Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 1).djvu/352

340 No wonder that his sanguine nature was inspired with new hope, and that he felt himself to be the man who could rally the defeated hosts, and overthrow the “military chieftain” with all his “pretorian bands.”

He was certainly not alone in thinking so. It began to be looked upon as a matter of course among the National Republicans that Clay would be their candidate against Jackson in 1832. On May 29, 1830, Daniel Webster wrote to him: “You are necessarily at the head of one party, and General Jackson will be, if he is not already, identified with the other. The question will be put to the country. Let the country decide it.” But in the mean time a curious movement had sprung up, dividing the opposition of which Clay was the head. It was the Anti-Masonic movement. In 1826 one Captain William Morgan, a brick layer living at Batavia, in western New York, undertook to write a book revealing the secrets of Freemasonry. Some Freemasons of the neighborhood sought to persuade and then to force him, by all sorts of chicanery, to give up his design, but without success. He was then abducted, and, as was widely believed, murdered. The crime was charged upon some fanatical Freemasons; but the whole order was accused of countenancing it, and was held responsible for obstructing the course of justice on the occasion of the investigations and trials which followed. The excitement springing from these occurrences, at first confined