Norwich bulletin., 1920-12-01
ODD INCIDENTS IN AMERICAN
 HISTORY
THE DISAPPEARANCE OF

WILLIAM MORGAN |
 One of the most peculiar political ep- isodes in the history of our country was | the Anti Masonic prejudice, which feach- ed it's height during the first quarter Of the past century. As the Society of Free l Masons included 8 large number of the 1 foremost citizens of the country the be- 1 lief existed that they used their secret ties to advance their ambitions. This l belief was found to create prejudice 1 among those who were not members of the order, and it added fuel to the fires of faction.
 The agitation grew so heated that opi September Il, 1926, William Morgan. of Batavia New York, Free Mason, who had announced his intention to print al pamphlet exposing the secrets of Ma sorry, was arrested on a charge of lar ceny, made by Master of a Masonic lodge He was found mot guilty and was then arrested for debt and imprison- ed in jail at Canandaigua.
 Morgan was taken secretly from the jail and conveyed to Fort Niagara, where he was kept until his abduction and a body found in the Niagara river was produced as proof that he was drowned to put him out of the way.
 Thurlow Weed, then an editor of al newspaper in Rochester, was aggressive in charging that Morgan was murdered by the Masons, and as late as 1882 he published an affidavit rehearing con- fession made to him by John Whitney, that the drowning was in fact perpetrat- ed by himself and four other persons, whom he named after a conference in Masonic lodge. The state was flooded with volumes portraying Masonry as a | monstrous conspiracy, and the literature | of the period was as narrowing as se- ries of sensational novels.
 It was denied that the body that was found near the mouth of the Niagara river was that of William Morgan. l Thurlow Weed was present af the in manufa cture In reply to his abuse 1 against the order. when the evidAnce pointed to the fact that the body was l other than that of Morgan. Weed was asked, What are you going to do for l Morgan now2" which phrass has become proverbiaL To this Wed replied,
 ''Tnis man is a good enough Morgan, un- l til you produce the man that was kill ed"
 Reilly and by him was distorted into the i the phrase, He is a good enough Nor I gan until after the election, ,' and in that form it was published in the Koch 1 ester Daily Advertiser, with the addition that Weed had disfgured the features oi the corpse to make them resemble those I of Morgan.
 Prosecutions were instituted against everyone whom Investigation showed tt Il have been in any way connected in the
 abduction of Morgan, and after repeated
 trials some of them were convicted or minor charges, but no murder was evel judicially established and the myster! : as to what became of William Nor gan has never been solved.
 The result of all this was the forming of an All-Masonic party in a candidat , for governor. Solomon southwick, in 1928. In 1881 a National Anti-Masoni convention was hed, wherein most of th Northern states were represented, Bhicl nominated William Wirt, of Maryland
 for president of the Unified States.
 The connection of Thurlow Weed witl
 the Morgan mystery caused that poll , tician and journalist years of pain a | well as incalculable injury. He could no T prove it, for those who invented the Ii
 would not sustain it. Speaking regar I'd
 ing it to friend not long before his Il death, he said: T suffered untold dis ! tress and was more or less under ba.
 for twenty-five years. Old acquaiatance
 avoided me, I was pointed out on tn
 streets, stran ngers would look askanc at me, 1 received threatening anony nous letters, and even my family wa
 made to feel the disgrace as if was
 felon''
 d Eventually all the charges against tn S Nrasons and their manipulation of poi
 ties, were disproved, and the Anti-Ma
 sonic movement gradually died ou
 through the introduction of other an = more vital questions into the politics c Il the sections in which the feeling was tn
 strongest.
 (Tomorrow-The Parsons caussD