IL LINO I S UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN PRODUCTION NOTE University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library Brittle Books Project, 2012. COPYRIGHT NOTIFICATION In Public Domain. Published prior to 1923. This digital copy was made from the printed version held by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It was made in compliance with copyright law. Prepared for the Brittle Books Project, Main Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign by Northern Micrographics Brookhaven Bindery La Crosse, Wisconsin 2012 miS AS ON'-R.Yl. -OF- NoTi. THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY C83 b .. A sw s <.:g,. d.i_ arr '5 sw&:, ,t tie , THE BROKEN SEAL; OR, PERSONAL REMINISCENCES OF THE MORGAN ABDUCTION AND MURDER. BY SAMUEL D. GREENE. BOSTON: PTUBLIrSIHED FOR THE AUTIOR, BY H. H. & T. W. CARTER. FOR SALE BY BOOKSELLERS GENERALLY. 1 8 7 0. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by SAMUEL D. GREENE, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. STEREOTYPED AT THE BOSTON STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY, 19 Spring Lane. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE INTRODUCTORY. .. 5 CHAPTER II. How I BECAME A MASON. 15 oD CHAPTER III. g CAPTAIN WILLIAM MORGAN AND COLONEL DAVID C. ' MILLER. .... 31 CHAPTER IV. STHE STORM GATHERING.. 47 CHAPTER V. ABDUCTION OF MORGAN. 71 CHAPTER VI. CL ATTEMPTED ABDUCTION OF MILLER AND HIS RESCUE. 99 cr., CHAPTER VII. WHAT BECAME OF MORGAN. 117 4 CONTENTS. CHAPTER VIII. WHAT MORGAN ACTUALLY REVEALED. 146 CHAPTER IX. MY SUBSEQUENT EXPERIENCES WITH MASONRY. 159 APPENDIX. THE WAY IN WHICH A MAN WA.S ENTICED INTO MA-. SONRY. 183 HOW OLD IS MASONRY? . .. 188 MR. MILLER'S TESTIMONY BEFORE A GENESEE COURT. 197 ANTIMASONIC POETRY. 205 MASONRY INCONSISTENT WITH A REPUBLICAN GOVERN- MENT. ......... 211 PERSECUTIONS OF S. D. GREENE, IN A SERIES OF LET- TERS TO SOUTHWICK'S NATIONAL OBSERVER. 215 "ABORTIVE ATTEMPT " TO PUNISH THE MORGAN ABDUC- TOR . - . 232 EXTRACTS FROM THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE NEW HAMP- SHIRE ANTIMASONIC STATE CONVENTION. 287 CONFESSION OF THE MURDERER OF WILLIAM MORGAN. 296 ALLEGATIONS AGAINST FREEMASONRY. 800 THE BROKEN SEAL. CHAPTER L. INTRODUCTORY. SENSIBLE that I am drawing near the close of life, I-feel it my duty to leave on record certain facts connected with my personal history, which may be of use to those who shall come after me. fMy life has been a long and eventful one; but I have no intention of writing an autobiography, except in relation to one feature of my history. Many years ago, I was brought, in the providence of God, into strange and intimate association with a. series of events which deeply affected my own mind, and, for a long time, powerfully agitated society. I refer to the abduction and murder of Captain William Morgan, for unfolding what he deemed to be the pernicious secrets of the mason- ic order. I was a member of the same lodge with (5) 6 THE BROKEN SEAL. him, was intimately acquainted with the man, and was an eye-witness of much that went on con- cerning him. I am prepared, therefore, to bear testimony on this subject, such as few other living men probably can give. To the rising generation the story is, in some good degree, a new one; but forty years ago, the whole land was moved with excitement in consequence of it. Believing, as I most sincerely do, that the insti- tution of Freemasonry, in its natural working, is injurious alike to individual and public morality, that it is secretly hostile to good and wholesome government, and still more hostile to the Christian church, I feel it my duty, before leaving the world, to tell what I have personally known of these things, and bear my testimony in this regard. In doing this I trust I am not moved by a sense of private wrongs, or by any personal animosities. Almost all of those who were in active life with me at the time the events above referred to took place, are now sleeping in the grave. This is no time for personal griefs and resentments. I have passed beyond that period when the honors and emoluments of this world can greatly affect me. The generation with which I have acted my part on the stage is gone, or fast disappearing. It is INTRODUCTORY. because I believe that what I have to relate has an intrinsic interest and a valuable lesson for others, that I am moved to tell it. After this long lapse of years, I am aware that in little things my memory at times may be at fault. But all the substantial points of this nar- rative were matters of record at the time, and they were, moreover, events of such deep inter- est, taking such strong hold of the thoughts and feelings, as not to be easily effaced from the recol- lection. In small and unimportant details there may be an occasional mistake; but in the great things of the narrative - the larger outlines - I am not likely to be mistaken. At my period of life the memory is far more alive and fresh with reference to matters forty years ago, than to events of more recent occurrence. The only value which such a personal history as this can have, is its honest and reliable truth. My aim will be to make this narrative strictly truthful, whatever other elements it may lack. It shall be a straightforward story of what I myself passed through. "In respect to such items of the narrative as did not actually fall under my own personal inspec. tion, but were yet connected with the same gen THE BROKEN SEAL. eral series of events, I have constantly referred to contemporary history, and have consulted espe- cially Rev. David Bernard's "Light on Masonry." At the time of the Morgan abduction and murder, Mr. Bernard was a member of the masonic lodge at Covington, in Wyoming County, only about twenty miles distant from Batavia. He had been for some years a Mason - had been led into it under the general representation that it was "an institution from Heaven; moral, benevolent, of great antiquity, the twin sister of Christianity, possessing the patronage of the wise, the great and good, and highly important to the ministers of Jesus Christ." Under this general impression he was taken, as I was, through the first three degrees, only to awaken in him the same disgust which I myself experienced after passing over the same road. " My disappointment," he tells us, " none, can know but those who have, in similar circumstances, been led in the same path of folly and sin. I silently retired from the institution, and for three years was hardly known as a Mason." Still, by the representations of others, he was made to believe that there was some great good in the higher masonic degrees, and he started again and travelled on his way until he entered INTRODUCTORY. 9 the Lodge of Perfection, and took the ineffable degrees. After all the experience he had, his opinion of the institution is summed up in the following plain, and unmistakable language: he "found it wholly corrupt; its morality, a shadow; its benevo- lence, selfishness; its religion, infidelity; and that, as a.system, it was an engine of Satan, calculated to enslave the children of men, and pour contempt upon the Most High." At the time of the Morgan abduction, Mr. Ber- nard was absent from home. He returned on the 16th of September, only five days after the ab- duction, to learn that Morgan was taken off and probably murdered. He says, " I conversed with Masons on the subject, and they justified both his abduction and murder." From that moment he broke with the institution; came out boldly and denounced it; was, in fact, the first Mason that openly took this stand. For so doing he was threatened on every hand, and subjected to a long course of dangerous and most annoying persecu- tion. But he held his ground, and three years after, in 1829, he published his volume of six hun- dred pages, in which are carefully gathered up all the chief records of those exciting times. This 10 THE BROKEN SEAL. book has been at hand while preparing this little volume, that I might refresh my memory upon any point about which I was in doubt. I am not unmindful of the fact that Freemason- ry is again popular and wide-spread in the land. In the opposition which arose after the Morgan murder, the institution throughout the country was greatly weakened and depressed. For twen- ty years little was heard of Masonry. Many of the lodges, in all directions, returned their charters and wound up their affairs. But in the coming on of the anti-slavery agitation, public attention was gradually called away from Masonry and its evils, and the institution, being left alone in the dark, with its few bigoted devotees, began to revive, until again it assumes a bold front, and stalks abroad with large pretensions. It is for this rea- son especially that I am induced to tell the story of the past. Most men, in connecting themselves with Masonry, take little thought of the conse- quences. By the peculiar and strange fascination which it has for many people, they are drawn within its embraces, and they do not reason care- fully enough upon the subject to comprehend what effects are wrought by it upon themselves personally, or upon society at large. I do not INTRODUCTORY. 11 charge upon members of the masonic order gen- erally, that they have any direct and conscious intentions against their neighbors, or the peace and welfare of community.