Andrew Jackson, Freemasons

Jackson's status as a Mason actually became a major political issue during his presidency.

That's because the first ever third party in US politics formed as part of a backlash against the Freemasons.

As Slate reported, the seeds for the Anti-Masonic Party were first sown in 1826, when Masons were implicated in the (still unsolved) kidnapping of a New York man who threatened to reveal their secret rites. The political party opposed what it perceived as a sinister, elitist, and anti-democratic secret society.

The Anti-Masonic Party found a natural foe in Jackson, who was not only a Mason, but a high-ranked one. Jackson served as the grand master of the grand lodge of Tennessee from 1822 to 1824.