IT is now twenty years since there sprung up in the
United States an earnest and at times a vehement
discussion, of the nature and effect of the bond entered
into by those citizens who join the society of Free and
Accepted Masons. The excitement which arose in
consequence of the disclosures then made, had the effect,
at least for a time, if not permanently, to check the farther
spread of that association. The legislative power of some
of the States was invoked, and at last actually interposed,
to prevent the administration of extra-judicial oaths,
including of course all such as were constantly taken in
the Masonic Order. This was the furthest point which the
opposition ever reached. It did not succeed in procuring
the dissolution of the organization of the Order, or even
the repeal of the charters under which it had a recognized
existence in the social system. From the moment of the
adoption of a penal law, deemed strong enough to meet
the most serious of the evils complained of, the
apprehension of further danger from Masonry began to
subside. At this day, the subject has ceased to be talked
of. The attention of men has been gradually diverted to
other things, until at last it may be said, that few persons
are aware of the fact, provided it be not especially forced
upon their notice, that not only Freemasonry continues to
exist, but also that
other associations partaking of its secret nature, if not of its
unjustifiable obligations, not merely live, but greatly flourish
in the midst of them.
Fully aware of this state of things, a few private citizens who
deeply interested themselves in the investigation of the subject
when first agitated, yet feel as if their duty was not entirely
performed so long as they shall have left undone any act which
in their estimation may have the effect of keeping up among their
countrymen a vigilant observation of the nature and tendency of
secret associations. Without cherishing the remotest desire,
even if they could be supposed to entertain the expectation, of
reviving an old excitement, they are nevertheless most anxious to
put in a permanently accessible shape, some clear and strong
exposition of the evil attending similar ties, as that evil was
illustrated years ago in an examination of the Freemason's Oath.
Such an exposition they knew could be found in the writings of
the Honorable John Quincy Adams. But although the various
papers in which it was first issued to the public enjoyed an
extensive circulation at the period when it was written, and
without doubt contributed much to the establishment of an
improved state of popular opinion, they are believed never to
have been collected together in any one form readily open to the
public examination. This great deficiency, it seemed to the
gentlemen who have been already alluded to, a desirable object
to supply. They accordingly undertook the task of publishing
the present volume, not as a matter of sale, but solely with the
intention of gratuitous distribution. And first of all, they deemed
it no more than proper to communicate with Mr. Adams himself,
and to get his opinion upon the subject. That gentleman very
cheerfully consented to aid the effort, not only by supplying
some entirely new documents, which have never before been
printed, but also by promising a recapitulation
of his views in the shape of an Introductory Essay. The
execution of this last engagement has, however, been
prevented by the late much regretted illness which has befallen
him. The task of preparing a preface has, by this unexpected
event, been made to fall into other hands, by which it must be
fulfilled in a far less comprehensive and satisfactory manner
than it would have been by him.
The Institution of Masonry was introduced into the British
Colonies of North America more than a hundred years ago. It
went on slowly at first, but from the time of the Revolution it
spread more rapidly, until in the first quarter of the present
century it had succeeded in winding itself through all the
departments of the body politic in the United States, and in
claiming the sanction of many of the country's most
distinguished men. Up to the year 1826 nothing occurred to mar
its progress or to interpose the smallest obstacle to its
triumphant success. So great had then become the confidence of
the members in its power, as to prompt the loud tone of
gratulation in which some of its orators then indulged at their
pubic festivals, and among these none spoke more boldly than
Mr. Brainard, in the passage which will be found * quoted in the
present volume. He announced that Masonry was exercising its
influence in the sacred desk, in the legislative hall and on the
bench of justice, but so little had the public attention been
directed to the truth he uttered, that the declaration passed off,
and was set down by the uninitiated rather as a flower of rhetoric
with which young speakers will sometimes magnify their topic,
than as entitled to any particularly serious notice. Neither would
these memorable words have been rescued from oblivion, if it
had not happened that the very next year after they were uttered
was destined to furnish a most extraordinary illustration of their
significance.
In a small town situated in the western part of the State
of New York, an event occurred in the autumn of the year
1826, which roused the suspicions first of the people living
in the immediate neighborhood, and afterwards of a very
wide circle of persons throughout the United States. A
citizen of Batavia suddenly disappeared from his family,
without giving the slightest warning. Rumors were
immediately circulated that he had run away; but there
were circumstances attending the act which favored the
idea that personal violence had been resorted to, although
the precise authors of it could not be distinctly traced. The
name of the citizen who thus vanished as if the earth had
opened and swallowed him from sight, was William
Morgan. He had been a man of little consideration in the
place, in which he had been but a short time resident.
Without wealth, for he was compelled to labor for the
support of a young wife and two infant children, and
without influence of any kind, it seemed as if there could
be nothing in the history or the pursuits of the individual to
make him a shining mark of persecution, on any account.
So unreasonable, if not absurd, did the notion of the
forcible abduction of such a man appear, that it was at first
met with a cold smile of utter incredulity. Among the
floating population of a newly settled country, the single
fact of the departure of persons having few ties to bind
them to any particular spot, would scarcely cause remark
or lead to inquiry. Numbers, when first called to express an
opinion in the ease of Morgan, at once jumped to the
conclusion that he voluntarily fled to parts unknown. So
natural was the inference that even to this day, many who
have never taken any trouble to look into the evidence, are
impressed with a vague notion that it is the proper solution
of the difficulty. In ordinary circumstances the thing might
have passed off as a nine days'
wonder, and in a month's time the name of Morgan might
have been forgotten in Batavia, had it not been for a
single clue which was left behind him, and which, at first
followed up from curiosity, soon excited wonder, and
from this led to astonishment at the nature of the
discoveries that ensued.
The single clue which ultimately unwound the tangled
skein of evidence was this. The sole act of Morgan, whilst
dwelling in Batavia, which formed any exception to the
ordinary habits of men in his walk of life, was an
undertaking into which he entered, in partnership with
another person, to print and publish a book. This book
promised to contain a true account of certain ceremonies
and secret obligations taken by those who joined the
society of Freemasons. The simple announcement of the
intention to print this work was known to have been
received by many of the persons in the vicinity,
acknowledged brethren of the Order, with signs of the
most lively indignation. And as the thing went on to
execution, so many efforts were made to interrupt and to
prevent it, even at the hazard of much violence, that soon
after the disappearance of the prime mover of the plan,
doubts began to spread in the community, whether there
was not some connection, in the way of cause and effect,
between the proposed publication and that event.
Circumstances rapidly confirmed suspicion into belief, and
belief into certainty. At first the attention was
concentrated upon the individuals of the fraternity
discovered to have been concerned in the taking off. It
afterwards spread itself so far as to embrace the action of
the Lodges of the region in which the deed was done. But
such was the amount of resistance experienced to efforts
made to ferret out the perpetrators and bring them to
justice, that ultimately the whole organization of the Order
became involved in responsibility for the misdeeds of its
members. The opposition made to investigation only
stimulated the passion to
investigate. Unexampled efforts were made to enlist the
whole power of the social system in the pursuit of the
kidnappers, which were as steadily baffled by the
superior activity of the Masonic power. In time, it
became plain, that the only effectual course would be, to
go if possible to the root of the evil, and to attack
Masonry in its very citadel of secret obligations.
The labor expended in the endeavor to suppress the
publication of Morgan's book, proved to have been lost. It
came out just at the moment when the disappearance of
its author was most calculated to rouse the public curiosity
to its contents. On examination, it was found to contain
what purported to be the forms of Oaths taken by those
who were admitted to the first three degrees of
Masonry,-the Entered Apprentice's, the Fellow Craft's
and the Master Mason's. If they really were what they
pretended to be, then indeed was supplied a full
explanation of the motives that might have led to Morgan's
disappearance. But here was the first difficulty. Doubts
were sedulously spread of their genuineness. Morgan's
want of social character was used with effect to bring the
whole volume into discredit. Neither is it perfectly certain
that its revelations would have been ultimately established
as true, had not a considerable number of the fraternity,
stimulated by the consciousness of the error which they
had committed, voluntarily assembled at Leroy, a town in
the neighborhood of Batavia, and then and there, besides
attesting the veracity of Morgan's book, renounced all
further connection with the society. One or two of these
persons subsequently made far more extended
publications, in which they opened all the mysteries of the
Royal Arch, and of the Knight Templar's libation, besides
exposing in a clear light the whole complicated
organization of the Institution. Upon these disclosures the
popular excitement spread over a large part of the
northern section of
the Union. It crept into the political divisions of the time. A
party sprung up almost with the celerity of magic, the end
of whose exertions was to be the overthrow of Masonry.
It soon carried before it all the power of Western New
York. It spread into the neighboring States. It made its
appearance in legislative assemblies, and there demanded
full and earnest investigations, not merely of the
circumstances attending the event which originated the
excitement, but also of the nature of the obligations which
Masons had been in the habit of assuming. Great as was
the effort to resist this movement, and manifold the
devices to escape the searching operation proposed, it
was found impossible directly to stem the tide of popular
opinion. Masons, who stubbornly adhered to the Order,
were yet compelled under oath to give their reluctant
testimony to the truth of the disclosures that had been
made. The oaths of Masonry and the strange rites
practiced simultaneously with the assumption of them,
were then found to be in substance what they had been
affirmed to be. The veil that hid the mystery was rent in
twain, and there stood the idol before the gaze of the
multitude, in all the nakedness of its natural deformity.
Strange though it may seem, it is nevertheless equally
certain, that the most revolting features of the obligation,
the pledges subversive of all moral distinctions, and the
penalties for violating those pledges, were not those
things which roused the most general popular
disapprobation. Here, as often before, the shield of
private character, earned by a life and conversation
without reproach, was interposed with effect to screen
from censure men who protested that when they swore
to keep secret the crimes which their brethren might have
committed, provided they were revealed to them under
the Masonic sign, they did nothing which they deemed
inconsistent with their
duties as Christians and as members of society. It is the
tendency of mankind to mix with all abstract reasoning,
however pure and perfect, a great deal of the alloy of
human authority, to harden its nature. Multitudes preferred
to believe the Masonic oaths and penalties to be
ceremonies, childish, ridiculous and unmeaning, rather than
to suppose them intrinsically and incurably vicious. They
refused to credit the fact that men whom they respected
as citizens could have made themselves parties to any
promise whatsoever to do acts illegal, unjust and wicked.
Rather than go so far, they preferred to throw themselves
into a state of resolute unbelief of all that could be said
against them. Hence the extraordinary resistance to all
projects of examination, that great wall of brass which the
conservative temper of society erects around
acknowledged and time-hallowed abuses. Hence the
determination to credit the assurances of interested
witnesses, who seemed to have a character for veracity to
support, rather than by pressing investigation, to undermine
the established edifice constructed by the world's opinion.
Neither is there at bottom any want of good sense in
this sluggish mode of viewing all movements of reform.
Agitation always portends more or less of risk to society,
and tends to bring mere authority into contempt. It is
therefore not without reason that those who value the
security which they enjoy under existing institutions,
hesitate at adopting any rule of conduct which may
materially diminish it. Such hesitation is visible under all
forms of government, but it is no where more marked than
in the United States, where the popular nature of the
institutions makes the tendency to change at all times
imminent. The misfortune attending this natural and
pardonable conservative instinct is, that it clings with
indiscriminate tenacity to all that has been long established
the evil as well as the
good, the abuses that have crept in equally with the useful
and the true. It was just so in the case of Masonry. A
large number of the most active and respected members
of society had allowed themselves to become involved in
its obligations, and rather than voluntarily to confess the
error they had committed, and to sanction the overthrow
of the Institution by a decided act of surrender, they
preferred to support it upon the strength of their present
character, and upon the combination of themselves and
the friends whom they could influence to resist the
assaults of a reforming and purifying power. Great as was
the strength of this resistance, it could only partially
succeed in accomplishing the object at which it aimed.
The opposition made to the admission of a palpable moral
truth, had its usual and natural effect to stimulate the
efforts of those who were pressing it upon the public
attention. Admitting in the fullest extent every thing that
could be said in behalf of many of the individuals, who as
Masons became subjected to the vehemence of the
denunciations directed against the fraternity, it was yet a
fact not a little startling, that even they should deem
themselves so far bound by unlawful obligations as at no
time to be ready to signify the smallest disapprobation of
their character, not even after the fact was proved how
much of evil they had caused. After the disclosures of the
Morgan history, it was no longer possible to pretend that
the pledges were not actually construed in the sense which
the language plainly conveyed. That after admitting the
possibility of such a construction, the association which for
one moment longer should give it countenance, made itself
responsible for all the crime which might become the fruit
of it, cannot be denied. Yet this reasoning did not appear
to have the weight to which it was fairly entitled, in deterring
the respectable members of the society from giving it their
aid and
countenance. DeWitt Clinton still remained Grand Master
of the Order after he had reason to know the extent to
which it had made itself accessory to the Morgan murder.
Edward Livingston was not ashamed publicly to declare
his acceptance of the same office, although the chain of
evidence which traced that crime to the Masonic oath
had then been made completely visible to all. When the
authority of such names as these was invoked with
success, to shelter the association from the effect of its
own system, it seemed to become an imperative duty on
the part of those whose attention had been aroused to the
subject, to look beyond the barrier of authority so
sedulously erected in order to keep them out, to probe by
a searching analytic process the moral elements upon
which the Institution claimed to rest, and to concentrate
the rays of truth and right reason upon those corrupt
principles, which if not effectively counteracted, seemed
to threaten the very foundations of justice in the social
and moral system of America.
It was the province here marked out which Mr. Adams
voluntarily assumed to fill when he addressed to Colonel
William L. Stone that series of letters upon the Entered
Apprentice's Oath, which will be found to make a part of
the present volume. Although this obligation may be
considered as constituting the lowest story and least
commanding portion of the edifice of Freemasonry, yet he
singled it out for examination as the fairest test by which
he could try the merits of all that has been built above it.
If that first and simplest step proved untenable, it followed
as a matter of course, that no later or more difficult one
could fare a whit better. Of the result of the investigation
thus entered into, it is thought that no difference of
opinion can now be entertained. No answer worthy of a
moment's consideration was ever made. It is confidently
believed that none is possible. As a specimen of rigid
moral analysis, the letters must ever remain, not simply as
evincing the peculiar powers of the author's mind, but
also as a standing testimony against the radical vice of
the secret Institution against which they were directed.
When the books of Morgan, and Allyn, and Bernard,
the admissions of Colonel Stone and of the Rhode Island
legislative investigation, had left little of the mysteries of
Freemasonry unseen by the public eye, the impressions
derived from observation were curious and contradictory.
Upon the first hasty and superficial glance, a feeling might
arise of surprise that the frivolity of its unmeaning
ceremonial, and the ridiculous substitution of its fictions
for the sacred history, should not have long ago
discredited the thing in the minds of good and sensible
men every where. Yet upon a closer and more attentive
examination, this first feeling vanishes, and makes way for
astonishment at the ingenious contrivance displayed in the
construction of the whole machine. A more perfect agent
for the devising and execution of conspiracies against
church or state could scarcely have been conceived. At
the outer door stands the image of secrecy, stimulating the
passion of curiosity. And the world which habitually takes
the unknown to be sublime, could scarcely avoid inferring
that the untold mysteries which were supposed to have
been transmitted undivulged to any external ear, from
generation to generation, must have in them some secret
of power richly worth the knowing. Here was the
temptation to enter the portal. But the unlucky wight, like
him of the poet's hell, when once admitted within the door,
was doomed at the same moment to leave behind him all
hope or expectation of retreat. His mouth was
immediately sealed by an obligation of secrecy, imposed
with all the solemnity that can be borrowed from the use
of the forms of religious worship. Nothing was left undone
to magnify the effect of the
scene upon his imagination. High sounding titles, strange
and startling modes of procedure, terrific pledges and
imprecations, and last, though not least, the graduation of
orders in an ascending scale, which like mirrors placed in
long vistas, had the effect of expanding the apparent range
of vision almost to infinitude, were all combined to rescue
from ridicule and contempt the moment of discovery of
the insignificant secret actually disclosed. Having thus
been tempted by curiosity to advance, and being cut off by
fear from retreat, there came last of all the appearance of
a sufficient infusion of religious and moral and benevolent
profession to furnish an ostensible cause for the
construction of a system so ponderous and complicate.
The language of the Old Testament, the history as well as
the traditions of the Jews, and the resources of
imagination, are indiscriminately drawn upon to deck out a
progressive series of initiating ceremonies which would
otherwise claim no attribute to save them from contempt.
Ashamed and afraid to go backwards, the novice suffers
his love of the marvelous, his dread of personal hazard,
and his hope for more of the beautiful and the true than
has yet been doled out to him, to lead him on until he finds
himself crawling under the living arch, or committing the
folly of the fifth libation. He then too late discovers himself
to have been fitting for the condition either of a dupe or of
a conspirator. He has plunged himself needlessly into an
abyss of obligations which, if they signify little, prove him
to have been a fool; and if, on the contrary, they signify
much, prove him ready at a moment's warning, to make
himself a villain.
Such is the impression of the Masonic Institution that
must be gathered from all the expositions that have been
lately made. Yet, strange though it may seem, there is no
reason to doubt that the Society has had great success in
enrolling numbers of persons in many countries among its
members, and in keeping them generally faithful to the
obligations which it imposed. This, if no other fact, would
be sufficient to relieve the whole machine from the
burden of ridicule it might otherwise be made to bear.
Perhaps the strongest feature of the association is to be
found in the pledge it imposes of mutual assistance in
distress. On this account much merit has been claimed to
it, and many stories have been circulated of the benefits
which individuals have experienced in war, or in perils by
sea and land, or in other disasters, by the ability to resort
to the grand hailing sign. This argument, which has
probably made more Freemasons than any other, would
be good in its defense were it not for two objections. One
of them is, that the pledge to assist is indiscriminate,
making little or no difference between the good or bad
nature of the actions to promote which a co-operation
may be invoked. The other is, that the engagement implies
a duty of preference of one member of society to the
disadvantage of another who may be in all respects his
superior. It establishes a standard of merit conflicting with
that established by the Christian or the social system,
either or both of which ought to be of paramount
obligation. And this injurious preference is the more
dangerous because it may be carried on without the
knowledge of the sufferers. The more scrupulously
conscientious a citizen may be, who hesitates at taking an
oath the nature of which he does not know beforehand,
the more likely will he be to be kept down by the artificial
advancement of others who may derive their advantage
from a cunning use of their more flexible sense of right.
That these are not altogether imaginary objections, there
is no small amount of actual evidence to prove. There has
been a time, when resort to Masonry was regarded as
eminently
favorable to early success in life; and there have been
men whose rapidity of personal and political advancement it
would be difficult to explain by any other cause than this, that
they have been generally understood to be bright Masons.
Such a preference as is here supposed, can be justifiable only
upon the supposition that Masonic merit and social merit rest
on the same general foundation;-a supposition which no
person will be able to entertain for a moment after he shall have
observed the scales which belong respectively to each.
Another argument which has been effectively resorted to as
an aid to Freemasonry, is drawn from its supposed antiquity. To
give color to this notion, a very ingenious use has been made of
much of the sacred history; but it appears to have no solid
foundation whatsoever. Whatever may have been the nature of
the associations of Masons who built the gothic edifices of the
middle ages, the investigations entered into by those who
opposed speculative Freemasonry sufficiently proved that the
latter scarcely dates beyond the early part of the last century.
The air of traditionary mystery like the aerugo on many a
pretended coin, has been artificially added to heighten its value
to the curious. Yet such has been its effect, that this cause alone
has probably contributed very largely to fill up the ranks of the
Society. The rapidity of its growth during the period of its
legitimate existence, is one of the most surprising circumstances
attending its history. Originating in Great Britain somewhere
about the beginning of the eighteenth century, it soon ramified
not only in that country, but into France and Germany; it spread
itself into the colonies of North America, and made its way to the
confines of distant Asia. Although the seeds of the Institution
were early planted in Boston and Charleston, they did not
fructify largely until after the period of the Revolution. The
original form of Masonry was comprised in what are now called
the first three degrees-the
entered apprentice, fellow craft and master-but during the first
quarter of the present century, so thoroughly had the basis
been laid over the entire surface of the United States, that the
degrees have been multiplied more than tenfold, and in all
directions the materials have been collected for a secret
combination of the most formidable character. It was not until
the history of Morgan laid open the consequences of the abuse
of the system, that the public began to form a conception of the
dangerous fanaticism which it was cherishing in its bosom.
Even then, the endeavor to apply effective remedies to the evil
was met with the most energetic and concerted resistance, and
the result of the struggle was by no means a decided victory to
the opponents of the Institution. Freemasonry still lives and
moves and has a being, even in New York and Massachusetts.
And at the seat of the Federal government, Freemasonry at this
moment claims and obtains the privilege of laying the
corner-stone of the national institution created upon the
endowment of James Smithson, for the purpose of increasing
and diffusing knowledge among men.
An obvious danger attending all associations of men
connected by secret obligations, springs from their
susceptibility to abuse in being converted into engines for the
overthrow or the control of established governments. So soon
was the apprehension of this excited in Europe by
Freemasonry, that many of the absolute monarchies took early
measures to guard against its spread within their limits. Rome,
Naples, Portugal, Spain and Russia made participation in it a
capital offense. Other governments more cautiously confined
themselves to efforts to control it by a rigid system of
supervision. in Great Britain, the endeavor of government has
been to neutralize its power to harm, by entering into it and by
placing trust worthy members of the royal family at its head. Yet
even with all these precautions
and prohibitions, it is believed that in France at the
period of the revolution, and in Italy within the present
century, much of the insurrectionary spirit of the time was
fostered, if not in Masonic Lodges, at least in associations
bearing a close affinity to them in all essential particulars.
With regard to the United States, there has thus far in their
history been very little to justify any of the most serious
objections which may be made against Masonry in
connection with political affairs. Yet the events which
followed the death of Morgan, first opened the public mind
to the idea that already a secret influence pervaded all
parts of the body politic, with which it was not very safe
for an individual to come into conflict. The boast of
Brainard, already alluded to, was now brought to mind. It
was found to bias, if not to control, the action of officers of
justice of every grade, to affect the policy of legislative
bodies, and even to paralyze the energy of the executive
head. This power, by gaining a greater appearance of
magnitude from the mystery with which it was surrounded,
was doubtless much exaggerated by the popular fancy
during the period of the Morgan excitement; but after
making all proper allowances, it is impossible from a fair
survey of the evidence to doubt that it was something real,
and that it might, in course of time, have established an
undisputed control over the affairs of the Union, had not its
progress been somewhat roughly broken by the
consequences of the violent movement against Morgan,
which had its origin in the precipitate but fanatical energy
of one division of the society. And even since the agitation
of that day, there is the best reason for believing that
throughout the region most affected by it, an organization
was made up after the fashion of Masonic Lodges, the
object of which was directly to stimulate a concerted
insurrection against the governing power of a neighboring
country, Canada, calculated
to give rise to a furious contest with a foreign nation, and
to mature plans by which such an attempt could be most
effectually aided by citizens of the United States in spite
of all the national declarations of neutrality and in
defiance of all the fulminations of government at home.
But at the time of Morgan's mysterious disappearance,
the investigations then pursued, imperfect as they were,
and more than once completely baffled for the moment,
brought forth the names of sixty-nine different individuals,
many of them of great respectability of private character,
who had been directly concerned in the outrages
attending his taking off. These sixty-nine persons were
not living within a confined circle. They had their homes
scattered along an extent of country of at least one
hundred miles. That so many men, at so many separate
points, should have acted in perfect concert in such a
business as they were engaged in, would scarcely be
believed, without compelling the inference of some
distinct understanding existing between them. That they
should have carried into effect the most difficult part of
their undertaking, a scheme of the most daring and
criminal nature, in the midst of a large, intelligent and
active population, without thereby incurring the risk of a
full conviction of their guilt and the consequent
punishment, would be equally incredible, but for the light
furnished by the phraseology of the Masonic oath. The
several forms of this oath, as shown to have been
habitually administered in the first three degrees, will be
found in the Appendix to the present volume. These,
together with the ceremony attending the Royal Arch and
the Knight Templar's obligation, have been deemed all of
Masonry that is necessary to illustrate the letters of Mr.
Adams. They are believed sufficient to account for the
successful manner in which Morgan was spirited away. It
is not deemed expedient to dwell here upon their nature,
when it will be found fully
analyzed in the body of the present volume. It is enough to
point out the fact that obedience to the Order is the paramount
law of association; that it makes every social, civil and moral
duty a matter of secondary consideration; that it draws few
distinctions between the character of the acts that may be
required to be done, and that it demands fidelity to guilt just the
same as if it were the purest innocence. Every man who takes a
Masonic oath, forbids himself from divulging any criminal act,
unless it might be murder or treason, that may be communicated
to him under the seal of the fraternal bond, even though such
concealment were to prove a burden upon his conscience and a
violation of his bounden duty to society and to his God. The
best man in the world, put in this situation, may be compelled to
take his election between perjury on the one side and sympathy
with crime on the other. The worst man in the world put in this
situation has it in his power to claim that the best shall degrade
his moral sense down to the level of his own, by hearing from
him, without resentment, revelations to which even listening
may be a participation of dishonor.
The facts attending the abduction of Morgan, not elicited
without the most extraordinary difficulty by subsequent
investigation, have been so often published far and wide as to
make it superfluous here to repeat them. It may be enough to
state, that from the day when the partnership between Morgan
and David C. Miller, a printer of Batavia, made for the purpose
of publishing the "Illustrations of Masonry," was announced,
no form of annoyance which could be expected to deter them
from prosecuting their design, was left unattempted. The
precise nature of these forms may be better understood, if we
class them under general heads, until they took the ultimate
shape of aggravated crime.
1. Anonymous denunciation of the man Morgan, as an
impostor, in newspapers published at Canandaigua, Batavia
and Black Rock, places at some distance from each other, but
all within the limits of the region in which the subsequent acts
of violence were committed.
2. Abuse of the forms of law, by the hunting up of small
debts or civil offenses with which to carry on vexatious suits or
prosecutions against the two persons heretofore named.
3. The introduction of a spy into their counsels, and of a
traitor to their confidence, employed for the purpose of
betraying the manuscripts of the proposed work to the
Masonic Lodges, and thus of frustrating the entire scheme.
4. Attempts to surprise the printing office by a concerted
night attack of men gathered from various points, assembling
at a specific rendezvous, the abode of a high member of the
Order, and proceeding in order to the execution of the object,
which was the forcible seizure of the manuscripts and the
destruction of the press used to print them.
5. Efforts to get possession of the persons of the two
offenders, by a resort to the processes of law, through the
connivance and co-operation of officers of justice, themselves
Masons. These efforts failed in the case of Miller, but they
succeeded against Morgan, and were the means by which all
the subsequent movements were carried into execution.
6. The employment of an agent secretly to prepare materials
for the combustion of the building which contained the
printing materials known to be employed in the publication of
the book, and to set them on fire
Such were the proceedings which were resorted to at the
very outset of this conspiracy, and upon looking at them, it
will be seen at a glance that the prosecution of them involved
the commission of a variety of moral and
social offenses, the commission of which may be fairly
included within the literal injunction of the Masonic oath.
Had the matter stopped here, it would have furnished
abundance of evidence to establish the dangerous
character of a secret Institution, when its interests are
deemed to conflict with those of individual citizens or of
society at large. But what has thus far been compressed
in the six preceding heads, appears as nothing when
compared with the startling developments of the
remainder of the story.
On Sunday, of all the days in the week, the tenth of
September, 1826, the coroner of the county of Ontario,
himself Master of the Lodge at Canandaigua, applied to a
Masonic justice of the peace of that town for a warrant to
apprehend William Morgan, living fifty miles off at
Batavia. The offense upon which the application was
based was larceny, and the alleged larceny consisted in
the neglect of Morgan to return a shirt and cravat that had
been borrowed by him in the previous month of May.
Armed with this implement of justice, which assumes in
this connection the semblance of a dagger rather than of
its ordinary attribute a sword, the coroner immediately
proceeded in a carriage obtained at the public cost, to pick
up at different stations along the road of fifty miles, ten
Masonic brethren, including a constable, anxious and
willing to share in avenging the insulted majesty of the
law. At the tavern of James Ganson, six miles from
Batavia, the same place which had been the head quarters
of the night expedition against Miller's printing office, the
party stopped for the night. Had that expedition proved
successful, it is very probable that this one would have
been abandoned. As it was, the failure acted as a stimulus
to its further prosecution. Early next morning, five of the
Masonic beagles, headed by the Masonic constable,
having previously procured a necessary endorsement of
their writ to give it effect in the county of Genessee, from
a Masonic
justice of the peace, proceeded from Ganson's house to
Batavia, where they succeeded in seizing and securing the
man guilty of the alleged enormity touching the borrowed
shirt and cravat. A coach was again employed, the
Masonic party lost no time in securing their prey, and at
about sunset of the same day with the arrest, that is,
Monday the eleventh day of September, they got back to
Canandaigua. The prisoner was immediately taken before
the justice who had issued the warrant, the futility of the
complaint was established, and Morgan was forthwith
discharged. The case affords a striking illustration of the
abuse of the remedial process of the law to the more
secure commission of an offense against law. Morgan
was free, it is true, but he was at a distance of fifty miles
from home, alone and without friends, brought through the
country with the stigma resulting from the suspicion of a
criminal offense attached to him, and all without expense
to the parties engaged in the undertaking, as well as
without the smallest hazard of a rescue.
It turned out that the person of whom the shirt and
cravat had been originally borrowed, had never sought to
instigate a prosecution for the offense. The idea
originated in the mind of the Masonic coroner himself. He
had executed the plan of using the law to punish an
offense of Masonry, to the extent to which it had now
been carried. Morgan had been brought within the coil of
the serpent, but he was not yet entirely at its mercy.
Another abuse of legal forms yet remained to complete
the operation. No sooner was the victim landed upon the
pavement, exonerated from the charge of being a thief,
than he found the same Masonic Grand Master and
coroner tapping him on the shoulder, armed with a writ
for a debt of two dollars to a tavern keeper of
Canandaigua. Resistance was useless. Morgan had
neither money nor credit, and for the want of them he
was taken to the county jail. The common
property and the remedial process of the State was
thus once more employed to subserve the vindictive
purposes of a secret society.
Twenty-four hours were suffered to pass, whilst the
necessary arrangements were maturing to complete the
remainder of the terrible drama. On the evening of the
succeeding day, being the twelfth of September, the same
Grand Master coroner once more made his appearance at
the prison. After some little negotiation, Morgan is once
more released by the payment of the debt for which he
had been taken. But he is not free. No sooner is he
treading the soil of freedom, and perchance dreaming of
escape from all these annoyances, than upon a given
signal, a yellow carriage and gray horses are seen by the
bright moonlight rolling with extraordinary rapidity towards
the jail. A few minutes pass, Morgan has been seized and
gagged and bound and thrown into the carriage, which is
now seen well filled with men, rolling as rapidly as before
but in a contrary direction. Morgan is now completely in
the power of his enemies. The veil of law is now
removed. All that remains to be done is to use the arm of
the flesh. Morgan is taking his last look of the town of
Canandaigua.
It is a fact that this carriage moved along night and
day, over a hundred miles of well settled country, with
fresh horses to draw it supplied at six different places,
and with corresponding changes of men to carry on the
enterprise, and not the smallest let or impediment was
experienced. With but a single exception, every individual
concerned in it was a Freemason, bound by the secret tie;
and the exception was immediately initiated by a
unanimous vote of the Lodge at Lewiston. It afterwards
appeared in evidence that the Lodge at Buffalo had been
called to deliberate upon it, and moreover that the Lodges
at Le Roy, Bethany, Covington and Lockport, as well as
the Chapter at Rochester, had all of them consulted upon
it. There is no other way to account for the preparation
made along the line of the road traveled by the party.
Nowhere was there delay, or hesitation, or explanation, or
discussion. Every thing went on like clock-work, up to the
hour of the evening of the fourteenth of September, when
the prisoner was taken from the carriage at Fort Niagara,
an unoccupied military post near the mouth of the river of
that name, and lodged in the place originally designed for
a powder magazine, when the position had been occupied
by the troops of the United States. The jurisdiction was
now changed from that of the State to that of the federal
government, but the power that held the man was one and
the same. It was Masonry that opened the gates of the
Fort, by controlling the will of the brother who for the time
had it intrusted to his charge.
On this same evening, there was appointed to take
place at the neighboring town of Lewiston, an installation
of a Chapter, misnamed Benevolent, at which the arch
conspirator was to be made Grand High Priest, and an
opportunity was given to all associates from distant points
to come together and to consult upon what it was best to
do next. Here it is, that in spite of the untiring labors of an
investigating committee organized for the purpose, and in
spite of the entire application of the force of the courts of
the country to the eliciting of the truth, the details of the
affair which thus far have been clearly exposed, begin to
grow dim and shadowy. There is reason to believe that
Morgan was carried across the river in a boat at night,
and placed at the disposal of a Canadian lodge at Newark.
The scruples of one or two brethren who hesitated at the
idea of murder, brought on a refusal to assume the trust.
Consultations on this side of the river followed, and
messengers were dispatched to Rochester for advice.
The final determination was, that Morgan must die, to pay
the
penalty of his violated oath. After this, every thing
attending the catastrophe becomes more and more
uncertain. It is affirmed that eight Masons met and threw
into a hat as many lots, three of which only were marked.
Each man then drew a lot, and where it was not a marked
lot, he went immediately home. There is reason to believe
that the three who remained, were the persons who, on
the night of the 19th or 20th of September, took their
victim from the fort, where he had been kept for sacrifice,
carried him in a boat to the middle of the stream, and
having fastened upon him a heavy weight, precipitated him
into eternity.
Such is a condensed statement of this eventful history
-a history which in many of its details will vie in interest
with any narrative of romance. That such a tragedy could
be executed in the United States, a country fortified as the
people fondly imagine by all known securities to life and
liberty; that it could be carried on through a period of ten
days, in a populous Christian community, without thought
of rescue; that it could enlist as actors so large a number
of citizens of good repute in so many different quarters as
were members of the various lodges privy to the
transaction; and finally, that it could secure the
co-operation of the chosen ministers of justice, and even
of some set apart to the service of the Deity, one of
whom could be found bold enough to invoke the blessing
of God upon the contemplated violation of his most solemn
law; that it could involve all these possibilities, was a thing
well calculated to rouse the human mind to a high pitch of
wonder, until the problem found its natural solution in the
disclosure of the Masonic oath. Construed as this
Obligation was construed by the members of the order in
Western New York, all cause of surprise at the
consequences instantly disappears.
Yet strange as is this narrative, fearful as is the
disclosure
of the fanaticism of secret association which could impel
men-holding a respectable rank in society, walking by
the light of modern civilization, acknowledging the
influence of Christianity over their daily life-to the
commission of outrages so flagrant as were the abduction
and murder of William Morgan, it would not of itself have
sufficed to justify attaching even a suspicion to the entire
institution of Freemasonry in the United States, or even to
any considerable branch of it existing without the limits of
the region where the events happened. Whatever might
have been the private sentiments entertained of the danger
attending the assumption of secret obligations, the exact
nature of these was at the outset too little understood to
sanction the inference that they allowed criminal
enterprises. Extensive as the conspiracy against Morgan
and Miller appeared to be, yet similar things have been
done under the influence of passion and in open and
acknowledged violation of moral and religious duty, in all
stages of the world's progress. It was hence no
unreasonable thing to conclude that it might have
happened once more. Censure was to be directed, if any
where, against those over-zealous members of the order
who could be believed to have overstepped the bounds of
reason and of justice, acknowledged as well by the law of
the fraternity as by the higher one of God and of civil
society. It was reserved for events coming somewhat
later, to develop the fact, that in the instance of Morgan,
Freemasons, so far from thinking themselves to be
violating, were literally following the injunction which they
felt to be laid upon them in their oaths. The law of
Masonry was to them more than that of civil government
or of the Deity, even when it was known directly to
conflict with them. It was the truth of this proposition,
slowly and gradually wrested from the lips of adhering
members, that turned the current of popular indignation
from the guilty individuals
towards the Institution itself. It was the proof furnished
of this truth, which created the moral power of the political party
that soon sprung up in New York and Pennsylvania and that
under the banner of opposition to all secret societies rallied its
tens of thousands in a fierce and vindictive, and at times, even a
fanatical persecution of every thing that bore even the
semblance of dreaded Freemasonry.
It would be tedious to recapitulate all the particulars of the
evidence which ultimately fastened upon the public mind a
conviction of the reality of the proposition above named. It may
be sufficient to state the manner in which the powerful efforts
made to discover the guilty parties and to bring them to justice,
were perpetually baffled. The first and most natural impulse
operating upon those who united in an endeavor to maintain
the law, was to look to the Chief Executive Magistrate of New
York for energetic support. The person who held that office at
the moment, was no less distinguished man than the celebrated
De Witt Clinton. But he was at the same time a Freemason, and
what is more, he was High Priest of the General Grand Chapter
of the United States, in other words, the highest officer of the
Order. The fact was known throughout the region of Western
New York, and was unquestionably relied upon as a protection
from danger by those who were concerned in the deeds of
violence. Indeed it afterwards came out, that what purported to
be a letter from him was freely used for the purpose of
instigating the members of the Order to prosecute their
schemes. There are many living who yet suspect that the letter
was actually genuine; but that suspicion is believed to be
unjust to the memory of the late Governor Clinton, who did
what he could, as soon as he became apprised of the character
of the offense, to bring the guilty to punishment. The fact
however furnishes an instructive illustration of the great
danger attending the existence of secret ties, which may even
be suspected to conflict in the mind of a high officer of state
with the performance of his public duties. The moral influence
of his situation was thus wholly lost upon men who believed,
that whatever he might say in public to the contrary, his
sympathies were all with them; who supposed that his private
obligations to conceal and never to reveal the secrets of his
brother Masons, as well as to aid and assist in extricating them
from any difficulty in which they might become involved, might
be depended upon, at least so far as to shelter them from the
legal consequences of their own misdeeds, within the sphere of
the Executive influence. Was this an inference wholly
unwarranted from the language of the Masonic oath? Let any
impartial individual examine its nature and answer affirmatively
if he can. Doubtless De Witt Clinton was wholly innocent of
guilt, but his situation was not the less clearly one of conflict
between his Masonic and his social and religious duty.
Although he may have escaped contamination, another and
weaker individual might have made himself accessory to the
crime. At all events, it must be conceded that the situation in
which he was thrown, was one not unnaturally the
consequence of his assumption of conflicting obligations, and
one in which no high civil officer under any government should
ever be suffered to stand.
The second manifestation of the force of the Masonic
obligation was made visible in the courts of justice, which are
established to try persons charged with the commission of
offenses against human life or liberty. The sheriffs, whose duty
it was under the laws of New York to select and summon the
grand juries, were, in all the counties in which the deeds of
violence against Morgan had been committed, Freemasons.
Several of them had themselves been parties to the crime. They
did not hesitate to make
use of their power as officers of justice to screen the criminals
from conviction. The jurors whom they summoned were most of
them Masons, some of them participators in the offenses into
which it became their civil duty to inquire. The consequence
may readily be imagined. Money, time and talent were expended
in profusion, for the purpose of bringing the perpetrators of the
crime complained of to condign punishment; but almost in vain.
Some of the suspected persons were found and put upon their
trial; but the secret obligation prevailed in the jury box, and
uniformly rescued them in the moment of their utmost need.
Others vanished from the scene and eluded pursuit even to the
farthest limits of the United States. One man, and probably the
most guilty, was tracked to the bosom of a Lodge in the city of
New York, by the members of which he was secreted, put on
board of a vessel below the harbor, and dispatched to a foreign
land. Five years were consumed in unavailing efforts to obtain a
legal conviction of the various offenders. Nothing that
deserves the name of a true verdict followed. Such a history of
deeply studied, skillfully combined and successfully executed
movements to set at naught the lawfully constituted tribunals
of justice, has at no other time been made evident in America.
Important witnesses were carried off at the moment when their
evidence was indispensable, and placed beyond the jurisdiction
of the State; or if present and interrogated, they stood
doggedly mute; or else they placed themselves entirely under
the guidance of legal advisers employed to protect them from
criminating themselves. It was made plain to the most ordinary
capacity that the Order was assuming the responsibility of the
crime of some of its members. It was exerting itself to throw over
the guilty, the protecting garb of the innocent. The obligation
of Freemasonry was then the law paramount, and the social
system sunk into nothing by the
side of it. Even distant Lodges responded favorably to the call
made upon them to aid in the defense of the endangered
brethren, by actually voting and forwarding sums of money for
their relief. And the brief and insignificant period of
imprisonment which two or three of them paid as a penalty for
comparatively light offenses, was spent by them in receiving the
sympathy of a martyr's fate. The end of all was, that for the first
time Masonry enjoyed its complete triumph. The men who
actually participated in the murder have gradually dropped off,
until it may be said that not a single individual remains within
the United States. But they lived and died secure from every
danger of legal punishment. The oath of Masonry came in
conflict with the duty to society and to God, and succeeded in
setting it aside.
The ends of justice were defeated; but the labors of those
indefatigable persons who had striven day and night to
promote them, were not altogether thrown away. The materials
were collected to show to the world the chain of connection
woven by the Masonic obligations between the subordinate
Lodges in Western New York and the higher authorities of the
East. The popular attention was turned to every Masonic
movement-not solely in the State in which had been the cause
of offense, but in all of the neighboring States. Extraordinary
powers to pursue the investigations to its source were
demanded of various legislative bodies, and the treatment of
these applications elicited the fact that Freemasonry exercised a
power almost as great in the deliberative assemblies as in the
executive council chamber, or in the jury box of the courts. The
opposition to Masonry became gradually more and more
intensely political, and in the process took up an aspect of
extreme and illiberal vindictiveness towards all who ventured to
stay its progress. The other parties were compelled to bend to
the force of the blast that was sweeping over them.
The revelations made by Morgan, in the book which cost
him his life, though at first called an imposture, proved on
examination to be strictly true. But they embraced only the
first three degrees of Masonry. Other persons, disgusted
and indignant at the proceedings of their adhering brethren
after the fate of Morgan was known to them, voluntarily
came forward and supplied all the remaining forms used in
America, and many of those which had been adopted in
Europe. A considerable number openly and voluntarily
seceded from the Order. A meeting of such persons, held
at Le Roy, ended, as has been already stated, in a formal
renunciation by them of all their obligations. Here and
there in other States the example was followed by a few.
There were more who silently seceded, having made up
their minds never again to visit a Lodge. Yet in spite of all
this, in spite of the earnest exhortation addressed to his
brethren by Colonel W. L Stone, in a book written by him
to prevail upon them to dissolve the Lodges and Chapters
and to abandon Masonry altogether, it must be admitted
that the great majority of the Society remained equally
unmoved by denunciation, flattery or prayer. Some had the
assurance publicly to deny the truth of all the allegations
made against Masonry, and further to affirm that they had
never taken obligations as Masons not compatible with
their duties as citizens. Others,-and the most important
of these was Edward Livingston, then uniting with the
possession of one of the chief posts of responsibility in the
general government, that of the highest dignity in the
Masonic hierarchy, made vacant by the death of
Clinton,-deemed it the part of wisdom to remain sullenly
dumb, abstaining from all controversy, and suffering the
excitement against Masons to blow over and spend itself
in vain. In this spirit Mr. Livingston proceeded to deliver
what he called an Address to the General Grand Royal
Arch Chapter
of the United States, upon the occasion of his installation
as General Grand High Priest. He recommended that all
attacks made upon the Order to which they belonged
should be met with dignified silence; as if dignified silence
were not equally a resource for the most atrocious criminal
and for the most unspotted citizen. The charge as against
Mr. Livingston was surely worthy of some little
consideration when connected with the evidence already
laid before the public to sustain it. It was neither more nor
less than this, that he, being Secretary of State of the
United States, one of the confidential advisers of the
President, and moreover the reputed author of a strong
proclamation issued by the chief magistrate against those
in danger of falling into treasonable practices by their
connection with South Carolina nullification, was yet
himself under secret obligations which required him to
conceal the evidence of all the offenses denounced in that
state paper, provided only that it should be communicated
to him under the seal of Masonic confidence. Not to
answer such a charge as this, implied rather a doubt of the
ability to do so satisfactorily, than a perfect reliance upon
the consciousness of innocence. If Masonry was free
from all the objections raised by its opponents, what more
effective step to establish its innocence than a simple
statement of the truth? If it was a valuable institution,
worthy of preservation, surely the effort to sustain it
against injurious calumnies was worth making. Could it be
supposed that the unanimous testimony to the alleged
character of the oaths, brought by hundreds of respectable
persons who had taken them but who now renounced
them, was to be discredited by the merely negative action
of adhering Masons, however individually respectable, or
however exalted in position ? Considering the precise
nature of the difficulties by which they were surrounded, it
is clear that no defense could have been assumed by
them, in its
character more nugatory. It manifested only the consciousness
of wrong, combined with a dogged resolution never to admit
nor to retract it.
The address of Mr. Livingston, such as it was, proved the
inciting cause of the publication of a series of letters directed by
Mr. Adams to him, which will be found to make a part of the
present volume. In these papers the argument against the
Masonic obligation, as the root of all the crimes committed in
the case of Morgan, was pushed with a force which carried
conviction to the minds of many persons at the time, and which
seems even at this day scarcely to admit of reply. Mr.
Livingston himself made no attempt at rejoinder. This was the
part of discretion, for had he done so, there is little reason to
doubt that Mr. Adams would have fulfilled his promise when he
said to him, " Had you ventured to assume the defense of the
Masonic oaths, obligations and penalties-had you presumed to
commit your name to the assertion that they can by any
possibility be reconciled to the laws of morality, of Christianity,
or of the land, I should have deemed it my duty to reply, and to
have completed the demonstration before God and man that
they cannot."
The opportunity for a complete and overwhelming victory
was thus denied to Mr. Adams by the tacit secession from the
field of Mr. Livingston. Yet the effect of his letters was by no
means trifling in many States. The moral power of the
opponents of Masonry visibly increased, and with it the
earnestness of their political hostility to those who practiced its
rites. It showed itself in the general election of State officers,
both in New York and Pennsylvania, and in the nomination of
Mr. William Wirt as a candidate at the ensuing election for the
presidency of the United States, in opposition to General
Jackson, the incumbent, who was found to be a Freemason.
Neither was Mr. Adams himself suffered to remain
disconnected
with the movement of political opinions upon the subject.
A large convention of citizens of Massachusetts
unanimously called upon him to suffer his name to be used in
the canvass for the office of Governor, which took place in that
State in the year 1833. Reluctant as he was to enter into the
arena, and to sacrifice his preference for the position in the
House of Representatives of the United States, which he then
occupied, the nature of the appeal made to him overcame all his
scruples. The election took place. It terminated in the failure to
make choice of any person by the requisite constitutional
majority. The power of the party which had for a long time held
the control of the government of Massachusetts, and with
which Mr. Adams had up to this period co-operated, was
broken under the effort to sustain Masonry against him. Had he
determined to persevere, it is quite uncertain what might have
been the consequences to the position of the Commonwealth.
But it was not his wish to press the matter beyond the point
which a sense of duty dictated. No sooner was it ascertained by
the return of the votes that a continuance of the contest in the
Legislature of the State was to be the result of his adherence to
his position, than he determined to withdraw his name from the
canvass. At the same time that be took this step, he caused to
be published an address to the people of the Commonwealth,
explaining his views of the connection between Masonry and
the politics of the country, and justifying himself from the
charges with which he had been most vehemently assailed.
With this paper, the last in the present volume, and the close of
which is in a strain of eloquence which alone should secure its
preservation, Mr. Adams appears to have terminated his public
labors in opposition to secret obligations and to
Freemasonry. But their effects were soon afterwards made
visible, by the adoption of laws prohibiting the administration
of extrajudicial oaths, by the voluntary dissolution
of many of the subordinate lodges, and by the tacit
secession of a large number of individual members. Indeed, such
was the silence preserved for a long time respecting the
Institution, that its existence in Massachusetts might almost
have been questioned. The purposes for which the organized
opposition had been made, seemed so completely answered,
that the motives for maintaining it were no longer strongly felt.
The current of public affairs soon afterwards took a new turn.
Anti-masonry gradually disappeared as an agent to effect
changes in the political aspect of the States, and the individuals
who had associated themselves in the movement, again joined
the ordinary party organizations with which they most nearly
sympathized.
Thus it happened that Freemasonry, by cowering under the
storm, saved itself from the utter prostration which would have
followed perseverance in the policy of resistance. Years have
passed away, and it again gives symptoms of revivification. A
new and kindred Institution has suddenly manifested an
extraordinary degree of development under the guise of
benevolence. What the precise nature of the obligations may
be, which bind great numbers of citizens, mostly young, active
men, into this connection, has not yet been fully brought to
light. The: objects are stated to be charity and the rendering of
mutual aid. If these are all the purposes of the association, it
cannot be otherwise than meritorious. Yet it can scarcely be
maintained that any unlimited pledge of secrecy is essential to
the successful execution of them. In a republican forte of
government, the only real and proper fraternity is the system of
civil society. To that, every member is bound to bow. The
obligations which it imposes need no veil of secrecy to cover
them. Illustrated by the law of love enjoined by the superior
authority of the divine command, it marks out with
distinctness to each individual the paramount duty of charity, of
benevolence and of mutual aid and support. There can be,
therefore, no good excuse for resorting to smaller and narrower
spheres for the invidious exercise of such virtues among those
who ought to stand upon a perfectly even footing, when the
broad and general one better answers to every useful and
honorable exertion. The disadvantages attending the formation
of all associations connected by secret obligations, no matter
how harmless may be their appearance, are, first, that if they
have any effect at all, it is injurious to those who do not choose
to join them; secondly, that they substitute a private pledge of a
doubtful nature to a few who have no moral right to the
preference, for a clear and well defined and entirely proper one
given to the many. In all similar cases, the tendency to introduce
objects of exertion in the smaller circle which conflict with those
of society at large, and which may sometimes even threaten its
safety, is obvious. It is the temptation presented to conspiracy
which has made secret associations the objects of denunciation
by the monarchs of Europe. The same thing should at all times
render them marks for jealousy and distrust in republican States.
They threaten the harmony of the community wherever they are. The
pledge of political preference which was rapidly becoming
engrafted upon the Masonic
Institution in the United States at the time of the Morgan
excitement, and which had already produced visible results in
many of the smaller towns of New York and New England, by
unaccountably exalting some individuals to
the depression of neighbors equally worthy, furnishes a good
illustration of the mode in which social discord of the bitterest
description may be made in the end to spring up. In view of the
possibility of this hazard, it would seem
as if few could be found, when once made sensible of the
difficulty, willing deliberately to give occasion to it.
It is confidently believed that in the materials of the
present volume will be found a solemn warning, conveyed
by a voice in the feebleness of age still powerful over the
sympathy of American citizens, against the formation of
secret obligations. As time rolls on in its swift career, and
as the generation which nursed the infant Republic into
strength disappears from the scene, the duty becomes
stronger on those who succeed, to heed the counsels
which its wisest and most experienced men leave behind
them. The arguments of Mr. Adams, although directed
against the particular Order of Freemasonry, will yet be
found susceptible of broader application, and extending
themselves over all societies of which the radical error is,
that they shun the light of day. The pride of freemen,-
living under a system of equal laws, with guarantees of the
rights of each individual,-should be to sustain the junction
of innocence with liberty, the union of an open, honest
heart with an efficient and liberal hand. Such a state
cannot co-exist with secret obligations. The person who
lies under an engagement which he must not reveal,
whatever may betide, can indeed be innocent and
energetic, but he will not be perfectly frank nor just to all
men alike. Occasions may arise in which his fidelity to his
private pledges will come into conflict with his duty to
society. Who is then to decide for him what he must do?
On either side is moral difficulty and mental distress. If he
betray his associates, he spots his heart with violated faith.
If he desert his country, he fails in a duty of even higher
obligation. The alternative is too painful to a conscientious
spirit ever knowingly to be hazarded with propriety. That
such an alternative is by no means impossible, who cart
doubt after the cases of Eli Bruce, of De Witt Clinton, and
of Edward Livingston, in the Masonic history of the murder
of Morgan ? Much as he might regret it, what Freemason
was there in 1826, who
did not perceive at a glance that his pledge to his
associates was to conceal the crime and to shelter the
criminal; whilst his duty to the State and to Heaven, to
disclose the guilt and to denounce the author, was written
with a sunbeam on his heart? And how many were
there, who, instead of judging rightly of the relative
importance of the obligations, actually made themselves
accessories after the fact, by supplying the means of
escape from justice to their unworthy brethren? The
damning evidence of this truth must remain in the minds of
men as long as Masonry shall endure. It may indeed be
that other associations will spring up which may be free
from all the grossly objectionable engagements of that
institution. But who shall be secure against the intrusion of
evil when the portal stands invitingly open to its
admission? Who shall be able to protect himself against
the designs of those of his associates to whom he has
given a secret control over his will? These are questions
which every citizen must answer for himself. It is with the
design that he may have at hand the means of acting
understandingly, that the present volume is put forth.
Young persons, who are especially liable to be carried
away by the fascination that always attends mystery, are
hereby furnished with an opportunity to weigh the
arguments of a powerful remonstrant against any secret
steps. May they read, weigh, and deeply ponder the words
of wisdom, and may the effect of them be to preserve
them in the paths of Liberty, of Friendship, and of Faith,*
* Fidem, Libertatem, Amicitiam--the motto abbreviated from that selected by his
father, who found it in Tacitus, in the charge of the Emperor Galba to Piso, on adopting
him. The passage, as it stands in the original, applicable to the temptations by which
great place is always surrounded, is as follows: "Fidem, liberatem, amicitiam, praecipua
humani animi bona, tu quidem eadem constantia retinebis: sed alii per obsequium
imminuent."
early marked out by their adviser as the guides of his own
career, unencumbered by obligations which they fear to
disclose, unembarrassed by promises which they know not
how conscientiously to perform !
LETTERS.
- To a Reviewer of Shepard's Defence of the Masonic Institution.
- To Edward Ingersoll, Esq., Philadelphia
- To the same
- To the same
- To the same
- To William Seward, Esq., Auburn, N.Y.
- To Richard Rush, Esq., York, Penn.
- To Hie Excellency Levi Lincoln, Governor of Massachusetts
- To William L. Stone, Esq., New York
- To the same
- To the same
- To the same
- To the same
- To the same
- To the same
- To the same
- To Hie Excellency Levi Lincoln, Governor of Massachusetts
- To Alexander H. Everett, Esq., Boston
- To Richard Rush, Esq., York, Penn.
- To Benjamin Cowell, Esq., York, Penn.
- To James Morehead, Esq., Mercer, Penn.
- To Edward Livingston, Esq.
- To the same
- To the same
- To the same
- To the same
- To the same
- To the same
