of 1827, Masons, as such, were excluded from office. At the next general
election the Antimasons nominated a separate ticket, and they carried the
counties of Genesee, Monroe, Livingston, Orleans, and Niagara against both
the great parties. A State organization followed, and in the election
of 1830 the Antimasonic candidate, Francis Granger, was adopted by the
National Republicans, and received one hundred and twenty thousand votes,
against one hundred and twenty-eight thousand for Mr. Throop. From a State
organization the Antimasons became a national party, and in 1832 nominated
William Wirt for the presidency. The Antimasonic electoral ticket was
adopted by the National Republicans, and the union became the Whig party,
which, in 1838, elected Mr. Seward Governor of New York, and in 1840
General Harrison President of the United States.

The spring of this triumphant political movement was hostility to a secret
society. Many of the most distinguished political names of Western New
York, including Millard Fillmore, William H. Seward, Thurlow Weed, Francis
Granger, James Wadsworth, George W. Patterson, were associated with it. And
as the larger portion of the Whig party was merged in the Republican, the
dominant party of to-day has a certain lineal descent from the feelings
aroused by the abduction of Morgan from the jail at Canandaigua. And as
his disappearance and the odium consequent upon it stigmatized Masonry, so
that it lay for a long time moribund, and although revived in later years,
cannot hope to regain its old importance, so the death of young Leggett is
likely to wound fatally the system of college secret societies.

The young man was undergoing initiation into a secret society. He was
blind-folded, and two companions were leading him along the edge of a cliff
over a deep ravine, when the earth gave way, or they slipped and fell from
the precipice, and Leggett was so injured that he died in two hours. There
was no allegation or suspicion of blame. There was, indeed, an attempt of