Few if any periods in our national history have been marked by a greater variety of clashing interests than the closing decade of the eighteenth century. Owing in part to inexperience in grappling with the problems of government, in part to widely belligerent and irreconcilable elements among the people, in part to grave international complications and concerns, and in part, confessedly, to rumors and excitements for which, as events proved, no adequate grounds existed, the lives of the people of New England were tossed rudely about on rough currents and counter-currents of mingled hope and anguish. To a dispassionate observer (if anywhere on the green earth at the close of the eighteenth century such an individual might have been found) it must have seemed as though the citizens of New England were as so many bits of wood, bobbing up and down on waters excessively choppy but otherwise motionless. The agitation, however, was not merely superficial; issues and movements of the most profound significance were pouring their impetuous torrents through channels freshly cut and steadily deepened by new streams of human interest which the erection of the national government, in particular, had started on their tortuous ways. The development of this thesis calls for an evaluation of the more significant elements and forces which gave to the period the characteristic temper of nervous excitability by which it was stamped. The profound spirit of apprehension, amounting to positive distress, with which for many a thoughtful religious patriot of New England the eighteenth century closed, constitutes a phenomenon as impressive as it is curious. To isolate that spirit, to analyze it, to explain its genesis and its development, to take account of its attachments and antipathies with respect to the special interest under consideration,—this must be regarded as no inconsiderable portion of the general task. On the morning of May 9, 1798, in the pulpit of the New North Church in Boston, and on the afternoon of the same day in his own pulpit at Charlestown, the occasion being that of the national fast, the Reverend Jedediah Morse[1] made a sensational pronouncement. He first discussed with his hearers “the awful events” which the European Illuminati had precipitated upon an already distracted world, and then proceeded solemnly to affirm that the secret European association had extended its operations to this side of the Atlantic and was now actively engaged among the people of the United States, with a view to the overthrow of their civil and religious institutions. In the eyes of the distinguished clergyman, the matter was of such serious moment that he felt moved to remark: