e 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 sev