About 1825 began a period of peculiar religious enthusiasm. Missions to the heathen were instituted. Revivals were numerous and often shook whole neighborhoods for weeks and months. About this date Millerism began to make converts. William Miller, from whom it took its name, preached far and wide that the world would be destroyed in 1843, securing multitudes of disciples, who clung to his general belief even after his prophecy as to the specific date for the final catastrophe was seen to have failed. Mormonism was also founded, in 1830, and the Book of Mormon published by Joseph Smith. A church of this order, organized this year at Manchester, N. Y., removed the next to Kirtland, O., and thence to Independence, Mo. Driven from here by mob violence, they built the town of Nauvoo, Ill. Meeting in this place too with what they regarded persecution, several of their members being prosecuted for polygamy, they were obliged to migrate to Salt Lake City, where, however, they were not fully settled until 1848. As part of the same general stir we may perhaps register the anti-masonic movement. One William Morgan, a Mason residing in Western New York, was reported about to expose in a publication the secrets of that order. The Masons were desirous of preventing this and made several forcible efforts to that end. Morgan was soon missing, and the exciting assumption was almost universally made that the Masons had taken him off. There was much evidence of this; but conviction was found impossible because, as was alleged, judges, juries, and witnesses were nearly all Masons. An intense and widespread feeling was developed that Masonry held itself superior to the laws, was therefore a foe to the Government and must be destroyed. The Anti-Masons became a mighty political party. Masons were driven from office. In 1832 anti-masonic nominations were made for President and Vice-President, which had much to do with the small vote of Clay in that year. It was this party that brought to the front politically William H. Seward, Millard Fillmore, and Thurlow Weed. [Illustration: Portrait.] Thurlow Weed. From an unpublished Photograph by Disderi, Paris, in 1861. In the possession of Thurlow Weed Barnes. In 1833 Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania passed laws suppressing lotteries, but the gambling mania seemed to transform itself into a craze for banks. In many parts this was such that actual riots took place when subscriptions to the stock of banks were opened, the earliest comers subscribing the whole with the purpose of selling to others at an advance. To make a bank was thought the great panacea for every ill that could befall. In this we see that the American people, bright as they were, could be duped.