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.