Aftermath: The Anti-Masonic Movement
Soon after Morgan disappeared, Miller published his book, which became a bestseller because of the notoriety of the events. Miller did not say that Morgan had been murdered but "carried away". Accounts circulated of Morgan's having assumed a new identity and settled in Albany, in Canada, or the Cayman Islands, where he was said to have been hanged as a pirate. New York governor DeWitt Clinton, also a Mason, offered a $1,000 reward for information about Morgan's whereabouts, but it was never claimed.
The circumstances of Morgan's disappearance and the minimal punishment received by his kidnappers caused public outrage. He became a symbol of the rights of free speech and free press. Protests against Freemasons took place in New York and the neighboring states. Masonic officials disavowed the actions of the kidnappers, but all Masons came under a cloud. Thurlow Weed, a New York politician, formed an anti-Masonic movement, gathering discontented opponents of President Andrew Jackson, known to be a Mason, into the Anti-Masonic political party. It ran a candidate for the presidency in 1828 and gained the support of such notable politicians as William H. Seward.
On that campaign, other Jackson rivals, including John Quincy Adams, joined in denouncing the Masons. In 1832, the Anti-Masonic Party fielded William Wirt as its presidential candidate, but he received only seven electoral votes. By 1835, the party had become moribund everywhere but Pennsylvania, as other issues, such as slavery, became the focus of national attention. In 1847 Adams published a widely distributed book titled Letters on the Masonic Institution that criticized the Masons' secret society.
In 1830 Morgan's widow Lucinda Pendleton Morgan married George W. Harris of Batavia, a silversmith who was 20 years older. After they moved to the Midwest, they became Mormons. By 1837, some historians believe that Pendleton Morgan Harris had become one of the plural wives of Joseph Smith, Jr., founder of the Latter Day Saint movement. She continued to live with her older husband, George Harris. After Smith was murdered in 1844, she was "sealed" to him for eternity in a rite of the church.
Members of Freemasonry criticized the Mormons for their alleged adoption of Masonic rituals and regalia. In 1841 the Mormons announced their official baptism of William Morgan after his death as one of the first under their new rite to posthumously take people into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for eternity.
By 1850 the Harrises had separated. When George Harris died in 1860, he had been excommunicated from the Mormons after ceasing to practice with them. That year Lucinda Morgan Harris was reported to have joined the Catholic Sisters of Charity in Memphis, Tennessee, where she worked at the Leah Asylum. She had been widowed three times.
In June 1881 in Pembroke, New York, a grave was discovered in a quarry two miles south of the Indian reservation. In it was a metal box containing a crumpled paper; its few legible words were interpreted to suggest that the remains might have been Morgan's.
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