Adams, Jefferson and Conspiracy Theory

I've been reading or re-reading several books (especially _Proofs of a Conspiracy_, _Memoirs Illustrating The History of Jacobinism_, _Fire in the Minds of Men_), articles (such as Yale University President, Timothy Dwight's excellent sermon entitled, "The Duty of Americans at the Present Crisis" and various historical articles or essays) and conducting research along related lines of thought (such as study Adam Weishaupt, the Illuminati, the Jacobin Clubs, of the "Citizen Genet" affair, the Whiskey Rebellion, the Alien and Sedition Acts, and of the similarity or differences of the stances taken by John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson). While I have yet to pull it all together in a intelligent and comprehensible manner, I have, in my research, concluded, among other things, that while Thomas Jefferson was not an "Illuminist" as charged by some, he may have been somewhat naive, indeed gullible, when it came to understanding the existence of and the threat posed by a conspiracy designed to "overthrow all civil and religious institutions" and its influence upon early America. This would, in large measure explain the difference between Jefferson and the so-called Federalists.

For instance Jefferson wrote to a friend regarding Barruel's work:

"Barruel's own parts of the book are perfectly the ravings of a Bedlamite" and "As Weishaupt lived under the tyranny of a despot and priests, he knew that caution was necessary even in spreading information, and the principles of pure morality. This has given an air of mystery to his views, was the foundation of his banishment.... If Weishaupt had written here, where no secrecy is necessary in our endeavors to render men wise and virtuous, he would not have thought of any secret machinery for that purpose."

While Washington wrote that the Jacobin clubs introduced by Citizen Genet would, "...would shake the government to its foundations."

John Quincy Adams also said, in referring to these "democratic" clubs that they were "so perfectly affiliated with the Parisian Jacobins that their origin from a common parent cannot possibly be mistaken."

John Adams wrote Jefferson years later and remarked, in a letter dated June 30, 1813, "You certainly never felt the terrorism excited by Genet, in 1793 ... when ten thousand people in the streets of Philadelphia, day after day threatened to drag Washington out of his house, and effect a revolution ... nothing but (a miracle) ... could have saved the United States from a fatal revolution of government."

Anyhow--if I can get it all together (distractions, so many distractions!) I'll post what I promise will be, in my opinion at least, a good article (or perhaps series of articles) on the subject.