FREEMASONRY AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
From The Grand Lodge Of Texas
The month of July is special to all Americans because we celebrate the birth
of our nation on the fourth of July. On that date in the year 1776,
representatives of the thirteen American colonies, assembled at what is now
known as Independence Hall in Philadelphia, adopted a manifesto asserting their
political independence from the British crown. We know that document as the
American Declaration of Independence.
Over the last two centuries various Masonic writers have often attempted to
inflate the involvement of members of the Masonic fraternity in the events
leading up to and resulting from this important historic event. It has often
been claimed that all or most of the signers of the Declaration of Independence
were Freemasons; or that all or most of the general officers serving under
Washington were Freemasons. These claims have been made to bolster the theory
that the events of the American Revolution and the formation of the American
colonies into an independent republic were carried out according to some Masonic
plan, and in accordance with universal Masonic principles.
It is always best that such claims be tempered by the light of responsible
and accurate historic research, not for the purpose of discounting the patriotic
nature of our early American Masonic forbearers, but rather to understand the
role that Freemasons did play in the formation of this great nation. Probably
the best accounting of Masonic membership among the signers of the Declaration
of Independence is provided in the book Masonic Membership of the Founding
Fathers, by Ronald E. Heaton, published by the Masonic Service Association at
Silver Spring, Maryland. According to this well researched and documented work,
proof of Masonic membership can be found for only eight of the fifty-six signers
of the Declaration of Independence. They are:
- Benjamin Franklin, of the Tun Tavern Lodge at Philadelphia;
- John Hancock, of St. Andrew's Lodge in Boston;
- Joseph Hewes, who was recorded as a Masonic visitor to Unanimity Lodge No.
7, Edenton, North Carolina, in December 1776;
- William Hooper, of Hanover Lodge, Masonborough, North Carolina;
- Robert Treat Payne, present at Grand Lodge at Roxbury, Massachusetts, in
June 1759;
- Richard Stockton, charter Master of St. John's Lodge, Princeton,
Massachusetts in 1765;
- George Walton, of Solomon's Lodge No. 1, Savannah, Georgia; and
- William Whipple, of St. John's Lodge, Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Additionally, another five or six signers have from time to time been
identified as members of the fraternity based on inconclusive or unsubstantiated
evidence.
As for the Masonic membership among Washington’s generals, it is true that
many were members of the fraternity, but many were not. The recognized modern
authority on the subject is James R. Case, former Grand Historian of the Grand
Lodge of Connecticut, who published his findings in the 1955 booklet Fifty Early
American Military Freemasons.
When examining the participation of Freemasons in the American Revolution we
should first remember the Ancient Charges of a Freemason, and especially that
charge concerning “the Civil Magistrates, Supreme and Subordinate,” which
enjoins the Mason to be “a peaceable subject to the Civil Powers” and “never to
be concern'd in plots and conspiracies against the peace and welfare of the
nation.” This charge was listed as the second of those contained in the
Constitutions adopted by the Premier Grand Lodge at London in 1723, long before
the American Revolution. How then can we justify the participation of American
Freemasons in their rebellion against the King?
The answer can be given in two parts. First, the Masonic fraternity in the
American colonies took no part in the Revolution, following Masonic tradition by
taking no official stance. However, the fraternity’s official neutrality may
have owed as much to the divided loyalties of its leadership as it did to
Masonic tradition. Many Masons were Loyalists. And second, rebellion against the
state, whether justified or unjustified, is not a Masonic offense. The Old
Charges state clearly “if a Brother should be a Rebel against the State, ... if
convicted of no other Crime, ... they cannot expel him from the Lodge, and his
Relation to it remains indefeasible.” This simply means that, in the case of the
American Revolution, many brethren, feeling that the actions of the crown
warranted revolution and independence, were justified in following their
consciences without fear of violating their Masonic obligations or any Masonic
law.
As the charge concerning the Civil Magistrates reminds us, “Masonry hath been
always injured by War, Bloodshed, and Confusion,” the fraternity was indeed
injured by the war. General Joseph Warren, Grand Master of the Ancient’s
Provincial Grand Lodge of Massachusetts, lost his life at the Battle of Bunker
Hill in June 1775 and his body was thrown into an unmarked grave. While he had
led the American troops during that battle, his lodge brother, Dr. John Jeffries
assisted the British troops. Nearly a year later, his body was exhumed and
identified by another Lodge brother, Paul Revere.
Even before the Declaration of Independence, colonial Masonry suffered from
the disruptions of the war, and the division of loyalties among its members.
Many lodges found it difficult to meet regularly, and others ceased to meet at
all. Many lodges were disbanded as occupying British forces prohibited private
assemblies, and loyalist Masons fled the country or joined the British forces.
Although the Masonic fraternity played no part in the Revolutionary War, it
can easily be shown that in many ways the revolutionary ideals of equality,
freedom, and democracy were espoused by the Masonic fraternity long before the
American colonies began to complain about the injustices of British taxation.
The revolutionary ideals expressed in the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of
Independence, and the writings of Thomas Paine, were ideals that had come to
fruition over a century before in the early speculative lodges of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, where men sat as equals, governed
themselves by a Constitution, and elected their own leaders from their midst. In
many ways, the self-governing Masonic lodges of the previous centuries had been
learning laboratories for the concept of self-government.
On September 18, 1793, President George Washington, dressed in his Masonic
apron, leveled the cornerstone of the United States Capitol with the traditional
Masonic ceremony. Historian Stephen Bullock in his book Revolutionary
Brotherhood carefully notes the historic and symbolic significance of that
ceremony. The Masonic brethren, dressed in their fraternal regalia, had
assembled in grand procession, and were formed for that occasion as
representative of Freemasonry's new found place of honor in an independent
American society. At that moment, the occasion of the laying of the new
Republic's foundations, Freemasons assumed the mantles “high priests” of that
“first temple dedicated to the sovereignty of the people,” and they “helped form
the symbolic foundations of what the Great Seal called ‘the new order for the
ages’.”
back to top |
