a selection from the HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE KIDNAPPING OF  WILLIAM MORGAN:   Captain Morgan was born in Virginia, and was a mason by trade. He commenced  the business of a brewer at York, Upper Canada, in 1821, but having lost all his  property by fire, he removed to New York State, and worked at his trade both in  Rochester and Batavia. In the year 1826 rumors were heard that Morgan, in  connection with other persons, was preparing and intended to publish a book  which would reveal the secrets of Freemasonry, and an excitement of some kind  existed in relation to the publication of the book. In the month of September he  was seized under feigned process of the law, in the day time, in the village of  Batavia, and forcibly carried to Canandaigua. Captain Morgan was at this time  getting ready his book, which purported to reveal the secrets of Freemasonry.  This contemplated publication excited the alarm of the fraternity, and numbers  of its members were heard to say that it should be suppressed at all events.  Meetings of delegates from the different Lodges in the Western counties has been  held to devise means for most effectually preventing the publication. The  zealous members of the fraternity were angry, excited, and alarmed, and  occasionally individuals threw out dark and desperate threats. About this time  an incendiary attempt was made to fire the office of Col. Miller, the publisher  of the book. The gang who seized Morgan at Batavia were Masons. They took him to  Canandaigua; after a mock trial he was discharged, but was immediately arrested  and committed to prison on a debt. The next night, in the absence of the jailer,  he was released from prison by the pretended friendship of a false and  hollow-hearted brother Mason. Upon leaving the prison door he was seized in the  streets of Canandaigua, and notwithstanding his cries of murder, he was thrust  with ruffian violence into a carriage prepared for that purpose. At Batavia he  had been torn from his home-from his wife and infant children. At Canandaigua he  was falsely beguiled from the safe custody of the law, and was forcibly carried,  by relays of horses, through a thickly populated country, in the space of little  more than twenty-four hours, to the distance of one hundred and fifteen miles,  and secured as a prisoner in the magazine of Fort Niagara. This was clearly  proved on the trial of persons concerned in the outrage, and who were found  guilty and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment. The fate of Captain  Morgan was never known, but it is supposed he was taken out into the lake, where  his throat was cut, and his body sunken fifty fathoms in water. About the same  time, Col. David C. Miller, the publisher of the book, was also seized, in  Batavia, under the color of legal process, and taken to Le Roy. The avowed  intention of Col. Miller's seizure was to take him where Morgan was-and where  that was may be best gathered from the impious declaration of one of the  conspirators, James Ganson, for several years a member of our Legislature-that  ''he was put where he would stay put until God should call for him.'' Miller was,  however, set at liberty, as the inhabitants of Le Roy interfered with the  schemes of his kidnappers. He soon after put to press the first part of the  volume which is here presented to the public. Additions have been made to  Captain Morgan's revelations, from time to time, until we are now able to make  public all the Masonic degrees of any note or interest, entered into by modern  Freemasons.

The Mysteries of Freemasonry PDF

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