FROM The Star-Spangled Heresy: Americanism by Solange Hertz (Tumblar House, 2012):

“It would be difficult to overrate the natural genius of this extraordinary man. In his Epitaph he calls himself a printer. And so he was, printing playing much the same role in his life that gold-making played in Alchemy. By its means he put together the first controlled press in America, his Pennsylvania Gazette soon heading a whole network of subsidiaries throughout the Colonies like the New York Journal, the Boston Gazette, and myriad lesser breed.

“These constituted a Masonic press, staunchly anti-Papist and preaching its own doctrine indefatigably in political dress. Franklin was a master propagandist. It is well known how he maintained European indignation at fever pitch against the British and loyalist Americans by atrocity stories which could not get by at home, but which he circulated via his fake newspaper the Boston Independent Chronicle, regular “reprints” of which were distributed abroad from Holland. Bernard Fay concludes it was such papers, in conjunction with taverns, the Lodges and the cooperation of certain preachers and merchants which actually fabricated the American Revolution.

“No informed historian will deny that Franklin was the most unwavering and orthodox of believers in eighteenth century Masonry. His conversion was entire and sincere, his passionate adherence to its tenets having occurred long before he ever joined a Lodge. As a matter of fact, he had to use certain unethical means to get accepted, for the Philadelphia establishment comprising the Lodge of St. John of Jerusalem was openly disdainful of the popular, witty little printer, who furthermore had had the audacity to form a debating society called the Junto, in some ways a rival organization composed of small artisans and proletariat. To make a long story short, he blackmailed the Lodge into admitting him, by printing in his Gazette on December 8, 1730 a report supposedly from London claiming to expose the Masonic mysteries. ‘Their Great Secret,’ it read, ‘is THAT THEY HAVE NO SECRET AT ALL!’

“A few weeks later Franklin was invited to join, and thereafter the Gazette published only flattering allusions to the Brothers.”

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