THE JOURNAL OF THE MASONIC SOCIETY
“Certainly, there is no evidence that he was murdered by Freemasons. The facts that they took him openly from the jail at Canandaigua, that they left a broad trail behind them, for more than one hundred and fifteen miles through a thickly settled country, and, that so many were admitted into the secret of the abduction, forbid such a supposition; the character of all the actors from Mr. N. G. Chesebro, the earliest, to Col. William King, the latest, forbid it even more strongly. That the abduction was a consummate piece of folly, from first to last, it is easy at this period to affirm; but, those who affirm it the most loudly, had they felt the provocations the brethren in Western New York experienced, might have committed the same error. In our private notes of Masonic History since 1846, we find more than one “Morgan case,” which was only prevented from coming to a head by the prudence of a few, who remembered the dark days of Eli Bruce and Col. King, and taught discretion to the more rash and indignant.” 27 In the foregoing excerpt we see a Rob Morris who was willing to accept that Morgan was likely murdered, albeit by a lawless band of Canadians waiting at the border for wealthy American drunkards, but perhaps more importantly, we see an acceptance that Freemasons could and did act rashly and improperly in the abduction of William Morgan in the fall of 1826. Morris accepts that the abduction of Morgan was “a consummate piece of folly,” but defends the abductors against the pointing fingers of their detractors by stating that “had they felt the provocations the brethren in Western New York experienced, might have committed the same error.” If, as Morris claimed, John Whitney told him the full story in 1859, why did he not include it in his 1861 biography of Eli Bruce? It is certainly possible that Morris promised to keep the information confidential until Whitney’s death, but the man died in 1869. And yet, Morris waited until 1883, more than a decade later to finally put the story in print. The timing of his book to coincide with renewed anti-Masonic attacks is reasonable cause for suspicion, a suspicion that is raised in reading the closing lines of Morris’ 1883 book: But I protest that I never would have published this work— though I had long been collecting materials for it—if that old man’s drivelings had been suppressed. The Masonic Order had so completely outlived Weed and his party and his hatreds, we were doing so well, that I should have buried the subject in oblivion and destroyed the material so laboriously accumulated rather than open a quarrel of which [Millard] Fillmore, [William H.] Seward, John Quincy Adams, Thaddeus Stevens and all the more respectable members of the Anti-Masonic party had become heartily ashamed before they died. Only one man was left, and he imbecile in body and mentally feeble, who could reopen the subject. Of all men living he was most interested in keeping the matter still. What evil spirit was it, then, that drew Thurlow Weed from his retirement to poison the community with Anti-Masonic slanders even with his dying breath.28 With no conviction in the murder of William Morgan, all we are left with today is a 183-year-old cold case. Opinions on the ultimate fate of William Morgan have been largely shaped by the alleged confessions of John Whitney as presented by Rob Morris, an active and passionate Freemason and Thurlow Weed, an active and passionate anti-Mason. But neither confession can be accepted as a true account because neither account presents any
evidence that removes reasonable doubt, something that five years of investigations and trials in the 1820s failed to accomplish. To truly understand what led to William Morgan’s abduction and what happened to him after he was arrested on September 11, 1826, we must piece together the trail of evidence that is left behind in the many affidavits and trial notes that were accumulated between 1826 and 1831, but that is another story. Stephen Dafoe is the author of Morgan: The Scandal That Shook Freemasonry, published by Cornerstone Book Publishers. He is a past Grand Steward of the Grand Lodge of Alberta, former publisher of Masonic Magazine and the author of several books on the Knights Templar. His website can be found at www.stephendafoe.com . Endnotes
1. Stone, William L. Letters on Masonry and Anti-Masonry addressed to the Hon. John Quincy Adams (New York: G. Halstead, 1832), 538. 2. Berry, Robert. The Bright Mason: An American Mystery (Booklocker, 2008), 142. 3. Stone, Op. cit., 281. 4. Morris, Rob. William Morgan; or Political Anti-Masonry, its Rise, Growth and Decadence (New York: Robert Macoy, 1883), 75. 5. Weed, Thurlow. The Facts Stated. Hon. Thurlow Weed on the Morgan Abduction (Chicago, IL: National Christian Association, 1882), 11–13. 6. The Malone Palladium, December 7, 1882. 7. Morris, Op. cit., 163. 8. Ibid., p. 164. 9. Ibid., p. 165. 10. Ibid., pp. 168, 169. 11. Ibid. p. 169. 12. Ibid., 169. 13. Ibid., 170–173. 14. Ibid., 174. 15. Ibid., 175. 16. Ibid., 183–185. 17. Ibid., 192. 18. Ibid., 193. 19. Ibid., 193. 20. Ibid., 194, 195. 21. Ibid., 196. 22. Ibid., 194–196. 23. Weed, Thurlow. The Life of Thurlow Weed, Vol. 1 (New York, NY: Harriet A. Weed, 1883), 334, 335. 24. Ibid., 335. 25. Morris, Op. cit., 204. 26. Morris, Rob. The Masonic Martyr; The Biography of Eli Bruce, Sheriff of Niagara County, New York (Louisville, KY: Morris and Monssarrat, 1861), 16. 27. Ibid., 23, 24. 28. Morris, William Morgan. Op. cit., 387, 388.
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