Starting another one,this one touches on the piracy aspect,more so than most I have read on the subject..

[When the American Revolution broke out, Benjamin Franklin turned to the Masonic elite of France, who controlled the slave trade, to get arms, supplies, and military support. In the first fourscore years of American history, the slave-trading ports from Charleston to Newport were controlled by a handful of families bound by Masonic and family ties. They were not like the Jeffersons and Madison's, who saw the eventual end to the institution as befitting the new democracy; it was a mercantilist capitalism that the slave traders put above freedom and democracy.

These merchants would not relinquish the lucrative trade and seemed to stop at nothing in fighting abolition. The presidency was something members of the mercantile elite felt they could buy, and when money couldn't decide an election they used other means to seize control. In an effort to derail abolition, Presidents Harrison and Taylor suffered sudden and suspicious deaths that put pro-slave vice presidents in power. When even death failed to halt abolition, the country wound up in the most destructive war it ever fought. The Civil War ended at Appomattox, where the armies of Jefferson Davis surrendered—but not for the elite. A conspiracy organized by members of the quasi-Masonic Knights of the Golden Circle to kill President Lincoln sought to nullify the Emancipation Proclamation and its effects on the trade with England. The postwar efforts at reconstruction would also be stained by another Masonic group of "knights," the Ku Klux Klan.

Although piracy and smuggling were no longer as profitable in the newly independent America, institutions such as the slave trade and illegal drug trafficking would take their place. The latter provided riches for the elite that would become the bedrock of the American industrial age. The illegal drug trade that the Americans and British united to create in the first half of the nineteenth century would be a never-ending plague. Again, a select core of families controlled the trade, and in both Britain and America they were organized in Masonic cells. Family and lodge connections were the only tickets to admittance.

While it is not surprising that America's Founding Fathers were mostly slave owners, a legal activity, it may be surprising to discover that they were often smugglers as well. Profits from drug running, smuggling, slave trading, and even piracy are directly responsible for the founding of several of the country's most important banks, which are still in operation today. New England's staunch insurance business was born and prospered through profits earned from insuring opium and slave ships. The large railroad system that was built throughout the continental United States in the nineteenth century was funded with profits from illegal drug smuggling. And one of the greatest opium fortunes would provide seed money for the telephone and communications industry.

The European Knights Templar was a massive organization, but at the center was a hereditary elite that controlled and reaped the rewards of the group. Even after the reported demise of the group, it retained remarkable clout and power, always behind the scenes.
https://exploringrealhistory.blogspot.com/2019/01/part-1-secret-societies-of-america-of.html