James B. Walker ran for president in 1876 as the nominee of the National Christian Association. Or the American Party. Its members never quite settled on an official name. While their platform contained a number of planks, their primary issue was the enactment of laws to prohibit the Freemasons, an organization they viewed as a threat to democracy. Yes, the guy down the street who parades in a sequined fez to raise funds for charitable causes. Back in the day, they were feared by multitudes of Americans on account of their secret rituals and oaths.
But that was back in the days before Walker’s day, which is what makes his fringe candidacy significant. It reveals how views that were once mainstream can later be fringe. Through Walker’s campaign we can bring into focus not only what changed but, more important, why.
Who, for starters, was James B. Walker? Perhaps the best answer appeared that election year in the Cincinnati Star: “James B. Walker, of Illinois, and Donald Kirkpatrick, of New York, are the candidates of the National Christian Association—anti–secret society—for President and Vice President. . . . Now who are these Walker and Kirkpatrick, please?”1 Evidently not famous is who they were. And in that respect Walker differed significantly from the candidate nominated by his party in the previous presidential election, the well-known politician and diplomat, Charles Francis Adams, son of John Quincy Adams, who in turn was the son of this nation’s second president, John Adams. Despite the pedigree he brought to his anti–secret society candidacy, Charles Francis Adams received less than 1 percent of the vote—way less. We know, for example, how many votes he received in Indiana (one); the numbers from the other states got mixed in the bin of “Other.”2 Similarly we know that, four years later, Walker garnered seventy-two votes in Michigan—not bad compared to Adams in Indiana, though still roughly .02 percent of that state’s total 317,528 votes.3 Compare these numbers to the first anti-Masonic presidential nominee, Attorney General William Wirt, who received nearly 8 percent of the vote nationwide. He, however, ran four decades earlier, in the 1832 presidential election.
Part of the difference between Wirt’s small but noteworthy number of votes and the negligible showing by Adams and Walker in the 1870s can be attributed to a headline-grabbing mystery in that earlier era. In 1828 William Morgan, a former member of a Masonic lodge in Rochester, New York, was denied membership in the Batavia, New York, lodge when he relocated there. In retaliation Morgan threatened to publish a book revealing the secret rituals and oaths of the Freemasons. Before doing so, however, he was abducted and never seen again, making national headlines. A second round of headlines kept the nation’s attention when a decomposed body washed up on the New York shore of Lake Ontario. Still, all those headlines were mere kindling to the political wildfire that ensued. As one New York newspaper reported, “The anti-masonic feeling seems spreading . . . nor is this excitement confined to our state.” The article went on to explain the suspicion echoing through much of the country that Freemasons secretly swore an oath of mutual favoritism and protection. “When, in addition to the boldness and atrocity of the crime,” it declared, “the mystery in which its perpetrators as well as its details are involved, and the absolute nullity of the law in its efforts to seek out and punish the guilty parties are considered, it can scarcely be wondered at that the populace should be almost fanatical and phrenzied [sic] upon such a subject.”4
This fear took the form of a political party called the Anti-Masonic Party. A measure of its significance can be seen in the fact that its first presidential nominating convention, in 1831, dominated nearly an entire page of coverage in newspapers in the nation’s capital, where politics were most closely followed, but also in newspapers in major urban centers, such as the New York Spectator, and in rural regions, such as Pennsylvania’s Gettysburg Star.5
By the next presidential election, however, Morgan’s disappearance was old news; other issues had elbowed their way to the forefront, and the best the Anti-Masonic Party could do in 1836 was seek influence by endorsing the nominee from the well-established Whig Party, William Henry Harrison. After that the Anti-Masonic Party was kaput.
Fast-forward to five years after the Civil War. “Some very curious proceedings have been lately had in this city by an organization which styles itself the National Christian Anti-Secret Society Convention,” the Cincinnati Enquirer told readers in 1870, dismissing their effort with this characterization: “Those who are in this crusade hope to revive the old anti-Masonic feeling . . . [from] a third of a century ago.”6 It was these proceedings that set in motion the nomination of Charles Francis Adams as their presidential candidate in the next election.
“Crazy Candidates” headlined an 1872 article in Indiana’s Fort Wayne Daily Sentinel. It took potshots at what it considered that year’s looniest contenders for the White House, its shortlist consisting of George Francis Train, “a man named James Black” (considered wacky for campaigning to prohibit alcohol), Victoria Woodhull, and Charles Francis Adams.7
Expressing the prevailing view of Freemasons, the Chicago Tribune declared in an article reprinted nationwide:
We have no more sympathy with Masonry than the Anti-Secret Society has; but if a man wants to put on a white apron and other silly toggery, march around with a square and compass behind a brass band . . . let him do it and have as many secrets as he pleases to keep from his wife. Ten to one where he has one secret she will have a dozen. Silly as Masons may be, the height of silliness is reached by these Anti-Secret Society individuals who . . . go into spasms every time they see a square and a compass.8
As the 1876 election approached, and despite the fact that the Adams candidacy had flopped, the not-very-merry band of anti-Masons played on, now receiving even more guffaws. “The members of these secret societies have no objections to these mild lunatics enjoying themselves in their own way,” an Illinois newspaper declared, “especially as their fulminations can hurt no one. This is a free country.”9
Understandably Adams was not up for more mockery by running again as the standard-bearer of a party that was little more than a political punching bag. The best they could come up with was James B. Walker, a minister from Wheaton, Illinois, who had recently retired.10 While his name appeared on the ballot nationwide, there is no evidence Walker ever left home to rouse voters—possibly because of his age (seventy-one), possibly because as the campaign season was just getting started, his wife passed away. As a politician Walker was indeed a fringe candidate; as a person he was a locally respected elderly man who had lived a productive and upright life.
Why, then, was a political party that once was mainstream now on the fringe? Indeed why—given that the original party collapsed—did it even reappear? And why did it reappear when it did?
Both the original Anti-Masonic Party in 1828–38 and the second, never precisely named party in 1870–76 appeared during periods when there was heightened concern as to whether the American experiment in democracy would work. In both eras social uncertainties resulted from a relatively sudden change in commerce that, in turn, led to major shifts in population and demographics. The completion of the Erie Canal in 1825 turned the Great Lakes into highways of commerce from the hinterland to the sea via this new waterway through western New York (where, by the way, William Morgan disappeared). As many Americans relocated and immigrants arrived to avail themselves of the economic opportunities created by the canal, old social bonds withered and organizations such as the Freemasons provided opportunities for new bonds to be formed.11
In addition, during this earlier era the torch of leadership was being passed from the founders of the United States to the next generation. From, for example, John Adams to John Quincy Adams. From highly cultured patricians such as Thomas Jefferson to men of more common stock such as Andrew Jackson. Raising a very real concern: Would they—would we—be up to the task? Would we be able to follow in the footsteps of the nation’s revered founders? Might our democracy be done in by members of societies whose secret oaths will undermine the integrity of those who govern—judges, jurors, legislators, governors, possibly even presidents?
Similarly, following the Civil War one could well wonder whether the nation’s democracy could work. Clearly it had failed in regard to slavery; only violence and destruction were able to put an end to that question. And it was certainly fair to wonder if that use of brute force damaged, if not destroyed, our democracy itself.
Similarly as well, soon after the Civil War the transcontinental railroad was completed—the spine from which sprang multiple new rail lines. As with the Erie Canal, these railways were followed by shifts in population and demographics. Once again organizations such as the Freemasons enjoyed an increase in popularity, followed once again by an increase in those concerned about it and other secret societies. For it was also in this era of major social and economic change that other fraternal organizations were springing up to provide a sense of community amid rapid change, such as—among the less generous—the Ku Klux Klan.12
Similarly as well, then, there was again reason to ask if we would be up to the task of following in the footsteps of the nation’s founders. With this in mind, it is not surprising that the first choice for president of those who feared secret societies this second time around was the son of a president who was the son of a president. And whose second choice was a man who had lived his life ethically and honestly, in no small part because he had never ventured into politics nor sought fame.
Why, then, didn’t America care this second time around? For reasons which, through another fringe candidate, we’ve already seen. While these social and economic shifts were akin to those that spawned the first anti-Masonic movement, there was now a new issue that was far more dominant: healing the wounds of the Civil War. Worth repeating from the discussion of George Francis Train (from the same election whose list of “Crazy Candidates” included Charles Francis Adams) is the statement previously cited from that year’s North American Review: “All that seems to be wanted is the quiet continuance of the present opportunities and dominant influences, in order that the great settlement may complete itself.”13
Through the candidacy of James B. Walker we are able to see more clearly just how accurately that 1872 insight from the North American Review captured its era and today serves to illuminate why Walker’s presidential campaign and that of Adams in the previous election were on the fringe.