Chapter One
Masonic Life During the American Revolution The commencement of the American Revolution was a new era in the Masonic as well as political history of our country. As the biographer of Washington''s public history is obliged to trace it along the pathway of current public events, so also his Masonic life, when fully given, must be blended with the Masonic history of the times in which he lived. From the first introduction of warranted lodges into America in 1733, until the commencement of the Revolution, Masonry had been in a state of progress in this country, so that in 1774 there were warranted lodges in each of the thirteen colonies, and in seven of them Provincial Grand Lodges. Massachusetts and Pennsylvania had then each two grand bodies of this class, making nine supervising Masonic powers in the colonies; and when we add to these the Grand Lodges of Scotland, Ireland, and the two of England, which each exercised Masonic authority in this country, we find the sources of Masonic power in the colonies then to be thirteen. The number of their subordinate lodges is lost to history, and the roll of the workmen who wrought upon the first temple of American Masonry has passed into the archives of the Grand Lodge above. The foundations of that temple still remain, but
"Its walls are dust, its trowels rust Its builders with the saints, we trust."
In 1774, when the clouds of political adversity were gathering thick above our country, and seemed ready to burst upon it with all their complicated gloom, a congress of delegates from the different colonies was convened at Philadelphia, and Washington was a member from Virginia. There were assembled in that council-chamber men who had never met before.
From New England, from the banks of the Hudson, the Delaware, the Susquehanna, and the Potomac, and from far down in the sunny South they came, and all looked kindly on each other then; for Common dangers and a common weakness bespoke the necessity of a unity of action. Many brothers of the mystic tie were members of that body, and over its deliberations Peyton Randolph, the Provincial Grand Master of Virginia, was selected from the bright roll of master workmen, to preside. Mr. Adams said it was a collection of the greatest men upon this continent, in point of abilities, virtues, and fortunes. Washington''s position in it may be seen from a remark made by Patrick Henry, who was also a member, to one who asked him whom he considered the greatest man in that body. "If you speak of eloquence," said he, "Mr. Rutledge of South Carolina is by far the greatest orator; but if you speak of solid information and sound judgment, Colonel Washington is unquestionably the greatest man on that floor."
A second session of which Washington was also a member, assembled the following year in Philadelphia, and Mr. Randolph was again called to preside over its councils. His health, however, failing, John Hancock was elected his successor as president; and before the session closed. Mr. Randolph died, and his remains were taken to Virginia and buried with Masonic honors. The contest at arms between the colonies and the mother country had already begun at Concord and Lexington, and Washington was elected commander-in-chief of the American army. He was at this time forty-three years of age. He had left his home at Mount Vernon but a few weeks before, expecting soon to return; but the duties of his appointment admitted of no delay, and after giving a few written directions for his domestic business, and executing a will, which he inclosed in an affectionate letter to his wife, who repaired to Cambridge, where the army was then stationed.
The British troops then held possession of Boston; and the very day that Washington received his commission, the battle of Bunker Hill was fought, and hi it fell General Joseph Warren, Grand Master of the Massachusetts Grand Lodge. It was the first grand offering of American Masonry at the altar of liberty, and the ground floor of her temple was bloodstained at its eastern gate. The second Grand Master who fell at the post of duty, was Peyton Randolph, in the following October, whose death has been already noticed. One fell on the battlefield, and the other in the council chamber of our country. Both their graves were wet with a nation''s tears, and their Masonic brethren placed on each the green acacia.
Washington reached Cambridge on the 2nd of July, and on the following day took command of the army. There were gathered around him a stern band of determined men, who had left their peaceful avocations and taken arms to defend their hearthstones. Of uniform they had little, and their arms were such as were found in possession of men unused to war. Some of their officers had -before held command in the old French and Indian War, and some had never held a sword before. To maintain his numbers, provide for their necessities, and reduce them to discipline, was Washington''s first care. But the year closed dark and gloomy upon the prospects of the army. Mrs. Washington left Mount Vernon late in the fall to spend the winter months at headquarters, and many of the officers were also joined by their wives; but the other officers and soldiers had few pleasures in their winter-quarters to make them forget the homes they had left.
During the previous French and Indian War, military lodge warrants had been granted by the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts to brethren in the army; and at the close of wearisome marches, and in their cheerless camps, the Masonic lodge-room became a bivouac in the tired soldier''s life, where his toils and privations were forgotten, and the finest feelings of his heart cultivated. While the Connecticut line of the army was encamped during this winter at Roxbury, near Boston, a movement was made by the brethren in it, early in February, to establish a Masonic lodge in their camp. For this purpose they applied to the Grand Officers of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts, of which John Howe was Grand Master, and Colonel Richard Gridley his Deputy, for the necessary authority. The petition was signed by Colonel Samuel H. Parsons, Colonel Samuel Wyllys, Colonel Joel Clark, Major John Park, Major Thomas Chase, Captain Ezekiel Scott, and sundry other brethren, praying that they might be formed into a regular lodge.
By appointment from Colonel Richard Gridley, the Deputy Grand Master, a meeting of the brethren was held in the Roxbury camp, on the 13th of February, 1776. At this meeting, it was agreed that Colonel Clark be recommended as Master, Major Park as Senior Warden, Major Chase as Junior Warden, Colonel Parsons as Treasurer, and Ensign Jonathan Hart as Secretary. The foregoing proceedings having been presented to the Deputy Grand Master, who was not present at the meeting, upon the 15th of the same month he issued to them a warrant or dispensation to hold a lodge in their camp at Roxbury, or wherever their body should remove on the continent of America, provided it was where no other Grand Master held authority.
It was called American Union Lodge, and both its name and the device on its seal were significant of the aid lent by Masonry in the hour of our country''s need. Both were expressive of the great sentiment which then pervaded the American heart. If Liberty was its keynote, Union was its watchword. The union of the Anglo-American colonies for mutual defence had been proposed in 1741, by Daniel Coxe of New Jersey, the first Provincial Grand Master in America. It had again been advocated in 1754 by Dr. Franklin, Provincial Grand Master of Pennsylvania, who also symbolized the idea at the close of an essay, which he published on this subject, by a wood-cut representing a snake divided into parts, with the initial letter of each colony on a separate part, underneath which he placed the motto, "Join Or Die."
The purposes for which both Coxe and Franklin had unsuccessfully advocated a federal union of the colonies, had been to protect them against the French "When the Revolution commenced, and the union of the colonies against British aggression was urged, many of the newspapers adopted Franklin''s device and motto. When the Union had taken place, the device was changed as a newspaper heading, and a coiled rattlesnake, with its head erect to strike, was substituted, with the motto, "Don''t tread on me." Both these devices and mottoes were inscribed on flags and other ensigns of war of the provincial troops at the commencement of the Revolution. This device, as a colonial emblem, was soon after changed to a circle consisting of a chain with thirteen links, containing in each an initial letter of one of the thirteen colonies. It was also placed upon some of the currency of the colonies as early as 1776.
The seal of American Union Lodge bore the same popular American idea in its symbolism, having as its principal device a chain of thirteen circular links, around a central part, on which was the square and compasses, with the sun, moon, and a star above, and three burning tapers beneath them, the extremities of the chain being united by two clasped hands. For the leading idea of the symbolism of the chain representing the union of the colonies, the brethren were probably indebted to Dr. Franklin, who visited the American camp in 1770, as one of a committee from Congress to confer with Washington on the affairs of the war; and the seal is supposed to have been engraved by Paul Revere, a distinguished Mason and patriot of Massachusetts, who was often employed at that period to engrave such designs.
Although a Military Lodge warrant had been granted by the Masonic authorities of New York on the 24th of July, 1775, for a lodge in the provincial troops of that colony, which was called St. John''s Regimental Lodge, yet the American Union Lodge was the first organized in the Continental army, and may be justly regarded as the eldest Masonic daughter of the American Union. It was organized in troops of which Washington had command, and though his military duties did not admit of his attendance on its meetings during the time the army was encamped around Boston, he subsequently often joined his Masonic brethren within its walls, and ever inculcated among its members, both by precept and example, a love of Masonry. This lodge went with his army, when it removed to New York, and held its meetings there while the city remained in his possession. Its last meeting there was on the 15th of August, 1776, a few days before the disastrous battle on Long Island. The next subsequent record of this lodge states:
"The British troops having landed with a large body on Long Island, the attention of the American army was necessary to repel them. On the ever memorable 27th of August, the Right Worshipful Joel Clark, Elisha Hopkins, Ozias Bissell, Joseph Jewett, Nathaniel Gore, being taken prisoners; and on the 13th of September, Brother James Chapman, Micajah Gleason, killed; William Cleavland and John P. Wyllys taken prisoners, and Brother Otho H. Williams taken prisoner at Fort Washington, by which misfortunes the lodge was deprived of its Master, and some most worthy members, and many other brethren were called to act in separate departments, wherefore the lodge stood closed without day.
"(Signed) Jonathan Hart, Secretary."
No further meetings of this lodge were held until March, 1777; and in the mean time, Joel Clark, its Master, died in captivity.
After the disastrous battle of Long Island, Washington found it impossible for the safety of his army to retain possession of New York, and he evacuated the city about the middle of September, after having his headquarters there five months. From this time until the close of 1776, he did not long enjoy a resting- place for his troops. His strongholds upon the Hudson were lost, and he retreated from river to river in New Jersey, till he had crossed the Delaware, and encamped on its Pennsylvania side. There he turned upon his pursuers, and on the 25th of December re-crossed the river amidst floods of ice, surprised a portion of the British army while engaged in their Christmas revels at Trenton, and gained a decided victory. This at once turned the tide of war, and after further successes at Princeton, his army went into winter-quarters at Morristown.
The close of 1776 was the darkest period in the history of American Masonry. Every Grand East on the American continent was shrouded in darkness. Massachusetts and Virginia had each lost a Grand Master since the commencement of the war; the old Grand Lodge of New York was dissolved, by its Grand Master, Sir John Johnson, fleeing from his home, and becoming an officer in the British army; the labors of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania were suspended, and their hall was soon after made a prison-room for citizens who were disaffected to the American cause.
In the spring of 1777 a ray of light first arose in the East. The members remaining of Dr. Warren''s Grand Lodge were convened, and they resolved, that as the political head of this country had destroyed all connection between the States and the country from which that Grand Lodge derived its commissioned authority, it was their privilege to assume an elective supremacy, and they accordingly elected Joseph Webb their Grand Master. Virginia, too, a few months later, called a convention of its lodges, which recommended to its constituents George Washington as the most proper person to be elected the first independent Grand Master of Virginia. Washington at that time had held no official position in Masonry, and he modestly declined the intended honor, when informed of the wish of his Virginia brethren, for two reasons: first, he did not consider it masonically legal, that one who had never been installed as Master or Warden of a lodge, should be elected Grand Master; and second, his country claimed at the time all his services in the tented field. John Blair, therefore, the Master of Williamsburg Lodge, who was an eminent citizen of Virginia, was elected in his stead.
The military campaign of 1777 gave to history, in quick succession, the battles of Brandywine and Germantown, the evacuation of Philadelphia by Congress, and its occupation by British troops, and closed by the retirement of the American army into winter-quarters at Valley Forge. Here, as the shoeless army marched to their cheerless encampment, hundreds of bare feet left footprints of blood in their frozen path. Washington was moved to tears at the sight, and his touching exclamation of "poor fellows" was responded to by a "God bless your Excellency, your poor soldiers'' friend," by the suffering soldiers. Masonic traditions state that military lodges were held in the camp at Valley Forge, which Washington often attended, but the loss of their records prevents us from verifying the statement. His headquarters that winter were at the house of a Quaker preacher; and tradition has told us how the man of peace surprised him one day in a retired place, praying audibly and fervently for the success of the American arms, and that he thereupon assured his family that America would finally triumph, for such prayers would surely be answered.
"Oh! who shall know the might Of the words he utter''d there? The fate of nations then was turn''d By the fervor of that prayer. "Hut wouldst thou know his words, Who wander''d there alone? Go, read enroll''d in heaven''s archives The prayer of Washington!"
There is an interesting Masonic memorial of Washington at this period, which has long been in possession of Lodge No. 43, at Lancaster, Pennsylvania. While Congress held its sessions in York, during the time the British occupied Philadelphia, Washington visited that borough, and his striking and majestic appearance so impressed a young man of that vicinity, that he carved a life-size statue of him from a single block of wood, which was afterwards presented to Lodge No. 43, and is still in its possession. The name of the young self-taught artist who carved it has long been forgotten, but the outlines and expression of the statue are said to bear a striking resemblance to Washington at that period.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Illustrated Masonic Secrets of America''s Founding Fathers Copyright © 2008 by Bottletree Books LLC . Excerpted by permission.
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