[158] William Morgan was a dissolute, nondescript printer in Batavia, New York, who, having failed in everything else, thought to make money by betraying the secrets of an order which his presence polluted. Foolishly misled, a few Masons had him arrested on a petty charge, got him out of the country, and apparently paid him to stay out. Had no attention been paid to his alleged exposure it would have fallen still-born from the press, like many another before it. Rumors of abduction started, then Morgan was said to have been thrown into Niagara River, whereas there is no proof that he was ever killed, much less murdered by Masons. Thurlow Weed and a pack of unscrupulous politicians took it up, and the rest was easy. One year later a body was found on the shore of Lake Ontario which Weed and the wife of Morgan identified--a _year afterward!_--she, no doubt, having been paid to do so; albeit the wife of a fisherman named Munroe identified the same body as that of her husband drowned a week or so before. No matter; as Weed said, "_It's good enough Morgan until after the election_"--a characteristic remark, if we may judge by his own portrait as drawn in his _Autobiography_. Politically, he was capable of anything, if he could make it win, and here he saw a chance of stirring up every vile and slimy thing in human nature for sake of office. (See a splendid review of the whole matter in _History of Masonry_, by Hughan and Stillson, also by Gould in vol. iv of his _History_.) [159] _Cyclopedia of Fraternities_, by Stevens, article, "Anti-Masonry," gives detailed account with many interesting facts. [160] Following the first day of the battle of Gettysburg, there was a Lodge meeting in town, and "Yanks" and "Johnny Rebs" met and mingled as friends, under the Square and Compass. Where else could they have done so? (_Tennessee Mason_). When the Union army attacked Little Rock, Ark., the commanding officer, Thomas H. Benton--Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Iowa--threw a guard about the home of General Albert Pike, _to protect his Masonic library_. Marching through burning Richmond, a Union officer saw the familiar emblems over a hall. He put a guard about the Lodge room, and that night, together with a number of Confederate Masons, organized a society for the relief of widows and orphans left destitute by the war (_Washington, the Man and the Mason_, Callahan). But for the kindness of a brother Mason, who saved the life of a young soldier of the South, who was a prisoner of war at Rock Island, Ill., the present writer would never have been born, much less have written this book. That young soldier was my father! Volumes of such facts might be gathered in proof of the gracious ministry of Masonry in those awful years. [161] _Cyclopedia of Fraternities_, by Stevens (last edition), article, "Free Masonry," pictures the extent of the order, with maps and diagrams showing its world-wide influence.