New England and the Bavarian Illuminati

by Vernon Stauffer

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]