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Newspaper announcement of the Democratic Antimasonic nomination of William Wirt.
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The Birth of the U.S. Political Convention in 1831

A radical third party had a new idea for selecting a presidential candidate, and it’s still in use today.
A collection of ninteenth-century manuscripts on top of a library table.

Fighting Words: The Pamphlets of a Democratic Revolution

To judge from the Concord collection, the public forum of antebellum America was no model of democratic deliberation.
An illustration of William Morgan's abduction.

The Masonic Murder That Inspired the First Third Party in American Politics

Public outcry over whistleblower William Morgan's disappearance gave rise to the Anti-Masonic Party, which nominated a candidate for president in 1832.
Political cartoon of Jackson slaying a many-headed hydra of politicians.

When American Politicos First Weaponized Conspiracy Theories

Outlandish rumors helped elect Presidents Jackson and Van Buren and have been with us ever since.
Painting of Jedidiah Morse with the Illuminati pyramid symbol over one eye.

Why the Founding Generation Fell So Hard for the Illuminati Story

They looked at France and said: “Make it make sense.”
Watercolor portrait of Bronson Alcott, a 19th century American philosopher and educator.

New England Ecstasies

The transcendentalists thought all human inspiration was divine, all nature a miracle.
A colorful bird and landscape sketched within the shape of a man's head.

Emerson Didn’t Practice the Self-Reliance He Preached

How Transcendentalism, the American philosophy that championed the individual, caught on in tight-knit Concord, Massachusetts.
African American men who escaped slavery at a US Army Camp.

John Wolcott Phelps’ Emancipation Proclamation

The story of John Wolcott Phelps and his push for Lincoln to emancipate all slaves.
Delegates on the floor at the Democratic National Convention at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, August 26, 1964.

How to Steal an Election

The crazy history of nominating Conventions.
Senator Joseph R. McCarthy speaking

The Paranoid Style in American Politics

It had been around a long time before the Radical Right discovered it.

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