The rift between the nation's two political parties is caused by a Conspiracy! New England the Bavarian Illuminati is the history of the Illuminati scare that occurred in America at the end of the eighteenth century. It tells how the Federalists, including the New England clergy in particular, seized upon the idea that the Illuminati were behind the actions of the Democrats. Only a far-reaching conspiracy could explain the irreverent habits and searing attacks of the Jeffersonians. Fear of the secret Democratic Clubs, magnified by fear of the French Jacobins, made such a conspiracy readily believable. Dr. Stauffer ably details the state of American politics and religion before and after the American Revolution. He recounts the known history of the Illuminati, and reviews how knowledge of the secret organization was transmitted to America. The conspiracy alarm is traced in detail, from the first announcement of the existence of the Illuminati given during a sermon, through the heated and virulent debates in newspapers and pamphlets, and finally to the decline of the public spectacle under counter-attacks and satirical mockery. This study of the Illuminati in New England was originally published in 1918. Acclaimed from its first printing, it has since then developed a respectable position as one of the most competent and important histories on the shadowy Order of the Illuminati.

Maria W. Stewart and the Roots of Black Political Thought tells a crucial, almost-forgotten story of African Americans of early nineteenth-century America. In 1833, Maria W. Stewart (1803–1879) told a gathering at the African Masonic Hall on Boston’s Beacon Hill: “African rights and liberty is a subject that ought to fire the breast of every free man of color in these United States.” She exhorted her audience to embrace the idea that the founding principles of the nation must extend to people of color. Otherwise, those truths are merely the hypocritical expression of an ungodly white power, a travesty of original democratic ideals. Like her mentor, David Walker, Stewart illustrated the practical inconsistencies of classical liberalism as enacted in the US and delivered a call to action for ending racism and addressing gender discrimination. Between 1831 and 1833, Stewart’s intellectual productions, as she called them, ranged across topics from true emancipation for African Americans, the Black convention movement, the hypocrisy of white Christianity, Black liberation theology, and gender inequity. Along with Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, her body of work constitutes a significant foundation for a moral and political theory that is finding new resonance today—insurrectionist ethics. In this work of recovery, author Kristin Waters examines the roots of Black political activism in the petition movement; Prince Hall and the creation of the first Black masonic lodges; the Black Baptist movement spearheaded by the brothers Thomas, Benjamin, and Nathaniel Paul; writings; sermons; and the practices of festival days, through the story of this remarkable but largely unheralded woman and pioneering public intellectual.

A conspiracy theory flourished in New England in 1798, destroying reputations and lives—but few have ever heard the story. This gripping book chronicles the rise of the Bavarian Order of Illuminists, surveying the tumultuous political, social, and religious atmosphere that allowed the organization to take root in the United States. Author Vernon Stauffer characterizes the mood in New England after the Revolutionary War, an atmosphere of religious disaffection and political confusion that fostered the development and spread of panic and hysteria. Stauffer traces the European beginnings of the Bavarian Order of Illuminists and the transmission of its legend across the Atlantic, culminating in the effects of the Illuminati agitation in New England. This strictly factual account incorporates no conjecture and is enhanced by extensive footnotes. A compelling work of forgotten history, it is an essential resource for readers interested in the origins of conspiracy theory in American social and political thought.