By the time these noisy verbal hostilities had taken place, the leading newspaper partisans on both sides of the controversy had accepted the responsibility of advising the public regarding the new issue. The _Connecticut Courant_ roundly denounced the unprincipled editor of the _American Mercury_ for having printed such a monstrous fabrication as its account of the Ebeling-Morse letter,[837] and later, on Morse’s behalf, undertook to say that while the communication which Morse had received from Ebeling contained denials of the authenticity of many of the facts alleged in the _Proofs of a Conspiracy_, at the same time it was destitute of even the most distant suggestion of moral or other delinquencies on the part of Robison.[838] The _Columbian Centinel_ regarded itself in duty bound to spread before its readers the indignant communication that Morse had sent to the editor of the _American Mercury_, for the reason that it believed Morse had been most shamefully treated in the matter.[839] As for the _Massachusetts Mercury_, one of its contributors felt moved to observe that the account of the Ebeling-Morse letter which the _American Mercury_ had published was nothing less than a consummate piece of pure villainy, intended to ruin Mr. Robison’s character; certainly no candid American would pay the slightest attention to it until the person who was responsible for the publication came forward and gave the public his name.[840] On the other side, such rampant Democratic journals as the _Bee_ and the _Aurora_ came ardently to the support of the _American Mercury_ and directed a searching cross-fire against Morse and his friends. Since the days of Salem witchcraft, the former observed, no subject had so much affected the minds of a certain class of people in New England as this pretended Illuminati conspiracy.[841] Because of the way in which preachers, orators, essayists, and newsmongers generally had declaimed upon the subject, a mist had overspread the public mind. Ebeling’s letter to Morse, however, had given a fatal blow to the strife. It was now to be expected that the impressions made upon the minds of numerous over-credulous citizens by an insidious and designing set of men would be fully eradicated.[842] To give full force to these observations, the _Bee_ published the text of the letter which, it averred, Morse had received from Ebeling.[843] This characterized Robison’s _Proofs of a Conspiracy_ as ridiculous and filled with statements many of which were faulty and others totally erroneous. Its author had composed the book in the interests of party and with a special animus against all men who asserted the use of reason in the sphere of theology. The authorities to which Robison appealed were declared to be questionable, and Robison’s own standing as a historian was pronounced to be such that it was impossible to take his work seriously.[844]