Chapter IV · (continued 2)

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.

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 July 4, 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 Du Pan, 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 September 26, 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 April 25, 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 June 11, 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, June 25, 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:

How much … are we surprised to find opposers to an association whose law is peace, and whose whole disposition is love; which is known to discourage by an express prohibition the introduction and discussion of political or religious topics in its assemblies; and which forbids in the most positive and solemn manner all plots, conspiracies, and rebellions. But, notwithstanding the ignorant mistake, and the prejudiced censure the society, we are persuaded that its real character is too well known, and its credit is too well supported, to be injured by their misrepresentations, or destroyed by their invectives. When they charge us with demoralizing principles, we will tell them that some of the most orthodox and respectable Clergymen are of our order; and when they impute to us disorganizing attempts, we will remind them that Washington is our patron and friend.[875]

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 July 27, 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 August 10, 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:

The notice taken of the American Geographer in the late Charge,[887] was on account of his zeal, in his public character, to give authority to a wicked and mischievous Book. That he did not understand the Charge he has proved in his attempt to apply it, and that he should not understand it, is easy to be conceived from the Strictures already published upon his Compilations, and from opinions of him, both at home and abroad. On a proper occasion, these opinions may be collected and published.[888]

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 September 7, 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 October 23, 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:

The principle, not to introduce politics in your private assemblies, and the other principle, to be willing subjects to the government, would, if observed, preserve such societies from suspicion. But it seems to be agreed, that the society of Masons have discovered a science of government, or art of ruling society, peculiar to themselves, and unknown to all the other legislators and philosophers of the world; I mean not only the skill to know each other by marks or signs that no other persons can divine, but the wonderful power of enabling and compelling all men, and I suppose all women, at all hours, to keep a secret. If this art can be applied, to set aside the ordinary maxims of society, and introduce politics and disobedience to government, and still keep the secret, it must be obvious that such science and such societies may be perverted to all the ill purposes which have been suspected. The characters which compose the lodges in America are such as forbid every apprehension from them, and they will best know whether any dangers are possible in other countries as well as in this…. I say cordially with you—let not the tongue of slander say, that Masons in America are capable of faction. I am very confident it can not be said by any one with truth of the Masons of Vermont.[896]

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:

The address to General Washington,[897] as brother, must have the best effect, because he gives his own testimony, that he is a stranger to any ill designs of our institution.[898] But the replies of President Adams, such as he was indeed obliged to offer, have only left us where he found us, if in so happy a condition. His answers are candid, but he could know nothing. His answer to Massachusetts Grand Lodge insinuates his hopes. To Maryland, he seems to express even his fears.[899] To Vermont, he says, he believes the institution has been useful But while he expressed a confidence in the American lodges, he consents to hold our lodges capable of corruption. His words are, “Masons will best know whether any dangers are possible in other countries, as well as in this.”[900]

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, June 24, 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:

If what Barruel has suggested of our institution is true; if it is among US that Jesus Christ is daily sacrificed, and all religion scoffed at; if our principles and doctrines, either in theory or practice, have a tendency to destroy the bonds of nature and of government; how could Washington, that Perfect Man, when his feet were stumbling upon the dark mountains of death, say, “I am ready to die,” until he had warned the world to beware of the Masonic institution and its consequences? He was a thorough investigator, and a faithful follower of our doctrines.[924]

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:

The honor thus conferred upon us has been peculiarly serviceable at the present day, when the most unfounded prejudices have been harbored against Freemasonary, and the most calumnious impeachments brought forward to destroy it. But our opposers blushed for the censures when we reminded them that Washington loved and patronized the institution.[925]

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]

NOTE.—The fiction of an alliance between American Freemasonry and the Illuminati had a curious revival in connection with the antimasonic excitement which swept the United States from 1826 to about 1832. The mysterious abduction of William Morgan had the effect of arousing the country to the peril of secret societies, the Masons particularly. The Antimasonic party for this and other reasons sprang into existence, and an elaborate political propaganda and program were attempted. See McCarthy, Charles, The Antimasonic Party: a Study of Political Antimasonry in the United States, 1827–1840. In Annual Report of the American Historical Association, 1902, vol. i, pp. 365–574. In connection with the Antimasonic conventions that were held in various states, efforts were made to establish a connection between American Masonry and Illuminism. Thus, in the state convention held in Massachusetts in 1828–1829, a committee was appointed “to inquire how far Freemasonry and French Illuminism are connected.” This committee brought in a report establishing to the satisfaction of the convention that there was a direct connection between the two systems, and resulting in the passing of the following resolution: “Resolved, on the report of the Committee appointed to inquire how far Free Masonry and French Illuminism are connected, That there is evidence of an intimate connexion between the higher orders of Free Masonry and French Illuminism.” Cf. An Abstract of the Proceedings of the Anti-Masonic State Convention of Massachusetts, held in Faneuil Hall, Boston, Dec. 30 and 31, 1829, and Jan. 1, 1830. Boston, 1830, p. 5. On the ground that the length of the committee’s report made it inadvisable, the publishing committee deemed it inexpedient to print the “evidence.”

The Vermont Antimasonic state convention of 1830 wrestled with the same question. Its committee brought in a report so naively suggestive as to merit notice. Citing the agitation that arose on account of the literary efforts of “Robison and Barruel in Europe, and Morse, Payson, and others in America,” the committee expressed its judgment that those works “called Masonry in question in a manner which if assumed on any other topic, would have called forth disquisition and remark on the subject matter of these writings from every editor in the union; yet the spirit of inquiry, which these able performances were calculated to raise, was soon and unaccountably quelled—the press was mute as the voice of the strangled sentinel and the mass of the people kept in ignorance that an alarm on the subject of Masonry had ever been sounded, or even that these works had ever existed.” See Proceedings of the Anti-Masonic State Convention, holden at Montpelier, June 23, 24, & 25, 1830. Reports and Addresses. Middlebury, 1830.

An exploration of the literature of the Antimasonic party yields nothing more significant. This literature as listed by McCarthy may be found on pp. 560–574 of the Report of the American Historical Association for 1902, vol. i.

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.

Robison and Barruel can deceive us no more. The 17 sophistical work-shops of Satan have never been found: not one illuminatus major or minor has been discovered in America, though their names have been published, and though their existence here is as clearly proved as was their existence in Europe.[969]

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.