Free The 13th Enumeration by William Struse, Rachel Starr Thomson

surprise that he had found something important. He was informed that it would be looked into. Later, when Darius followed up on the note, he was told that there were no records of any so-called “13 th Enumeration.” Still curious but now also cautious, Darius dropped the subject and began a clandestine effort to learn the truth.
    After that night, Darius was never left alone in the Four Crowns research library again. And from that ni ght to the present, Darius had pursued the secret.
    Over the intervening years, Darius had learned much tradition and superstition, but little tangible evidence surrounded the prominence of the number thirteen in history. He searched for every bit of knowledge on the history of thirteen in the cultures of the world, hoping it would provide him clues to the meaning of the 13 th Enumeration. He knew from the subsequent information he gathered that the 13 th Enumeration was the great secret of the Order. He had been astounded to learn that the knowledge of this secret was also the Order’s greatest fear. Every time information surfaced that even hinted at its possible discovery, it was quickly destroyed. When it could not be destroyed, the Order employed deception and superstition to cover the truth. They had been so effective that after all these years, Darius still did not know the exact nature of that which he sought. He had often wondered if the keepers of the secret even knew the exact nature of their fear.
    All the research Darius had gathered was in File 13 in front of him. He read down the list of people and events and chose one to review. Often when he reviewed the files, he gleaned new information. Information which led him to the next clue. Tonight he chose the Frishmuth file.
    William Frishmuth was born in 1830 in Coburg, Germany. He attended Gymnasium Ernestium in Gotha, Germany, after which he spent a year learning from Fredrick Wohler, the famous German chemist. It was Fredrick Wohler who isolated aluminum in 1827. After studying as a chemist, William Frishmuth traveled through South America, the Caribbean, and the United States. In 1855, he settled in Philadelphia and became a US citizen.
    In 1860, he spoke vehemently in support of the abolitionist cause. He was a staunch supporter of the emancipation efforts of Abraham Lincoln during his 1860 presidential campaign, and he became a close acquaintance of President Lincoln. At the start of the Civil War, Lincoln requested that the secretary of war appoint William Frishmuth as a secret agent. Frishmuth’s activities during the war reportedly earned him two hundred dollars from President Lincoln’s private purse. Later, during the war, Frishmuth was granted permission by Lincoln to raise a regiment in the Pennsylvania 12 th Cavalry. With the confirming sanction of Pennsylvania’s governor, he raised the 113 th Regiment and was commissioned a colonel. His service lasted only a short time before he resigned.
    Darius well knew that it could be argued that the presidency of Abraham Lincoln was born out of the Morgan Affair and the anti-Masonic movement that saw Masonry go from fifty thousand members to five thousand in a short period of time. The Anti-Masonic Party (the first third party in America) joined with the Whigs in the New Republican Party and nominated Abraham Lincoln as their presidential candidate. After his election, President Lincoln’s push for an amendment to the constitution for the abolishment of slavery was a double insult to the South.
    At the time of the Civil War, Charleston, South Carolina, was the headquarters of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry. South Carolina was the first state to secede from the union. In all, eleven states were considered to have officially seceded from the Union—but to those who understood the symbolic nature of the struggle, the thirteen stars on the secessionist flag told the tale of the Templars’ infiltration into Masonry.
              P.T. Beauregard, on April 12,