Towards a Christian Republic: Antimasonry & the Great Transition in New England 1826-36

by Paul Goodman

In the wake of the American and French Revolutions, the Order of the Masons gained popularity in Europe and America. A cosmopolitan and tolerant Order, reflecting in many ways the best aspects of the Enlightenment, the Masons were also a secret and exclusive society, open only to men and made up of members from the middle-class and upper-class strata of small towns. When former Mason William Morgan disappeared in western New York in 1826 after threatening to publish an expose on Freemasonry, opposition to the group mounted, eventually leading to the formation of the Antimasonry Party. Accusing the Masons of undemocratic practices that endangered fundamental civic and religious rights, the Antimasons soon became a force in state and national politics. Paul Goodman's magisterial study is a sweeping reinterpretation of the ideology, class formation, religious tension, and gender conflict in early 19th-century America. A book of vast learning and great power, Towards a Christian Republic is certain to attract wide attention."

344 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

A pioneer in the “new political history” of the 1960s and 1970s and an acclaimed scholar of the early U.S. republic, Paul Goodman received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1961. After short stints teaching at the Harvard Business School and Brooklyn College, he took up a position at the University of California, Davis, where he taught until his death in 1995.