This should have ended the Morgan excitement but it did no such thing. “A lie well stuck to is more convincing than the truth.” So a most infamous deception was practiced upon the people.
Prosecutions were instituted against those who were supposed to have anything to do with the abduction of Morgan. Many trials resulted, but no murder was ever established.
What had become of Morgan? Was he drowned or murdered?
As early as September 26, 1826, the “Intelligencer,” of Harrisburg, as well as other newspapers, cautioned the Masonic fraternity against “a man calling himself Captain Morgan, as he is a swindler and a dangerous man.”
It has been authentically settled that after the night of the so-called abduction, being threatened with numerous suits for debt and other misdemeanors, Morgan left the country of his own free will, going directly to Australia, the passage money being furnished him. Arriving in that far distant clime, he established a newspaper, but died ten years later. A son, who accompanied him, continued the business, and was living just prior to our Civil War.
The Freemasons of New York State, as a body and individually, disclaimed all knowledge of any abduction of “Captain” Morgan.
By 1828 the Anti-Masonic movement had gained such impetus in New York that a candidate for governor was placed on their ticket. Anti-Masonic tickets were named in Massachusetts, Vermont and Ohio.
In 1829 the storm broke out in Pennsylvania, and was first felt in the little town of New Berlin, Union County, where Lafayette Lodge No. 194 was holding a public procession August 18. The speakers for the occasion were Hon. Jesse Merrill, General Henry Frick, Henry C. Eyer, Reverend Just Henry Fries, Reverend John Kessler and Reverend Henry Piggott. Henry W. and George A. Snyder, distinguished sons of former Governor Simon Snyder, were officers of the lodge and had arranged the program.
The meeting was broken up by the hostile action of a mob. It was these same people who sent Ner Middlesworth, that great exponent of Anti-Masonry to the General Assembly; it was also in New Berlin where the first Anti-Masonic newspapers were established.
Joseph Ritner was placed in nomination for the office of Governor by the Anti-Masonic convention, which met in Harrisburg in 1829, and he received 51,000 votes, only 30,000 less than his successful opponent, George Wolf.