Читать книгу The Freemasons In America: - H. Paul Jeffers - Страница 13

RECALLING THE SIGNING OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, Freemason William Ellery wrote, “I was determined to see how they all looked as they signed what might be their death warrant. I eyed each closely as he affixed his name to the document. Undaunted resolution was displayed in every countenance.”

Sixteen of the fifty-six signers (28 percent) of the Declaration of Independence were either Masons or probable ones. The known are Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Joseph Hewes, William Hooper, Robert Treat Payne, Richard Stockton, George Walton, William Whipple, and Ellery. Those for whom there is evidence of Masonic membership or affiliations were Elbridge Gerry, Lyman Hall, Thomas Nelson Jr., John Penn, George Read, Roger Sherman, and Thomas Jefferson.

While the Declaration was being discussed in June 1776, Congress took time out to appoint a committee to prepare plans for treaties “of commerce and amity” with other countries. When it issued a report in September, Congress presented the task to three “commissioners.” It named Silas Deane, who was already in Europe, Jefferson, and Franklin.

As an envoy to France, Franklin formed affiliations with the country’s Masonic lodges. In 1777, he was elected a member of the Lodge des Neuf Souers (Lodge of the Nine Sisters, or Nine Muses) of Paris, and in 1778 he assisted in Voltaire’s initiation into the lodge. In 1782, he became a member of Lodge de Saint Jean de Jerusalem. In the following year, he was elected venerable d’honneur of that body. The same year, he was made an honorary member of Lodge des bons Amis (Good Friends), Rouen. These and other distinctions were honored in a sermon at St. Paul’s Church, Philadelphia. On St. John’s Day in December 1786, he was referred to as “an illustrious Brother whose distinguished merit among Masons entitles him to their highest veneration.” One scholar of Franklin’s contributions to Masonry writes that no catalog of his offices, services, dates, names, and places could adequately convey his importance and “facets of a many-sided jewel which best reflect the influence Freemasonry had upon him.”

Franklin wrote, “Freemasonry has tenets peculiar to itself. They serve as testimonials of character and qualifications, which are only conferred after our course of instruction and examination. These are of no small value; they speak a universal language, and act as a passport to the attentions and support of the initiated in all parts of the world. They cannot be lost as long as memory retains its power.” He also observed, “Masonic labor is purely a labor of love. He who seeks to draw Masonic wages in gold and silver will be disappointed. The wages of a Mason are earned and paid in their dealings with one another; sympathy that begets sympathy, kindness begets kindness, helpfulness begets helpfulness, and these are the wages of a Mason.”

During the convention in Philadelphia that produced the U.S. Constitution, Franklin used language that Freemasons interpret as evidence of his Masonry:

The longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth, that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings, that “except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.” I firmly believe this; and I also believe, that, without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of [the Tower of] Babel.

A Masonic Franklin biographer writes: “It is not for us to say what he would have been had there been no Freemasonry in his life; it is for us only to revere the Franklin who was among the very greatest of any other nation, in all times; for us to congratulate ourselves and be thankful for our country, that this wise philosopher, this leader of men and of nations, had taken to his heart the immutable and eternal principles of the Ancient Craft.”

On November 15, 1777, representatives of the former colonies voted to adopt thirteen Articles of Confederation and sent them to the states for ratification. Because of Maryland’s refusal to agree until states claiming western lands ceded them to the new nation, approval did not occur until March 1, 1781. With independence secured by the surrender of the British force under General Charles Cornwallis to General George Washington at Yorktown, Virginia, on August 19, 1782, Americans had won their independence, but as the Masonic historian H. C. Clausen notes in Masons Who Helped Shaped Our Nation, “Though free, we were not yet united. The loose Article of Confederation did not provide a strong national government, common currency or consistent judicial system. Men of vision realized that another step must be taken if the weak Confederation of American States was to become a strong, unified nation.”

In the calling for a convention to devise a new structure of governance, and during the debate that resulted in the formation of the U.S. Constitution, Freemasons played a significant role. When a Constitutional Convention opened on May 25, 1787, in Philadelphia, with eighty-one-year-old Benjamin Franklin as a delegate and George Washington the unanimous choice of fifty-five representatives as presiding officer, Freemasonry was not only the single remaining pre-Revolution fraternal entity but also the sole organization operating nationally. More than two and a half centuries later, in the paper “Masonic Education and Service for the Grand Lodge of Texas,” the Masonic scholar James Davis Carter observes, “The role of Freemasonry and individual Masons prior to and through the American Revolution was that of the destruction of the traditional social and political order based on an authoritarian philosophy and characterized by inequality and privilege.”

With the victorious end of the American Revolution, Carter notes, “philosophy had, for the first time in history, an opportunity to play a constructive role in the erection of a political and social order. The experience of Masonic organizations before the Modern Age had taught Masons that liberty for the individual has never been handed down by the government—that liberty is gained through the limitation of the powers of government, not the increase of them.”

Carter continues:

Masons had also discovered that freedoms are learned—the individual has freedom of thought only as he learns to move within the limits established by a rational intelligence; he has freedom to form opinions only after he has learned to distinguish the true from the false; he has social freedom only after he has learned to live according to accepted standards of social intercourse; he has political freedom to the extent to which the law protects his political rights; and he has freedom to extend his liberties only when he has learned to fulfill obligations and conditions of those liberties. Masons have long recognized that the “discovery of the power to aim at ideal ends freely chosen by his own will and intelligence is the supreme achievement of man, and in that, more than any other in any other single fact, lies hope of the future.”

This traditional Masonic analysis of the Constitution continues:

Included in [the first ten] amendments were principles advocated by Masons, including religious toleration, freedom of speech, a speedy trial according to law before equals when accused of law violation, no imposition of excessive punishment, reservation of all powers not delegated in the Constitution. A comparison of the principles of government universally adopted by Masons, with those contained in the Constitution, reveals they are essentially the same in both documents. There is conclusive evidence that the majority of the men who worked for a federal union and wrote the Constitution were Masons. Some of these Masons were the most influential leaders of the fraternity in America, fully conversant with Masonic principles of government. Freemasonry was the only institution at that time governed by a federal system. There is not a scrap of evidence left by any member of the Constitutional Convention indicating that these principles were drawn from any other source. Since the government of the United States bears such a startling similarity to the government of the Masonic fraternity in theory and in structure, it is difficult to ascribe the similarity to coincidence.

On June 21, 1778, New Hampshire became the required ninth state to ratify the new Constitution. On July 2, the last Congress under the Articles of Confederation resolved that the states should choose presidential electors on the first Wednesday in January 1789, that one month later they should select a president and vice president, and that a congress elected under the Constitution should meet the first Wednesday in March in New York. The unanimous choice for president was Washington, with John Adams, a non-Mason, as vice president. On April 30, 1789, Washington’s oath of office was administered by Chancellor Robert R. Livingston, Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of New York. General Jacob Morton, Worshipful Master of St. John’s Lodge—the oldest in the city—and Grand Secretary of the Grand Lodge of New York, served as marshal of the inauguration ceremonies.

When Washington recited the presidential oath of office as required by the Constitution, the Bible was opened to Genesis, chapters 49 and 50, consisting of the prophecies of Jacob concerning his sons and his son Joseph’s death. Printed by Mark Baskett, “Printer to the King’s Most Excellent Majesty,” in London in 1767, the Bible’s first page bore a steel-engraved portrait of King George II. The second page was inscribed, “On this sacred volume, on the 30th day of April, A. L. 5789, in the City of New York, was administered to George Washington, the first president of the United States of America, the oath to support the Constitution of the United States. This important ceremony was performed by the Most Worshipful Grand Master of Free and Accepted Masons of the State of New York, the Honorable Robert R. Livingston, Chancellor of the State.” This was followed with:

Fame stretched her wings and with her trumpet blew

Great Washington is near. What praise is due?

What title shall he have? She paused and said

“Not one—his name alone strikes every title dead.”

A King James version, complete with the Apocrypha and elaborately supplemented with the historical, astronomical, and legal data of that period, the Bible contained numerous artistic steel engravings portraying biblical narratives from designs and paintings by old masters and engraved by the celebrated English artist John Stuart. It had been presented to the lodge by Jonathan Hampton on November 28, 1770.

This Bible was used at the inaugurations of Presidents Warren Harding (1921), Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953), Jimmy Carter (1977), and George H. W. Bush (1989). It was also to have been used for the inauguration of George W. Bush in 2001, but rain prevented it. It has also been present at numerous public and Masonic occasions. They include Washington’s funeral procession in New York, December 31, 1799; dedication of the Masonic Temple in Boston, June 24, 1867, and in Philadelphia in 1869; the dedication of the Washington Monument, February 21, 1885 (and its rededication in 1998); and the laying of the cornerstone of the Masonic Home at Utica, May 21, 1891. It was also used at the opening of the present Masonic Hall in New York on September 18, 1909, when St. John’s Lodge held the first meeting, and conferred the first Third Degree in the newly completed temple. It was displayed at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York, at the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia, and at the Famous Fathers and Sons exhibition at the George H. W. Bush Memorial Library in Texas in 2001. When not in use by St. John’s Lodge or on tour, it is on permanent display in what is now Federal Hall in New York, where Washington took the oath.

Of those who accompanied Washington in the inauguration ceremony, Roger Sherman, Alexander Hamilton, Baron Friedrich von Steuben, General Henry Knox, and John Adams, all except Adams were Masons. The governors of the thirteen states at the time of Washington’s inauguration were Masons. Washington chose for his first cabinet men who were Masons or sympathetic to the Craft’s ideals: Thomas Jefferson became secretary of state; Alexander Hamilton, secretary of the treasury; General Henry Knox, secretary of war; and Edmund Randolph (the grand master of the Grand Lodge of Virginia in 1788), attorney general. While they were chosen because of their fitness for public office, in the minds of Washington and other men of that time Masonic membership was another evidence of a man’s reliability and fitness for trust. Washington wrote that “being persuaded that a just application of the principles on which the Masonic fraternity is founded must be promotive of private virtue and public prosperity, I shall always be happy to advance the interests of the Society and be considered by them a deserving Brother.” One of Washington’s first duties was to appoint the chief justice and four associate justices of the Supreme Court. Four were Masons: Chief Justice John Jay and Associate Justices William Cushing, Robert H. Harrison, and John Blair.

The first Congress elected under the Constitution had several Masons. In the House of Representatives were Abraham Baldwin, Theodorick Bland, John Brown, Daniel Carroll, Elbridge Gerry, Frederick A. Muhlenberg, John Page, Josiah Parker, John Sevier, Nicholas Gilman, Thomas Hartly, James Jackson, John Lawrence, James Madison, Roger Sherman, William Smith, John Steele, Thomas Sumter, and Jeremiah van Rensselaer. Muhlenberg was elected Speaker of the House. Of twenty-six senators, thirteen are known to have been Freemasons: Oliver Ellsworth, James Gunn, William S. Johnson, Samuel Johnston, Rufus King, John Langdon, Richard Henry Lee, James Monroe, Robert Morris, William Paterson, George Read, and Phillip Schuyler Freemasons find connections between Masonry and the U.S. government in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. Pointing out that many leaders in the development of the federal union were Masons, they claim that the idea of a free public school system supported by the state was fostered by Masons. The policy of admitting new states to the Union on a basis of complete equality with the old, has a counterpart in Masonry in the creation of new lodges “equal in every respect to the position held by older lodges.” Men who had an influence on the writing of the Constitution were Masons who were “well informed in Masonic philosophy, practice and organization.” Freemasons occupied influential offices in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the government at the birth of the nation.

On September 25, 1793, Washington left New York for the laying of the cornerstone of the Capitol building in a city that had been named for him in the federal District of Columbia. He was, said the Columbian Mirror and Alexandria Gazette, the central figure in “one of the grandest MASONIC Processions” ever seen. The newspaper reported:

About 10 o’clock, Lodge, No. 9, were visited by that Congregation, so graceful to the Craft, Lodge, No. 22, of Virginia, with all their Officers and Regalia, an directly afterwards appeared on the southern banks of the Grand River Potomack: one of the finest companies of Volunteer Artillery that has been lately seen, parading to receive the President of the United States, who shortly came in sight with his suite—to whom the Artillery paid their military honors, and his Excellency and suite crossed the Potomack, and was received in Maryland, by the Officers and Brethren of No. 22, Virginia and No. 9, Maryland whom the President headed, and preceded by a bank of music; the rear brought up by the Alexandria Volunteer Artillery; with grand solemnity of march, proceeded to the President’s square in the City of Washington: where they were met and saluted, by No. 15, of the City of Washington, in all their elegant regalia, headed by Brother Joseph Clark, Rt. W.G.M.—P.T. and conducted to a large Lodge, prepared for the purpose of their reception. After a short space of time, by the vigilance of Brother C. Worthy Stephenson, Grand Marshall, P.T. the Brotherhood and other Bodies were disposed in a second order of procession, which took place amid a brilliant crowd of spectators of both sexes.

The assemblage consisted of the surveying department of the city of Washington; the mayor and officials of “George-Town”; the Virginia Artillery; the commissioners of the city of Washington and their attendants; stone cutters; mechanics; two sword bearers; Masons of the first, second, and third degree; bearers of “Bibles &c on the Grand Cushions”; stewards with wands; a band; Lodge No. 22 of Virginia, “disposed in their own order”; bearers of corn, wine, and oil; “Grand Master P. T. [Prince of the Tabernacle] George Washington, W.M. [Worshipful Master] No. 22, Virginia”; and a “Grand Sword Bearer.”

The newspaper account continued:

The procession marched two a-breast, in the greatest solemn dignity, with music playing, drums beating, colors flying, and spectators rejoicing; from the President’s Square to the Capitol, in the City of Washington; where the Grand Marshall called a halt, and directed each file in the procession, to incline two steps, one to the right, and one to the left, and face each other, which formed a hollow oblong square; through which the Grand Sword Bearer led the van; followed by the Grand Master P.T. on the left—the President of the United States in the Centre, and the Worshipful Master of Number 22, Virginia, on the right—all the other orders, that composed the procession advanced, in the reverse of their order of march from the President’s Square, to the south-east corner of the Capitol; and the Artillery filed off to a defined ground to display their maneuvers and discharge their cannon: The President of the United States, the Grand Master, P.T. and the Worshipful M. of No. 22, taking their stand to the East of a huge stone; and all the Craft, forming a circle westward, stood a short time in silent lawful order. The Artillery discharged a Volley. The Grand Marshall delivered to the Commissioners, a large Silver Plate with an inscription thereon which the commissioners ordered to be read, and was as follows:

This South East corner stone, the Capitol of the United States of America in the City of Washington, was laid on the 18th day of September 1793, in the thirteenth year of American Independence, in the first year of the second term of the Presidency of George Washington, whose virtues in the civil administration of his country have been as conspicuous and beneficial, as his Military valor and prudence have been useful in establishing her liberties, and in the year of Masonry 5793, by the Grand Lodge of Maryland, several Lodges under its jurisdiction, and Lodge No. 22, from Alexandria, Virginia. Thomas Johnson, David Stuart and Daniel Carroll, Commissioners, Joseph Clark, R.W.G.M. pro tem., James Hobam and Stephen Hallate, Architects. Collin Williamson, Master Mason.

The Artillery discharged a volley. The Plate was then delivered to the President, who, attended by the Grand Master pro tem., and three Most worshipful Masters, descended to the cavazion trench and deposited the plate, and laid it on the corner-stone of the Capitol of the United States of America, on which were deposited corn, wine, and oil, when the whole congregation joined in reverential prayer, which was succeeded by Masonic chanting honors, and a volley from the Artillery.

The whole company retired to an extensive booth, where an ox of five-hundred pounds weight was barbecued, of which the company generally partook with every abundance of other recreation. The festival concluded with fifteen successive volleys from the Artillery…. Before dark the whole company departed with joyful hopes of the production of their labor.

The laying of the Capitol cornerstone occurred on a date between publication of the first edition of Ilustrosions of Masonry by William Preston in 1772 in London and the first edition of The Freemason’s Monitor (a version of Preston adopted for American Freemasonry) by Thomas Smith Webb in 1797 in Albany, New York. Preston’s publication was available to the Masons who planned the Capitol cornerstone laying. More familiar to the planners would have been John K. Read’s New Ahiman Rezon, published in Richmond, Virginia, in 1791, two years before the Capitol event. It was published for the guidance of the Virginia lodges and dedicated to “George Washington, Esq. President of the United States of America.”

Visual proof of Washington’s Freemasonic observation was provided in a portrait by William Williams in 1794. At the request of the Alexandria Lodge, Washington stood for the painting wearing Masonic regalia. Documents show that on March 18, 1797, he “received” a delegation from the Alexandria Lodge, and on April 1, 1798, he attended a lodge banquet and proposed a toast.

Although his last will and testament expressed his desire “that my Corpse may be Interred in a private manner, without parade, or funeral Oration,” his lodge was permitted to prepare arrangements for the funeral procession. Mourners were instructed to arrive at Mount Vernon on Wednesday “at twelve o’clock, if fair, or on Thursday at the same hour.” Early on Wednesday, December 18, the Alexandria Lodge started for Mount Vernon and arrived about one o’clock. Two hours later the formal procession was formed, consisting of horse and foot soldiers, clergy, Washington’s horse with an empty saddle, a military band, the bier, and dozens of mourners.

At a red brick tomb in a hillside below the mansion, the Reverend Thomas Davis, the rector of Christ Church, Alexandria, read the Episcopal Order of Burial. Next, the Reverend James Muir, the minister of the Alexandria Presbyterian Church, and Dr. Elisha Dick, both members of Washington’s lodge, conducted the traditional Masonic funeral rites. The shroud was briefly withdrawn to allow a final viewing. A few days later, Muir wrote:

In the long and lofty portico, where oft the hero walked in all his glory, now lay the shrouded corpse. The countenance, still composed and serene, seemed to depress the dignity of the spirit which lately dwelt in that lifeless form. There those who paid the last sad honors to the benefactor of his country took an impressive, a farewell view. Three general discharges of infantry, the cavalry, and eleven pieces of artillery, which lined the banks of the Potomac, back of the vault, paid the last tribute to the entombed Commander-in-Chief of the Armies of the United States.

Nearly half a century later, a ceremony in Pennsylvania was vividly recalled by Captain Samuel De Wees:

Immediately after the arrival of [the] sad news [of his death], a public meeting was held at the court-House in [the town of] Reading, and arrangements made for a funeral procession. The Free Masons met at their Lodge, and made arrangements to join in the procession. A bright and exemplary brother had gone from a mystic Lodge upon earth, to join in membership with the Grand Lodge of transplendent and unconceived of brilliancy, holiness and glory above, and now, that the last funeral tribute was about to be paid, they could not be idle. Two companies of volunteers, one commanded by Captain Keims, were ordered out. The procession formed in the following order: the military in front, then the coffin, then the order of Masons, then civil officers, and then the citizens. The procession was fully a mile in length. It moved to a large church in Reading where the military, Masons and many of the citizens entered. The military moved (proceeded by the music) and placed the coffin in an aisle in front of the pulpit.

Washington would not have a memorial in his namesake capital city until many years after his death. Built at intervals between 1848 and 1885 with funds from public subscriptions and federal appropriations, a monument to honor him was considered during the Continental Congress in 1783. During the next three decades, Congress took no action on many additional proposals. In 1833, the Washington National Monument Society was organized by influential citizens who wanted a “great National Monument to the memory of Washington at the seat of the Federal Government.”

By 1847, $87,000, including interest, had been collected. A design by architect Robert Mills was selected and provided for a decorated obelisk 600 feet high that was to rise from a circular colonnaded building 100 feet high and 250 feet in diameter. But this plan was altered during construction, so that the present monument has little in common with the Mills design. On July 4, 1848, the cornerstone was laid during a Masonic ceremony using the trowel Washington had wielded at the laying of the cornerstone of the Capitol in 1793.

In 1854, many people were dissatisfied with the work and collection of funds declined, largely because of growing antagonism between the North and South. This brought construction to a stop for almost a quarter of a century. The monument was left incomplete at the height of about 150 feet. It wasn’t until August 2, 1876, that President Ulysses S. Grant approved an act committing the federal government to completion of the monument, with the Corps of Engineers of the War Department in charge of the work. When it resumed in 1880, Maryland marble facing was secured from the same vein as the original stone used for the lower portion. On August 4, 1884, the walls reached 500 feet. The capstone was set in place on December 6 and the monument was dedicated on February 21, 1885. It opened to the public on October 9, 1888. Inserted into the interior walls are 188 carved stones presented by individuals, societies, cities, states, and nations of the world.

Since its construction, critics of Freemasonry have discerned sinister, and even Satanic, symbolism. Noting that the number 3 has Masonic significance, they point out that the monument was built of 36,000 separate blocks of granite and that the number 36 is derived by multiplying 3 by 12. The capstone weighs exactly 3,300 pounds. As to the 188 specially donated memorial stones, those with suspicions of Freemasonry record that Masonic lodges throughout the world gave thirty-five that were mingled with the others, but that the last several were placed at the 330-foot level. These critics of Freemasonry claim that the cost of the monument, reported to be 1.3 million, is yet another instance of the Masonic number 13. The monument has eight windows that total thirty-nine square feet in size, a figure reached by multiplying 3 by 13. The figure 39 divided by 2 is 19.5, which is supposedly another significant Masonic number. The number 8 is purported to convey in occult numerology “new beginnings” and 13 means “extreme rebellion.” This is seen as a “new beginning,” that among Masons it is a euphemism for a “New World Order” through an “extreme rebellion,” such as the Mason-inspired American Revolution. There are said to be other, more complicated Masonic numbers concealed within the construction of the monument that was constructed to honor the first Masonic president and designed so that both the White House and the Capitol face it. The obelisk was located at that place so that residents and visitors to the Capitol could face the obelisk daily. The monument is also described as part of a sinister Masonic design for the capital city itself that will be examined in a later chapter of this book.

During the period when the Washington Monument was slowly rising in fits and starts, the American style of Freemasonry was spreading as steadily as the continental country and the nation.