One section of the Appendix, however, supplied some evidence of a definite effort to leave generalities and deal intimately with the point at issue. In this section[716] Morse sought to connect the Illuminati with “the Jacobin Clubs instituted by Genet.”[717] Like their sister organizations in France they had been constituted after the manner and with the principles of the European Illuminati. The fact that the members of these American organizations have been the leading disseminators of the _principles_ of Illuminism in this country, as well as the circulators of all those publications, like Paine’s _Age of Reason_, whose object is to discredit and throw contempt upon the Christian religion, clearly fixes their status as “the apostles of Illuminism.”[718] Frowned upon by the Federal government, these American organizations have ceased to act openly; “but, like their parent society in Bavaria which, when suppressed under one form, was soon revived again under the name of the German Union,”[719] so their offspring in the United States now hypocritically mask themselves under the name of The American Society of United Irishmen.[720] Taken by itself, it would be impossible to state how favorably this presentation of the case against Illuminism impressed the public mind.[721] But as a matter of fact, on the occasion of the Massachusetts anniversary thanksgiving referred to, Morse was by no means compelled to bear his testimony alone. By the time that occasion came round, the subject of Illuminism had solicited the attention and concern of the Federalist clergy generally; on which account it happened that a considerable amount of clerical artillery was unlimbered and trained upon the new foe. At Haverhill, the Reverend Abiel Abbott, in language emphatic, if somewhat high-flown, voiced his alarm: Upon the authority of a respectable writer in Europe and of corroboratory testimonies, it is now generally believed that the present day is unfolding a design the most extensive, flagitious, and diabolical, that human art and malice have ever invented. Its object is the total destruction of all religion and civil order. If accomplished, the earth can be nothing better than a sink of impurities, a theatre of violence and murder, and a hell of miseries. Its origination was in Germany; its hot-bed now is Paris. Its nursing fathers are the French Government; its apostles are their generals and armies. Its fruits have been seen in France; Christianity expelled; its priesthood seized and murdered, or hunted down in neutral countries and demanded of their hospitable protectors at the peril of war and ruin.—And now, were our first magistrate an Illuminatus, a conspirator in league with the horde in Europe, the grand master of the demoralizers in America, how soon might the American republic have been degraded to the deplorable state of the French?[722]