On June 5, 1730, the Duke of Norfolk granted to Daniel Coxe of New Jersey one of the earliest known Masonic deputations to reach the American colonies.
The deputation appointed Mr. Coxe provisional Grand Master of:
New York
New Jersey
Pennsylvania
It also allowed him to establish lodges.
One of the earliest official colonial lodges was founded by Henry Price in Boston on August 31, 1733, under a charter from the Mother Grand Lodge of England.
[Albert Gallatin Mackey (March 12, 1807 – June 20, 1881) was an American medical doctor and author. He is best known for his books and articles about freemasonry, particularly the Masonic Landmarks.]
Freemasonry spread rapidly in the American colonies just as it had done in Europe.
The early lodges in the British colonies were nearly all chartered by the English Mother Grand Lodge, and members of the early lodges were loyal British subjects.
Englishmen were not the only people to colonize America.
The competition between the two nations caused frequent spats over colonial boundaries.
This brought about a number of violent clashes on American soil, such as Queen Anne’s War during the first decade of the 18th century, and King George’s War in 1744.
Even during times of peace, relations between the two superpowers were anything but smooth.
One of Britain’s loyal military officers in the colonies was a man named George Washington.
Both England and France benefited from this pause in hostilities because the wars were driving the two into debt.
Even the inflatable paper currencies the two nations used to help pay for their wars did not prevent the serious financial difficulties that wars always bring.
Unfortunately, the peace lasted less than a decade.
It was broken, according to some historians, by George Washington during one of his military forays into the Ohio Valley.
Washington and his men sighted a group of French soldiers but were not spotted by the French in return.
On the command of Washington, his troops opened fire without warning.
It turned out that Washington’s soldiers had ambushed credentialed French ambassadors traveling with a customary military escort.
The French alleged afterwards that they were on their way to confer with the British to settle some of the disputes still existing over the Ohio regions.
Washington justified his attack by stating that the French soldiers were “skulking” and that their claim to diplomatic immunity was a pretense.
Whatever the truth might have been, the French felt that they had been the victims of unprovoked military aggression.
[Frederick II (German: Friedrich II.; 24 January 1712 – 17 August 1786) was the monarch of Prussia from 1740 until 1786. He was the last Hohenzollern monarch titled King in Prussia, declaring himself King of Prussia after annexing Royal Prussia from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1772. His most significant accomplishments include his military successes in the Silesian wars, his reorganisation of the Prussian Army, the First Partition of Poland, and his patronage of the arts and the Enlightenment. Prussia greatly increased its territories and became a major military power in Europe under his rule. He became known as Frederick the Great (German: Friedrich der Große) and was nicknamed "Old Fritz"]
Heavy economic damage was inflicted upon both England and France.
When the war ended, England faced a national debt of 136 million pounds, most of it owed to a banking elite.
To repay the debt, the English Parliament levied heavy taxes in its own country.
When this taxation became too high, duties were placed on goods in the American colonies.
The duties quickly became a sore point with the American colonists who began to resist.
Another change caused by the War was Hanover’s abandonment of their policy of keeping a small standing army in Britain.
England’s armed forces were greatly expanded.
This brought about a need to tax citizens even more. In addition, nearly 6,000 British troops in America needed housing and they often encroached upon the property rights of colonists.
This generated yet more colonial dissent.
The fourth adverse consequence of the War (at least in the minds of the colonists) was England’s capitulation to the demands of several American Indian nations.
The American Indians had fought on the side of the French because of the encroachment of British colonists on Indian lands.
After the French and Indian War, the Crown issued the Proclamation of 1763 commanding that the vast region between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River was to be a widespread Indian reservation.
Many colonists strongly objected to the taxes and the manner in which they were collected.
Under British “writs of assistance,” for example, Crown custom agents could search wherever they pleased for goods imported in violation of the Acts.
The agents had almost unlimited powers to search and seize without notice or warrant.
In October 1765, representatives from nine colonies met at a Stamp Act Congress in New York.
They passed a Declaration of Rights expressing their opposition to taxation without colonial representation in the British Parliament.
The Declaration also opposed trials without juries by British Admiralty courts.
This act of defiance was partially successful.
On March 17, 1766, five months after the Stamp Act Congress met, the Stamp Act was repealed.
Despite sincere efforts by the British Parliament to satisfy many colonial demands, a significant independence movement was developing in the American colonies.
Under the leadership of a man named Samuel Adams, a secret organization calling itself the “Sons of Liberty” began to commit acts of violence and terrorism.
In this c. 1772 portrait, Adams points at the Massachusetts Charter, which he viewed as a constitution that protected the peoples' rights.
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[Samuel Adams (September 27 [O.S. September 16] 1722 – October 2, 1803) was an American statesman, political philosopher, and a Founding Father of the United States. He was a politician in colonial Massachusetts, a leader of the movement that became the American Revolution, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and other founding documents, and one of the architects of the principles of American republicanism that shaped the political culture of the United States. He was a second cousin to his fellow Founding Father, President John Adams.]
Tensions continued to mount, and more secret revolutionary groups were formed.
Britain would still not repeal the tax on tea.
On October 14, 1773, three years after the Boston Massacre, colonists dressed as Indians crept onto a British ship anchored in Boston harbor and threw large quantities of tea into the water.
These acts of rebellion finally caused Parliament to enact trade sanctions against the colonists.
The sanctions merely fueled the rebellion.
In 1774, a group of colonial leaders convened the First Continental Congress to protest British actions and to call for civil disobedience.
In March 1775, Patrick Henry gave his famous “Give me liberty or give me death” speech at a convention in Virginia.
Portrait by George Bagby Matthews after Thomas Sully, c. 1891
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[Patrick Henry (May 29, 1736 [O.S. May 18, 1736] – June 6, 1799) was an American politician, planter and orator who declared to the Second Virginia Convention (1775): "Give me liberty, or give me death!" A Founding Father, he served as the first and sixth post-colonial Governor of Virginia, from 1776 to 1779 and from 1784 to 1786.]
Within less than a month of that speech, the American Revolution got under way with the Battle of Concord, where an organized colonial militia called “the minute men” suffered eight casualties while inflicting 273 on the British.
In June of that same year, George Washington, the man who some historians believe had gotten the entire snowball rolling two decades earlier when he had ordered his troops to fire on the French in the Ohio Valley, was named commander-in-chief of the new ragtag Continental Army.
Historians have noted that economic motives were not the only ones propelling the American revolutionaries.
This became obvious after the British Parliament repealed nearly all of the tariffs they had imposed.
King George III, despite being a Hanoverian, was popular at home and he initially thought of himself as a friend to the colonists.
The sharp attacks against King George by revolutionary spokesmen quite upset him because the attacks seemed out of proportion to his actual role in the problems complained of by the colonists.
More of the revolutionary rhetoric should have been aimed at Parliament.
There was clearly something deeper driving the revolutionary cause:
the rebels were out to establish a whole new social order.
Their revolt was fueled by sweeping philosophies which encompassed much more than their disputes with the Crown.
One of those philosophies was Freemasonry.
A “Who’s Who” of the American Revolution is almost a “Who’s Who” of American colonial Freemasonry.
According to Col. La Von P. Linn in his article “Freemasonry and the National Defense, 1754-1799,” [1] out of an estimated 14,000 officers of all grades in the Continental Army, one seventh, or 2,018, were Freemasons.
One hundred of those officers were generals. Col. Linn remarks:
In all our wars, beginning with the French and Indian Wars and the War for American Independence, the silhouettes of American military Masons have loomed high above the battles. [2]
Europe provided the Americans with two additional Freemasons of importance.
From Germany came the Baron von Steuben, who personally turned Washington’s ragged troops into the semblance of a fighting army.
[Friedrich Wilhelm August Heinrich Ferdinand von Steuben (born Friedrich Wilhelm Ludolf Gerhard Augustin Louis von Steuben; September 17, 1730 – November 28, 1794), also referred to as Baron von Steuben (German: [fɔn ˈʃtɔʏbm̩]), was a Prussian military officer who played a leading role in the American Revolutionary War by reforming the Continental Army into a disciplined and professional fighting force. His contributions marked a significant improvement in the performance of U.S. troops, and he is consequently regarded as one of the fathers of the United States Army.]
Von Steuben was a German Freemason who had served in the Prussian Army as an aide-de-camp to Frederick the Great.
He had been discharged during the 1763 Prussian demobilization after the Seven Years War.
At the time that von Steuben’s services were procured in France by Benjamin Franklin, von Steuben was a half-pay captain who had been out of military work for fourteen years.
Franklin, in order to get the approval of Congress, faked von Steuben’s dossier by stating von Steuben to be a Lieutenant General.
The deception worked, much to the ultimate benefit of the Continental Army.
La Fayette was a wealthy French nobleman who, in his very early twenties, had been inspired by news of the American Revolution while serving in the French army in Europe, so he sailed to America to aid the revolutionary cause.
In 1778, during his service with the Continental Army, La Fayette was made a Freemason.
Later, after the war, La Fayette revealed just how important Freemasonry was to the leadership of the revolutionary army.
In his address to the “Four of Wilmington” Lodge of Delaware during his last visit to America in 1824, La Fayette said:
At one time [while serving under General Washington] I could not rid my mind of the suspicion that the General harbored doubts about me; this suspicion was confirmed by the fact that I had never been given a command-in-chief.
This thought was an obsession and it sometimes made me very unhappy.
After I had become an American freemason General Washington seemed to have seen the light.
From that moment I never had reason to doubt his entire confidence.
And soon thereafter I was given a very important command-in-chief. [3]
When we consider the prominence of Freemasons in the American Revolution,* it should come as no surprise that revolutionary agitation came from Masonic lodges directly.
According to Col. Linn’s article, the famous Boston Tea Party was the work of Masons coming directly out of a lodge:
On December 6, 1773, a group disguised as American Indians seems to have left St. Andrew’s Lodge in Boston and gone to Boston Harbor where cargoes of tea were thrown overboard from three East Indiamen [ships from the East Indies].
St. Andrew’s Lodge closed early that night “on account of the few members in attendance.” [5]
Sven G. Lunden, in his article, “Annihilation of Freemasonry,” states that St. Andrew’s Lodge was the leading Masonic body in Boston.
He adds:
And in the book which used to contain the minutes of the lodge, and which still exists, there is an almost blank page where the minutes of that memorable Thursday should be.
Instead, the page bears but one letter—a large T.
Can it have anything to do with Tea? [6]
In Sam Adams, Pioneer of Propaganda, author John C. Miller describes the hierarchy of the anti-British mobs which played such an important role in the conflict.
The mobs were not just random aggregates of disgruntled colonials.
Mr. Miller explains the important role of Freemasons in those mobs:
A hierarchy of mobs was established during Sam Adam’s rule of Boston: the lowest classes—servants, negroes, and sailors—were placed under the command of a “superior set consisting of the Master Masons carpenters of the town”; above them were put the merchants’ mob and the Sons of Liberty. [7]
Masonic Lodges were not Johnny-come-lately’s to the revolutionary cause.
There is evidence that they were the initial instigators.
At least one lodge engaged in agitation from the very beginning.
Letters and newspapers from the early 1760’s reveal that the Boston Masonic Society was stirring up anti-British sentiment at the end of the Seven Years War, a good ten years before the Revolution actually began:
The Boston Masonic Society peppered [governor Thomas] Hutchinson and the royal government from its meeting place in “Adjutant Trowel’s long Garret,” where it was said more sedition [inciting to revolt], libels, and scurrility were hatched than in all the garrets in Grubstreet.
Otis and his Masonic brethren became such adept muckrakers that Hutchinson’s friends believed they must have “ransak’d Billingsgate and the Stews” for mud to sling at the Massachusetts aristocracy. [8]
We might wonder how American lodges became sources of revolt when they were nearly all chartered under the English system which, as we recall, was pro-Hanoverian and forbade political controversy within the lodges.
It must be kept in mind that by the 1760’s, the anti-Hanoverian Templar degrees had become firmly established in Europe and had also traveled secretly to many of the lodges in the American colonies.
For example, as mentioned in an earlier chapter, St. Andrew’s Lodge of Boston, which had perpetrated the Boston Tea Party in 1773, conferred a Templar degree already on August 28, 1769, after applying for the warrant in 1762 from the Scottish Grand Lodge in Edinburgh.
That application was made almost a decade before the American Revolution began.
Some Templars were not only anti-Hanoverian, but they also sought the abolition of all monarchy.
The philosophical importance of Freemasonry to the American Revolutionaries can also be seen in the symbols which the revolutionary leaders chose to represent the new American nation.
They were Brotherhood/Masonic symbols.
Among a nation’s most significant symbols is the national seal.
An early proposal for the American national seal was submitted by William Barton in 1782.
In the upper right-hand corner of Barton’s drawing is a pyramid with the tip missing.
In place of the tip is a triangular “All-Seeing Eye of God.”
The All-Seeing Eye, as we recall, has long been one of Freemasonry’s most significant symbols.
It was even sewn on the Masonic aprons of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and other Masonic revolutionaries.
Above the pyramid and eye on Barton’s proposal are the Latin words Annuit Ceoptis, which means,
“He [God] hath prospered our beginning.”
On the bottom is the inscription Novus Ordo-Seclorum:
“The beginning of a new order of the ages.”
This bottom inscription tells us that the leaders of the Revolution were pursuing a broad universal goal which encompassed much more than their immediate concerns as colonists.
They were envisioning a change in the entire world social order, which follows the goal announced in the Fama Fraternitis.
The main portion of Barton’s design was not adopted except for one small part.
In the center of Barton’s proposal is a shield with two human figures standing on either side.
Perched atop the shield is a phoenix with wings outstretched; in the middle is a small phoenix burning in its funeral pyre.
As discussed earlier, the phoenix is a Brotherhood symbol used since the days of ancient Egypt.
The phoenix was adopted by the Founding Fathers for use on the reverse of the first official seal of the United States after a design proposed by Charles Thomson, Secretary of the Continental Congress.
Portrait "Charles Thomson" Oil on canvas; Joseph Wright (1756 - 1793), American; c. 1785
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[Charles Thomson (November 29, 1729 – August 16, 1824) was an Irish-born patriot leader in Philadelphia during the American Revolution and the secretary of the Continental Congress (1774–1789) throughout its existence. As secretary, Thomson, a Founding Father of the United States, prepared the Journals of the Continental Congress, and his and John Hancock's names were the only two to appear on the first printing of the United States Declaration of Independence. Thomson is also known for co-designing the Great Seal of the United States and adding its Latin mottoes Annuit cœptis and Novus ordo seclorum, and for his translation of the Bible's Old Testament.]
The first die of the U.S. seal depicts a long-necked tufted bird:
the phoenix.
The phoenix holds in its mouth a banner with the words E. Pluribus Unum (“Out of many, one”).
Above the bird’s head are thirteen stars breaking through a cloud.
In one talon the phoenix holds a cluster of arrows:
in the other, an olive branch.
Some people mistook the bird for a wild turkey because of the long neck; however, the phoenix is also long of neck and all other features of the bird clearly indicate that it is a phoenix.
The die was retired in 1841 and the phoenix was replaced by the bald eagle—America’s national bird.
Freemasons consider their fraternal ties to transcend their political and national divisions.
When the War for American Independence was over, however, the American lodges split from the Mother Grand Lodge of London and created their own autonomous American Grand Lodge.
The Scottish degrees soon became dominant in American Freemasonry.
The two major forms of Freemasonry practiced in the United States today are the York Rite (a version of the original English York Rite) and the Scottish Rite.
The Scottish Rite has a total of thirty-three degrees, many of which are Knight degrees.
The influence of Freemasonry in American politics remained strong long after the Revolution was over.
About one third of all U.S. Presidents have been Freemasons, most of them in the Scottish Rite. **
The list of prominent American Freemasons also includes such people as the late J. Edgar Hoover, founder of the F.B.I., who had attained the highest (33rd) degree of the Scottish Rite, and presidential candidate Jesse Jackson (in. 1988).
Famous American artists have also been members, such as:
Mark Twain
Will Rogers
W. C. Fields
The influence of Freemasonry in American politics extended beyond the Presidency.
The U.S. Senate and House of Representatives have had a large Masonic membership for most of the nation’s history.
In 1924, for example, a Masonic publication listed sixty Senators as Freemasons. [9]
They constituted over 60% of the Senate.
More than 290 members of the House of Representatives were also named as lodge members.
This Masonic presence has waned somewhat in recent years.
In an advertising supplement entitled, “Freemasonry, A Way of Life,” the Grand Lodge of California revealed that in the 97th Congress (1981-1983), there were only 28 lodge members in the Senate and 78 in the House.
While that represents a substantial drop from the 1920’s, Freemasonry still has a good-sized representation in the Senate with more than a quarter of that legislative body populated by members of the Craft.
The American Revolution was more than a local uprising.
It involved many nations.
France was a secret participant in the American cause long before the actual outbreak of war.
As early as 1767, the French Foreign Minister, Duke of Choiseul, had sent secret agents to the American colonies to gauge public opinion and to learn how far the seeds of revolt had grown.
France also dispatched agent provocateurs to the colonies to secretly stir up anti-British sentiment.
In 1767, Benjamin Franklin, who was not yet committed to armed warfare with England, accused France of attempting to blow up the coals between Britain and her American subjects.
After Choiseul was deposed in 1770, his successor, Compte de Vergennes, continued Choiseul’s policy and was instrumental in bringing about France’s open military support for the American cause after the War for Independence began. ***
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View full-sizeDownload [Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes (French pronunciation: [vɛʁ.ʒɛn]; 29 December 1719 – 13 February 1787) was a French statesman and diplomat. He served as Foreign Minister from 1774 to 1787 during the reign of Louis XVI, notably during the American War of Independence.]
Frederick the Great of Prussia was another to openly support the American rebels.
He was among the first European rulers to recognize the United States as an independent nation.
Frederick even went as far as closing his ports to Hessian mercenaries sailing to fight against the revolutionaries.
Just how deeply Frederick was involved in the American cause may never be known, however.
There is no doubt that many colonists felt indebted to him and viewed him as one of their moral and philosophical leaders.
Decades after the Revolution, a number of Masonic lodges in America adopted several Scottish degrees which had reportedly been created by Frederick.
The first American Lodge of the Scottish Rite, which was established in Charleston, South Carolina, published a circular on October 10,1802 declaring that authorization of its highest degree came from Frederick, whom they still viewed as the head of all Freemasonry:
On the 1st of May, 5786 [1786], the Grand Constitution of the Thirty-Third Degree, called the Supreme Council of the Sovereign Grand Inspectors General, was ratified by his Majesty the King of Prussia, who as Grand Commander of the Order of Prince of the Royal Secret,**** possessed the Sovereign Masonic power over all the Craft. In the New Constitution this Power was conferred on a Supreme Council of Nine Brethren in each nation, who possess all the Masonic prerogatives in their own district that his Majesty individually possessed, and are Sovereigns of Masonry. [10]
Some scholars argue that Frederick was not active in Freemasonry in the late 1700’s.
They feel that his name was simply used to lend the Rite an air of authority.
This argument may well be true, or at least partially so.
The significance of the Charleston pamphlet lies in the loyalty that the early American Scottish Rite openly proclaimed to German Masonic sources so soon after the founding of the new American republic.
While some German Freemasons from Prussia were aiding the American cause, other German Masons were helping Great Britain, and at an enormous profit.
Nearly 30,000 German soldiers were rented to Great Britain by six German states:
Hesse-Kassel
Hesse-Hanau
Brunswick
Waldeck
Anspach-Bayreuth
Anhalt-Zerbst
More than half of those troops were supplied by Hesse-Kassel; hence, all of the Germans soldiers were known as “Hessians.”
Hesse-Kassel’s troops were considered to be the best of the mercenaries; their accurate gunfire was feared by the colonial troops.
In many battles, there were more Germans fighting for the British than there were British soldiers.
In the Battle of Trenton, for example, Germans were the only soldiers against whom the Americans fought.
This does not mean that the German soldiers were especially loyal to Britain, or even to their own German rulers.
Almost one sixth of the German mercenaries (an estimated 5,000) deserted and stayed in America.
The use of German mercenaries created a stir in both England and America.
Many British leaders, including supporters of the monarch, objected to hiring foreign soldiers to subdue British subjects.
For the Germans, the arrangement was as lucrative as ever.
The Duke of Brunswick, for example, received 11,517 pounds 17 schillings 1 ½ pence for the first year’s rental, and twice that figure during each of the following two years.
In addition, the Duke received “head money” of more than seven pounds for each man, for a total of 42,000 pounds for Brunswick’s six thousand soldiers.
For each soldier killed, Brunswick was paid an additional fee, with three wounded counting as one dead.
The Prince of Hesse-Kassel, Frederick II, earned about 21,000,000 thaler for his Hessian troops, amounting to a net total of approximately five million British pounds.
That was an almost unheard of sum during his day and it accounted for more than half of the Hesse-Kassel fortune inherited by William IX when his father died in 1785.
The Hesse-Kassel treasury became one of the largest (some say the largest) princely fortunes in Europe because of the American Revolution.
The American Revolution followed the pattern of earlier revolutions by weakening the head of state and creating a stronger legislature.
Sadly, the American revolutionaries also gave their new nation the same inflatable paper money and central banking systems that had been erected by revolutionaries in Europe.
Even before the American Revolution was won, the Continental Congress had gotten into the inflatable paper money business by printing money known as “Continental notes.”
These notes were declared legal tender by the Congress with nothing to back them.
The Continental Congress used the notes to buy the goods it needed to fight the Revolutionary War.
Cooperative colonists accepted the money on the promise that the notes would be backed by something after the war was won.
As the Continental notes continued to come off Ben Franklin’s press, inflation set it.
This caused more notes to be printed, which triggered a hyperinflation.
After the war was won and a new “hard” currency (currency backed by a metal) was established, the Continental notes were only redeemable for the new currency at the rate of one cent to the dollar.
It was another clear and painful lesson on how paper money, inflation and devaluation can be effective tools to help nations fight wars.
Ironically, some American Founding Fathers used the experience of the Continental notes to urge the creation of a central bank patterned after the Bank of England to better control the currency of the new American nation.
The proposed central bank was a hot issue of debate with strong emotions running for and against the plan.
The pro-bank faction won.
After several years of controversy, America’s first central bank, the Bank of the United States, was chartered in 1791.
The charter expired twenty years later, was renewed after a five-year lapse, was vetoed by President Andrew Jackson in 1836, regained its charter twenty-seven years later (in 1863), and finally became the Federal Reserve Bank, which is America’s central bank today.
Although considerable opposition to a central bank has always existed in the United States, the country has had one, under one name or another, for most of its history.
The Founding Father credited with creating America’s first central bank was Alexander Hamilton.
Hamilton had joined the revolutionary movement in the early 1770’s and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel and aide-de-campon Washington’s staff by 1777.
Hamilton was a good military commander and became a close friend of George Washington and the Marquis de La Fayette.
After the war ended, Hamilton studied law, was admitted to the bar, and in February 1784, founded and became director of the Bank of New York.
Hamilton’s goal was to create an American banking system patterned after the Bank of England.
Hamilton also wanted the new U.S. government to assume all state debts and turn them into one large national debt.
The national government was to continue increasing its debt by borrowing from Hamilton’s proposed central bank, which would be privately owned and operated by a small group of financiers.
How was the American government going to repay all of this debt?
In an act of supreme irony, Hamilton wanted to place taxes on goods, just as the British had done prior to the Revolution!
After Hamilton became Secretary of Treasury, he pushed through such a tax on distilled liquor.
This tax resulted in the famous Whiskey Rebellion of 1794 in which a group of mountain people refused to pay the tax and began to speak openly of rebellion against the new American government.
At Hamilton’s insistence, President George Washington called out the militia and had the rebellion crushed militarily!
Hamilton and his backers had managed to establish in the United States a situation identical to England before the American Revolution:
a nation deeply in debt which must resort to taxing its citizens to repay the debt.
One might legitimately ask: why did Messrs. Hamilton and Washington bother participating in the American Revolution?
They simply used their influence to create the very same institutions in America that the colonists had found so odious under British rule.
This question is especially relevant today as the United States faces an astounding national debt of over two trillion dollars, and an enormous tax burden on its citizens far higher than anything ever conceived of by Britain to impose on the colonists in the 18th century.
Although Hamilton’s plans were largely successful, they did not go without very considerable opposition.
Leading the fight against the establishment of a privately-owned central bank were James Madison and Thomas Jefferson.
They wanted the government to be the issuer of the national currency, not a central bank.
In a letter dated December 13, 1803, Jefferson expressed his strong opinion about the Bank of the United States:
This institution is one of the most deadly hostility existing, against the principles and form of our constitution. [11]
He added:
...an institution like this, penetrating by its branches every part of the Union, acting by command and in phalanx [unison], may, in a critical moment, upset the government.
I deem no government safe which is under the vassalage of any self-constituted authorities, or any other authority than that of the nation, or its regular functionaries. [12]
Although one of Jefferson’s objections to the central bank rested on his concerns that such a bank might be an obstruction during times of war, he was nonetheless quite farsighted about some of the effects that such an institution would have.
Not only did the U.S. central banks create major financial panics in 1893 and 1907, but the financial fraternity operating the U.S. central bank has exerted, and continues to exert today, a strong influence in U.S. affairs, especially foreign affairs, just as Jefferson had warned.
It was Jefferson’s powerful influence, incidentally, which caused the five-year delay in the renewal of the bank’s charter in 1811.
We have just finished viewing the American Revolution in a less than rosy light.
There was, however, a powerful humanitarian influence at work inside the circle of Founding Fathers that must be acknowledged.
The United States is one of the freer countries today as a direct result of that influence, even if Americans are still far from being a completely free people.
The American founders affirmed important freedoms, especially those of:
speech
assembly
religion
An excellent Constitution was created for the United States that has proven highly workable in such a large and diverse society.
The genocide which seemed to go along with earlier Brotherhood political activity is conspicuously absent in the American Revolution.
American Freemasons today are proud of the role that their brethren played in creating the American nation, and justly so.
The spark of humanitarianism which periodically resurfaces in the Brotherhood network surely did so again during the founding of the American republic.
If we were to name a few of the most important humanitarians among the Founding Fathers, we might list such well-known figures as:
[George Mason (December 11, 1725 [O.S. November 30, 1725] – October 7, 1792) was an American planter, politician, Founding Father, and delegate to the U.S. Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, where he was one of three delegates who refused to sign the Constitution. His writings, including substantial portions of the Fairfax Resolves of 1774, the Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776, and his Objections to this Constitution of Government (1787) opposing ratification, have exercised a significant influence on American political thought and events. The Virginia Declaration of Rights, which Mason principally authored, served as a basis for the United States Bill of Rights, of which he has been deemed a father.]
George Mason was described by Thomas Jefferson as,
“One of our really great men, and of the first order of greatness.” [13]
Mason is the most neglected of the Founding Fathers because he ignored political glory, shunned office, and was never famous for his oratory; yet he stands as one of the most farsighted of the men who created the American nation.
After the Revolution, George Mason opposed the plans of Hamilton and declared that Hamilton had,
“Done us more injury than Great Britain and all her fleets and armies.” [14]
It was George Mason who pushed hardest for the adoption of a federal Bill of Rights.
The ten Amendments to the U.S. Constitution which constitute the Bill of Rights are based upon Mason’s earlier Virginia Declaration of Rights written by him in 1776.
The Bill of Rights almost did not make it into the American Constitution, and it would not have done so had not Mason engaged in a heated battle to ensure its inclusion.
Despite his chronic ill health, Mason published influential pamphlets denouncing the proposed Constitution because it lacked specified individual rights.
Most drafters of the Constitution, including Alexander Hamilton, declared a Bill of Rights unnecessary due to the balance and limitation of powers imposed on the federal government by the Constitution.
Mason persisted and was supported by Richard Henry Lee and Thomas Jefferson.
With the backing of James Madison, the Bill of Rights was finally pushed through to ratification in the final hours.
When we consider how the federal government has grown since then and how crucial the Bill of Rights have become, we can appreciate what a man of vision George Mason truly was.
His far-sightedness and humanitarianism were also manifested in his attempts to completely abolish slavery.
At a time when even his friends George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were slave owners, George Mason denounced the slave trade as a “disgrace to mankind” and worked to have it outlawed throughout all of the states.
George Mason did not succeed in this quest during his lifetime, but his dream did come true less than a century later when slavery was abolished in the United States by the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution. *****
Although most American schoolchildren do not hear much about George Mason in their history lessons or have his portrait hanging in their classrooms, he was one of the great heroes of human freedom.
The renewed spark of humanitarianism which arose during the American Revolution was soon overshadowed.
The establishment of the inflatable paper money system in the United States was a clue that something was still badly amiss in the Brotherhood network.
As similar revolutions led by Freemasons erupted around the world, the old horrors reemerged.
Two important Revolutionary leaders who are thought not to have been Freemasons are Samuel Adams and Thomas Jefferson.
According to John C. Miller, writing in his book, Sam Adams, Pioneer in Propaganda:
It is surprising to find that Sam Adams, who belonged to almost every liberal political club in Boston and carried the heaviest schedule of “lodge nights” of any patriot, was not a Mason.
Many of his friends were high-ranking Masons and the Boston lodge did much to foster the Revolution, but Sam Adams never joined the Masonic Society. [4]
Thomas Jefferson’s name was recorded in the Proceedings of the Grand Lodge of Virginia in 1883 as a visitor to the Charlottesville Lodge No. 60 on September 20, 1817.
The Pittsburg Library Gazette, Vol. 1, August 4, 1828, mentions Jefferson as a Notable Mason.
During his lifetime, he was even accused of being an agent of Weishaupt’s Bavarian “Illuminati.” More recently, some Rosicrucians have cited Jefferson as a member of their fraternity.
Despite all of this, actual records of Jefferson’s membership in any of those organizations appears to be either missing or nonexistent, except as that one-time visitor to the Charlottesville Lodge.
For this reason, some Masonic historians believe that Jefferson was either an inactive Mason or was not a member at all. **
In addition to George Washington and James Madison, Freemasons in the Presidency have been:
Degrees in the Scottish Rite are grouped together in sections, and each section is given a name.
Order of Prince of the Royal Secret is today called the Consistory [Council] of Sublime Princes of the Royal Secret and contains the 31st and 32nd degrees of the Scottish Rite.
Another indication of the early Scottish Rite’s admiration for things Prussian is found in the title of the 21st degree, which is called Noachite, or Prussian Knight. *****
La Fayette and a few other Freemasons also deserve credit for the success of the anti-slavery movement.
They belonged to a Masonic organization known as the Societe des Amis des Noirs (Society of the Friends of the Blacks) which worked to bring about the universal emancipation of blacks.
