A Tournament Of Shadows: Illuminati

A Tournament Of Shadows:

VII. Illuminati

In July 1898 the Quasi-War began. It was the first war the United States would fight since achieving independence in 1785. It was ironic that her enemy was France, a former ally without whose assistance American independence might never have been achieved. Much had changed in fifteen years. In 1793, France beheaded King Louis XVI and Queen Marie during its bloody revolution. Maximilien Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety rose to power during “The Terror” and executed thousands of political opponents. Robespierre was himself executed a year later, and in 1795 a ruling council of five directors, the Directory, had assumed control of France. Emboldened by revolutionary spirit, France declared war against Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, and the Netherlands. President George Washington (America’s first President) resisted French efforts to draw America into the conflict. France, expecting America to align with her, was furious with Washington’s proclamation of neutrality. In their alliance during the Revolutionary War, the United States agreed to defend French possessions in the Caribbean. In 1793, however, when Britain began to invade and capture those possessions, America refused to defend them because France began the war.[1]

Then there was the Citizen Genêt Affair which involved the Edmond-Charles Genêt, French envoy to America. In 1793 he was sent to the United States to cultivate American support for France’s wars with Britain and Spain. Though he was supposed to report to Philadelphia, he remained in Charleston, South Carolina where he recruited American privateers for the French. (Washington had him recalled to France.) Jean-Antoine-Joseph Fauchet, the Robespierre-appointed French Ambassador to the United States, published a book upon his return to France in 1897 that disabused the French public of any lingering hopes of fraternal Franco-American relations.[2] His successor, Pierre Adet, was viewed with suspicion.[3] A war between America and France seemed imminent. Outraged by perceived diplomatic slights, the French government issued several sharply worded statements complaining of American perfidy. American papers, meanwhile, were increasingly filled with reports about French attacks on American shipping in the West Indies.[4]

In April 1898, one year into his first term, John Adams, America’s second President, delivered a report before Congress about recent negotiations with the French Republic. Like most Americans, they had been anxiously awaiting this report since the departure of the official mission several months earlier. Its outcome would determine whether the young nation would remain at peace or be plunged into the turmoil of European war. The report revealed a web of French diplomatic intrigue (bribery, forced loans, personal insults, national, etc.) that amazed everyone, regardless of political affiliation. Newspapers quickly spread the story, and a national outrage swept over the country.

American public opinion, traditionally supportive of all things French, was dramatically reversed. In the streets of Philadelphia, the shift in public sentiment was swift and palpable. The fashionable tri-color cockade that many wore in their hats was quickly replaced with its black American counterpart. Popular French songs like the “Marseillaise” were scorned in favor of American airs, like “Hail Columbia.”

in public. Private armed bands of “associated youth” patrolled city streets in search of “French disorganizers,” and even street kids pretended to defeat imaginary French soldiers. President Adams, now an overnight hero, was wildly cheered whenever he made a public appearance.[5]

By the summer of 1798, Congress voted to allow the chief executive to sell thirty-thousand stands-of-arms to state militias and established the United States Marine Corps. It also authorized the President to bring the regular army to its full strength for the Quasi-War.[6] In July President Adams offered his predecessor, Washington, a commission as chief officer of the United States Army to help plan for possible conflict with France. Washington reluctantly agreed. Having already led America to victory in the American Revolution, helped frame the new government, and served two terms as President (from 1789 to 1797,) he was more than ready to enjoy his retirement in Mount Vernon. When his old comrade in arms, Jonathan Trumbull (the governor of Connecticut) asked him to consider running for a third term, Washington refused. Not only had he promised not to seek unfair power as a government official, but he was also tired of the country’s heated political climate. “The line between Parties was not so clearly drawn,” as when he was in office. As for the French, there was not a  well-informed, and unprejudiced man, who could mistake the aims (and the tendency of the ambitious conduct) of the post-revolutionary French Government. The rhetoric of the political parties in America, however, made the discourse unpalatable. “With art, and sophistry, which regard neither truth nor decency,” Washington thought, these politicians attacked “every character, without respect to persons—public or private—who happen to differ from themselves in politics.”[7] Indeed, Washington was consistent in his belief that America’s political parties had soured discourse and created a hostile environment. He predicted as much in his farewell address in 1796. “[Political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterward the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”[8]

There was no guarantee this American project would succeed. By 1790 there was a marked distinction between the North and South, between New England and the Middle States; between the Border and Southern Slave States.[9] Historically, the thirteen original colonies of America were hardly united. More often than not, they were competing religious factions.[10] The conflicts that arose in early America were an extension of the religious conflicts that began in Europe. Broadly speaking, there were the Puritan colonies of New England, and the Cavaliers, Jacobites, and Huguenots of the South who despised the Puritans who settled the North.[11] A generation before the American Revolution, New England had undergone a “Great Awakenings,” a mechanism by which Puritan society prepared for a new form of social order.[12] The isolated Puritans, bound together through the hardships of frontier survival, maintained a strong (if draconian) group solidarity. Over time, their social ecosystem, informed by their Calvinist work ethic, had encouraged greater instrumental activity. As a result, a thriving commercial economy developed which, ironically, put an end to their isolation and rendered their theocratic government inapplicable. Just like the austere Calvinists in England whose anxiety over their state of “grace” created the conditions for the Industrial Revolution, the theology of New England Puritans had unintended temporal consequences. The more diligently the Puritans worked their trades, the more successful they became, which, consequently, produced the very elements that were the “decay of religion and a corruption of morals.” The Great Awakening was a movement that looked to the past for inspiration for a new moral social order, a “sectarian and denominational pattern more commensurate with democratic pluralism.”[13]

(Left) Jonathan Edwards. (Right) Edwards’s Home At Stockbridge.[14]

The Second Great Awakening began around 1790, around the time that the Federalist Party sought to “de-revolutionize the Revolution,” and find alternative formative events in the colonial past. This was paralleled in the works of New England thought leaders who re-interpreted their community’s cultural influence in American history. A group of divines, the “New Divinity,” inspired by the American theologian, Jonathan Edwards, played a key role in this effort. Men like Lyman Beecher pushed for a “filiopietistic interpretation” of New England that connected the Puritan ideals of Plymouth Colony with American religious history.

The social organism, informed by theological debates, developed a journalistic tradition that helped to give direction to people suffering from the social strains of a population veering into new political, economic, and geographical areas. The press (religious and popular) “swiftly became a sword of democracy,” and decentralized religious authority, effectively undermining reverence for tradition (education, station, etc.) which previous generations displayed. It also elevated populist leaders to positions once only held by (authorized) learned scholars.[15]A combination of “Yankee cultural predisposition and new economic imperatives” brought more people to Western New York at the tail-end of the Second Great Awakening. It was said that “Western New York contained a people extraordinarily given to unusual religious beliefs, peculiarly devoted to crusades aimed at perfection of mankind and the attainment of millennial happiness.” It was because of this “hell’s-fire revivalism” that the area was known as the “Burned-Over District.”[16] It was here where “charismatic Christian” denominations like the Shakers and Swedenborgians thrived. During this period John Chapman, a Swedenborgian missionary, a figure who would someday enter the pantheon of American folk-heroes, first makes his appearance. A Massachusetts native, Chapman claimed to have frequent conversations with angels and spirits—two of the latter (feminine spirits,) revealed to him that they were to be his wives in a future state if he abstained from matrimonial alliance on earth. Part of his missionary work included the transport of apple seeds to create orchards on furthest verges of colonial settlements. Every log cabin from the Ohio River to the Northern lakes, and westward into the prairies came to know him as “Johnny Appleseed.”[17]

“Johnny Appleseed.”[18]

In the Spring of 1798, a new horror emerged for the New England Clergy. On the morning of May 9, 1798, in the pulpit of the New North Church the Reverend Jedediah Morse made a sensational pronouncement. It was in regard to the “awful events” the European Illuminati had precipitated on a distracted world. Morse then solemnly affirmed that this secret European association had extended its operations to America and was actively engaged among the people of the United States with designs on overthrowing their civil and religious institutions.[19] By October of that year, it was a topic of focus for George Washington, especially regarding the Illuminati’s Masonic controversy.

Freemasonry had a presence in America since its (modern) inception. The city of Boston, receiving its charter from the Grand Lodge of England in 1733, made it the third oldest Grand Lodge in the world (and the oldest in the Western Hemisphere.) Founding Fathers and native sons of Massachusetts, like Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, and Sam Adams were all members of the Fraternity—Paul Revere holding the rank of Grandmaster.^[20] (In later years, the Masonic Temple in Boston would preserve a lock of George Washington’s hair in a Golden Urn that Paul Revere himself crafted.)^[21]

(Left) Washington In Masonic Regalia.[22]

(Right) Chair Occupied By Washington When He Was The Worshipful Master.[23]

Two Lodges could rightfully claim the honor of having initiated George Washington into Freemasonry. The first was an Army Lodge, No. 227, which was attached to the Forty-Sixth Regiment of English Infantry sent to America in 1754. The other Lodge was the one in  Fredericksburg, Virginia, where it was said that Washington received the first three degrees. In 1777 a Convention of Masonic Lodges was held in Virginia, and a resolution was passed favoring the election of Washington as Grand Master, but Washington declined the office. While Washington was never a Grand Master, in 1788 he was Worshipful Master of Lodge No. 39, in Alexandria, Virginia.[24] Just about the time (October 1798) that Tsar Pavel Petrovich was made their Grand Master of the Knights of Malta, Washington received a letter from the Reverend G.W. Snyder.[25]

You will, I hope, not think it a presumption in a stranger, whose name, perhaps never reached your ears, to address himself to you, the Commanding General of a great Nation. I am a German, born and liberally educated in the City of Heidelberg in the Palatinate of the Rhine. I came to this country in 1776 and felt soon after my arrival a close attachment to the Liberty for which these confederated States then struggled. The same attachment still remains, not glowing, but burning in my breast. At the same time that I am exulting in the measures adopted by our Government, I feel myself elevated in the idea of my adopted Country. I am attached both from the bent of education and mature enquiry and search to the simple doctrines of Christianity, which I have the honor to teach in public; and I do heartily despise all the cavils of infidelity. Our present time, pregnant with the most shocking evils and calamities, threatens ruin to our Liberty and Government. Secret, the most secret plans are in agitation: plans, calculated to ensnare the unwary, to attract the gay and irreligious, and to entice even the well-disposed to combine in the general machine for overturning all Government and all Religion.

It was some time since that a book fell into my hands entitled Proofs Of A Conspiracy by John Robison, which gives a full Account of a Society of Freemasons, that distinguishes itself by the name of “Illuminati,” whose plan is to overturn all Government and all Religion, even natural; and who endeavor to eradicate every idea of a Supreme Being and distinguish man from beast by his shape only. A thought suggested itself to me, that some of the Lodges in the United States might have caught the infection and might cooperate with the Illuminati or the Jacobine Club in France. Fauchet is mentioned by Robison as a zealous Member: and who can doubt of Genêt and Adet? Have not these their confidants in this Country? They use the same expressions and are generally men of no religion. Upon serious reflection I was led to think that it might be within your power to prevent the horrid plan from corrupting the Brethren of the English Lodge over which you preside […] I send you the Proof Of A Conspiracy which, I doubt not, will give you satisfaction and afford you matter for a train of ideas, that may operate to our national felicity[…]^[26]

Washington wrote to Snyder, thanking him for the letter, and stating that he did not believe that any of  the Lodges in America were “contaminated with the principles ascribed to the Society of the Illuminati.”^[27] Snyder wrote a follow-up, suggesting the “Democratic-Societies,” as they were called in America, were one-in-the-same as that which went by variously as “Illuminati” in the German Union, “Reading Societies,” and the Jacobine Club in France. “Those Men who are so much attached to French Principles, have all the Marks of Jacobinism. They first cast off all religious Restraints, and then became fit for perpetrating every act of inhumanity,” Snyder stated. “They are laboriously employed to excite discord—to extinguish public virtue—to break down the barriers of religion—to establish atheism and work the downfall of our civil—and religious liberty. Should their perfidious schemes succeed […] what would become of our Columbia?” After an exchange of a few more letters, their communication came to an end with a letter from Washington on October 24, 1798.^[28]

It was not my intention to doubt that the Doctrines of the Illuminati, and principles of Jacobinism had not spread in the United States. On the contrary, no one is more fully satisfied of this fact than I am. The idea I meant to convey, was, that I did not believe that the Lodges of Freemasons in this Country had, as Societies, endeavored to propagate the diabolical tenets of the first, or the pernicious principles of the latter (if they are susceptible of separation.) That individuals of them may have done it, and that the founder, or instrument employed to found, the Democratic Societies in the United States, may have had these objects—and actually had a separation of the People from their Government in view, is too evident to be questioned.^[29]

A tactic which the Illuminati employed, “a favorite one of the Secret Societies,” was calling a man “what they find it convenient to suppose him, and then, with the justice so worthy of their history, proceed to treat him according to their own description of his character.”^[30] One might say they cast spells—or rather, they knew how to render a party “spell-bound.” From ancient times words held magical valence, to cast a “spell” meant just that, to spell out a word.[31] In this sense, by controlling what a word meant, the definition, one could manipulate and bind the passive party to their will. Even the name itself, Illuminati, was something of a “spell.” The first use of the word was a distinctively Christian one, meaning enlightened, and applied to the faithful who, having passed through several stages of probation and candidacy, were admitted to receive baptism, sacramentum illuminationis, the sacrament of illumination. The baptized were therefore called the illuminati. The term came to be appropriated with vainglorious assumptions by various “cabals” (from Kabbalah) of philosophers, savants, mystics, theosophers, heretics, and sectaries in the time of Washington.[32] The group Snyder was referring to, however, was the Illuminatenorden (henceforth Illuminati,) which was instituted in 1776 by Adam Weishaupt, Professor of National and Canon Law at the University of Ingolstadt in Bavaria. Weishaupt had early in life been a protégé of the Society of Jesus, or the Jesuits, from the rules of which derived much of the economy and administration for his order. At the same time, the Illuminati practically and secretly positioned entirely antagonistic to the objects contemplated by Saint Ignatius of Loyola when founded the Jesuits (with six others) in 1540 C.E.[33]

Weishaupt believed that Freemasonry was insufficient, partly because it failed in unity, and partly because it did not “bend sufficiently under the yoke of passive obedience.” The aim of Weishaupt, therefore, was to recruit candidates in Germany and France (using the attraction of the mystery, and subtle force of association,) and bring them into a state of submission to the single will of “unknown and invisible chiefs.” His aims, according to eyewitness testimony, were revolutionary in the ultimate sense of the word,  “subversive of all existing human relations, and of all domestic, social, political, religious, and ecclesiastical organizations,” and they were to culminate in the perfection of both the individual man, and the human race, and the introduction of an era of communistic cosmopolitanism.

Liberty and equality, it was held, are the natural and primitive rights of man, which he inherits from the fact of his birth. The law of property has destroyed this equality. As to Liberty, she has perished by the institution of political societies or of governments. It is, therefore, necessary, in order to recover for humanity its primitive and inalienable rights, to abolish: (1) The religious law, which is the only support or sanction of Governments; (2) The Governments themselves, with their laws and civil administration; and (3) Property, on the principle that nothing is personal, and that all is for the benefit and the enjoyment of all. It is to the diffusion of such principles which are, possibly without entire justice, and certainly without entire charity, referred to the system of Weishaupt, that some French writers have traced the beginnings of the great Revolution, the agitation of which is far from having yet disappeared from the unquiet surface and the unfathomed depths of French society.[34]

So, in addition to occupying themselves with mysticism, the Illuminati had a political aim. Their object was to “overthrow the monarchical despotism then prevailing almost throughout Europe.” Count Cagliostro who, it will be remembered, visited Russia during the reign of Catherine the Great, was assigned a leading part in the program of the Illuminati it was said.[35] The biography of this Italian magician is shrouded in mystery. Some said he was born in Sicily, in the city of Palermo, to the shopkeeper Pietro Balsamo and his wife Felicia.[36] A more romantic account claimed that he was the offspring of Emanuel de Rohan, sixty-eighth Grand Master of the Knights of Malta, and a lady of Turkish extraction “who was captured by a Maltese galley.” Most agreed, however, that he was born in 1743. It was claimed that he passed his youth at Medina, in Arabia, where he lived in the palace of the Mufti Jalahayim, where he was instructed in the alchemical arts, and “the hidden Eastern mysteries of Theurgic Magic” by his tutor, Althotas the Greek.

When he was twelve years old, Althotas took Cagliostro from Medina to Mecca, and from the latter, he set out on his travels, “visiting various African, Asiatic, and Egyptian sanctuaries,” and was “initiated into the doctrines of the Eastern Illuminati and other philosophi­cal fraternities, spread all over Oriental countries.” In 1766 Cagliostro went to Malta with Althotas where he adopted European dress for the first time. He lived in the palace of the Grand­ Master Pinto, with whom he and his tutor “spent much time in chemical and alchemical experiments.” After the death of Althotas, he proceeded to Naples and Rome. From Rome he went to Schleswig, Germany, to meet the celebrated Count St. Germain. “His visit to the Count St. Germain was the great turning point of his life,” it was said. “He met at that time Swedenborg, Fairfax, Lavater, and other leaders of the Illuminati,” and was instructed by them to “assist in operating against the oppressive political tyrannies in Europe.” It was agreed by the secret leaders of the Illuminati that “the first blows should be struck in America […] and in France, where the mass of the people were in a state of semi-serfdom, ground down under the most fearful tyranny.” Cagliostro then traveled through Germany, England, Russia, Courland, Poland, Spain, and France, establishing “Lodges of Egyptian Masonry.” He was arrested by Papal authorities for attempting to establish a Masonic Lodge in Rome. Initially sentenced to death, his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. He died in the cells of Forte di San Leo in 1795. His influence reverberated in occult Europe with the introduction of the Egyptian Rite, the scaffolding of which supported a product of Napoleon’s savants of the Egyptian Campaign.[37]

Cagliostro at a Masonic meeting in London in 1786.

Back in Egypt, the French fleet which had remained in Aboukir Bay after landing the army, was attacked by Admiral Nelson on August 1. Napoleon had not fully realized the power of the English on the sea before this battle and knew nothing of Nelson’s genius. The destruction of his fleet, and the realization that he and his army were now prisoners in the Orient, had opened his eyes to France’s greatest weakness. Napoleon spent the winter reorganizing the government of Egypt and in scientific work. Over one hundred savants had been added to the Army of Egypt, including some of the most eminent scientific men of the day (Monge, Geoffroy-St. Flilaire, Berthollet, Fourier, and Denon.) From the moment of their arrival, every opportunity was given to them to carry on their work, and to support this endeavor, Napoleon founded the Institut d’Égypte, in which membership was granted as a reward for services. These savants went out in every direction, pushing their investigations up the Nile as far as Philae. They found evidence of an ancient canal in the Suez and traced its bed to the Nile; they unearthed ancient monuments, made collections of the flora and fauna, and examined, in detail, the arts and industries of the people. The most important discovery of these savants was the dark slab of stone, the “Rosetta Stone,” on which were engraved characters in Greek, Hieroglyphic, and an unfamiliar third language. It was correctly guessed that the three inscriptions were versions of the same text, but it was, as yet, indecipherable.^[38] The information gathered by the French would produce a great impetus to the study of Egyptology, and their investigations on the old Suez Canal would excite the possibility of reviving it as a shortcut to India. The work of the savants was interrupted by news that the Ottoman Sublime Porte (Central Government) declared war against France and that two Turkish armies were on their way to Egypt. In March 1799 Napoleon set out off to Syria to meet the first. This expedition was a failure, ending in retreat. As Napoleon entered Egypt from Syra, he learned that the second Turkish army was near the Bay of Aboukir. He turned against it completely defeated. In the exchange of prisoners made after the battle, a bundle of French papers came to his hands. It was the first news he heard from France in over ten months. Italy was lost. Austria and Russia were threatening invasion. The French Directory was discredited and tottering. Napoleon decided to leave Egypt at once. With four small vessels, Napoleon sailed for France in August 1799. In October he was in Paris. His journey from the coast to the capital was a triumphal march. “You alone can save the country! It is perishing without you! Take the reins of government!” Indeed, the government was waiting to be overthrown. “A brain and a sword” were all that was required to carry out a coup d’etat.[39] On November 9, 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte assumed dictatorial control of France.[40]

As for the Egyptian Rite and Napoleon. Many of Napoleon’s savants established the short-lived Ordre Sacré des Sophisiens, which owed its ritualistic imagery and occult symbolism to Cagliostro’s Egyptian Rite. This, in turn, would help popularize the field of Egyptology, as well as the cult of Isis. Fauchet, the former French Ambassador to the United States, was one among that group of Napoleon’s Sophisians.[41] The scholars and soldiers who participated in the Egyptian Expedition inspired much enthusiasm for all things Egypt, marking the beginning of “Egyptomania.” It became a balm for every cultural province, and it was massaged into literature, architecture, art, politics, and religion. A storm of scholarship produced by the cloud-bursting Egyptologists stimulated the people to veer their thoughts to everything Egyptian (whose images and representations were then welded into Western culture.) Certain characteristic elements of Egyptian civilization became especially charged. The mummy became a curiosity on which Europeans and Americans could project their fascination with the undead and reanimation. Writers wrapped their horror in Egyptian leitmotifs, while mummies were even unwrapped during viewing parties.^[42]

SOURCES:

[1] Fehlings, Gregory E. “America’s First Limited War.” Naval War College Review. Vol. LIII, No. 3 (Summer 2000): 101-143.

[2] Spieth, Darius A. Napoleon’s Sorcerer’s: The Sophisians. University Of Delaware Press. Newark, Delaware. (2007): 148.

[3] Stinchcombe, William. “A Neglected Memoir By Talleyrand On French-American Relations, 1793-1797.” Proceedings Of The American Philosophical Society. Vol. CXXI, No. 3 (June 15, 1977): 195-208; Alderson, Jr., Robert J. “The 1794 Projected French Invasion Of Spanish East Florida And Atlantic History.” The Florida Historical Quarterly. Vol. LXXXVIII, No. 1 (Summer 2009): 54-82.

[4] Perl-Rosenthal, Nathan. “Private Letters And Public Diplomacy: The Adams Network And The Quasi-War, 1797–1798.” Journal Of The Early Republic. Vol. XXXI, No. 2 (Summer 2011): 283-311.

[5] Ray, Thomas M. “‘Not One Cent For Tribute’: The Public Addresses And American Popular Reaction To The XYZ Affair, 1798-1799.” Journal Of The Early Republic. Vol. III, No. 4 (Winter 1983): 389-412.

[6] Murphy, Jr., William J. “John Adams: The Politics Of The Additional Army, 1798-1800.” The New England Quarterly. Vol. LII, No. 2 (June 1979): 234-249.

[7] “From George Washington to Jonathan Trumbull, Jr., 21 July 1799.”

The Papers Of George Washington. Retirement Series. Vol. IV. (20 April 1799 – 13 December 1799.) [ed.] W. W. Abbot. University Press Of Virginia. Charlottesville, Virginia. (1999): 201–204.

[8] “Farewell Address, 19 September 1796.” The Papers Of George Washington. Presidential Series. Vol. XX. (1 April–21 September 1796.) [ed.] David R. Hoth and William M. Ferraro. University Press Of Virginia. Charlottesville, Virginia. (2019): 703–722.

[9] “There was in 1790 a marked distinction between the North and South, between the New England and the Middle States between the Border and Southern Slave States “Mason and Dixon’s line,” as it was called from the surveyors to whom the demarcation of the artificial frontier between Maryland and Pennsylvania was entrusted, was the boundary of two essentially different and constantly diverging civilizations. No phrase is of more frequent occurrence in American history, politics, and satire. It is used seldom or never in its strict geographical sense, as marking the State line commencing with the Delaware and ending on the Upper Ohio, but as the border between North and South, between slavery and freedom. It acquired this use while as yet slavery existed, legally and practically, in many of the so-called Free States. In this sense it divided nations of common blood and language, but in character, thought, social institutions, economy, and industrial organizations, more unlike than France and Spain, Germany and Russia.” [Greg, Percy. History Of The United States From The Foundation Of Virginia To The Reconstruction Of The Union: Volume II. West, Johnston & Company. Richmond, Virginia. (1892): 134.]

[10] A summary: (Virginia) Established in 1607, the colony of Jamestown. Governed by the chartered London Company, this seed for the colony of Virginia, was the sight of the first representative assembly in America. (Massachusetts) The Puritans sailed for America on board the Mayflower in September 1620. Whether intentional, or not, they missed their destination (Virginia) by a wide margin, landing far to the north. The Puritans, a group of ultra-strict Calvinists who formed the Plymouth Colony, thus invalidated the limited privileges they had been granted. “Trespassers themselves […] they assumed to drive away or harass other settlers whose right was as good […] They would not tolerate the worship of the [Anglican] church of whose intolerance they complained.” They were absorbed into the Massachusetts Bay colony in 1629.  “Of all New England states or colonies extant or extinct, Plymouth had least to do with the neighbor who has absorbed both her territory and her fame.” There was both a utopian and materialistic component to the Puritans enterprise in the New World. They were neither exiled from England, nor were they driven out by persecution. Rather they entered into a covenant with God to form a civil and ecclesiastical social body. [Rossel, Robert D. “The Great Awakening: An Historical Analysis.” American Journal of Sociology. Vol. LXXV, No. 6 (May 1970): 907- 925.] (New York) The colony of New Amsterdam was founded in 1624 by the Dutch West India Company, becoming an extension of the Dutch Republic in 1626. While the Plymouth Colony struggled with hardships in its infancy, New Amsterdam flourished on the island of Manhattan. The Plymouth Colony had “neither the leisure, nor the power, to molest them.” In 1664, following the first Dutch War of Charles II, New Amsterdam surrendered without resistance to an English fleet. (Maryland) The second of the Southern colonies, Maryland was established by the first Lord Baltimore in 1633 after obtaining a territorial grant from the King James. The colony was named Maryland in honor of Henrietta Maria, a Catholic Queen of England. Baltimore, himself a Roman Catholic, intended for the colony to be an asylum “for his persecuted co-religionists,” but absolute religious toleration was the fundamental principle of its constitution. Catholic influence was long prevalent, and its tradition still lingers. In 1689, a Puritan fanatic led a rebellion that removed Lord Baltimore from power. Rights were given back to Baltimore family only after publicly confessing to being a Protestant. (Rhode Island, Connecticut, & New Hampshire) Religious disputes over the degrees of “purity”  caused the colonists of Massachusetts to found Rhode Island and Connecticut in 1636. It was a similar case for New Hampshire in 1638. (North Carolina) Founded in 1653, North Carolina’s first colonists were those of whom “nobody missed or mourned it,” pockets of individual adventurers who came settled where the law could not follow them. For years it was a disorganized, self-dependent, yeomanry. (South Carolina) The semi-tropical South Carolina, with its large plantations, and considerable slave population, was founded in 1663. The colony owed its growth to the repeal of the Edict of Nantes when thousands of French Huguenots, driven into exile, found freedom from persecution across the Atlantic. Though the Royalist and Anglican element was strong in the colony, it was never strong enough to “enforce its pretensions to supremacy,” and religious and civil disputes kept both the Carolinas in anarchy. The most influential aspect of the population of South Carolina derived from the Huguenot refugees, “in whom persecution had engendered a fierce impatience of all rule,” and “a spirit of inveterate antagonism to all authority formed.” (Delaware and New Jersey) In 1638 Swedish colonists established the Delaware Valley Colony, and in 1660, the Bergen Colony. After the death of the Swedish king, Gustavus Adolphus, the whole country was forcibly annexed by the Governor of New Netherland. The Swedes were treated with full equality, and the change was hardly felt. In 1664, after the surrender of New Amsterdam, England gained control of the colonial possessions of Delaware Valley and Bergen, which formed the new English colonies of Delaware and New Jersey. Though the English element “preponderated everywhere,” the Dutch inhabitants of New York, and the Swedish settlements on the Delaware, “were not without influence on the character of those provinces.” (Pennsylvania) William Penn, and his fellow Quakers, purchased Western New Jersey from the original grantees. A democratic Jacobite, Penn was “devoted to the cause of religious equality, and the interests of his sect.” In 1682 he established an “ideal commonwealth where the Quakers should be free from the vexations that, in any civil community, must trouble the life and conscience of men who would neither fight nor swear allegiance, would pay neither church dues nor military taxes.” (Georgia) In 1732, a group of proprietors obtained from King George II in 1732 a charter for the colony of Georgia. James Oglethorpe, first leader of the last of the thirteen original colonies “assumed and retained for many years a virtually despotic authority.” [Greg, Percy. History Of The United States From The Foundation Of Virginia To The Reconstruction Of The Union: Volume I. W.H. Allen & Company. London, England. (1887): 22-23, 36, 44-46, 55, 77-80, 83, 131-132.]

[11] Fitzhugh, George. “The Message, The Constitution, and the Times.” De Bow’s Review. Vol. V, No. 2. (February 1861): 156-167; Fitzhugh, George. “The Puritan and the Cavalier.” De Bow’s Review. Vol. VI, No. 3. (September 1861): 209-252.

[12] Rossel, Robert D. “The Great Awakening: An Historical Analysis.” American Journal of Sociology. Vol. LXXV, No. 6 (May 1970): 907- 925.

[13] Rossel, Robert D. “The Great Awakening: An Historical Analysis.” American Journal of Sociology. Vol. LXXV, No. 6 (May 1970): 907- 925.

[14] “A New England Village.” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine. Vol. XLIII, No. 258 (November 1871): 815-829.

[15] Mathews, Donald G. “The Second Great Awakening As An Organizing Process, 1780-1830: An Hypothesis.” American Quarterly. Vol. XXI, No. 1 (Spring 1969): 23-43; Conforti, Joseph. “The Invention Of The Great Awakening, 1795-1842.” Early American Literature. Vol. XXVI, No. 2 (1991): 99-118.

[16] Pritchard, Linda K. “The Burned-over District Reconsidered: A Portent Of Evolving Religious Pluralism In The United States.” Social Science History. Vol. VIII, No. 3 (Summer 1984): 243-265.

[17] “Johnny Appleseed: A Pioneer Hero.” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine. Vol. XLIII, No. 258 (November 1871): 830-836.

[18] “Johnny Appleseed: A Pioneer Hero.” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine. Vol. XLIII, No. 258 (November 1871): 830-836.

[19] Stauffer, Vernon. New England And The Bavarian Illuminati. The Columbia University Press. New York, New York. (1918): 10-12.

^[20] “The New Theatre.” The Boston Globe. (Boston, Massachusetts) November 7, 1885; Stanwood, Edward. Boston Illustrated: A Familiar Guide to Boston and Its Neighborhood; Setting Forth the Rich Historical Associations and Containing Full Descriptions. Houghton Mifflin. Boston, Massachusetts (1893): 35-42; “Parade of the Knights.” The New York Times. (New York, New York) August 28, 1895.

^[21] Stratton, W. D. (Compiler.) Dedication Memorial Of The New Masonic Temple. Lee And Shepard. Boston, Massachusetts. (1868): 14-15, 34-35.

[22] Hayden, Sidney. Washington And His Masonic Compeers. Masonic Publishing And Manufacturing Co. New York, New York. (1867): Frontispiece.

[23] Lodge No. 22. A Memorial To Washington The Mason. Alexandria-Washington Lodge. Alexandria, Virginia. (1910.)

[24] “Washington’s Connection With The Masonic Fraternity.”  The Freemasons Repository. Vol. XVII, No. 5 (February 1888): 254-257.

[25] Mackey, Albert Gallatin. An Encyclopedia Of Freemasonry And Its Kindred Sciences: Vol. I. The Masonic History Company. New York, New York. (1913): 392-395.

[26] Hayden, Sidney. Washington And His Masonic Compeers. Masonic Publishing And Manufacturing Co. New York, New York. (1867): 179-181.

[27] Hayden, Sidney. Washington And His Masonic Compeers. Masonic Publishing And Manufacturing Co. New York, New York. (1867): 181.

[28]  [Hayden, Sidney. Washington And His Masonic Compeers. Masonic Publishing And Manufacturing Co. New York, New York. (1867): 182.]

[29] Hayden, Sidney. Washington And His Masonic Compeers. Masonic Publishing And Manufacturing Co. New York, New York. (1867): 182.

[30] O’Brien, R. B. “Dr. O’Brien’s Second Address To The Young Men Of Ireland.” The Cork Examiner. (Cork, Ireland) April 3, 1862.

[31] “A magic spell is commonly explained as equivalent to incantation; a form of words by the recitation. (AS. spellian, to recite.)” [Wedgwood, Hensleigh. A Dictionary Of English Etymology. MacMillan & Co. New York, New York. (1878): 627.]

[32] “The Jews believed that received in Sinai not only the law, but also certain unwritten principles of interpretation, called Cabala or Tradition, which were handed down from father effecting a purpose; and a cabal is a conclave of persons, secretly plotting for their own ends.” [Wedgwood, Hensleigh. A Dictionary Of English Etymology. MacMillan & Co. New York, New York. (1878): 122-123.]

[33] “Whoever desires to serve as a soldier of God beneath the banner of the cross in our Society, which we desire to be designated by the name of Jesus, and to serve the Lord alone and the Church, His spouse, under the Roman pontiff, the vicar of Christ on earth, should, after a solemn vow of perpetual chastity, poverty, and obedience, keep what follows in mind. He is a member of a Society founded chiefly for this purpose: to strive especially for the defense and propagation of the faith and for the progress of souls in Christian life and doctrine, by means of public preaching, lectures, and any other ministration whatsoever of the word of God, and further by means of the Spiritual Exercises, the education of children and unlettered persons and the spiritual consolation of Christ’s faithful through hearing confessions and administering the other sacraments. Moreover, he should show himself ready to reconcile the estranged, compassionately assist and serve those in prisons or hospitals, and indeed to perform any other works of charity, according to what will seem expedient for the glory of God and the common good. Furthermore, all these works should be carried out altogether free of charge and without accepting any remuneration for the labor expended in all the aforementioned activities. Still further, let any such person take care, as long as he lives, first of all to keep before his eyes God and then the nature of this Institute which is, so to speak, a pathway to God; and then let him strive with all his effort to achieve this end set before him by God—each one, however, according to the grace which the Holy Spirit has given to him and according to the particular grade of his own vocation. Consequently, lest anyone should perhaps show zeal, but a zeal which is not according to knowledge, the decision about each one’s grade and the selection and entire distribution of employments shall be in the power of the superior general or ordinary who at any future time is to be elected by us, or in the power of those whom this superior general may appoint under himself with that authority, in order that the proper order necessary in every well-organized community may be preserved. This superior general, with the council of his associates (with the majority of votes always having the right to prevail), shall possess the authority to compose constitutions leading to the achievement of this end which has been proposed to us. He shall also have the authority to explain officially doubts which may arise in connection with our Institute as comprised in this Formula. The council, which must necessarily be convoked to establish or change the Constitutions and for other matters of more than ordinary importance, such as the alienation or dissolution of houses and colleges once erected, should be understood (according to the explanation in our Constitutions) to be the greater part of the entire professed Society which can be summoned without grave inconvenience by the superior general. In other matters which are of lesser importance, the same general, aided by counsel from his brethren to the extent that he will deem fitting, shall have the full right personally to order and command whatever he judges in the Lord to pertain to the glory of God and the common good, as will be explained in the Constitutions.” [Formula Of The Institute Of The Society Of Jesus Approved By Julius III.]

[34] “The Secret Order Of The Illuminati.” The Dublin University Magazine. Vol. LXXXI, No. 334 (January 1873): 67-78.

[35] Fredal, Maurice. “Cagliostro.” The Theosophist. Vol. IX,  No. 107 (August 1888): 646-654.

[36] Cagliostro, Alessandro. The Life Of Count Cagliostro. C. & C. Kearsley. London, England. (1791): 1; Carlyle, Thomas. “Count Cagliostro: In Two Flights. Pt. I.” Fraser’s Magazine. Vol. VIII, No. 43 (July 1833): 19-28.

[37] Spieth, Darius A. Napoleon’s Sorcerer’s: The Sophisians. University Of Delaware Press. Newark, Delaware. (2007): 17-45.

^[38] Parkinson, R. B; Diffie, Whitfield; Fischer, Mary;  Simpson, R.S. Cracking Codes: The Rosetta Stone And Decipherment. University of California Press. Oakland, California. (1999): 20; Ray, J. D. Rosetta Stone And The Rebirth Of Ancient Egypt. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts. (2012): 136.

[39] Tarbell, Ida M. A Short Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte. S. S. McClure, Limited. New York, New York. (1895): 46-47.

[40] Newman, Aubrey. “Napoleon and The Jews.” European Judaism: A Journal for the New Europe. Vol. II, No. 2 (Winter 1967): 25-32.

[41] Spieth, Darius A. Napoleon’s Sorcerer’s: The Sophisians. University Of Delaware Press. Newark, Delaware. (2007): 148.

^[42] Stewart, George R. Names on the Land: A Historical Account of Place-Naming In The United States. Oxford University Press. Oxford, England. (1970): 289; Whitehouse, Helen. “Review: Egyptomanias.” American Journal Of Archaeology. Vol CI, No.1 (January 1997): 158–161; Trafton, Scott Driskell. Egypt Land: Race and Nineteenth-Century American Egyptomania. Duke University Press. Durham, North Carolina. (2004): 132-140; Curl, James Stevens. The Egyptian Revival: Ancient Egypt As The Inspiration For Design Motifs In The West. Routledge. Abingdon, England. (2013): 300.