Having now traced, with perhaps a tedious hand, the rise and fall of two
political Orders, ranking among the most powerful instruments of crime and
public wrong of their day, the writer bids their unmourned remains
farewell, to pass to the consideration in the succeeding chapter, of the
desperate career and final explosion of the Order of the Sons of
Liberty--a solemn warning to the American people forever.

To save the Goudys, Caulfields, Adams, Edwards, Duncans, Wickershams,
Cuttings, and Kimberlys, the Morrises, Walshes, Jacksons, Pattens, Gearys,
and Doolittles were put forward because they were eager for the fray, and
possessed the temerity to brave the danger of Union bullets.

We have now seen how the Temple or First Degree was instituted in counties;
how the various elements of treason were collected together and detailed
for their special service of educating the ignorant, manufacturing
materials and munitions of war, and devising plots to burn, plunder, and
pillage unsuspecting cities; how each member was singled out according to
his fitness for certain duties, which he performed without their character
coming even to his fellow members of the same degree; and how the brained
leaders of these institutions retired to the back ground to elude the
vigilance of the ministers of the law, and "adjust the wires" that were to
check to-day, and to-morrow precipitate the conspiracy.

The Grand Council, or Second Degree, was established in every State where
the Temple Degree had obtained any strength and character as to numbers.
This Degree resembled the State in its governmental organization, and bore
the same relation to the Supreme Council or Third Degree that the State
governments of the Federal Union bear to the government at Washington. The
Order having a military department, these Grand Councils, in council
assembled, adopted the militia and other statute laws of the particular