The Illuminati in the United States

New Haven, Connecticut,  4 July 1798. The President of Yale, Timothy Dwight, announces the name of an apocalyptic and conspiratorial threat facing America. Referencing the Book of Revelation, he declared that the end was close, the Antichrist was abroad in the land and agents of a conspiracy were filling the nation with impious people and false prophets. The conspiracy, he proclaimed, had already ravaged the Old World, unleashing the forces of atheism, enlightenment and revolution, and was in the process of extending its influence across the Atlantic. The spiritual and political order of the nation, of Christian civilisation itself, was at stake. And the greatest threat to its survival, Dwight declared with certainty, was the Order of the Illuminati.

Today the name ‘Illuminati’ conjures images of imagined threats and spurious connections played out with corkboard and string. Yet the Illuminati scare of the late 18th century is among the earliest, most paradigmatic examples of American cultural demonologies. Dwight was far from alone in his concerns. Earlier that year the Reverend Jedidiah Morse uttered similar proclamations from his Boston pulpit, calling ‘the Illuminated’ fomenters of revolution, advocates of sexual promiscuity and enemies of both patriotism and private property. Other Federalist preachers and publications followed suit. Narratives of Illuminati infiltrators exacerbated an existing atmosphere of partisan crisis generated by the threat of war with France in 1797.

Thomas Jefferson and the Democratic Republicans, opponents of John Adams’ incumbent Federalist party, were the primary targets of accusations of conspiracy, cast as Illuminati agents seeking to cause the moral and spiritual collapse of the nation. 

It was with the Alien and Sedition Acts (1798-1801), however, that the most direct ramifications were felt. The French Revolution and its aftermath led to a fresh wave of immigrants, who became ripe targets for claims of subversion. Irish and French immigrants – many of the latter being, ironically, aristocrats displaced by the Revolution – became framed as Jacobin sympathisers, bringers of a threatening atheist Illuminism. Some were tried and convicted. For Federalist preachers, such as Morse, the Devil was abroad and his legions were comprised of Republicans, immigrants and the opposition press. Political critique was repackaged as sedition.