The Anti-Secretism Movement

The movement against secret societies reached its peak in the 1830s. Spurred on by the murder of Freemason William Morgan in Batavia by lodge members, the movement gained momentum in the North. Cultural in origin, the movement protested the influence of secret societies in the United States. Masonry was the dominant form and the easiest target because of Morgan's murder. Anti-Masonic sentiment was closely aligned with abolitionism. Both reforms were divided along the Mason-Dixon line.

In the 1830s, secret societies were demonized as a threat to American democracy. Secret societies were bastions of powerful elites acting in concert to their benefit while undermining nonmembers. But by the end of the Civil War, the movement had lost most of its momentum. The Blanchard crusade against secret societies was the last gasp of a movement that no longer enjoyed broad popular support.

Jonathan Blanchard was fated to become an enemy of secret societies. He hailed from the Green Mountains of Vermont. In the 1830s, anti-Masonic sentiment ran deep in the state. The Anti-Masons would control the state and much of the local government for more than a decade. Anti-secretism was also tied to abolitionism. The two were inextricably linked, such that it was almost impossible to be one without the other.