Early in the fall of 1799 a new twist was given to the controversy. This developed out of an episode that for the time at least seriously embarrassed the personal integrity of Morse, and enveloped the issue generally in such a cloud of pettiness and disagreeable suspicions that the entire subject of Illuminism assumed an unsavory aspect, with the result that the public was all the more easily persuaded to turn to other and more fruitful topics. Compressed as much as the interests of clarity will allow, the facts were as follows.
The American Mercury of September 26, 1799, published an article asserting that in his efforts to substantiate his charges against the Illuminati, Morse had addressed a letter of inquiry to Professor Ebeling[829] of Hamburg, Germany, to which the latter made response that Robison’s Proofs of a Conspiracy had no standing in Europe; that it was regarded there as a farrago of falsehoods, written by its author to obtain bread rather than in the hope that it would be believed.[830] It was further asserted that Ebeling’s letter to Morse gave Robison an unsavory character; he was said to have lived too fast for his income, to be in trouble with the civil authorities in his native country, and to have been expelled from a Masonic lodge in Edinburgh on account of unworthy conduct.[831] This being the true state of affairs, why, it was urged, ought not “the terrible subject of illumination” to be dismissed forthwith as a wretched mass of absurdities? Let Morse publish the letter that he had received from Ebeling and the public would express itself quickly enough as to the silliness of the Illuminati conspiracy.[832]
Morse’s rejoinder was spirited. He demanded the name of the author of the article in the Mercury and vigorously protested that the Ebeling letter referred to was a fabrication.[833] Denied the comfort of immediate attention and satisfaction,[834] he addressed the editor again and with even greater vehemence, insisting that the editor publicly brand the article referred to as “without foundation and a tissue of the most vile and calumnious falsehoods.” But for the one consideration that the letter which he had actually received from Professor Ebeling was private, he averred that he stood ready to spread it before the public gaze.[835] As a guarantee of its character, however, he stood prepared to furnish the affidavits of Professors David Tappan and Eliphalet Pearson of Harvard, to whom he had submitted the letter of Ebeling for their inspection, and who were ready to depose that it was in no sense like the letter whose contents had been given to the public by the American Mercury.[836]
By the time these noisy verbal hostilities had taken place, the leading newspaper partisans on both sides of the controversy had accepted the responsibility of advising the public regarding the new issue. The Connecticut Courant roundly denounced the unprincipled editor of the American Mercury for having printed such a monstrous fabrication as its account of the Ebeling-Morse letter,[837] and later, on Morse’s behalf, undertook to say that while the communication which Morse had received from Ebeling contained denials of the authenticity of many of the facts alleged in the Proofs of a Conspiracy, at the same time it was destitute of even the most distant suggestion of moral or other delinquencies on the part of Robison.[838] The Columbian Centinel regarded itself in duty bound to spread before its readers the indignant communication that Morse had sent to the editor of the American Mercury, for the reason that it believed Morse had been most shamefully treated in the matter.[839] As for the Massachusetts Mercury, one of its contributors felt moved to observe that the account of the Ebeling-Morse letter which the American Mercury had published was nothing less than a consummate piece of pure villainy, intended to ruin Mr. Robison’s character; certainly no candid American would pay the slightest attention to it until the person who was responsible for the publication came forward and gave the public his name.[840]
On the other side, such rampant Democratic journals as the Bee and the Aurora came ardently to the support of the American Mercury and directed a searching cross-fire against Morse and his friends. Since the days of Salem witchcraft, the former observed, no subject had so much affected the minds of a certain class of people in New England as this pretended Illuminati conspiracy.[841] Because of the way in which preachers, orators, essayists, and newsmongers generally had declaimed upon the subject, a mist had overspread the public mind. Ebeling’s letter to Morse, however, had given a fatal blow to the strife. It was now to be expected that the impressions made upon the minds of numerous over-credulous citizens by an insidious and designing set of men would be fully eradicated.[842] To give full force to these observations, the Bee published the text of the letter which, it averred, Morse had received from Ebeling.[843] This characterized Robison’s Proofs of a Conspiracy as ridiculous and filled with statements many of which were faulty and others totally erroneous. Its author had composed the book in the interests of party and with a special animus against all men who asserted the use of reason in the sphere of theology. The authorities to which Robison appealed were declared to be questionable, and Robison’s own standing as a historian was pronounced to be such that it was impossible to take his work seriously.[844]
The Aurora steered a similar course. Drawing upon the Bee, the text of the alleged Ebeling-Morse letter was printed[845] and the accompanying comment made that this effectually disposed of the Illuminati.[846] It was now fully apparent that Morse had seized upon the idea of a conspiracy against religion and the state in order to further selfish and partisan ends. He and Dr. Dwight, who were at the head of the clerical systems in Massachusetts and Connecticut respectively, were exhausting all the means in their power to exalt Federalism and to obtain a religious establishment which would deliver the consciences and purses of the nation into the hands of their party.[847] The rancor that these two men had recently stirred up against the respectable fraternity of Freemasons was due solely to their bigotry.[848]
Meantime a certain shrewd and none too scrupulous Democratic clergyman in Massachusetts was deriving such satisfaction as he could out of Morse’s discomfiture and bitter resentment. The letter that the Bee and the Aurora published as a letter from Ebeling to Morse was in fact a letter from Ebeling to William Bentley,[849] inveterate hater of Morse.[850]