and Indiana. It had its newspaper organs and a “Review,” and presently it was prepared to contest a presidential election as a “party.”
Clay had many friends among the Anti-Masons who would have been glad to obtain from him some declaration of sentiment favorable to their cause, in order to make possible a union of forces. But he gave them no encouragement. To the many private entreaties addressed to him he uniformly replied that he did not desire to make himself a party to that dispute; that, although he had been initiated in the order, he had long ceased to be a member of any lodge; that he had never acted, either in private or in public life, under any Masonic influence, but that Masonry or Anti-Masonry had in his opinion nothing to do with politics.
He believed that, if the Anti-Masons were seriously thinking of nominating a candidate of their own for the presidency, they would not find a man of weight willing to stand, and that the bulk of the Anti-Masonic forces would drift over to himself. In this expectation he was disappointed. The Anti-Masons held a national convention at Baltimore in September, 1831, which nominated for the presidency William Wirt, late Attorney General under Monroe and John Quincy Adams; and for the vice-presidency, Amos Ellmaker of Pennsylvania. Wirt was at heart in favor of Clay's election, but, having once accepted the Anti-Masonic nomination, he found it impossible to withdraw from the field. Some of the leading Anti-Masons
