Vernon Stauffer

THE ILLUMINATI AGITATION IN NEW ENGLAND

1. MORSE PRECIPITATES THE CONTROVERSY

The fast day proclamation of President John Adams, issued March23, 1798, expressed unusual solemnity and concern. Therein the United States was represented as “at present placed in a hazardous and afflictive position.”[610] The necessity of sounding a loud call to repentance and reformation was declared to be imperative, and the people were fervently urged to implore Heaven’s mercy and benediction on the imperiled nation.

On the day appointed, the 9th of May, among the multitude of pastors who appeared before their assembled flocks and addressed them on topics of national and personal self-examination, was the Reverend Jedediah Morse. The deliverance which he made to his people[611] was destined to have far more than a passing interest and effect. He took for his text fragments of the language that King Hezekiah addressed to the prophet Isaiah, as found in II Kings 19: 3, 4: “This is a day of trouble, and of rebuke (or reviling), and blasphemy…. Wherefore lift up thy prayer for the remnant that is left.” Then the well-known minister of Charlestown proceeded to suggest a parallel between the desperate state of affairs within the little kingdom of Judah when the Assyrians, fresh from their triumph over the armies of Egypt, renewed their insolent and terrifying campaign against the city of Jerusalem, and the unhappy and perilous condition of affairs within the United States.[612]

From this general observation Morse proceeded to take specific account of the circumstances that made the period through which the nation was passing “a day of trouble, of reviling and blasphemy.” The main source from which the day of trouble had arisen, as the President’s fast day proclamation had indicated, was the very serious aspect of our relations with France, owing to the unfriendly disposition and conduct of that nation. Here, and not elsewhere, was to be found the occasion of the unhappy divisions that existed among the citizens of the United States, disturbing their peace, and threatening the overthrow of the government itself.[613] The settled policy of the French government, that of attempting the subjugation of other countries by injecting discord and division among their citizens before having recourse to arms, had been faithfully adhered to with respect to America.

Their too great influence among us has been exerted vigorously, and in conformity to a deep-laid plan, in cherishing party spirit, in vilifying the men we have, by our free suffrages, elected to administer our Constitution; and have thus endeavoured to destroy the confidence of the people in the constituted authorities, and divide them from the government.[614] They have abused our honest friendship for their nation, our gratitude for their assistance in our revolution and our confidence in the uprightness and sincerity of their professions of regard for us; and, by their artifices and intrigues, have made these amiable dispositions in the unsuspecting American people, the vehicles of their poison.[615]

Emboldened by its knowledge of the power which the French party in America has acquired, Morse continued, the government of France has shown itself disposed to adopt an increasingly insolent tone toward the government of this nation. The insurrections which the government of France has fomented here, its efforts to plunge the United States into a ruinous war, its spoliation of our commerce upon the high seas, its insufferable treatment of our ministers and commissioners as shown in the lately published state papers[616]—these all tend to show how resolute and confident in its determination to triumph over us the French government has become.[617]

If, said Morse, a contributory cause for the present “hazardous and afflictive position” of the country is sought, it will readily be found in “the astonishing increase of irreligion.”[618] The evidence of this, in turn, is to be found, not only in the prevailing atheism and materialism of the day, and all the vicious fruits which such impious sentiments have borne, but as well in the slanders with which newspapers are filled and the personal invective and abuse with which private discussion is laden, all directed against the representatives of government, against men, many of whom have grown gray in their country’s service and whose integrity has been proved incorruptible. It is likewise to be discovered in the reviling and abuse which, coming from the same quarter, has been directed against the clergy, who, according to their influence and ability, have done what they could to support and vindicate the government. Nothing that the clergy has done has been of such a character as to provoke this treatment. And how “can they be your friends who are continually declaiming against the Clergy, and endeavouring by all means—by falsehood and misrepresentation, to asperse their characters, and to bring them and their profession into disrepute?”[619]

When the question is raised respecting the design and tendency of these things, their inherent and appalling impiety is immediately disclosed. They give “reason to suspect that there is some secret plan in operation, hostile to true liberty and religion, which requires to be aided by these vile slanders.”[620] They cannot be regarded as mere excrescences of the life of the times; they are not detached happenings; they go straight down to the roots of things; they are deadly attacks upon the civil and religious institutions whose foundations were laid by our venerable forefathers. They mean that all those principles and habits which were formed under those institutions are to be brought into contempt and eventually swept aside, in order to give a clear field “for the spread of those disorganizing opinions, and that atheistical philosophy, which are deluging the Old World in misery and blood.”[621]

That this preparatory work has begun, that progress in the direction of its fatal completion has been made, that what is now going on in America is part of the same deep-laid and extensive plan which has been in operation in Europe for many years—these, Morse continued, are reasonable and just fears in the light of the disclosures made “in a work written by a gentleman of literary eminence in Scotland, within the last year, and just reprinted in this country, entitled, ‘Proofs of a Conspiracy against all the Religions and Governments of Europe’.”[622] The following facts are brought to the light of day in this volume: For more than twenty years past a society called THE ILLUMINATED has been in existence in Germany; its express aim is “to root out and abolish Christianity, and overthrow all civil government”;[623] it approves of such atrocious principles as the right to commit self-murder and the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes, while it condemns the principles of patriotism and the right to accumulate private property;[624] in the prosecution of its infamous propaganda it aims to enlist the discontented, to get control of all such cultural agencies as the schools, literary societies, newspapers, writers, booksellers, and postmasters;[625] it is bent upon insinuating its members into all positions of distinction and influence, whether literary, civil, or religious.[626]

Practically all of the civil and ecclesiastical establishments of Europe have already been shaken to their foundations by this terrible organization; the French Revolution itself is doubtless to be traced to its machinations; the successes of the French armies are to be explained on the same ground.[627] The Jacobins are nothing more nor less than the open manifestation of the hidden system of the Illuminati.[628] The order has its branches established and its emissaries at work in America.[629] Doubtless the “Age of Reason” and the other works of that unprincipled author are to be regarded as part of the general plan to accomplish universal demoralization: the fact that Paine’s infamous works have been so industriously and extensively circulated in this country would seem to justify fully this conclusion.[630] The affiliated Jacobin Societies in America have doubtless had as the object of their establishment the propagation of “the principles of the illuminated mother club in France.”[631]

Before making room for the admonitions which Morse based upon this exposition of the underlying significance of “this … day of trouble, … rebuke … and blasphemy,” his treatment of the Masonic bearings of the subject should be noticed. As delivered by Morse, the fast day sermon of May9, 1798, contained no reference to the relations alleged to exist between the Order of the Illuminati and the lodges of Freemasonry. The Charlestown pastor’s silence upon this important phase of the matter is best explained in the light of the pains which he took, when the sermon was committed to type, to handle this delicate and embarrassing aspect of the case.[632]

Extended foot notes dealing with the omitted topic and expressive of great reserve and caution comprise a substantial part of the printed sermon. In these Morse repeated the charge which Robison had made before him that the Order of the Illuminati had had its origin among the Freemasons, but hastened to add that this was because of corruptions which had crept into Freemasonry, so that Illuminism must be viewed as “a vile and pestiferous scion grafted on the stock of simple Masonry.”[633] As if further to ward off the blows of incensed and resentful members of the craft, Morse proceeded to dilate upon the artifice which men of wicked purpose commonly resort to in attempting “to pervert and bend into a subserviency to their designs ancient and respectable institutions.”[634] The Illuminati, it is suggested, may thus have taken advantage of the schisms and corruptions with which European Masonry has been cursed, and have employed many members of the lodges to serve as “secret conductors of their poisonous principles”: the high estimation in which the order of Masonry is generally held may be construed as making such a presumption probable.[635] And in this country, if one may base his judgment upon the considerations that the immortal Washington stands at the head of the Masonic fraternity in America and that the Masons of New England “have ever shown themselves firm and decided supporters of civil and religious order,” then it may safely be assumed that the leaven of Illuminism has not found its way into the American lodges, at least not into the lodges of the Eastern States.[636] If it should be found true that some of the branches of Masonry have been corrupted and perverted from their original design, need that circumstance occasion more serious humiliation and embarrassment than Christians face as they contemplate the apostasies of which certain churches in Christendom have been guilty?[637] Finally, the readers are urged to keep in mind that Robison’s book has been commended, not because of its animadversions upon Freemasonry, but for the reason that “it unveils the dark conspiracies of the Illuminati against civil government and Christianity, … and because it is well calculated to excite in this country a just alarm for the safety and welfare of our civil and religious privileges, by discovering to us the machinations which are deployed to subvert them.”[638]

Thus having canvassed the situation abroad and at home, the sermon drew toward its close in the following manner:

By these awful events—this tremendous shaking among the nations of the earth, God is doubtless accomplishing his promises, and fulfilling the prophecies. This wrath and violence of men against all government and religion, shall be made ultimately, in some way or other, to praise God. All corruptions, in religion and government, as dross must, sooner or later, be burnt up. The dreadful fire of Illuminatism may be permitted to rage and spread for this purpose…. But while we contemplate these awful events in this point of view, let us beware, in our expressions of approbation, of blending the end with the means. Because atheism and licentiousness are employed as instruments, by divine providence, to subvert and overthrow popery and despotism, it does not follow that atheism and licentiousness are in themselves good things, and worthy of our approbation. While the storm rages, with dreadful havoc in Europe, let us be comforted in the thought, that God directeth it, and that he will, by his power and wisdom, so manage it, as to make it accomplish his own gracious designs. While we behold these scenes acting abroad and at a distance from us, let us be concerned for our own welfare…. We have reason to tremble for the safety of our political, as well as our religious ark. Attempts are making, and are openly, as well as secretly, conducted, to undermine the foundations of both. In this situation of things, our duty is plain, and lies within a short compass.[639]

With one heart, as citizens to cleave to the national government and as Christians to be alert to the open and secret dangers which threaten the church, these, according to the last word of the preacher, were the paramount concerns of the hour.

Such was Jedediah Morse’s fast day sermon of May9, 1798. Such at least it was when it came from the press; surely not even by the widest stretch of the imagination an epoch-making sermon; not even notable, except when viewed from a single angle. Nothing could be clearer than that the sermon moved, for the most part, well within the circle of conventional ideas to which on state occasions the minds of the clergy of New England generally made response. But for the introduction of one element it is safe to say the deliverance of Charlestown’s minister would have passed for one of the ordinary “political sermons” of the day, and so have accomplished nothing perhaps beyond helping to swell the chorus of protests from disgusted Democrats against “political preaching.” That element, needless to say, was Illuminism.

The public sanction which Morse gave to the charge that the Illuminati were responsible for the afflictions of both the Old World and the New was a new note on this side of the Atlantic. Sounded in New England at a time when Europe was in convulsion and when the shift from traditional social, political, and religious positions in America was extremely rapid in its movement, this new alarm could not fail to arrest attention. We have seen that the air of New England was already surcharged with notions of implacable hostility to the forces in control of church and state,[640] and with gloomy forebodings born of surmises of intrigue and conspiracy.[641] The hour was electric. The hard-pressed forces of religious and political conservatism were bound to receive the new Shibboleth with unquestioning and eager joy. Henceforth their arsenal would be enlarged to include a new weapon. They would be able to point to the villainies, impieties, and blood-lettings in Europe, to the flauntings, contumelies, and crafty counter-manoeuverings which the clergy and the heads of government had to suffer in America, and assert that back of all these and binding all together into a single vicious whole was a conspiracy whose object was nothing less than the complete overthrow of civil government and orthodox Christianity. To be able to brand political and religious radicalism with a word as detestable as this new word “Illuminism” which had just come across the Atlantic, should indeed prove sufficient to damn that cause.

The immediate effect produced by the sermon fell considerably short of a sensation. For one thing the subject of the Illuminati was new and unfamiliar in New England. Much more significant, however, is the fact that at the time the sermon came to public attention, the long-expected X. Y. Z. despatches were passing through the newspaper presses of the country and inflaming the national spirit to an incredible degree. In view of the fact that innumerable public assemblies were being held and innumerable patriotic addresses drawn up and presented to the President, all inspired by the prospect of and the demand for an immediate rupture with France, it is not surprising that the minister of Charlestown did not succeed in creating a more instant and widespread alarm than he did.

However, he had no reason to be disappointed. The spark which he had communicated to the tinder might seem to smoulder for a season,[642] but in due course it was bound to burst into flame. That Morse was himself well content with the degree of interest which the public manifested in his disclosure of the “conspiracy” is evident from the following letter that he addressed to Oliver Wolcott, within a fortnight of the date of the national fast:

Charlestown, May21, 1798.

Dear Sir,

I enclose for your acceptance my Fast Sermon, & one on the death of my worthy friend Judge Russell, both whh. together with one other occasional discourse, besides two common sermons, I was obliged to compose after my return from Phila., and under the disadvantage of general fatigue.—I owe you and myself this apology.—The fast discourse was received with very unexpected approbation—& with no opposition even in Charlestown, whose citizens many of them have been the most violently opposed to the measures of Govt. & the most enthusiastic in favor of France.—This same discourse delivered two months ago would have excited such a flame, as would in all probability have rendered my situation extremely unpleasant, if not unsafe.—I hope it has done some good, & that it may have a chance of doing more, however small, I have permitted its publication…. The fast was celebrated in this quarter with unexpected solemnity & unanimity. Its effects, I hope & believe will be great both as respects our civil & religious interests….

Your friend,

JED^H MORSE.[643]

TO HONORABLE OLIVER WOLCOTT,

Comptroller of the Treasury

Here and there Morse’s sermon promptly became the occasion of public comment. To illustrate: The Reverend John Thayer, beloved and trusted shepherd of the Catholic flock in Boston, following the patriotic example of the Protestant clergy, preached a sermon on the occasion of the national fast appropriate to the solemnity of the day.[644] In the published text of this sermon Thayer took occasion to commend Morse “for his interesting abridgement of the infernal society of the Illuminati.”[645] For the most part, however, the comment of the clergy was reserved for subsequent occasions when the clerical mind should have had opportunity to inform itself more fully concerning the matter.

As for the newspapers, they began to pay their respects to Morse’s sensational utterance soon after the latter’s fast day sermon came from the press. Thus “An American” contributed an article of generous length and of somewhat hostile tone to the Independent Chronicle of May24 (1798), calling upon Morse to substantiate more fully the charge he had made. This pseudonymous contributor professed to have experienced great astonishment upon reading Morse’s sermon and finding that Robison’s Proofs alone had been relied upon as a source of information and authority. So serious a matter seemed to demand fuller evidence. Thinking that perhaps Dr. Morse had been imposed upon and that the work in question was possibly apocryphal, the writer had been constrained to search through foreign literary journals with a view to discovering how the “performance” attributed to Robison was regarded abroad. Thus employed he had come across an article in The Critical Review, or Annals of Literature, London, 1797, wherein he found severe strictures upon Robison’s volume. In view of this, “since the Doctors of Europe and America differ so widely in their estimation of its importance,” but a single course of honor and obligation would seem to be open to Dr. Morse. Having stood sponsor for the authenticity of such an extraordinary publication, he should now submit to the public decided proofs of the authority and correctness of the book in question.[646]

To this sharp challenge of “An American,” Morse was not indifferent. Replying to his critic in a subsequent issue of the Chronicle,[647] he expressed the hope that the public would not form its judgment respecting Robison’s volume before reading the same, or at least not until it shall have heard further from its “humble servant, Jedidiah Morse.” Meantime, if his readers shall be pleased to peruse the observations clipped from the New York Spectator by which his (Morse’s) letter to the Chronicle is accompanied they will learn that “there is at least one other person in the United States who has read this work, [and] whose opinion of it accords with” his own.[648]

A few days later, through the columns of the same paper,[649] Morse replied at greater length to the criticisms which “An American” had brought to public attention. That he had not “too hastily recommended Professor Robison’s late work” Morse regards as sufficiently demonstrated by the fact that he had had a copy of the book in his possession since the middle of the previous April. This he had examined with care, and he had satisfied himself that it was entitled to the recommendation he had given it in his fast day sermon. So far as the hostile criticism of the authors of The Critical Review is concerned, he has no doubt that their caricature of Robison’s book is to be construed as expressive of their determination to destroy its reputation and thus prevent its circulation, since it probably exposed and thwarted their favorite schemes. Besides, over against the contemptuous estimate that the authors of The Critical Review had seen fit to place upon Robison’s volume, Morse was able to oppose a very different judgment. The London Review of January, 1798, extracts from which he was glad to be permitted to offer in evidence,[650] placed an estimate upon Robison’s book which was both accurate and just. From this “An American” will be able to gather that “‘the Doctors in Europe and America’” do not “differ so widely in their estimation” of the importance of Robison’s volume as had been asserted. The observations that Morse is now offering to the public, it is his expectation, will serve to effect his personal justification; but if doubts still remain in the minds of any, he can only recommend as the best and perhaps the only sure means of dissolving them that such persons read Proofs of a Conspiracy for themselves.[651]

With respect to the inception of the Illuminati agitation in New England, the utterances of two other clergymen require attention. One of these, the Reverend David Tappan, professor of divinity at Harvard, in a discourse[652] delivered before the senior class of that institution on the 19th of June, 1798, cautioned the young people before him who were about to quit the life of the college to guard against the dangers of speculative principles, the pleasures of idleness and vicious indulgence, the degrading tendency of selfish sentiments, and “a more recent system, which … has for its ostensible object THE REGENERATION OF AN OPPRESSED WORLD TO THE BLISSFUL ENJOYMENT OF EQUAL LIBERTY.” This “more recent system,” Tappan explained, was the philosophy of the Order of the Illuminati.[653]

Drawing, as he professed, upon Morse’s fast day discourse and upon President Dwight’s sermons on infidel philosophy,[654] Tappan essayed a sketch of the objects and operations of the Illuminati, from the time of the founding of the order by Weishaupt to its supposed connections with the French Revolution, and the successes which it had enabled the French armies to accomplish through its intrigues “in various and distant parts of the world.” The conspiracy, it is true, might not be as extensive in its scope as had been claimed; but even so, the undoubted aspects of the situation were sufficient to afford ground for most grave apprehension. “If these and similar facts,” the clergyman continued, “do not evince so early and broad a system of wickedness as this writer[655] supposes (the truth of which in all its extent the speaker is not prepared to support), yet they indicate a real and most alarming plan of hostility against the dearest interests of man.”[656]

The question of the general credibility of the claims which Robison had made, as well as the implication of the Masons in the “conspiracy,” came in for special consideration by Tappan when his sermon was prepared for publication.[657] Concerning the former, the observation is made that the ridicule and incredulity which have opposed themselves to the report of a scheme so novel, extravagant, and diabolical, were to have been expected. At any rate, much of the opposition has come from men whose wishes and opinions have been offended, or from those who have shown themselves to be ardent friends of political and religious innovation. And with regard to the Masons, it is urged that the displeasure which certain worthy members of that fraternity have expressed against Robison ought not to be permitted to become so violent as to render impossible a candid and thorough examination of the proofs he has submitted. Robison’s opinion respecting the universal frivolity or mischievous tendency of the assemblies of the European Masons may be incorrect and injurious, and at the same time the leading facts upon which he founds that opinion may be true. To manifest a willingness to investigate with candor the proofs that have been presented, while continuing to hold in esteem “the approved characters of the principal Masons in this country, especially in the Eastern States,” this, Tappan advises, represents the middle course that his readers should attempt to steer.[658]

Thus it will appear that Tappan became an echo of Morse. As for Timothy Dwight, the contribution he made to the awakening of public interest in the subject of Illuminism requires somewhat stronger statement. In the person of the president of Yale this new idea of a definite and deep-laid conspiracy against religion and civil government encountered a highly sensitized mind. Upon the subjects of infidelity and the general irreligious tendencies of the times, Dwight had been speaking frequently and for years from his lecture-desk in the classroom and from his pulpit in the church. It is safe to say that among all the men of New England no man’s spirit was more persistently haunted by the fear that the forces of irreligion were in league to work general ruin to the institutions of society than his. When, therefore, on the occasion of the Fourth of July, 1798, the people of New Haven assembled to do honor to the day in listening to a sermon by the honored president of their college, it was to be expected that if the latter had any new information to impart or any new pronouncement to make respecting malign efforts that were making to plunge the world into irremediable scepticism and anarchy, he would seize the occasion that the day offered to arouse in his hearers a sense of the new perils which threatened. And President Dwight had new information and a new pronouncement to offer.

The subject which he chose to discuss on that Independence Day, and the text upon the elucidation of which he relied for the illumination of the subject, were in themselves calculated to excite concern. These were respectively, THE DUTY OF AMERICANS AT THE PRESENT CRISIS, and “Behold I come as a thief: Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame.” (Revelation xvi: 16.)[659] Having first explained the setting of the text, President Dwight then proceeded to define the thesis of his sermon in the following manner: “From this explanation it is manifest that the prediction consists of two great and distinct parts: the preparation for the overthrow of the Antichristian empire; and the embarkation of men in a professed and unusual opposition to God, and to his kingdom, accomplished by means of false doctrines, and impious teachers.”[660]

The first of these predictions, it was asserted, had been fulfilled in the repressive and secularizing measures that during the century had operated to weaken greatly the Catholic hierarchy and its chief political supports among the states of Europe.[661] The second was experiencing a fulfilment not less remarkable in the open and professed war against God and his kingdom, in which Voltaire, Frederick II, the Encyclopedists, and the Societies of the Illuminati had confederated.[662]

This systematical design to destroy Christianity, which Voltaire and his accomplices formed, found its first expressions in the compilation of the EncyclopÉdie, the formation of a new sect of philosophers to engineer the assaults upon the church, the prostitution of the French Academy to the purposes of this sect, and the dissemination of infidel books and other publications, all of which were so prepared “as to catch the feelings, and steal upon the approbation, of every class of men.”[663] Eventually the labors of this group of men and their disciples were widened so as to include not only religion but morality and civil government as well, with the object in view of unhinging “gradually the minds of men, and destroying their reverence for everything heretofore esteemed sacred.”[664]

Simultaneously the Masonic Societies of France and Germany had been drawn away from the pursuit of the objects of friendly and convivial intercourse for which they were originally instituted, to the employment of their secret assemblies in the discussion of “every novel, licentious, and alarming opinion”[665] that innovators and other restless spirits might choose to advance. Thus,

Minds already tinged with philosophism were here speedily blackened with a deep and deadly die; and those which came fresh and innocent to the scene of contamination became early and irremediably corrupted…. In these hot beds were sown the seeds of that astonishing Revolution, and all its dreadful appendages, which now spreads dismay and horror throughout half the globe.[666]

The Society of the Illuminati, springing up at this time and professing itself to be a higher order of Freemasonry, availed itself of the secrecy, solemnity, and mysticism of Masonry, of its system of correspondence, to teach and propagate doctrines calculated to undermine and destroy all human happiness and virtue. Thus God’s being was derided, while government was pronounced a curse, civil society an apostasy of the race, the possession of private property a robbery, chastity and natural affection groundless prejudices, and adultery, assassination, poisoning and other infernal crimes not only lawful but even virtuous.[667] To crown all, the principle that the end justifies the means was made to define the sphere of action for the members of the order.

The triumphs of this system of falsehood and horror, Dwight continued, have already been momentous. In Germany “the public faith and morals have been unhinged; and the political and religious affairs of that empire have assumed an aspect which forebodes its total ruin.”[668] In France the affairs of the people have been controlled by the representatives of this hellish society. Not only this, but by means of the establishment of the order in those countries which France has opposed, the French government has been able to triumph in its military campaigns and to overthrow religion and governments in the countries which have been attacked. Neither England nor Scotland have escaped the foul contagion; and private papers of the order, seized in Germany, testify to the fact that several such societies had been erected in America prior to the year 1786.[669]

When the preacher passed to the head of improvement, it was therefore natural that he should prescribe as one of the “duties” that especially needed to be observed, the breaking off all connection with such enemies as had been mentioned. The language in which this particular duty was enforced certainly did not lack boldness and vigor.

The sins of these enemies of Christ, and Christians, are of numbers and degrees which mock account and description. All that the malice and atheism of the Dragon, the cruelty and rapacity of the Beast, and the fraud and deceit of the false Prophet, can generate or accomplish, swell the list. No personal or national interest of man has been uninvaded; no impious sentiment, or action, against God has been spared; no malignant hostility against Christ, and his religion, has been unattempted. Justice, truth, kindness, piety, and moral obligation universally have been, not merely trodden under foot, … but ridiculed, spurned, and insulted, as the childish bugbears of drivelling idiocy. Chastity and decency have been alike turned out of doors; and shame and pollution called out of their dens to the hall of distinction and the chair of state…. For what end shall we be connected with men of whom this is the character and conduct? Is it that we may assume the same character, and pursue the same conduct? Is it that our churches may become temples of reason, our Sabbath a decade, and our psalms of praise Marsellois [sic] hymns? … Is it that we may see the Bible cast into a bonfire, the vessels of the sacramental supper borne by an ass in public procession, and our children, either wheedled or terrified, uniting in the mob, chanting mockeries against God, and hailing in the sounds of Ca ira the ruin of their religion, and the loss of their souls? … Shall we, my brethren, become partakers of these sins? Shall we introduce them into our government, our schools, our families? Shall our sons become the disciples of Voltaire, and the dragoons of Marat; or our daughters the concubines of the Illuminati?[670]

With equally fiery speech, all doubting Thomases are urged to

… look for conviction to Belgium; sunk into the dust of insignificance and meanness, plundered, insulted, forgotten, never to rise more. See Batavia wallowing in the same dust; the butt of fraud, rapacity, and derision, struggling in the last stages of life, and searching anxiously to find a quiet grave. See Venice sold in the shambles, and made the small change of a political bargain. Turn your eyes to Switzerland, and behold its happiness and its hopes, cut off at a single stroke, happiness erected with the labour and the wisdom of three centuries; hopes that not long since hailed the blessings of centuries yet to come. What have they spread but crimes and miseries; where have they trodden but to waste, to pollute, and to destroy?[671]

From these excerpts and this extended survey of President Dwight’s sermon it will readily appear that his espousal of the notion that the Illuminati were immediately responsible for the riotous overturnings and bitter woes of the age was as unequivocal as it was vigorous. To this view of things he boldly committed himself, and that on a great national anniversary occasion when public interest was bound to be peculiarly alert. Moreover, the crisis through which his country was passing had seemed to him to require that his countrymen should especially be put on their guard respecting this new peril which threatened. Though he had been silent respecting personal observations and evidence of his own bearing on the operations of this infamous organization in the United States, nevertheless he had given his hearers to understand that he accepted at its face value Robison’s statement regarding the existence of the Order of the Illuminati in this country. Here, then, was a man high in the councils of the church,[672] of education, and the state, lending the full weight of his personality and his office to this fresh and startling explanation of the true cause of the agitations and disorders of the day.[673] The undoubted effect was to give more solid standing to the sensational charge that Jedediah Morse had made.

But preachers were not the only public characters who early caught up and echoed the new alarm. Orators, too, lent the aid of their voices in an effort to persuade the people that their liberties and institutions were in danger of a deadly thrust from this new quarter. A number of these, on the Fourth of July just referred to, delivered themselves of sentiments similar to those which President Dwight expressed. Thus at Sharon, Connecticut, the orator of the day, a certain John C. Smith, supplied a new thrill to his patriotic address by informing his hearers that the French Revolution was the result

chiefly of a combination long since founded in Europe, by Infidels and Atheists, to root out and effectually destroy Religion and Civil Government,—not this or that creed of religion,—not this or that form of government,—in this or that particular country,—but all religion,—all government,—and that through the world.[674]

At Hartford, Theodore Dwight, brother to Yale’s president, publicly averred it was a fact well ascertained that the French Revolution “was planned by a set of men whose avowed object was the overthrow of Altars and Thrones, that is, the destruction of all Religion and Government.”[675] At the midnight orgies of the “modern Illuminati” the plan had been conceived and nourished. For six years past, the orator declared, the government of France has been directed by men who have been schooled in that society of demons.[676] In the same city, and on the same occasion, another voice was raised to declaim against the reckless impiety of French partisans in the United States.[677] These conspiring men, so this orator somewhat vaguely declared, are said to have substituted the wild dogmas of infidel philosophy for the benevolent principles of Christianity. They have adopted “a philosophy originating in wickedness, founded in error, and subversive of the peace and happiness of society.”[678]

From this early handling of the subject by clergymen and orators, we are now called away to consider a significant exposition of the matter in the columns of a Boston newspaper. To the issue of the Massachusetts Mercury of July27, 1798, “Censor” contributed an article that was destined to have important bearings on the course of public discussion. Professing a spirit of reasonable moderation, “Censor” offered the practical suggestion that the time had come to inquire what evidence Professor Robison possessed respecting the authenticity of his sources. “At this distance,” he urged, “it is impossible to decide on the truth of his assertions, or the respectability of his testimonies.” Yet the writer had had his attention drawn to certain evidences of prejudice, misrepresentation, and unrestrained imagination on the part of Robison which tended to destroy confidence in his judgment. Dr. Morse, too, he continued, on the unsupported assertion of an individual three thousand miles distant, to the effect that several lodges of the Illuminati had been established in America prior to ’86, in his fast sermon had seen fit to declare that the Illuminati were here, that they had made considerable progress among us, and that to them were to be traced the torrent of irreligion and the abuse of everything good and praiseworthy which threatens to overwhelm the world. For all these assertions, “Censor” inquired, where were the evidences?[679]

The tone of “Censor’s” article was decidedly hostile. The spirit of cynicism and distrust had lifted its head, not apologetically but boldly. The evidence in the case was called for. To Jedediah Morse, original and chief sponsor for the outcry against the Illuminati, it must have seemed clear that the obligation of meeting the issue thus joined rested squarely upon his own shoulders. Nor was he minded to evade responsibility. And thus it happened that the columns of the Massachusetts Mercury, for some weeks to come,[680] carried a succession of articles over Morse’s signature, all laboring to prove that the judgment their author had passed upon Robison’s volume had not been hasty, but was well grounded in reason. To these articles, rambling and inconclusive as they were, we must now devote attention.

Expressing first his gratitude that Professor Robison’s Proofs of a Conspiracy had attracted the attention of so large and respectable a portion of the community, Morse thereupon professed surprise that his own commendation of that work in his late fast day sermon should have exposed him to the necessity of vindicating both the author of the Proofs and his own composition.[681] He had assumed that every reader of Robison’s production would be impressed as he had been with the evidence of the author’s talents, views, candor, and integrity. The sensitiveness and irritation which members of the Masonic fraternity had shown had also astonished him. His hope had been that the notes by which his published fast day sermon had been accompanied would forestall censure from that quarter. However the necessity to vindicate Professor Robison and his book had been imposed upon him, and that he would proceed to do. He would first introduce extracts from his fast day sermon to show that he had recommended Robison’s book, not because of any observations unfavorable to the Masons which it contained, but for the sole reason that it exposed the dark conspiracies of the Illuminati against civil government and Christianity.[682]

The vindication of Professor Robison’s character and reputation as a man and writer was next undertaken. These points Morse considered to be fully established by the positions that Robison occupied as Secretary of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and Professor of Natural Philosophy in one of the best universities of the world. If further proof should be required, the contributions that Robison had made to the EncyclopÆdia Britannica certainly vouched for his respectability and prominence. Beyond this Morse could go no further than to add that private advices which had come to him from one of his foreign correspondents, the Reverend Dr. Erskine, of Edinburgh, fully confirmed the reputation of the Scotch professor.[683]

But since it was likely to be remarked in this instance that “great men are not always wise,” Morse proposed to deal next with the marks of the book’s credibility. As to external marks, the approbation and support of the book by very respectable men in England and Scotland, and its approval and recommendation by clergymen and laymen of discernment and ability in America, he argued, were to be weighed as impressive considerations.[684] If by way of rejoinder it should be urged that the English reviewers were not of one mind respecting the merits of the book, then his reply would be that having read on both sides of the controversy that had been waged in the English journals, he had been forced to the conclusion that “the balance of candor and truth are [sic] clearly on the side of those who are in favor of Professor Robison, and give credit to his work.”[685]

Respecting the favorable reception which the book had been accorded in America, he was glad to be privileged to point to the sentiments of Professor Tappan,[686] President Dwight,[687] and Theodore Dwight, Esq.[688] It is true that in America the book had excited warm, even virulent opposition; but certainly it had received respectable support, “such as ought to exempt any person from the charge of weakness or credulity who believes it authentic.”[689]

An effort to marshal the internal evidence of the book’s credibility is next promised by Morse.[690] This anticipation remained a promise, however, for the disingenuous reason that Morse offered that a book which has met such a flattering reception as Robison’s Proofs absolves its friends and supporters of the necessity of defending its contents as well as the authenticity of the documents from which it has been drawn. The burden of proof rests upon those who have nothing to offer against the work in question but bold assertions, contemptuous sneers, and vilifying epithets.[691] Professor Robison’s critics have failed to take sufficient account of the fact that he was engaged in a delicate and arduous undertaking. He was attempting to unveil a deep and dark conspiracy.[692] It is not pretended that all the links in the chain of evidence have been discovered; nor is it claimed that there has been an entire absence of confusion, disconnection, and imperfection in the work of ferreting out the conspiracy. But certainly enough has been accomplished to merit confidence in the effort, and to justify serious alarm on the part of the friends of the civil and religious interests of the country.[693]

This, it need scarcely be said, did not amount to a satisfactory handling of the case. In truth, from the standpoint of the main issue involved, viz., the reliability of Robison’s “proofs,” it was little more than so much dust thrown into the air. Evidence had been asked for. In its place arguments, and it must be confessed very inconclusive arguments at that, were submitted. The vital questions in the case had scarcely been touched. Were the Illuminati still in existence? If so, did they actually aim at the universal overthrow of religion and civil government? Was the French Revolution the result of their machinations? More momentous still to the interests of Americans, had the net of conspiracy been thrown over this country, with the result that nefarious secret organizations were at work among her people, corrupting them and plotting the downfall of their institutions? No definite, independent word had yet been spoken in America in answer to these questions. Thus far the issue was joined over the merits or demerits of a book,[694]—a book that had recently come across the Atlantic and whose readers in America, according as they were credulous or incredulous, boldly asserted or as vehemently denied that the questions which have just been propounded should be answered in the affirmative.

Thus matters stood in the early fall of 1798. The newspapers generally had begun to take hold of the subject, and the volume of public discussion steadily increased. But as to progress in the clarifying of the fundamental questions at issue, no advance was made. No additional facts were forthcoming; no new light was shed. The alarm that Morse and his allies had raised may be said to have been something like a ship which has been able to make its way out as far as the harbor mouth, but lingers there becalmed, waiting for a favoring gale to speed it on its way. Or was it that the winds were ample, but wholly unfavorable? In the late summer and the fall of 1798 practically every other public interest in New England was eclipsed by two surpassingly important concerns: the bitter agitation over the Alien and Sedition Acts, and the distress and terror of the people over the ravages of an epidemic of yellow fever which was sweeping the towns and cities of the Atlantic seaboard, extending well up along the New England coast.

2. INCONCLUSIVE DEVELOPMENTS OF MORSE’S SECOND FORMAL DELIVERANCE

With the approach of the anniversary thanksgiving in Massachusetts, late in November, 1798, public discussion of the Illuminati broke out afresh. Once more the columns of the Massachusetts Mercury became the chief medium of communication. Stirred, it appears, by the announcement from abroad that the first three volumes of the AbbÉ Barruel’s Memoirs of Jacobinism had been translated into English, a contributor to the Mercury took occasion to comment at length on the marvelous corroboratory evidence which that work was about to supply to the English reading public with respect to the great and terrible conspiracy which Professor Robison had laid bare.[695]

This advance commendation of Barruel’s composition was not destined to be received with unanimous approval. “A Friend to Truth” was unable to restrain the impulse to exclaim:

The paper signed “A Customer” could find but one man contemptible enough to write it. It has his ignominy and his guilt…. No excuse can be made for the late publication. If Barruel’s work be not yet in America, why not wait till it comes? … The public are cautioned against all anonymous defamers, from whom our Country has suffered its greatest evils.[696]

Time and space were claimed by this writer to call attention also to alleged discrepancies of a serious nature between Robison’s account of the rise of the Illuminati and its early relations with Freemasonry and the account of the same matters by Barruel, as reflected in English reviews of the latter’s work. Quite incidentally “A Friend to Truth” threw out the suggestion that Robison was not always in command of his reason.[697]

Such an indecisive passage at arms obviously called for further hostilities. The aspersion upon Robison’s sanity must immediately be branded as infamous, and the charge that Barruel had contradicted Robison boldly pronounced a lie.[698] “Trepidus” felt drawn to enter the combat at this juncture, with satire as his principal weapon. He knew of nothing so amazing and so wonderful as the discoveries which Mr. Robison and his commentators had made respecting the achievements of the Illuminati in America.[699] Surely there was nothing half so dreadful about the Catalinarian conspiracy, the Sicilian Vespers, the massacre of St. Bartholomew, or the Gunpowder Plot. But he, too, had a mysterious cabal to expose. The people who were vulgarly called “Quakers,” but who had assumed the suspicious name of “Friends,” were they not conspirators?

The Illuminati esteem all ecclesiastical establishments profane, irreligious, and tyrannical; so do the Quakers. They hold also the obligations of brotherly love and universal benevolence. The Quakers not only profess these Atheistical principles, but actually reduce them to practice. The Illuminati hold the enormous doctrine of the Equality of mankind. So do these Quakers. They, like the Illuminati, have a general correspondence through all their meetings, delegates constantly moving, and one day, at every quarterly meeting, set apart for private business; and I engage to prove at the bar of any tribunal in the United States, that these Friends, these men so horribly distinguished for benevolence and philanthropy, (Ah! philanthropy!) have held, and do still hold a constant correspondence with their nefarious accomplices in Europe…. Awake, arise, or be forever fallen![700]

These, however, were the sentiments of mere scribblers. Such were able to handle the subject seriously or lightly according as their sympathies or their prejudices were most appealed to. It was evident that in either case such men charged themselves with no personal responsibility to get at the precise facts. What was needed was the testimony and counsel of one who, recognizing the gravity of the interests involved and having accumulated and weighed the evidence, should be able to speak the language of enlightened conviction, backed by the force of a position among his fellow citizens which would entitle his words to respect. An attempt to meet that need was about to be made, how successfully we shall soon be in a position to judge.

On the day of the anniversary thanksgiving referred to in the beginning of this chapter, the Reverend Jedediah Morse was again before his people in his Charlestown pulpit, to speak to them under the inspiration of another high occasion in the commonwealth’s life. Of what would he speak? The day had, of course, its own definite suggestions. Governor Increase Sumner, in appointing it, apparently had felt that Massachusetts’ measure of providential mercies had been well filled.[701] The earth had yielded a sufficient supply for the wants of the people, and the efforts of industrious husbandmen had been well rewarded. The state’s fisheries had been prospered, and its commerce, although much interrupted by the violence and rapacity of unreasonable men, had been generally attended with success. Order and tranquillity had continued to reign in the commonwealth, and although a mortal contagious disease had been permitted for a time to afflict the city of Boston, yet Providence had been pleased to set bounds to the progress of the plague, and once more the voice of health and plenty was generally heard. The constitutions of civil government were still enjoyed; the life and usefulness of the nation’s chief magistrate had been spared and continued; and despite the past impenitence of the people, they were still indulged with the Christian religion.[702]

Would these considerations engage the thought of the minister of Charlestown and inspire his tongue to speak the language of thanksgiving and praise? Only in part.[703] Morse’s mind was occupied, not so much with the thought of mercies bestowed as with that of perils to be faced. Passing lightly over the more favorable and reassuring aspects of the state of public affairs, he seized upon various items in the governor’s proclamation to point out those untoward elements in the situation which seemed to him to supply ample warrant for alarm.

The proclamation of the governor had referred to the uninterrupted order and tranquillity of the state. True; this was a mercy with which, under the favor of Providence, the people of Massachusetts had been blessed. Yet, unhappily, serious differences in political and religious opinions had been permitted to exist. Men might call these differences a mere war of words; but words are often calculated to bring on a more serious conflict. Such party zeal and animosities as had been raging would now somewhat abate, let it be hoped, and thus the heat of battle would be found to be past. But undeniably the crisis had been grave.[704]

The “Constitutions of Civil Government” were still enjoyed; but they had been, and still were seriously threatened. The main sources from which such dangers issue deserved to be pointed out. The vices and demoralizing principles of the people generally, their selfish spirit as conspicuously expressed in their insatiable ardor to become rich, the spread of infidel and atheistical principles in all parts of the country, the increase of luxury, extravagance, and dissipation, the spirit of insubordination to civil authority,—these constituted the perils against which the most powerful precautions must be taken.[705] The people of the United States were not sufficiently aroused to a sense of the high importance of the experiment of free government which they were making before the eyes of the world. Unless prompt reformation took place, they must make their choice between a voluntary increase in the power of government on the one hand, and revolution, anarchy, and military despotism on the other.[706]

The real nub of the matter, however, was yet to be considered. “The blessings of good government have been most imminently and immediately endangered by foreign intrigue.”[707] Enlarging upon this proposition, Morse argued that for twenty years and more foreign intrigue had been the bane of the country’s independence, peace, and prosperity. By it, insidious efforts had been made to diminish the nation’s limits, its importance, and its resources. By it, national prejudices had been kept alive. By it, efforts had been made to render efficient government impossible.[708] This spirit, which in other nations had brought about their downfall and left them, like the republics of Europe, prostrate at the feet of France,[709] had thus far been thwarted here only by means of the administration of government, wise, firm, dignified, and “supported by the enlightened and ardent patriotism of the people, seasonably manifested, with great unanimity, from all quarters of the Union, in patriotic addresses, in a voluntary tender of military services, and liberal means of naval defence.”[710]

As to the country’s continued indulgence with the Christian religion,[711] it should be said that this blessing was regularly recognized in the governor’s proclamation, and always called for loudest praise. However, at that particular hour there were extraordinary reasons why the praise of citizens should be unusually fervent; for were not those times

… when secret and systematic means have been adopted and pursued, with zeal and activity, by wicked and artful men, in foreign countries, to undermine the foundations of this Religion, and to overthrow its Altars, and thus to deprive the world of its benign influence on society, and believers of their solid consolations and animating hopes; when we know that these impious conspirators and philanthropists have completely effected their purposes in a large portion of Europe, and boast of their means of accomplishing their plan in all parts of Christendom, glory in the certainty of their success, and set opposition at defiance; when we can mark the progress of these enemies of human happiness among ourselves, in the corruption of the principles and morals of our youth; the contempt thrown on Religion, its ordinances and ministers; in the increase and boldness of infidelity, and even of Atheism?[712]

The foregoing abstract takes account of all the important points in the text of Morse’s anniversary thanksgiving sermon. The reader will not need instruction as to the commonplace character of Morse’s pulpit performance. The distinguishing character of the production, however, is not to be sought in the sermon proper, but in the astonishing array of supplementary material by which it was accompanied when it appeared in its printed form. This material consisted of numerous foot notes and a bulky appendix of some fifty pages. The foot notes frequently commented upon passages in the works of Robison and Barruel. Since they throw no light upon the fundamental questions at issue, we may pass them by. One, however, was unique; and because of its suggestiveness for the future trend of public discussion respecting the Illuminati, it must be cited in full.

The probable existence of Illuminism in this country was asserted in my Fast Discourse of May last. The following fact, related by a very respectable divine, while it confirms what is above asserted, shews that my apprehensions were not without foundation. “In the northern parts of this state [Massachusetts] as I am well informed, there has lately appeared, and still exists under a licentious leader, a company of beings who discard the principles of religion, and the obligations of morality, trample on the bonds of matrimony, the separate rights of property, and the laws of civil society, spend the sabbath in labour and divertion, as fancy dictates; and the nights in riotous excess and promiscuous concubinage, as lust impels. Their number consists of about forty, some of whom are persons of reputable abilities, and once, of decent characters. That a society of this description, which would disgrace the natives of Caffraria, should be formed in this land of civilization and Gospel light, is an evidence that the devil is at this time gone forth, having great influence, as well as great wrath.” Cf. a Sermon on “the Dangers of the times, especially from a lately discovered Conspiracy against Religion and Government. By Rev. Joseph Lathrop, D. D., of West Springfield.”[713]

This foot note speaks for itself. The Appendix, or supplement of Morse’s sermon, was made up of a curious mixture of heterogeneous documents, such as an original survey of the history of the United States from the time that the Federal government was established, extracts from the confidential correspondence which passed between French agents in this country and the French government,[714] and extracts from the correspondence of various public characters in the United States, all tending to enforce the point that from the beginning of the relations between our government and that of France, the controlling aim and spirit of the latter had been to work despicable and ruinous intrigue.[715]

All of this, it may be said, was fairly typical of the pabulum which Federalist leaders were regularly serving up to the people in 1798, and signified little or nothing concerning the existence of French conspirators wearing the Illuminati brand who may, or may not, have been at work in America at the time.

One section of the Appendix, however, supplied some evidence of a definite effort to leave generalities and deal intimately with the point at issue. In this section[716] Morse sought to connect the Illuminati with “the Jacobin Clubs instituted by Genet.”[717] Like their sister organizations in France they had been constituted after the manner and with the principles of the European Illuminati. The fact that the members of these American organizations have been the leading disseminators of the principles of Illuminism in this country, as well as the circulators of all those publications, like Paine’s Age of Reason, whose object is to discredit and throw contempt upon the Christian religion, clearly fixes their status as “the apostles of Illuminism.”[718] Frowned upon by the Federal government, these American organizations have ceased to act openly; “but, like their parent society in Bavaria which, when suppressed under one form, was soon revived again under the name of the German Union,”[719] so their offspring in the United States now hypocritically mask themselves under the name of The American Society of United Irishmen.[720]

Taken by itself, it would be impossible to state how favorably this presentation of the case against Illuminism impressed the public mind.[721] But as a matter of fact, on the occasion of the Massachusetts anniversary thanksgiving referred to, Morse was by no means compelled to bear his testimony alone. By the time that occasion came round, the subject of Illuminism had solicited the attention and concern of the Federalist clergy generally; on which account it happened that a considerable amount of clerical artillery was unlimbered and trained upon the new foe.

At Haverhill, the Reverend Abiel Abbott, in language emphatic, if somewhat high-flown, voiced his alarm:

Upon the authority of a respectable writer in Europe and of corroboratory testimonies, it is now generally believed that the present day is unfolding a design the most extensive, flagitious, and diabolical, that human art and malice have ever invented. Its object is the total destruction of all religion and civil order. If accomplished, the earth can be nothing better than a sink of impurities, a theatre of violence and murder, and a hell of miseries. Its origination was in Germany; its hot-bed now is Paris. Its nursing fathers are the French Government; its apostles are their generals and armies. Its fruits have been seen in France; Christianity expelled; its priesthood seized and murdered, or hunted down in neutral countries and demanded of their hospitable protectors at the peril of war and ruin.—And now, were our first magistrate an Illuminatus, a conspirator in league with the horde in Europe, the grand master of the demoralizers in America, how soon might the American republic have been degraded to the deplorable state of the French?[722]

At Deerfield, the Reverend John Taylor dwelt upon “the good effect … produced upon the public mind by the fortunate discovery of a secret conspiracy in Europe, against all the religions and governments on earth.”[723] One of the evidences of this salutary impression, he said, was to be found in the fact that even the confirmed infidels in America had been shocked.[724] At Andover, the Reverend Jonathan French did not consider his full duty discharged when he had uttered a general warning against men of treachery, slander, and falsehood in the nation, men who have spared no pains in fomenting difficulties and divisions.[725] He believed it to be incumbent upon him to strike out at that “envenomed serpent in the grass,” France, whose tools, said he, were here, according to two writers of eminence and credit, Professor Robison and the AbbÉ Barruel.[726] The works of these two authors, French’s hearers were informed, “ought to rouse the attention, awaken the vigilance, and excite the endeavors of every friend to religion, to develop the dark designs, and to guard against the baneful influence of all such dangerous secret machinations.”[727] Through the pulpit ministrations of the Reverend Joseph Eckley, auditors at the Old South Church in Boston had their attention drawn to the same topic, although the language employed by this clergyman was somewhat less specific than that which has just been noted.[728]

Other pastors, while refraining from definite reference to the Illuminati, took occasion to exploit the subject of French intrigue, with a view to awakening in their hearers a keen sense of instant alarm. Of such, the efforts of the Reverend Nathan Strong, pastor of the North Presbyterian Church in Hartford,[729] and the Reverend Henry Cumings, pastor of the church in Billerica, deserve mention. Strong contended that foreign influence, if not promptly checked, would work here the same havoc it had wrought in France, i. e., the demoralizing principles of infidelity and political engagements and alliances would chain the people of the United States to “a burning pile”;[730] and Cumings developed the idea that the war impending between this country and France possibly amounted to an act of intervention on the part of God to rescue the United States as a brand from the burning.[731] By the breaking out of war a providential check would be put

… to that alarming inundation of impiety and infidelity, which, having overwhelmed a great part of Europe, has lately rolled its swelling waves across the Atlantic … threatening our happy country with an universal devastation of every religious sentiment, moral principle, and rational enjoyment, together with the consequent introduction of that wretched unhallowed philosophy which degrades a man to a level with the beasts that perish,”[732] etc.

On the whole, the idea of secret and systematic plottings against the liberties and institutions of the people of the United States was extensively promoted by clerical agency during the autumn and winter of 1798–99. For it is not to be lost sight of that such pulpit utterances as have just been noticed were considerably more than mere pulpit pronouncements. Issued from the presses of New England, these sermons were scattered widely through the country[733] and, no doubt, were widely read. Some representatives of the clergy, as we have seen, spoke out with distinctness regarding the Illuminati, asserting that this organization would have to be reckoned with by their fellow citizens. Others committed themselves no farther than to emphasize foreign intrigue of the French stripe, and to characterize it as a vital thrust at the country’s peace and prosperity. The total effect was to invite a general airing of the issue which Jedediah Morse had raised in his fast day sermon of May9, 1798, and to render imperative a sifting of evidence.

The part played by the newspapers is less easily interpreted, since it calls for the survey of a much less solid body of opinion. Some journals adopted an attitude of discreet silence, apparently waiting for the mists which enveloped the subject to clear. Others opened their columns impartially to champions and antagonists, willing to be used to let light in upon a dark and perplexing matter. The policy (the word seems strangely out of place in connection with the average New England newspaper of the period) of several of these journals can best be stated in terms of their own behavior.

The course pursued by the Columbian Centinel[734] left nothing to be desired as respects impartiality. As early as August11, 1798, there appeared in this paper the following sarcastic “epistles”:

Epistle from Professor Robison, in Scotland, to Professor Morse, in America:

“Dear Brother,

Will you scratch my back?

Yours affectionately,

J. ROBISON.”

Another Epistle, from Professor Morse, in America, to Professor Robison, in Scotland:

“Dear Brother,

I’ll scratch your back, if you will scratch my elbow.

Yours affectionately,

JED. MORSE.”

A few weeks later there appeared in the same paper an article whose author professed that having read “The Cannibals’ Progress, the Freemason’s illuminati, and some other documents of the French nation,” he had been brought round to the conclusion that the depravity of the human race was astounding. He could no longer doubt that the conspiracy against religions and governments was not only deeply laid, but was likewise spreading far and wide. He was convinced that the proofs of its existence in America were to be observed generally throughout the country, “in every society where there is the least prospect of success, in misleading and dividing our citizens.”[735] To this another contributor was given opportunity to respond with an expression of sentiments intended to sweep the views of the former aside as inordinately nonsensical and silly.[736]

After the autumn crop of thanksgiving sermons had revived interest in the subject of the Illuminati, the Centinel published one article which really shed a modicum of light upon the subject. This consisted of a letter which had originally been received in England from Germany, together with certain observations from the pen of the anonymous contributor who offered it in evidence.[737] The letter bore the signature of one Augustus BÖttiger, who identified himself as “Counsellor of the Upper Consistory, and Provost of the College of Weimar.”[738] It concerned itself with the amused astonishment with which, according to its author, Professor Robison’s Proofs of a Conspiracy had been received in Germany, in view of the fact that from 1790 on every interest in the Illuminati had ceased in that country. The Freemasons of Germany, BÖttiger asserted, had had absolutely nothing to do with Illuminism from the date mentioned. In the observations which accompanied this letter the information was advanced that in England all public interest in Illuminism had likewise died out, owing to the contemptuous estimate which the people of that country had come to place upon the works of Robison and Barruel.[739]

In the heat which had arisen over the subject of Illuminism it was impossible that this bit of evidence should pass without being sharply challenged. A rough and scurrilous rejoinder to these productions appeared in the Centinel of January19, 1799. Questions were boldly raised concerning the identity of the addressee of the BÖttiger letter; how the letter had chanced to find its way to America; where it had been translated; what were the religious and political sentiments of the author; who was the person that penned the remarks by which it had been accompanied in the Centinel; how the latter had come into possession of his pretentious stock of information respecting the state of public opinion in England, et cetera, et cetera. Neither the writer nor his friends were favorably impressed. “The naked declaration of an unknown paragraphist, probably enough an emigrant illuminatist, will not be sufficient with enlightened Americans to convict Professor Robison or AbbÉ Barruel of criminality or even of error in their publications.”[740]

Another newspaper that sought to hold to a noncommittal course was the Massachusetts Mercury, as might have been anticipated in view of circumstances already related. After the generous hearing which this journal, in the summer and fall of 1798, accorded to both sides in the controversy, a marked diminution of its interest for a season is noticeable. A search through its files for the winter of 1798–99 discloses nothing more than an occasional article bearing on the subject. One of these came to light in the issue of December7.[741] “Anti-Illuminism” solicited the public ear that he might testify to the change that had taken place in his personal convictions. An examination of Robison’s volume and reflection upon the amount of abuse which that author had been compelled to suffer had persuaded him that there was positive truth in the charge of conspiracy that had been made. He was now certain that the Masons were not the harmless persons he had formerly believed them to be. The vociferous attempt which had been made to vindicate American Freemasonry impressed him as decidedly premature. It was clear to him that all secret societies were dangerous.

It might have been expected that a Democratic sheet as violent and aggressive as the Independent Chronicle would range itself squarely against the alarmists, and seek, if not by argument at least by unlicensed vituperation, to distract the public interest. But as a matter of fact, the Chronicle elected to adopt a very different attitude.[742] Morse and his associates in the special cause which he and they were pleading should be treated with contemptuous indifference. The bÊte noire of the editors of the Chronicle was “political preaching.” This new agitation over Illuminism, for which the clergy were chiefly responsible, was but one other proof of their incorrigible impertinence in turning aside from their legitimate functions. In displaying “his over-heated zeal … in silly tales about the ‘illuminati’,”[743] Morse was but holding true to type.[744]

At Hartford, next to Boston the main center of the Illuminati agitation in New England, two papers, the American Mercury and the Connecticut Courant, assisted materially in giving publicity to the controversy. The former at first gave some evidence of a disposition to treat Morse’s presentation of the case with respect. Extracts from the latter’s fast day sermon of May9, 1798, were given to this journal’s readers;[745] and the annual poem which at the beginning of the new year (1799) it furnished to its patrons, testified to the widespread interest that the general public in Connecticut had come to have in the subject of the Illuminati.[746] It was not long after this, however, that Elisha Babcock, editor of the Mercury, found reason to become rabidly hostile to Morse and his agitation.[747]

As for the Connecticut Courant, its behavior was precisely what one should expect from a journal breathing always a spirit of arrogant and unreasoning Federalism. Quick to take advantage of any new issue which gave promise of offering discomfiture to the Democrats, and all too often impatient to the point of exasperation over so slight a question as the essential soundness of the facts involved, from the first day that it was made aware of the agitation against the Illuminati, the Courant gave every encouragement to the men who were trying to awaken the people of the country to a sense of the gravity of the peril that threatened. The books, pamphlets, sermons, orations, and leading newspaper contributions that appeared upon the subject, these the Courant urged upon the attention of its readers, and gave such assistance as it was able in the exposition of their respective merits.[748]

The political possibilities in the situation supplied the chief, if not the only animus for this playing-up of the case by the Courant. On this point little room for doubt is left. One contributor who heard Theodore Dwight’s Fourth of July oration asserted that not till then had his eyes been opened to see in Mr. Jefferson “anything more than the foe of certain men, who were in possession of places to which he might think himself entitled;” but Dwight convinced him that Jefferson “is the real Jacobin, the very child of modern illumination, the foe of man, and the enemy of his country.”[749] Another argued that the zeal of the Democrats for office was to be treated as a part of the scheme of Illuminatism in America “to worm its votaries into all offices of trust, and importance, that the weapon of government, upon signal given, may be turned against itself.”[750] Still another contended that the one concern of the Democrats of Connecticut was to dispense “to the people of this state the precious doctrines of the Illuminati.”[751]

The contributions to the agitation made by two newspapers that were published outside of New England but which were extensively circulated and much quoted in that region, are entitled to consideration at this point. These were Porcupine’s Gazette and the Aurora General Advertiser, both Philadelphia publications and, it may be remarked in passing, both tremendously influential throughout the entire country.

William Cobbett, the editor of the former, participated in the publication of the first American edition of Robison’s Proofs of a Conspiracy. As soon as the book was ready for distribution he announced the fact in his paper, accompanying the advertisement with flattering testimonials gleaned from the London Review.[752] Later, he gave to his readers his personal estimate of the merits of Robison’s production.[753] In his judgment the Proofs was of such great value that it deserved to be read by every living man. For one thing, “it unravels everything that appears mysterious in the progress of the French Revolution.”[754]

In the issue of Porcupine’s Gazette for August9, 1798, Cobbett expressed his deep interest in the reports which had come to him respecting Morse’s fast day sermon and the “Vindication” with which, he understood, Morse had followed his sermon. He would be grateful to any gentleman who would send him a copy of the “Vindication,” since there could be no doubt as to its great public utility. Very promptly his desire was gratified, and Morse’s articles in vindication of Robison, which in the summer of that year he contributed to the Massachusetts Mercury, began to be spread before the readers of Porcupine’s Gazette.[755]

Following their publication, other matters appear to have held the restless attention of Cobbett for a time and no further reference of an extended character to the affairs of the Illuminati appeared in this paper until February of the following year.

Upon the receipt of a copy of Morse’s thanksgiving sermon, Cobbett communicated to his readers the joy he experienced in being able to put them in possession of extracts from it.[756] Morse’s sermon, in his judgment, was an extraordinary performance. Of its Appendix he wrote:

“This Appendix is one of the most valuable political tracts that ever appeared in America, whether we view it as a collection of facts, or as an address to the reason and feelings of the people.”[757] Of the sermon as a whole he wrote:

It has gone through two editions, and a third is about to be commenced. Doctor Morse has long been regarded as a benefactor to his country; but notwithstanding his former labours have been of great utility, this last work, I have no hesitation to say, surpasses them all in this respect; and it must, if there be any such thing as national gratitude in America, render the author the object of universal esteem. He has brought to light facts which people in general never before dreamed of, and however deaf the middle and southern states may be to his warning voice, New-England will listen to it.[758]

This was very strong language, providing the personality of William Cobbett is left out of account! How soothingly it fell upon the ears of a certain clergyman in New England, which ears, it may be remarked, were growing accustomed to much less kindly comment, we may leave to conjecture.

As for Benjamin Franklin Bache, the editor of the Aurora[759] and as militant an advocate of Democratic principles as this country contained, all such views of the case were so much puerile fol de rol. Robison’s Proofs was a blending of “a most absurd collection of stories respecting the mystical societies in Germany with some fragments of histories of French Free Masonry, … [an] inconsistent Farrago.”[760] Weak indeed must be the cause of despotism “when its Satellites can imagine a dissemination of such contemptible mummery would calumniate the friends of Liberty or paralize their efforts to explore the divinity of kings, or the dogma of priests.”[761] The explanation of Morse’s faith in Robison’s book is to be sought in the fact that the minister of Charlestown received his doctor’s degree from the University of Glasgow; and therefore on the principle, “Tickle me and I’ll scratch you,” the Glasgow professor’s production was entitled to credit.[762]

3. MORSE SUBMITS HIS INEPT DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE

The national skies had by no means cleared of threatening clouds when, in the early spring of 1799, the time arrived for President Adams to issue his annual fast day proclamation. In the view of the nations chief executive the questions of the hour were still of great urgency and it was a season of imminent danger.[763] Accordingly, in appointing Thursday, April25, as the day for the people of the nation to perform acts of solemn humiliation, fasting and prayer, he justified in part the issuance of the proclamation on the following grounds:

The most precious interests of the people of the United States are still held in jeopardy by the hostile designs and insidious acts of a foreign nation, as well as by the dissemination among them of those principles, subversive of the foundations of all religious, moral, and social obligations, that have produced incalculable mischief and misery in other countries.[764]

Seldom, if ever, has a presidential proclamation breathed deeper concern for the moral and religious interests of the people.[765] Its challenge to citizens who were already of fearful heart was unmistakable.

To the observance of this fast day the Reverend Jedediah Morse must have turned in no ordinary frame of mind. A spirit of exultation possessed him. It is impossible to read the sermon which on that occasion he delivered before his people in the Charlestown meeting house and avoid the impression that to Morse personally the day had been anticipated as one of triumph rather than of humiliation.[766] Not that in any sense he was out of sympathy with the objects for which the day had been set apart, or with the President’s extremely solemn language in proclaiming the fast; but it was given him, as he believed, to make before his people a pronouncement of such a startling and convincing character as would perform for the country at large that great and needed service which for months he had been eager to accomplish. Incidentally, the scoffers who had sought to cry down the alarm which a year before he had sounded should be put to rout. Timid apologists for the outcry against the Illuminati were about to see their case tremendously strengthened. Honest doubters, by the overwhelming weight of the evidence which was about to be spread before them, would be forced to acknowledge the folly of their distrust.

The text that Morse employed for the occasion directly echoed a sentiment in the President’s proclamation, and besides was well suited to the purpose in view. From the Hebrew Psalms he selected the following passage: “If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?”—Psalm xi:3. With this text he proposed to make an effective appeal. The Psalm from which it was taken was composed by David while he was in great peril and distress from the persecuting hand of Saul; while, too, he was hard pressed to find a way of escape out of the destructive snares set by his enemies, whose secret machinations involved both his character and his life, and not only this, but the foundations of his country.[767] What word would better fit the circumstances of the present hour? Have not the enemies of David, of Christ his Antitype, and of the Church … ever possessed similar dispositions, … had in view similar designs, and in like circumstances, … adopted and pursued the same means of gratifying the former, and of accomplishing the latter?”[768] Might it not be said that “the present situation is uncommonly critical and perilous?” Do not all persons of reflection agree upon that judgment, even though their opinions regarding the sources and degrees of the dangers may vary greatly?[769]

The “foundations” alluded to in the text were, of course, the foundations of religion and government.[770] This exegesis paved the way for the following statement:

With all the frankness and plainness becoming an honest and faithful watchman, I intend, my brethren, to lay before you what I humbly conceive to be our real and most alarming dangers; those which have a malign aspect, both on our religious and our political welfare. Believing, as I firmly do, that the foundations of all our most precious interests are formidably assailed, and that the subtil and secret assailants are increasing in number, and are multiplying, varying, and arranging their means of attack, it would be criminal in me to be silent. I am compelled to sound the alarm, and I will do it, so far as God shall enable me, with fidelity.[771]

Having thus prepared the minds of his auditors for the portentous revelation, Morse quickly descended to particulars.

It may as well be said plainly, he continued, that the passage in the President’s fast day proclamation respecting the hostile designs, insidious arts, and demoralizing principles of a certain foreign nation, referred to France.[772] Did any one ask for proofs that the President’s statement was true? The proofs were so abundant and so evident that the difficulty was to know where to begin. The war upon the defenceless commerce of the United States; the inhuman and savage treatment of those citizens of this country who have been so unfortunate as to fall into the hands of France’s minions by whom they have been so grossly insulted, beaten, wounded and thrust into loathsome prisons and dungeons, even murdered; the recent plot of the French Directory to invade the southern states from St. Domingo, using an army of blacks to effect an invasion, and by these attempting to excite to insurrection the blacks of this country;[773] here, surely, were ample proofs of the hostile and detestable designs of the French government against our own.[774]

But there was another matter. The disclosure that had recently been made regarding the secret machinations of the French on the Island of St. Domingo, focused attention upon a matter of the most serious moment. The most vigorous, active, and united measures must immediately be adopted to arouse from their slumber the citizens of this country, that they may give due attention to a particular aspect of the insidious and seductive activities of the French in the United States, of which, Morse averred, he stood prepared to speak with the utmost definiteness.[775] Continuing:

It has long been suspected that secret societies, under the influence and direction of France, holding principles subversive of our religion and government, existed somewhere in this country. This suspicion was cautiously suggested from this desk, on the day of the late National Fast, with the view to excite a just alarm, and to put you on your guard against their secret artifices. Evidence that this suspicion was well founded has since been accumulating, and I have now in my possession complete and indubitable proof that such societies do exist, and have for many years existed, in the United States. I have, my brethren, an official, authenticated list of the names, ages, places of nativity, professions, &c. of the officers and members of a Society of Illuminati (or as they are now more generally and properly styled Illuminees) consisting of one hundred members, instituted in Virginia, by the Grand Orient of FRANCE. This society has a deputy, whose name is on the list, who resides at the Mother Society in France, to communicate from thence all needful information and instruction. The date of their institution is 1786, before which period, it appears from the private papers of the European Societies already published, (according to Professor Robison), that several societies had been established in America. The seal and motto of this society correspond with their detestable principles and designs. The members are chiefly Emigrants from France and St. Domingo, with the addition of a few Americans, and some from almost all the nations of Europe. A letter which enclosed this list, an authentic copy of which I also possess, contains evidence of a society of like nature, and probably of more ancient date, at New-York, out of which have sprung fourteen others, scattered we know not where over the United States. Two societies of the same kind, but of an inferior order, have been instituted by the society first mentioned, one in Virginia, the other at St. Domingo. How many of equal rank they have established among us I am not informed.

You will perceive, my brethren, from this concise statement of facts, that we have in truth secret enemies, not a few scattered through our country; how many and, except in three or four instances, in what places we know not; enemies whose professed design is to subvert and overturn our holy religion and our free and excellent government. And the pernicious fruits of their insidious and secret efforts, must be visible to every eye not obstinately closed or blinded by prejudice. Among these fruits may be reckoned our unhappy and threatening political divisions; the increasing abuse of our wise and faithful rulers; the virulent opposition to some of the laws of our country, and the measures of the Supreme Executive; the Pennsylvania insurrection; the industrious circulation of baneful and corrupting books, and the consequent wonderful spread of infidelity, impiety, and immorality; the arts made use of to revive ancient prejudices, and cherish party spirit, by concealing or disguising the truth, and propagating falsehoods; and lastly, the apparent systematic endeavours made to destroy, not only the influence and support, but the official existence of the Clergy.[776]

The remainder of the sermon is void of originality and interest. Its utterances pale into insignificance alongside of the sensational and emphatic statements just recorded.[777]

When the sermon came from the printer’s hands it contained the “complete and indubitable proof” that Morse had proudly told his hearers was in his possession. This “proof” was in the form of documents, conspicuous among which was the following letter:

A L’Ot? de Portsmouth, En Virginie le 17. du 5e. m. en L’an de la V? L? 5798/:

La R? L? Pte? Fse? rÉguliÉrement constituÉ sous le titre distinctif de la Sagesse No. 2660, par le G?

La T? R? L? L’union-franÇaise No. 14. constituÉe par le G? Ot? de New-York.

S? F? V?
TT? CC? & RR? FF?

La Planche dont vous nous avez favorisÉs en date du 16e. du 2e. mois de la presÉnte annÉe Mque?, ne nous est parvenuË que depuis peu de jours; Elle a ÉtÉ mise sous les yeux de notre R? L? en sa sÉance extraordinaire du 14e. du prÉsent.

Nous vous fÉlicitons TT? CC? FF? des nouvelles Constitutions que vous avez obtÉnuËs du G? Ot? de New-York. Nous avons ferons en consequÉnce un plaisir & un devoir d’entretenir avec votre R? L? la correspondence la plus fraternelle, comme avec toutes les LL? rÉguliÉre qui voudront bien vous favoriser de la leur.

C’est a ce titre que nous croyons devoir vous donner Connoissance de l’Éstablissement de deux nouveaux attellieres maÇoniques rÉguliÉrement constituÉs et installÉs au rite franÇais par notre R? L? provincialle, L’un depuis plus d’un an sous le titre de L’amitiÊ À L’Ot? de Petersburg, en Virginie; l’autre, plus rÉcent, sous le titre de la Parfaite-EgalitÉ À L’Ot? du Port de Paix isle St. Domingue.

Nous vous remettons cy-joint quelques exemplaires de notre Tableau de cette annÉe que notre L? vous prie d’agrÉer en retour de ceux qu’elle a reÇu de la votre avec reconnoissance.

Puisse la G? A? de l’U? bÉnir vos travaux et les couronner de toutes sortes de succÉs! C’est dans ces sentiments que nous avons la faveur d’Être,

P? L? N? M? Q? V? S? C?
TT? CC? et TT? RR? FF?

Votre trÈs affectionÉs F?
Par Mandement de la T?
R? L? Pte? de la Sagesse.

Guieu,

SÉcrÉtaire.[778]

Following this letter and its translation appeared a list of the officers and members, resident and non-resident, of Wisdom Lodge, Portsmouth, Virginia, with explanatory data in each instance, covering such points as age, place of birth, profession, etc., the whole concluding with a representation of the seal of Wisdom Lodge and the following motto: Amplius Homines oculis quam auribus credunt. Iter longum est per precepta, breve et efficax per exempla.[779]

Upon these documents Morse saw fit to make and publish certain “Explanatory Remarks,”[780] of which the following is the gist.

The Lodge Wisdom in Portsmouth, Virginia, is seen to be a branch of the Grand Orient of France. Its members consist chiefly of foreigners, that is to say, Frenchmen,—Frenchmen who come either from France or from the West India possessions of that country. From the seal it appears that Wisdom Lodge was established as early as 1786. It is also, as its number shows, “the TWO THOUSAND SIX HUNDRED AND SIXTIETH branch from the original stock.”[781] It further appears that there is a sister lodge in the city of New York, styled the Grand Orient of New York. The latter, from the name and number of the lodges it has instituted, is quite likely the first and principal branch that the Mother Club in France has established in America. This New York lodge has established the French lodge, Union, to which the letter from the lodge Wisdom was addressed. As to the other thirteen branches from the parent stock, for the present there could be nothing more than conjecture as to their location.[782]

The documents also show that an intimate correspondence is maintained between the lodges in America and those in St. Domingo; also between the American lodges and the Grand Orient in France. It further appears that Wisdom Lodge has a regular deputy in the membership of the Grand Orient of France. Lists of names are exchanged between the two societies, so that their members may be fully known to each other.[783]

Masons to whom these documents issuing from Wisdom Lodge have been shown declare that the organization is not truly Masonic. The titles of its officers, its seal and motto, they affirm, are not regular. Thus the lodge in Portsmouth has been pronounced spurious by well-informed Masons.[784]

Wisdom Lodge, it appears, has one hundred members. Counting all the others referred to in the documents, there are seventeen lodges in all. Assuming that these have an equal number of members, it may be said that there are at least seventeen hundred Illuminati in the United States, all bound together by oath and intimate correspondence.[785] Beyond these there are to be considered, of course, the many thousands of Frenchmen scattered through the United States, all perhaps “combined and organized (with other foreigners and some disaffected and unprincipled Americans) in these societies, … regularly instructed and directed by their masters in France, and … systematically conducting the plan of revolutionizing this country.”[786]

The principles and objects of this organization may be partly deduced from the motto and seal of Wisdom Lodge. The literal rendering of the former is not so significant as its spirit, which is best expressed in the following liberal translation: “Men more readily believe what they see than what they hear. They are taught slowly by precept, but the effect of example is sudden and powerful.”[787] From this it may be inferred that the organization was formed, “not for speculation, but for activity.” Precepts are scorned; actions are accepted as the only quick method of teaching mankind and of producing a change in their opinions. The change in opinions which the organization contemplates must have to do with government and religion. It cannot have to do with the minds of its members, for the society is secret and designs to work secretly. “The changes which they can produce by secret influence and intrigue, the novel arts which they can thus exhibit before the eyes of men, are doubtless to be the efficaceous means of teaching men the new system of philosophy, which sets at defiance, and contemns all old and settled opinions, by which the government of nations and the conduct of individuals have heretofore been directed.”[788]

As to the organization’s seal, no description can do it justice.[789] A view of its square and compass, pillars, and skull and cross-bones best indicates its horrid nature.[790]

Fortified by these documents, and flanked by the testimonies of Robison and Barruel,[791] Morse concluded his presentment in the following energetic manner:

That there are branches and considerably numerous too, of this infernal association in this country we have now full proof. That they hold and propagate similar doctrines and maxims of conduct is abundantly evident from what is passing continually before our eyes. They even boast that their plans are deeply and extensively laid, and cannot be defeated, that success is certain. If then, Americans, we do not speedily take for our motto, Vigilance, Union and Activity, and act accordingly, we must expect soon to fall victims to the arts and the arms of that nation, “on the title page of whose laws, as well as on its standards, is written the emphatic and descriptive motto

HAVOC AND SPOIL AND RUIN ARE OUR GAIN.”[792]

Here, at last, was something reasonably concrete. After a full year, devoted mostly to the reiteration of vague suspicions and generalities, of reckless affirmations and denials, here was something which had the value of a definite point at which a rational investigation of the subject could begin, should any course so practical as this be thought of. The hour for the introduction of something tangible in the way of evidence had fully come, in any event. This was evidenced by the fact that in connection with the celebration of the national fast other clergymen, for the most part, had held back, apparently unwilling to commit themselves further on the subject of the Illuminati until clearer proof should be at hand.[793] This did not signify that public interest in the subject had abated; it was rather in suspense.[794]

With the appearance of Morse’s third and last sermon dealing with the Illuminati,[795] the public discussion of the subject became immediately possessed of a new energy. In a letter to Wolcott, bearing date of June5, 1799, Morse observed to his friend, “I expect that I have disturbed a hornet’s nest.”[796] There can be no doubt that, diction conceded, this was an apt estimate of the situation. In view of the experiences which were ahead of him, it was well that Morse found his serenity of mind such as to enable him to complete the remark just recorded, by adding, “Happily, I am fearless of their stings.”[797]

The breaking-out of a heated newspaper discussion supplied the principal evidence that Morse’s fast day sermon of 1799 inaugurated a new stage in the Illuminati agitation.

The Independent Chronicle, aware of the fact that something tangible was now before the public, something which might perhaps seriously influence the popular judgment, promptly abandoned its contemptuous and indiscriminative policy[798] and violently assailed Morse for his latest performance. The author of the fast sermon was sharply taken to task for handling the Illuminati matter as he did. If, in his judgment, there was substantial justification for the charges he had made, why then did he not submit the evidence to President Adams, or lay it before some other proper official of the government, instead of retailing “the alarming narrative in a nine-penny sermon?”[799] If it was true that there was a society plotting the overthrow of our government and Morse could throw any light whatever on the persons involved, what sense was there in treating the subject “in so loose a manner as to render it only subservient to a second or third edition of a political fulmination?”[800] Morse could have only political ends in view. His “plot” was another Federalist scheme. He wished to excite jealousies against a certain class of citizens,[801] i. e., the Democrats. Or, was it to be inferred from the way he handled “the trifling story of the Illuminati,” that he desired to incense and greatly anger the people of this country against France?[802] This suspicion would seem to be justified by the fact that Morse had preached and published a number of sermons, in all of which he had anathematized the French nation as the authors of the diabolical system of Illuminatism.[803] But whatever were the motives which animated him, his statements were not to be trusted. He had forfeited the right to be taken seriously.[804]

During the two or three months that followed the celebration of the national fast, a copious flood of contributed articles poured through the columns of the Chronicle.[805] “A Friend to a Real Clergyman, and an Enemy to Bigotry,” “Bunker Hill,” “Credulity,” “Daniel,” et al., all made their offerings to the airing of what the opposition unanimously agreed should be styled “the preposterous documents of Morse.” If a friend and supporter of the Charlestown pastor ventured to express his respect for the arguments of that gentleman, he had little to hope for in the face of the withering fire of sarcasm, ridicule, denial, and defiance that the opposition steadily maintained. Thus, for example, when “Senex,” an old contributor to the Chronicle, made public profession of the fact that Morse’s evidence had seriously shaken his earlier distrust of the “Illuminati conspiracy,”[806] “Credulity” hastened to “pooh-pooh” such anxious fears, and to insist that they were unworthy of a sensible man. Morse’s declarations on the subject of Illuminism deserved only to be laughed at. They were certainly utterly out of reason.[807]

The American Mercury was another newspaper that rallied to the effort to break down any favorable impressions which Morse’s latest deliverance upon the subject of Illuminism may have made upon the public mind. The respectfully attentive and receptive attitude of this journal during the earlier stages of the agitation has already been noted.[808] The appearance of the fast day sermon converted this into a spirit of violent antagonism. Morse’s latest sermon was pronounced absurd. “His history of the Lodge of Wisdom is equally fabulous with his story of the ship Ocean,”[809] was the judgment of Editor Babcock.[810] A few weeks later the Mercury gave to its readers an article that had first seen the light in the Farmer’s Weekly Museum,[811] a New Hampshire publication. How roughly Morse and the documentary proofs which he had recently laid before the public were handled in this article, the following excerpts will suggest:

Every person who had an opportunity of perusing the sermons which have been published by Dr. Morse, within the space of two years past, must be sensible how great have been his efforts and exertions, to sound an alarm amongst the people, and to create in the public mind the highest degree of astonishment…. From the assurance with which the Dr. speaks of his discovery and the great utility which must result from it to mankind, one would imagine that his name would be enrolled among the worthies of his day, as the greatest ornament of our country, and the glory of human nature…. He will undoubtedly do more honour to himself and his profession, to return again to his old business, “of writing geography,” and not thus attempt to agitate the public mind, with such alarming discoveries of Illuminatism.

For trifles, light as air, are to the suspicious,

Strong as proofs of holy writ.[812]

Meanwhile the supporters of Morse were not idle, although it must be admitted that as far as the press was concerned the amount of sympathy and support that Morse received from that quarter was by no means commensurate to the weight of criticism with which his opponents sought to crush him. Extracts from his recent fast sermon appeared in such papers as the Massachusetts Mercury[813] and the Salem Gazette;[814] and with characteristic loyalty to every interest which in any way might be able to serve the cause of Federalism, the Connecticut Courant proclaimed its complete satisfaction with Morse’s production in the following reckless fashion:

This sermon is worthy the attention of every inhabitant in the United States on every account, as it contains an authentic letter from the Grand Lodge of Illuminated Free Masons in France, to the Grand Lodge of the Illuminated Free Masons in the United States, together with a list of about one hundred members—their names—birthplace—age—places of residence, and occupation. Every person who does not wish to be blind to his own destruction, will undoubtedly furnish himself with this document; since it establishes beyond a doubt the existence of that infernal club in the very heart of our country.[815]

A larger measure of support of Morse and his cause came from the public declaimers, who, on the occasion of the Fourth of July following, regaled their audiences with discursive observations on the state of national affairs. All over New England citizens were solemnly urged to take serious account of the conspiracy that recently had been partially dragged into the light.

At Ridgefield, Connecticut, the declaration was made that America had been caught in the meshes of the net which the Illuminati had attempted to cast over all the nations.[816] At New Haven it was asserted that the societies of Illuminism, having wrought fearful havoc and ruin in Europe, were now known to be extensively engaged in communicating infection and death to the citizens and institutions of this nation.[817] At Hartford the society of the Illuminati and the occult lodges of Freemasonry were represented as having “exhausted the powers of the human mind, in inventing and combining a series of dread mysteries, unhallowed machinations, and disastrous plots,” with the dissemination of the principles of Voltaire and his school as the main objective in view.[818] At Boston direct connections were made between the secret affiliated societies which the virtuous frown of Washington drove into their lurking-places and the newly discovered organizations which had just been found to be “busily engaged in sapping the foundations of society, and may ere long spring a mine, which shall blow up our Constitution and Liberties.”[819] At Portland, Maine, the unwilling prostitution of the Masonic lodges in Europe to the purposes of the Illuminati was pointed out as amounting to a threat against the institutions of America.[820] At Byfield[821] and Roxbury,[822] Massachusetts, similar warnings were heard.

To a certain extent, the general employment of this anniversary of national independence to arouse the country against the machinations of the Illuminati was due to an event, long anticipated, that had occurred shortly before. Less than a month prior to July4, 1799, Barruel’s Memoirs of Jacobinism made its first appearance in New England.[823] The hopes of the supporters of the agitation were immediately raised.

Before the publication of the documents which Morse gave to the world in his fast sermon of 1799, Robison’s Proofs of a Conspiracy constituted the chief if not the sole resource of the friends of the agitation. Barruel had been appealed to, but only in the form of such scanty excerpts from his writings as percolated to America through the fingers of his English reviewers and, as we have seen, in settings which provided ammunition for both sides in the controversy. Now the hour had come when the supporters of the Illuminati alarm in New England were to be privileged to make a full and free appeal to their second great ally from abroad.[824]

The facts regarding the nature of the reception accorded Barruel’s composition in New England are meagre in the extreme. In this very circumstance, one may suppose, is found the best of all evidences that the book failed to fulfil the hopes of its friends. It is true that within seven weeks after the public announcement of the fact that the Memoirs of Jacobinism were ready for distribution at Hartford, one of Morse’s correspondents at that place was able to assure him that “the facts … in DuPan, Robison, and Barruel have got into every farm house” in that section of the country.[825] It is also true that in order to insure a wide reading of what were supposed to be the more significant portions of Barruel’s voluminous work, an abridgment of it was undertaken and published in the columns of such leading papers as the Connecticut Courant[826] and the Massachusetts Mercury.[827] Nevertheless, the inference is unavoidable that at the most the cause of the agitators received only a momentary quickening from this quarter. If anything, the very flatness of the reception accorded Barruel’s work served to quiet the public mind in New England on the subject of Illuminism. The precious conceit which the supporters of the charge of an American conspiracy of the Illuminati had imported from abroad, viz., that the two “great” European writers on the subject of Illuminism, Robison and Barruel, while working independently had unearthed the same set of facts and arrived at the same conclusion as to their import, fell quickly enough to the ground. Whatever the facts might be regarding the situation in Europe, it speedily became clear that Barruel had no clear and steady light to throw upon the situation in America, and even those who hoped most from the publication of the Memoirs of Jacobinism were soon forced to admit that the American reading public had little taste for the prolix romancings of the French abbÉ.[828]

Early in the fall of 1799 a new twist was given to the controversy. This developed out of an episode that for the time at least seriously embarrassed the personal integrity of Morse, and enveloped the issue generally in such a cloud of pettiness and disagreeable suspicions that the entire subject of Illuminism assumed an unsavory aspect, with the result that the public was all the more easily persuaded to turn to other and more fruitful topics. Compressed as much as the interests of clarity will allow, the facts were as follows.

The American Mercury of September26, 1799, published an article asserting that in his efforts to substantiate his charges against the Illuminati, Morse had addressed a letter of inquiry to Professor Ebeling[829] of Hamburg, Germany, to which the latter made response that Robison’s Proofs of a Conspiracy had no standing in Europe; that it was regarded there as a farrago of falsehoods, written by its author to obtain bread rather than in the hope that it would be believed.[830] It was further asserted that Ebeling’s letter to Morse gave Robison an unsavory character; he was said to have lived too fast for his income, to be in trouble with the civil authorities in his native country, and to have been expelled from a Masonic lodge in Edinburgh on account of unworthy conduct.[831] This being the true state of affairs, why, it was urged, ought not “the terrible subject of illumination” to be dismissed forthwith as a wretched mass of absurdities? Let Morse publish the letter that he had received from Ebeling and the public would express itself quickly enough as to the silliness of the Illuminati conspiracy.[832]

Morse’s rejoinder was spirited. He demanded the name of the author of the article in the Mercury and vigorously protested that the Ebeling letter referred to was a fabrication.[833] Denied the comfort of immediate attention and satisfaction,[834] he addressed the editor again and with even greater vehemence, insisting that the editor publicly brand the article referred to as “without foundation and a tissue of the most vile and calumnious falsehoods.” But for the one consideration that the letter which he had actually received from Professor Ebeling was private, he averred that he stood ready to spread it before the public gaze.[835] As a guarantee of its character, however, he stood prepared to furnish the affidavits of Professors David Tappan and Eliphalet Pearson of Harvard, to whom he had submitted the letter of Ebeling for their inspection, and who were ready to depose that it was in no sense like the letter whose contents had been given to the public by the American Mercury.[836]

By the time these noisy verbal hostilities had taken place, the leading newspaper partisans on both sides of the controversy had accepted the responsibility of advising the public regarding the new issue. The Connecticut Courant roundly denounced the unprincipled editor of the American Mercury for having printed such a monstrous fabrication as its account of the Ebeling-Morse letter,[837] and later, on Morse’s behalf, undertook to say that while the communication which Morse had received from Ebeling contained denials of the authenticity of many of the facts alleged in the Proofs of a Conspiracy, at the same time it was destitute of even the most distant suggestion of moral or other delinquencies on the part of Robison.[838] The Columbian Centinel regarded itself in duty bound to spread before its readers the indignant communication that Morse had sent to the editor of the American Mercury, for the reason that it believed Morse had been most shamefully treated in the matter.[839] As for the Massachusetts Mercury, one of its contributors felt moved to observe that the account of the Ebeling-Morse letter which the American Mercury had published was nothing less than a consummate piece of pure villainy, intended to ruin Mr. Robison’s character; certainly no candid American would pay the slightest attention to it until the person who was responsible for the publication came forward and gave the public his name.[840]

On the other side, such rampant Democratic journals as the Bee and the Aurora came ardently to the support of the American Mercury and directed a searching cross-fire against Morse and his friends. Since the days of Salem witchcraft, the former observed, no subject had so much affected the minds of a certain class of people in New England as this pretended Illuminati conspiracy.[841] Because of the way in which preachers, orators, essayists, and newsmongers generally had declaimed upon the subject, a mist had overspread the public mind. Ebeling’s letter to Morse, however, had given a fatal blow to the strife. It was now to be expected that the impressions made upon the minds of numerous over-credulous citizens by an insidious and designing set of men would be fully eradicated.[842] To give full force to these observations, the Bee published the text of the letter which, it averred, Morse had received from Ebeling.[843] This characterized Robison’s Proofs of a Conspiracy as ridiculous and filled with statements many of which were faulty and others totally erroneous. Its author had composed the book in the interests of party and with a special animus against all men who asserted the use of reason in the sphere of theology. The authorities to which Robison appealed were declared to be questionable, and Robison’s own standing as a historian was pronounced to be such that it was impossible to take his work seriously.[844]

The Aurora steered a similar course. Drawing upon the Bee, the text of the alleged Ebeling-Morse letter was printed[845] and the accompanying comment made that this effectually disposed of the Illuminati.[846] It was now fully apparent that Morse had seized upon the idea of a conspiracy against religion and the state in order to further selfish and partisan ends. He and Dr. Dwight, who were at the head of the clerical systems in Massachusetts and Connecticut respectively, were exhausting all the means in their power to exalt Federalism and to obtain a religious establishment which would deliver the consciences and purses of the nation into the hands of their party.[847] The rancor that these two men had recently stirred up against the respectable fraternity of Freemasons was due solely to their bigotry.[848]

Meantime a certain shrewd and none too scrupulous Democratic clergyman in Massachusetts was deriving such satisfaction as he could out of Morse’s discomfiture and bitter resentment. The letter that the Bee and the Aurora published as a letter from Ebeling to Morse was in fact a letter from Ebeling to William Bentley,[849] inveterate hater of Morse.[850]

Ebeling, it appears, had written the letters to Bentley and to Morse at about the same time.[851] A little after the receipt of his letter, Bentley had learned from Ebeling that Doctors Pearson, Tappan, and Morse all were inquiring of Ebeling concerning Robison’s standing as a historian, and that the Hamburg professor had addressed Morse at length upon the subject.[852] Further, he received clear hints from Ebeling as to the precise nature of the communications to Morse.[853] Bentley, therefore, had substantial reasons for believing that he was in full possession of the information that Ebeling had furnished Morse regarding the subsidence of the Illuminati craze in Europe and the unfavorable opinions of Robison that were entertained on the other side of the Atlantic. It certainly was not to his credit, however, that he should permit a letter which he himself had received from Ebeling to be published as a communication from Ebeling to Morse.[854]

Under the circumstances, Morse was placed in a position of embarrassment and humiliation from which he found it impossible wholly to extricate himself.[855] What is more to the point, the cause which in his misguided zeal he had been promoting was thus made to suffer an irreparable blow. With his personal integrity under grave suspicion and his main European ally held up to public ridicule and scorn, even Morse’s obdurate spirit must have foreseen that the collapse of the agitation which he had fostered could not long be deferred. Even without this tumble into the slough of suspicion and contempt, time must soon have brushed aside as groundless the alarm that Morse had sounded. It is not difficult to imagine, however, that time might have found ways less vindictive and scurvy to dispose of the excited clamor of Morse.

Driven to undertake some further effort at self-justification,[856] the belated idea came to Morse to investigate the lodge Wisdom at Portsmouth, Virginia. Accordingly he addressed a letter to Josiah Parker, member of Congress for Virginia, soliciting information from Parker respecting the Portsmouth lodge. Parker responded to the effect that he had lived in Portsmouth until he went to Congress in 1789; that the lodge Wisdom was regarded in that city as a reputable Masonic society, made up of a few worthy people, mostly French; that some of its members were personally known to the writer to be men warmly attached to the cause of the government; that a good many Frenchmen had been admitted to the lodge about the time of the insurrection on the island of St. Domingo, but that the most of these were not now in America; that some of the Frenchmen whose names Morse had incorporated in his fast sermon of April25, 1799, as members of Wisdom Lodge, were known to Parker to be honest and industrious men; in a word, that he, Parker, considered the lodge in question as entirely harmless as far as fomenting hostility to the institutions of the country was concerned.[857]

The receipt of Parker’s letter left Morse without further resource. Promptly he wrote his friend and adviser, Oliver Wolcott, soliciting his counsel as to whether it would be better for him to remain silent and let matters take their course or whether he would better offer to the public such explanations and observations as he could.[858] The nature of Wolcott’s counsel is unknown; but Morse, in any event, came to the conclusion that there was no further action he could take in the case, and his advocacy of the idea of an Illuminati conspiracy against religion and the government ceased. Henceforth, the reverberations of the controversy, with a single exception, were to be of the nature of jibes and flings on the part of irritated and disgusted Democrats who adopted the position that the controversy over the Illuminati had been introduced into American politics to serve purely partisan ends.

In 1802, the Reverend Seth Payson,[859] minister of the Congregational church at Rindge, New Hampshire, made an effort to revive the agitation. In a volume[860] characterized by dismal mediocrity Payson fulminated against the public stupor that, he admitted, had taken the place of the sense of alarm that the discovery of the Illuminati conspiracy had originally caused.[861] Payson’s book was nothing more than a revamping of the earlier literature, European and American, on the subject. There is no evidence that it made the slightest impression on the country.

4. FREEMASONRY’S EMBARRASSMENT AND PROTEST

Freemasonry in New England, as throughout the United States in general, was very far from being in a favorable condition when the Illuminati controversy broke out. Like every other institution in the country, it had suffered greatly on account of the American Revolution. The membership of its lodges was depleted, and its affairs generally left in a chaotic condition. In the period of reconstruction which followed the Revolution, Masonry experienced the same difficulty in rebuilding its organizations and investing them with a fair degree of importance in the public eye as other social institutions of the times. To no little extent, this was due to internal dissensions and disintegrating tendencies generally. In the main these dissensions developed out of efforts which were made to create grand lodges of native origin, endowed with powers of sovereignty, to take the place in the system of American Masonry that formerly had been accorded to the grand lodges of England and Scotland. The spirit of independence communicated by the revolutionary struggle had to be reckoned with by Masonic leaders in their efforts to give unity and solidity to the system.[862]

But other concerns than those of organization engaged the attention of those who sought the rehabilitation of the institution. In the literature of the times appears more than one stinging reference to the reproach under which Freemasonry rested on account of the low standards of conduct by which the private lives of its members and its assemblies were marked. Coarseness, profligacy, boisterousness, and conviviality, which in the latter case did not stop short of drunken revels, were common indictments brought against the lodges by friend and foe alike.[863] It cannot be doubted that a considerable amount of the kind of rude and unlicensed behavior that displayed itself about many a New England tavern of the period was likewise to be observed in connection with the private and public performances of the craft.

To this must be added another and, from our special point of view, more serious criticism. The spirit of democracy, it should not be forgotten, was working itself out in the common life of the times in manifold ways. The idea of human equality had become the very touchstone of life. New applications of this conception were constantly being made. In such a day it was inevitable that the secret and exclusive character of the assemblies and practices of Freemasonry should make that institution widely suspected. Members of the fraternity were freely accused of supporting an institution that failed to respond to the spirit of the times.[864] As a result of the stir occasioned by Washington’s bold denunciation of “self-created societies,” in 1794, this charge of dangerous and unjustifiable secrecy became a more powerful weapon in the hands of Freemasonry’s enemies, whose blows were by no means easy to avoid.

That a retrograde movement was on in the ranks of American Masonry at the time the Illuminati controversy broke out is, however, by no means to be inferred. In most particulars, the faults and weaknesses which have been noted represented common faults and weaknesses of the times. On the whole, as the eighteenth century drew to its close, Freemasonry in this country appeared to be slowly working its way up out of the state of disorganization and weakness by which its progress had been retarded during the two decades that followed the Revolutionary War. It was in a day characterized by earnest and worthy striving, though not without its tokens of popular suspicion, that the accusation of an alliance with the odious Illuminati fell as a black shadow across its path.

The response which Massachusetts Masonry made to the aspersions of Robison and his supporters[865] on this side of the ocean was promptly forthcoming. On June11, 1798, the Grand Lodge of that state drew up an address to President Adams, from which the following generous extract is taken:

Sir:—

Flattery, and a discussion of political opinions, are inconsistent with the principles of this ancient Fraternity; but while we are bound to cultivate benevolence, and extend the arm of charity to our brethren of every clime, we feel the strongest obligations to support the civil authority which protects us. And when the illiberal attacks of a foreign enthusiast, aided by the unfounded prejudices of his followers, are tending to embarrass the public mind with respect to the real views of our society, we think it our duty to join in full concert with our fellow-citizens, in expressing gratitude to the Supreme Architect of the Universe, for endowing you with the wisdom, patriotic firmness and integrity, which has characterized your public conduct.

While the Independence of our country and the operation of just and equal laws have contributed to enlarge the sphere of social happiness, we rejoice that our Masonic brethren, throughout the United States, have discovered by their conduct a zeal to promote the public welfare, and that many of them have been conspicuous for their talents and unwearied exertions. Among these your venerable successor is the most illustrious example; and the memory of our beloved Warren,[866] who from the chair of this Grand Lodge, has often urged the members to the exercise of patriotism and philanthropy, and who sealed his principles with his blood; shall ever animate us to a laudable imitation of his virtues.[867]

In addition to this formal action taken by the Grand Lodge, prominent Massachusetts Masons began at once to employ such public occasions as the calendar and special events of the order supplied, to refute the charge that Masonry was in league with Illuminism. PreËminent among these apologists were the Reverend William Bentley and the Reverend Thaddeus Mason Harris.[868]

On the occasion of the Masonic festival of St. John the Baptist, June25, 1798, Bentley delivered a charge before Morning Star Lodge, at Worcester, Massachusetts.[869] The clergy, he maintained,—not all the clergy, to be sure, but particularly those representatives of the clergy “who ply the shuttle-cock of faith, with the dexterity of expert gamesters, and have the art of making the multitude fly with its feathers,”—are responsible for this new out-cry against the order.[870] It is the state of affairs in Europe that has caused general attention to be drawn to the order. During the century Masonry has flourished there in a remarkable way. In the midst of an age full of apprehension respecting everything that suggests political association, this rapid progress of Freemasonry, the character of its members, the coincidence of its designs, and its secrecy, have quite naturally conspired to give some appearance of danger. Yet no discoveries have been made which can fairly impeach the fraternity.[871] As for the principles and work of Weishaupt, these ought not to be condemned outright, solely on the testimony of Robison.[872] “We must leave Robison to an inquisitive public,” Bentley concluded, and “forgive a worthy divine who has noticed the book, and has made our order ridiculous.”[873]

Somewhat later in the year Harris delivered a number of addresses, in connection with the consecration of various lodges, in which he paid sufficient attention to the new issue that had been raised to make it clear that Masonic circles were greatly disturbed.[874] To Harris, this last assault upon the good name of Masonry was a most unreasonable performance; yet all he felt prepared to do was to enter a general denial, couched in a bombastic, windy style of utterance, of which the following is typical:

Much more of like character issued from this source.[876] We shall see, however, that the keen invective and unrestrained sarcasm of Bentley, rather than the platitudes of the amiable Harris, were needed to put Masonry’s case before the public in an effective manner.

On the same occasion that the “Author of the Worcester Charge”[877] made his first formal answer to Robison and Morse, at least two other addresses were delivered, each of which require a word. One of these, mirabile dictu! was by Jedediah Morse.[878] Morse’s “sermon” was dull and insipid enough. There was much talk about the cultivation and diffusion of the love of country, the duty of essaying the rÔle of the peacemaker, and the wickedness of spreading base slanders and exciting unreasonable prejudices among one’s fellows; but no discussion of the subject of Illuminism was attempted. All that was said was in entire good spirit, and but one consideration entitles Morse’s performance to mention: the fact that its setting as well as its substance gave evidence of its author’s earnest desire not to see the gulf widen between him and his Masonic neighbors.

The other address was different. Masonic Brother Charles Jackson, addressing the members and friends of St. Peter’s Lodge, Newburyport, Massachusetts, showed no disposition to mince words with respect to the detractors of Freemasonry.[879] Robison was reprobated by him for launching “illiberal sarcasms” against the fraternity,[880] and particularly for making out the Masonic lodges to be “hot-beds of sedition and impiety,” which the orator indignantly averred they were not.[881] It was granted that certain profligate and abandoned characters, as Robison claimed, had assumed the cloak of Masonry, with a view of shrouding their infernal plans under pretences of philanthropy and benevolence; but these men soon threw off this cloak, and there was no reason why Masonry should be sacrificed on their account.[882] The charges of atheism and unpatriotic spirit among the members of the fraternity were repelled with equal warmth by Jackson. As with Harris, these calumnies were countered, the charge of atheism by the fact that many of the clergy were members of the order, and the charge of unpatriotic spirit by the fact that Washington was the “illustrious brother” of American Masons.[883]

To a very limited extent the press was resorted to, in order that New England Masonry might have a chance to square itself before the public. The call for specific evidence that was made upon Morse, as voiced in the Massachusetts Mercury of July27, 1798, and Morse’s prolix but ineffective effort to meet the situation this created, have already been noticed.[884] In the course of the newspaper discussion referred to, the name of another prominent Mason of Massachusetts, the Reverend Josiah Bartlett, was drawn into the controversy.[885] To Morse’s somewhat unmanly plaint that “by necessary implication” he had been accused by the Massachusetts Masons before the President as being under the influence of unfounded prejudices, Bartlett made the conciliatory, though artful, response that the address of the Grand Lodge, to which Morse referred, was designed merely as a manly avowal of the true principles of Freemasonry. It was not necessary to believe, he continued, that they were influenced by irritation or resentment in making the Address, nor that Dr. Morse had hostile designs in the delivery and publication of his fast sermon.[886]

Such language, however, was much too mild and unduly exonerative for the “Author of the Worcester Charge.” His aroused spirit required that censure should be imposed. Morse had been guilty of a base injustice; it was right that this fact should frankly be published to the world. Accordingly, the Massachusetts Mercury of August10, 1798, contained a vigorous statement of the case of Masonry against Morse, from Bentley’s pen. The following will suffice to indicate the author’s spirit:

Still refusing to depart from the pathway of amiability and clerical courtesy, Bartlett returned to the discussion of the subject of Illuminism in its relation to American Freemasonry, in the Mercury of September7, 1798. In cumbrous sentences the appearance of Robison’s book in this country was reviewed; the best of motives were imputed to its author and his supporters in America; but stress, very gentle stress, to be sure, was laid upon the question whether the Illuminati, in any form or other, had branches in this country. “If,” Bartlett urged, “there is any citizen in the United States who can prove this, it is a duty which he really owes to God and his country, to come forward, ‘as a faithful watchman,’ with his documents.” As for himself, he was fully persuaded that if the Masonic institution could be implicated fairly in the conspiracy, then the doors of every lodge ought to be flung wide open, and Masonry henceforth held in just derision and contempt.[889]

This seemed to open the way for such a polite and harmless handling of the subject as Morse coveted. In like spirit he replied to the foregoing.[890] He rejoiced in the candid utterances of his worthy friend. Bartlett’s acceptance of the existence of the Illuminati persuaded him to hope that opposition to Robison would now soon cease. Had the latter’s work not been opposed in the first place, he entertained no doubt that Freemasonry in the United States would not have been injured. While disclaiming all intention of pursuing a controversial course, he would, however, undertake an investigation to determine whether or not there were societies of the Illuminati in this country.[891]

A belated promise, to say the least, and one that found a certain belated fulfilment in Morse’s fast sermon of the following spring.[892] Before turning to consider the effect of that sermon on Masonic thought, one other Masonic disclaimer of 1798 requires attention.

On October23, the Grand Lodge of Vermont drew up an address to the President somewhat similar to the one which earlier in the year their Massachusetts brethren had presented.[893] Beginning with the familiar observation that Masonic principles forbade the introduction of political subjects into the discussions of the order, but that the serious cast of national affairs was such as to justify the present action, the address proceeded to notice the “slanders” that were in circulation respecting the order and to profess the ardent attachment of Vermont Masons to the cause of the government. The idea that Masons were capable of faction was repudiated with energy. An individual Mason here and there might possibly sell his birthright for a mess of pottage, or betray his country for paltry pelf; but as a body the Masonic fraternity stood committed to support the government. All should be risked in its maintenance and defence.[894]

The language of the address could hardly have been warmer. On the other hand, the President’s response was cold, or, if not that, at least puzzling.[895] Asserting first that he had ever esteemed the societies of Freemasons in this country as not only innocent of base designs but actually useful, he seemed to dispel all the comfort which the reading of that assurance was calculated to impart by adding the following:

Was the President ironical or frank? He had intimated that the Masons were capable of corruption: did he, or did he not think they were guiltless of the charge of conspiracy that had recently been lodged against them? One could not be absolutely sure from what he had written. What the Masons of Vermont may have felt when the ambiguous response of the President was before them, we have no means of knowing; but there was one Mason in Massachusetts who read the response of the President to the address of the Vermont Masons, and who was displeased. In the view of William Bentley, the President had done anything but assist the cause of Masonry in the hour of its embarrassment. He has left us the record of his impressions in the following form:

We have seen that the most appreciable and positive of all the evidence that the champions of the charge of Illuminism brought against the Masons was that which Morse embodied in his fast sermon in the spring of 1799. For once the tiresome reiterations of the theorist and the reporter of other men’s suspicions were laid aside. For once a straight thrust was made at a definite point in the armor of American Masonry. The effect which Morse’s sermon produced on the minds of New England Masons naturally stimulates inquiry.

Contrary to what might very properly be supposed, the literature of contemporary New England Freemasonry fails to yield full and convincing evidence as to the precise character of this reaction. A few formal public statements were made on the part of representatives of the craft, or in one or two instances by men who were sufficiently close to the institution to be used on occasions when Masonry threw wide its doors of seclusion that the profane might draw near. Some of these must be noticed.

Far removed from the chief centers of the agitation, at Portland, Maine, Masonic Brother Amos Stoddard addressed the craft, on the occasion of the festival of St. John the Baptist, June24, 1799.[901] Stoddard did not balk at the admission that the fraternity “have, unfortunately, tolerated the Illuminati.”[902] But there was this to be said by way of exculpation: the Illuminati were not legitimate Masons.[903] “To propagate their revolutionary poison, and to protract the period of detection” (sic), they attached themselves to Freemasonry and called themselves by its name. In this way the world had been deceived. But the main citadel of Masonry had not capitulated; only a section of the fraternity had been taken by treachery.[904] A temporary wound, undeniably, had been inflicted; but no lasting hurt would come to the craft.[905]

At Reading, Massachusetts, on the same occasion, Caleb Prentiss, a non-Mason, told the members and friends of Mt. Moriah Lodge that the lodges were under suspicion as they had never been before.[906] The eyes of the world were now turned upon Masonry. The suspicion that nefarious conspiracies had been formed or countenanced within the lodges was well fixed in the public mind. Masons would need to walk with more than ordinary circumspection. They must sedulously keep themselves spotless from the imputation of such designs, that the craft be not blamed. By striving to show themselves to be lovers of God and mankind, friends of religion, friends of their country, and firm and study supporters of the latter’s civil constitution, government, and laws, they would be able to vindicate the principles, professions, and constitutions of true ancient Masonry.[907]

At Ashby, New Hampshire, on the same festival day, an assembly of Masons and their friends listened to a discourse which by way of concessions to the opponents of Masonry outstripped anything that went before or followed after.[908] The Reverend Seth Payson, that fatuous aspirant to literary fame who elected to be a tardy echo of the speculations of Robison, Barruel, and Morse,[909] informed his auditors that while Masonry in its essential principles and constitution had shown itself to be useful to society, unhappily its name, veil of secrecy, symbols, and associative principles had been seized by a body of men in Europe, in order to mask their hellish purposes of eradicating from the human mind “all belief of a God, of a governing providence, of the immortality of the soul, and a future state,—to extinguish every principle of natural and revealed religion and moral sentiments, and to demolish every government but its own.”[910] In all its horrid appendages, the French Revolution was the result of this conspiracy. This “vine of Sodom” was transplanted to the United States: witness the opposition which in this country developed against those “eminent benefactors to mankind in general,” Drs. Robison, Morse, et al.[911] Without the faithful researches of Morse, in particular, a very much more serious infection of the Masonic body assuredly would have occurred.[912]

Such isolated and generally indefinite utterances, it may be urged, are scarcely to be trusted as offering an accurate reflection of the state of the Masonic mind. They do not, however, stand altogether alone. From various and perhaps more solid sources, the evidence is forthcoming that the year 1799 was a year of deep anxiety and concern on the part of the Masons of New England.

The diary of William Bentley supplies some evidence to this effect.[913] His disgust was great that the clergy continued to agitate concerning the pernicious principles and influence of Weishaupt, and that with equal pertinacity the press kept the affairs of that individual and his minions before the public.[914] The equally candid acknowledgments of other Masons are even more to the point. One spokesman for Rhode Island Masonry made public admission that the fraternity was suffering keenly from “a temporary odium.”[915] Another in Massachusetts uttered the complaint that the industrious zeal of the unprincipled defamer had involved the craft in most serious embarrassment.[916] Some were driven to take refuge in the consolation that the lodges of the Illuminati were bastard organizations, and therefore Freemasonry could not justly be anathematized on their account.[917]

When the skies had cleared, as we have seen they soon did, and Masons began to take stock of the experience through which their institution had passed, their admissions of what the agitation had cost the order were even more significant. One confessed that Masonry had started back affrighted at the hideous spectre of Illuminism, and that the joy that filled the lodges because they were no longer suspected as “hot-beds of sedition” and “nurseries of infidelity” was very great.[918] Another likewise rejoiced in spirit that the dark period of suspicion and calumny through which the order has been passing was now over, and that political agitation against the institution was at an end.[919] Another admitted that after the lapse of a half dozen years it was difficult to plant a new lodge in one of the most cultured of New England’s communities, on account of the influence exerted by the works of Robison and Barruel.[920] Still another confessed that the Illuminati controversy had cost the fraternity dearly in the matter of membership; a serious defection had resulted, representing many desertions.[921]

The various causes that contributed to bring about a collapse of the agitation over Illuminism have elsewhere received attention and for the most part require no special comment in this connection. One of these, however, was of such a nature that it has been reserved for brief exposition at this point.

The death of Washington, while confessedly an event of national significance, and, as such, shared as the common bereavement of all the citizens of the country, nevertheless assumed a very special importance in the eyes of Masons and exerted an immediate and weighty influence upon the fortunes of the order.

One who turns the pages of the black-bordered newspapers of the day, all sharing in the universal lamentation and doing their utmost to set before their readers the last detail regarding the closing hours in the great man’s life and the arrangement and disposition of affairs in connection with his obsequies, is likely to find himself amazed because the Masons found it possible to figure in the circumstances as conspicuously and largely as they did. The Masons were in evidence, in very conspicuous evidence, it must be said, in all that pertained to the funeral rites of the nation’s first chief. Not only was this true of the funeral ceremonies proper; in innumerable places where mourning assemblies gathered to pay respect to the memory of Washington, Masons claimed and were accorded the places of honor in the processions and concourses that marked these outpourings of popular sorrow.

It cannot be doubted that American Freemasons, while sincere in their expressions of sorrow on account of Washington’s death, none the less found a peculiar comfort of soul in being able at such a time to point to the fallen hero as their “brother.” At an hour when the tongue of scandal and the finger of suspicion were still active they esteemed it an opportunity not to be despised to be able to stand before the country and proudly say, “Washington was of us.”

That this is not idle fancy the following utterances will help to make clear. At Middletown, Connecticut, a few days after Washington’s death, a Masonic oration was pronounced in connection with the observance of the festival of St. John the Evangelist.[922] The orator, who recognized the season as one of unremitting calumny of Freemasonry,[923] sought refuge from the strife of tongues for himself and his brethren by urging the following sentiment:

To this must be added the somewhat different apologetic of a prominent Massachusetts Mason. Speaking at Dorchester, at a Masonic service in Washington’s memory, the Reverend Thaddeus Mason Harris acknowledged the value of Washington’s connection with American Freemasonry in these words:

Washington’s Masonic career, Masonry’s uncontested claim to the right to be first among those who mourned at his burial,—these constituted a part, and a very substantial part of the demurrer which Freemasonry offered at the bar of public judgment in answer to its accusers. It is very certain that after the reinstatement in public favor which American Masonry was accorded when Washington was buried, the voice of censure was less and less disposed to be heard.[926]

5. ATTEMPTS OF DEMOCRATS TO FIX THE COUNTERCHARGE OF ILLUMINISM UPON THE FEDERALISTS

By 1798 and 1799 the alignment of political parties in New England had arrived at such a stage that the suspicion of political jockeying to obtain party advantage was well grounded in the minds of leaders in both camps. This self-conscious and determined party spirit had been greatly promoted by the employment of electioneering methods.[927] The general public had not yet become accustomed to the precise significance of the broadside, the political pamphlet, and the newspaper canard; and these all, in a copious stream, had begun to flow from the country’s presses. Party leaders, however, who knew the purposes of their own minds if not those of the opposition, were quick to scent anything that savored of political buncombe.

Coincident with the breaking out of the controversy over the Illuminati, a number of tales of plots or conspiracies were foisted upon the public.[928] One of these concerned a band of conspirators who were alleged to be agents of the French Directory, and who, with their secret documents concealed in the false bottom of two tubs, had taken ship from Hamburg to work sedition in this country.[929] Another concerned the operations of a tailor in the city of Philadelphia, of whom the report spread that he was engaged in making immense quantities of uniforms for French soldiers; and if for French soldiers, for whom could they be intended but for some French army which must be planning an invasion of the United States? A third tale had to do with the massacre which, rumor had it, had taken place on the good American ship Ocean, involving the brutal butchery of her entire crew by the French.[930]

All these preposterous “plots” were promptly exploded, and in due course all were traced to Federalist sources. The general effect upon the opposition scarcely needs to be stated. Such silly tales, said one Democrat, discredit everything that the Federalists affirm to be true.[931] They all had been artfully concocted and employed, said another, “to excite an indignation which might be played off for the purposes of party.”[932] They were so many alarm-bells, a third said,[933] rung, we may add, to frighten the people into running to prop up the bowing walls and tottering pillars of the doomed temple of Federalism.

This mood of scepticism, imbedded as it was in a more serious mood of indignation arising from the rebuffs and discomfitures that citizens of democratic tastes and principles had long suffered at the hands of Federalist bigotry and intolerance, rendered it inevitable that the charge of Illuminism should be suspect from the first. One has but to recall that the year in which the controversy over the Illuminati broke out has still its characterization in political annals as “the reign of terror,” to appreciate fully the statement that has just been made.

Beginning with 1799 a small group of pamphlets appeared, dedicated by their authors to an effort to convert the charge of Illuminism into a political boomerang, to be employed as a weapon against the Federalists. Conspicuous among these, and perhaps first in point of time, was A View of the New England Illuminati,[934] an anonymous composition, but one whose authorship was soon traced to the Reverend John Cosens Ogden,[935] an Episcopal clergyman.

Ogden wielded the pen of a ready and discursive writer, the latter more especially. To follow him step by step as he ranged from Barruel and Robison to meetings of New England ministers, from meetings of New England ministers to ecclesiastical usurpations, from ecclesiastical usurpations to the French Revolution, from the French Revolution to high-handed measures taken by New England college presidents, and so on ad infinitum, and the while to take equal account of all he touched upon, would be a formidable and, we may believe, largely unprofitable exercise. And yet, through a good deal of Ogden’s pamphlet the spirit of ecclesiastical and political dissent finds a certain earnest and even vivid expression.

It is true, said Ogden at the outset, that New England had its Illuminati. They were not, however, such as Robison and Barruel would represent them to be. The New England societies of the Illuminati were the monthly meetings of the clergy.[936] The work they did and the influence they exerted were so like the work and influence of the societies of which Robison and Barruel wrote that they deserved to be styled the New England Illuminati: readers could judge for themselves as to the appositeness of the title thus bestowed.[937] Their confederacy had been so successful that certain opulent and leading laymen, who supremely desired to perpetuate the union of church and state in New England, had lent to these clerical organizations their fostering care and support.[938] At these monthly clubs, the political issues of the times were discussed and prayers and orations filled with invectives against those who had not adopted the creeds and politics of the members were delivered.[939]

That which first gave offence to these clubs was the establishment of universal religious toleration in Canada and the petition of the Episcopalians inhabiting the colonies—now the United States—to their brethren in England, that a Protestant bishop might be granted them who would live in their midst.[940] To defeat these measures, the New England Illuminati were indefatigably busy; and when they discovered that they were foiled in their efforts, they languished for a season,[941] until the French Revolution stirred them to new life.

When the Revolution began in France, these New England Illuminated Clubs redoubled their energies. They prayed, they exhorted, they wrote and printed numerous dissertations and prophecies, all emphasizing the import of the Revolution as signalizing the overthrow of the Church of Rome, which was Antichrist, and of the Pope, who was the Beast of the Apocalypse, preparatory to the fulfilment of the eternal decree respecting the Millennium.[942] Everything that the clergy did at this time smacked loudly of their excessive interest in French affairs. In order more fully to influence public opinion they took the colleges into their confederacy, and soon teachers and pupils were busy disseminating throughout the land principles and prejudices favorable to the Revolution in France.[943] Nothing was omitted that might have been done to cement an attachment to the cause of the Revolution.

The fluctuating events of the European wars and the uncertain issue of French affairs soon cooled the ardor of these clerico-political societies.[944] For these men were not sincere in their devotion to France. They were not genuine supporters of the rights of man. They repudiated their former interest in French politics and turned fiercely upon those who maintained their interest in the principles of the Revolution. These men had but one interest. What they desired was power, a millennium in which the money and liberties of all men should be laid at the feet of the colleges and of the Illuminati Clubs.[945]

Such was the general indictment that Ogden drew. This attended to, he proceeded to file a bill of particulars.

The clergy, who constituted the predominating element in these New England Illuminati Clubs, from the first had occupied a position of commanding influence in New England. But the clergy from the first had steadily kept the people at a distance.[946] They courted the rich and schemed to obtain political influence. They united to themselves a formidable body from among the laity, who looked to them for votes and preferments. They freely wielded the weapons of ecclesiastical censure and discipline in efforts to coerce those who would not sell their consciences for gold or political honors.[947] In the army and the navy their sons and favorites received promotion; and in the distribution of college diplomas, because of the same influence, men were honored who could not construe the Latin parchments they received.[948]

Nominations to magistracies had been handed about by the arrogant members of these Illuminated Clubs, and good men of the opposition had been denounced by them at the polls.[949] By the same forces the public press had been deprived of its freedom and the channels of public communication diverted to serve unworthy ends.[950] Missionaries had been sent to frontier communities in the various states, not to propagate religion, but to extend the influence and to increase the power of the societies whose agents they were.[951] The destruction of dissenting bodies had been aimed at and the cause of universal liberty of conscience spurned as an odious thing.[952]

In their efforts to control the instruments of education, the representatives of these Illuminated Clubs had manifested the same illiberal and contracted policy. Public attention had artfully been withdrawn from the schools of the yeomanry and centered upon the colleges which the Illuminati controlled.[953] Some of these institutions had shown themselves subservient in the extreme. The clergy and corporation of Yale had been so narrow as to cause philanthropists to turn the gifts they intended for that institution into other channels, to Harvard particularly.[954] At Dartmouth a spirit quite as contemptible had prevailed.[955] Fortunately the school at Cambridge had escaped from the clutches of these bigoted men. Columbia, too, had recently been placed upon a more liberal foundation, but not without having incurred the hostility of the Illuminati.[956] Everywhere, indeed, that the Edwardean theology was not permitted to flourish unmolested, there the hostility of the New England Illuminati was felt.[957] Venerable, learned, and experienced Catholic, Episcopal, and Baptist clergymen were roughly thrust aside at the seats of learning where these men had control, and dapper young parsons “with neat gowns and bands, and degrees of Doctor of Divinity, bought and obtained by the influence of rich merchants”[958] were permitted to supersede them.

There was no place into which the influence of these men had gone where contentions and persecutions had not followed.[959] But few interruptions of the public tranquility had occurred that could not be traced directly to their door. No hand of sympathy or conciliation had ever been held out by them to the opposition.[960] Should some political despot enlist these men under his banner, disaster would overtake our religion, government, liberty, and property; anarchy and destruction would overspread a land saved by the valor of freemen, by the blood of the fathers.[961]

What, therefore, was to be done with such contumacious and intolerable men? Ogden’s answer sounds surprisingly moderate, in view of the extent to which the iron of bitterness had entered his soul:

If the New-England Illuminati proceed unheeded and uncontrolled, this nation will constantly experience the pernicious effects of discord and popular discontent. Wars at home, tumults abroad, the degradation of legislatures, judges and jurors, will be our daily portion…. To dissolve or abolish those societies or clubs would not be to infringe upon the rights of conscience: to counteract them is to establish law and peace.[962]

Such was Ogden’s effort to brand the Standing Order of New England with the hateful mark of the Illuminati.[963] His endeavor was supplemented by the oratorical and literary effusions of Connecticut’s most shrewd and impudent Democrat, Abraham Bishop, of New Haven. In the course of a year, beginning with September, 1800, Bishop delivered, and later expanded and printed, three orations,[964] in each of which he drew heavily upon his by no means meagre resources of logic, wit, irony, and boldness, to arraign Connecticut Federalism as a hideous conspiracy against the peace of the state and the liberties of the people.

The first of these orations had something of a history, not very extraordinary to be sure, and yet unique enough to throw some light upon the mettle of the man and the nature of the opposition that inflamed his passion. The Phi Beta Kappa Society of Yale College appointed Bishop its orator for the year 1800, in connection with the commencement exercises of the college, then held in the month of September. Exercising the traditional right of selecting his own subject, Bishop elected to prepare an oration on “The Extent and Power of Political Delusion,” instead of writing on “broken glass, dried insects, petrifactions, or any such literary themes,” as he afterwards intimated the Federalists doubtless had expected.[965] The labor of composition completed, Bishop showed his manuscript to the secretary of the society, only to be informed later that on account of the political character of his effort his appointment as orator had been rescinded by the society. Not to be routed by any such expert generalship on the part of the enemy, Bishop rallied his Democratic friends, procured a hall, and on the evening of the Phi Beta Kappa exercises, held forth in the presence of an audience of very gratifying proportions.[966]

And what had Abraham Bishop to say on “The Extent and Power of Political Delusion” which in the view of the Phi Beta Kappas amounted to an abuse of “the confidence of the Society, … involving the members in that political turmoil which disgraces our country”?[967] Much in every way. He devoted several scores of pages to an exposition of the delusive arts of the “friends of order,” which, being interpreted, meant the knavery of the Federalists throughout the country in general and in Connecticut in particular. The major portion of his “argument” need not detain us, since Bishop ran the full gamut of political crimination, charging upon the Federalists an amount of deception and chicanery truly appalling. One item only is of interest to us. Among the endless “delusions” that he cited as evidence of the hypocrisy of the Federalists was the clergy’s habit of waiving the sacerdotal functions, descending from their high seats made venerable by the respect of the people for religion, and imposing upon their auditories political sermons based upon texts drawn from Robison and Barruel.[968] Happily, he continued, the people were able to penetrate this stratagem, along with the rest.

But Bishop’s thought upon the subject of the Illuminati had not yet fully ripened.[970] The circumstances under which this virgin effort of his was executed added considerably to his reputation; so much so that when at the end of the following winter the Democrats of Wallingford adopted the irreverent suggestion of holding a public thanksgiving to celebrate the election of Thomas Jefferson to the presidency, Bishop was asked to be one of the mouthpieces of their joy on that occasion. The ground over which Bishop traveled in the Wallingford oration was much the same as before. Again the “friends of order” were arraigned for their impostures and their oppressions. Such were “blind guides,” “a generation of vipers,” dispensers of hypocrisy to children in their cradles, “arch impostors and prime movers” of iniquitous works.[971] They were great sticklers for “steady habits”; but what meant their cry of “steady habits” but mortal hostility to republicanism in every form?[972]

These self-styled “friends of order,” it should not be forgotten, were not the people. They were the commercial aristocrats who insisted that ours was a blessed government because they were all becoming rich, plus the clergy, the bench, the bar, and the office-seeking and office-holding” class in general.[973] They united church and state, made religion play a game against civil rights, and strove to make the object of the American Revolution appear impossible of full realization.[974] Affecting to respect and serve the rights of man, they imposed upon the people the funding system, the alien and sedition acts, and the unwarranted enlargement of the navy.[975] They stirred up the animosity of the people against the French, excited the X. Y. Z. mania, and scattered over the country the “arabian tales of Robison and Barruel.”[976] With respect to religion, they had developed more hypocrisy in New England than existed in any other equal portion of the globe.[977] They had cried aloud that atheism prevailed in New England and infidel books were plentiful; but neither atheists nor infidel publications were actually to be found, unless in the latter case the writings of Robison and Barruel and the sermons preached against infidelity were to be called such.[978] The grave fault of the clerical “friends of order” was that they had not preached the Gospel. Instead, they had insulted the intelligence of the people by revamping the fables of a Scotch monarchist and a Catholic abbÉ. They imputed infidelity to the Democrats, while they themselves caused infidelity to abound. They directed all their darts of “democratic infidels” and “infidel philosophy” against one man, Thomas Jefferson, and in this way caused their enemies to blaspheme and say, “Where is your God?”[979]

And so on through a hundred pages less one. In a tirade of such interminable length the idea of a Federalist conspiracy against the best interests of the people of New England was worked out in more than ample detail. All that was needed was to apply the term “Illuminati,” and the catalogue of incriminations would be complete. This application Bishop proceeded to make in his third oration, which appeared sometime within the year 1802.

Bishop’s last effort surpassed all that he had previously achieved in the way of boldfaced and reckless assertion. Constant reiteration and an awkward effort to fashion his composition on the form that Robison and Barruel supplied him, gave to the pamphlet abundant suggestions of insincerity and political rant. The union of church and state in New England was presented as a constant, powerful, and efficient enemy against Christianity and the government of the United States.[980] Thus the true Illuminatists were the political clergy and the Federalist leaders.[981] The charge of infidel conspiracy brought against the Democrats a few years previous constituted nothing more nor less than a specious accusation brought forward “to prostrate the public mind.”[982] Robison and Barruel were miserable mixtures of falsehood and folly.[983] The Federalists were well aware of this when they launched their charge of infidel philosophy against Thomas Jefferson and the party that supported him. The Federalists were simply desperate. They were determined to go to any lengths to keep Jefferson out of the presidency. All their works were saturated with sacrilege and impiety. Their public fasts were kept for political purposes.[984] Their cry, “The church is in danger!” was hollow and insincere.[985] Their praise of the Federal administration had no other object than to effect the abasement of the Democrats.[986] Their “Church and State Union” freely sacrificed the highest interests of religion and government to the cause of party.[987]

A more extended report of Bishop’s waspish and bitter harangue would neither strengthen his indictment nor elucidate his “proofs.” His pamphlet has significance only as an outburst of triumphant but still indignant New England Democracy as it reflected upon the exasperating obstacles which the opposition had thrust in its way as it had pressed forward to power. Nothing could be clearer than that the word “Illuminati” had lost all serious and exact significance and had become a term for politicians to conjure with;[988] or if not that, to give point to the general charge of calloused villainy which Democrats lodged against Federalists at the turn of the eighteenth century.