The fact that at least five of these Democratic Societies were located in New England strongly suggests the immediate concern which the people of that section were bound to have because of these unexpected and ominous secret political associations.[234] The creation of the Boston Society became at once the occasion of virulent opposition and infuriated comment. Organized in the late fall of 1793[235] under the innocent title, the Constitutional Club, the principles and alliances of the organization became quickly known, with the result that the already agitated waters of local party feeling were disturbed beyond all previous experience. Citizens whose sympathies were fully with the conduct of affairs under the Federalist régime were quick to believe that henceforth they might expect to be threatened, brow-beaten, and checkmated in a ruthless and scandalous fashion because of the activities of this pernicious Club.[236] They anticipated an amount of secret and dastardly political interference on the part of the Club, because of which the lives of their public officials would be filled with distraction and the minds of decent men aspiring to public office would be thrown into a state of disinclination and repugnance. Nor in this did they prove to be false prophets. Newspaper innuendoes, sharp and poisonous as deadly arrows, were let fly with abandon; town meetings were disturbed and the opponents of democracy and French republicanism put to rout; the public mind was so altered that Democrats who sought to deprive Federalists of their hold upon the “Boston Seat” in the legislature were completely successful in their efforts. In these and similar ways the citizens of Boston were given tangible proofs of how effective an instrument of political action such an organization as the Constitutional Club could be.[237]