by organizers like Thurlow Weed and counting young Whigs such as William H. Seward and Thaddeus Stevens, the party ran William Wirt for president in 1832, carrying Vermont. Its energy was quickly absorbed into anti-Jackson coalition politics, and most Anti-Masons folded into the new **[[Whig Party]]** by the late 1830s. For this KB the Anti-Masonic Party is the **founding American example of conspiracy-driven, anti-elite populist mobilization as electoral politics** — a recurring template, from nativism to later panics, in which fear of a hidden, sinister, conspiratorial elite is converted into a mass political movement. ## See Also - [[Whig Party]] — where its members and energy went - [[Know-Nothing Party]] — a later conspiracy-and-grievance third party - [[Second Party System]]