subs. (American).—A bare-faced imposture.
1826. WEED [in Autobiography, i. 319]. [In 1826 American masons were accused of murdering Morgan, a renegade. Popular feeling ran high, and a violent anti-masonry crusade resulted, national polities being considerably influenced. Mr. Thurlow Weed, one of the chief figures of the episode, says:—] The election of 1827 elicited an accusation against me, which assumed proportions not dreamed of by those with whom it originated…. Ebenezer Griffin, Esq., one of the council of the ‘kidnappers,’ who was going to Batavia to conduct the examination, observed laughingly to me, ‘After we have proven that the body found at Oak orchard is that of Timothy Monroe, what will you do for a Morgan?’ I replied in the same spirit, ‘That is a good enough Morgan for us until you bring back the one you carried off.’
