American Phoenix
WHEN EUROPEAN COLONISTS sailed to North America, the Brotherhood
organizations sailed with them. In 1694, a group of Rosicrucian
leaders from Europe founded a colony in what is today the state of
Pennsylvania. Some of their picturesque buildings in Ephrata still
stand as a unique tourist attraction.
Freemasonry followed. 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, and
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. Masonic historian Albert MacKey believes that
lodges probably existed earlier, but that their records have been
lost.
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. England had
a major rival in the New World: France. 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. He had been initiated into Freemasonry on
November 4, 1752 at the age of 20. He remained a member of the Craft
for the rest of his life. Washington became an officer in the
colonial army, which was under British authority, by the time
he reached his mid-twenties. Standing six feet three inches tall and
weighing nearly two hundred pounds, Washington was a physically
impressive figure.
One of Washington’s military duties was to keep an eye on French
troops in tense border regions. The Treaty of Aixla-Chapelle
executed in 1748 had ended King George’s War and had returned some
territories to France. 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.
The French and Indian War was soon underway. It spread to Europe as
the Seven Years War.
The renewed warfare was disastrous. According to Frederick the Great,
the Seven Years War claimed as many as 853,000 military casualties,
plus hundreds of thousands of civilian lives. 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. British subjects were not permitted
to settle there without approval from the Crown. This sharply reduced
western expansion.
The first of Britain’s new colonial tax measures went into effect in
1764. It was known as the Sugar Act. It placed duties on lumber,
food, rum and molasses. In the following year a
new tax, the Stamp Act, was instituted to help pay for the British
troops stationed in the colonies.
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. They
burned the records of the Vice Admiralty court and looted the homes
of various British officials. They threatened further violence
against stamp agents and other British authorities.
The Sons of
Liberty organized economic boycotts by urging colonists to cancel
orders for British merchandise. These acts hurt England because the
colonies were very important to Britain as a trade outlet.
Therefore, in 1770, Britain bowed once again to the colonists by
repealing all duties except on tea. By that time, however, the
revolutionary fervor was too strong to be halted. The result was
bloodshed. On March 5, 1770, the “Boston Massacre” occurred in which
British troops fired into a Boston mob and killed five people.
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. This
incident was the famous “Boston Tea Party.”
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. 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. Freemasons fighting on the
revolutionary side included George Washington, Benjamin Franklin (who
had been a Mason since at least 1731), Alexander Hamilton, Richard
Montgomery, Henry Knox, James Madison, and Patrick Henry.
Revolutionaries who were also Masonic Grand Masters included
Paul
Revere, John Hancock, and James Clinton,
in addition to Washington and Franklin.
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. They
represented a total of 218 lodges. 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. 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.
The second European was the Marquis de La Fayette. 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.
* 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.
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, they 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.
Barton’s pyramid and accompanying Latin inscriptions were adopted in
their entirety.
The design is still a part of the American Great
Seal which can be seen on the back of the U.S. $1.00 bill.
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 Thompson, Secretary of the Continental Congress.
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 modern York
Rite has a total of ten degrees: the topmost is “Knights Templar.”
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.*
* In addition to George Washington and
James Madison, Freemasons in the Presidency have been: James Monroe
(initiated November 9, 1775), Andrew Jackson (in. 1800), James Polk
(in. June 5, 1820), James Buchanan (in. December 11, 1816), Andrew
Johnson (in. 1851), James Garfield (in. November 22, 1861 or 1862),
William McKinley (in. May 1, 1865), Theodore Roosevelt (in. January
2, 1901), William Howard Taft (in. February 18, 1908), Warren
Harding (in. June 28, 1901), Franklin
D. Roosevelt (in. October 10, 1911), Harry S. Truman (in. February
9, 1909), and Gerald Ford (in. 1949).
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 and 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.*
*
Interestingly, Vergennes was also a Freemason. He supported some of
the French Freemasons, such as Voltaire, who were creating the
fervent intellectual climate that led to the French Revolution. The
French Revolution overthrew Vergennes’ king, Louis XVI, within a
decade of Vergennes’ death. It is ironic that while he was alive,
Vergennes had opposed all deep-seated reforms to French society. He
thereby helped create the popular discontent which did so much to
make the French Revolution successful.
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
* 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.
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
ofthe 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 peoples. The American founders affirmed important
freedoms, especially those of speech, assembly and 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
Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Patrick Henry, and Richard Henry
Lee. One of the most important of the Founding Fathers is rarely
mentioned, however. He is the one in whose memory no large
monuments have ever been erected in Washington, D.C. His portrait
does
not grace any U.S. currency and he did not even have a postage stamp
issued in his honor until 1981. That man was George Mason.
George Mason was described by Thomas Jefferson as “oneof 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.*
* 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. Unfortunately, Aryanism still remained very
much alive in other Brotherhood branches.
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. One of those horrors was calculated genocide.
Back to Contents
The World Afire
ONE SIGNIFICANT BY-PRODUCT of the American Revolution was a
philosophical reshaping of how people viewed revolution. When
Benjamin Franklin was in France to win French military support for
the American cause, he engaged in an intensive public relations
campaign. He vigorously promulgated the idea of “virtuous
revolution”—a concept which had already found increasing favor in the
Masonic lodges. The public at that time tended to view violent
revolution as a crime against society. Franklin was successful in
changing this perception by encouraging people to accept violent
revolutions as steps in the progress of mankind.
Revolutionaries
were no longer to be frowned upon as criminals, he argued, because
they were idealists righting for freedom and justice. A new motto was
coined:
“Revolution against tyranny is the most sacred of duties.”1
These bold ideas electrified Paris and helped to win open French
support for the American cause, but at a terrible long-term cost to
human society. The ideas expressed by Franklin have helped to
stimulate endless bloody revolutions ever since.
The American Revolution was followed by many other revolutions
and/or the establishment of republican-style governments throughout
the western world and South America. The success of the American
Revolution had made it easy to rally people to fight. We witness
during this era the French Revolution, the creation of,
-
the Batavian
Republic in the Netherlands (1795-1806)
-
the Helvetic Republic in
Switzerland (1798-1805)
-
the Cisalpine Republic in northern Italy
(1797-1805)
-
the Ligurian Republic in Genoa (1797-1805)
-
the Parthenopean Republic in southern Italy
Between 1810 and 1824, the
Spanish colonies in South America took up arms and won their
political independence. In 1825, the Decembrist revolt broke out in
Russia. A second revolution erupted in France in 1830. In that same
year, a revolt in Holland brought about the sovereignty of Belgium.
A Polish revolution in 1830 and 1831 was successfully stamped out by
Russia. In 1848, a major wave of revolutionary activity swept Europe
spurred by an international collapse of credit caused in good part
by the new inflatable paper money system, bad harvests, and
a
cholera epidemic.
In nearly all of those revolutions, we continue to see important
revolutionary leadership positions held by Freemasons. During the
first French Revolution, a key rebel leader was the Duke of Orleans,
who was the Grand Master of French Masonry before his resignation at
the height of the Revolution. Marquis de La Fayette, the man who had
been initiated into the Masonic fraternity by George Washington,
also played an important role in the French revolutionary cause. The
Jacobin Club, which was the radical nucleus of the French
revolutionary movement, was founded by prominent Freemasons.
According to Sven Lunden’s article, “The Annihilation of
Freemasonry”:
Herbert, Andre Chenier, Camille Desmoulins and many other
“Girondins” [moderate French republicans supporting republican
government over monarchy] of the French Revolution were Freemasons.2
Freemasons were the primary leaders of the 1825 Decembrist revolt
in Russia. Some of the planning for that revolt took place within
their lodges.
In South America, according to Richard DeHaan, writing in Collier’s
Encyclopedia:
The order [Freemasonry] played an important role in the spread of
liberalism and the organization of political revolution in Latin
America. Like French Freemasonry, the Latin American movement was
also generally anticlerical. In Mexico and Colombia, Masons helped
win independence from Spain, while in Brazil they worked against
Portuguese domination.3
Mr. Lunden agrees:
In Latin America, too, the process of liberation from the Spanish
yoke was the work of Freemasons, in large measure. Simon Bolivar was
one of the most active of Masonry’s sons, and so were San Martin,
Mitre, Alvear, Sarmiento, Benito Juarez—all hallowed names to Latin
Americans.4
Regarding other revolutions, Mr. Lunden adds:
Many of the leaders in the great year 1848, which saw so many
uprisings against feudal rule in Europe, were members of the Order;
among them was the great Hungarian hero of democracy, Louis Kossuth,
who found a temporary refuge in America.5
The 1800’s also witnessed the wars of Italian unification led by
Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882), who was a thirty-third degree Mason
and the Grand Master of Italy. The victorious Garibaldi placed
Victor Emmanuel, another Freemason, on the throne.
The Italian wars of unification left two important legacies: a
united Italy and the modem Mafia. The Mafia was a loosely-knit
secret society founded in Sicily in the mid 1700’s. At first, the
Mafia was a resistance movement
formed to oppose the foreign rulers who controlled Sicily at the
time.
The early Mafiosi were popular heroes who specialized in
criminal acts against the hated foreigners. The Mafia built an
underground government in Sicily and held power by extortion. The
Mafia assisted Garibaldi when he invaded Sicily in 1860 and declared
himself dictator of the island. After the foreign rulers were ousted
and Italy was unified, the Mafia became the violent criminal network
we know today.
Freemasonry was clearly an important catalyst in the creation of
modern Western-style government. The vast majority of Freemasons who
participated in the revolutions were well-intended. The
representative form of government they helped to create was certainly
an improvement over some of the governments they replaced.*
* This is not to say that monarchy is always bad. History has seen a
few benevolent monarchs who ruled well, who could act for peace, and
who were popular with their people. Hereditary or life-term
leadership has the advantage of stability. It can work if the
monarch is accountable for his or her actions and can be removed
for chronic incompetence or abuse of power. Monarchies have rarely
functioned well on Earth because monarchs have usually ruled by
so-called “divine right” and have therefore not been accountable to
the people they governed.
Regrettably, the lofty ideals of those
Freemasons were in the
process of a speedy betrayal by sources within the Brotherhood
network itself.
One consequence of the French Revolution was a severe disruption of
the French economy. Food production had dropped severely and the new
regime was in deep political trouble because the majority of
Frenchmen were still loyal to the monarchy. Under this cloud, the
revolutionary government decided to solve the problems of political
opposition, hunger and distribution of wealth by reducing the human
population of France. Rather than increase food production to meet
the demand, it was decided to reduce the demand to match the
lessened amount of food.
Throughout the French nation, a program of
mass murder was launched as an official program of the
revolutionary council. This program was
known as the Reign of Terror. People were put to death by all means
available, including guillotine, mass drowning, bludgeoning,
shooting, and starvation. Although not as many people were murdered
as the council had planned, it has been estimated that over 100,000
people died.
We have noted that genocides are committed by grouping people into
superficial categories usually based upon race, religious belief, or
nationality. The victims are then targeted for slaughter even though
they may be guilty of no crimes against their murderers. The French
revolutionaries took the process to an extreme. During the Reign of
Terror, people were grouped simply according to their economic and
vocational standing. Those who fell into the wrong categories were
deemed members of an undesirable social class and were killed. This
was certainly as superficial a distinction as one can make, yet
grouping people in this fashion has been extremely successful in
factionalizing human beings.
The French Revolution dragged nearly all of the major powers of
Europe into a war. Initially benefiting from this was William IX, the
prince who had inherited the immense Hesse-Kassel fortune. William
IX rented out, at a handsome fee, 8,000 soldiers to England to fight
against the French during the first half of the 1790’s. When Napoleon
Bonaparte later became emperor of France, William IX seemed to gain
even more. After Napoleon’s troops occupied German regions west of
the Rhine River, including some Hessian properties, Napoleon
compensated William IX by awarding him a large section of Mainz and
by conferring upon William the title of Elector—a status higher than
prince.
The cordiality between Napoleon and Elector William did not
last very long, however. William IX tried to play the old trick of
courting both sides of the conflict in order to make a fortune by
renting soldiers. William foolishly leased mercenaries to the
Prussian king for a quarter of a million Pounds to fight Napoleon
and then tried to claim “neutrality.” True to the warning of
Machiavelli, this double-dealing finally caught up and backfired on
the House of Hesse. Hesse-Kassel was soon annexed and made part of
Napoleon’s “Kingdom of Westphalia.”
It was not until after Napoleon’s
defeat at the Battle of Leipzig in 1813 that William IX was able
to regain Hesse-Kassel. Hesse-Kassel remained under the control of
his dynasty until 1866, when it was taken over by Prussia. Although
the Hessian royal family has remained influential in German society
until well into the twentieth century, it never regained exclusive
rule over its territory. Hesse merged into what has become modern
Germany—a country that was unified in large part by the
Prussian Hohenzollern dynasty.
Despite the reversals suffered by Hesse-Kassel, the upheavals in
France proved to be a boon for one of William IX’s financial agents:
Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1743-1812), founder of one of the most
influential banking houses of Europe.
Mayer Amschel was an ambitious and hard-working merchant who began
his career in the Jewish ghetto of Frankfurt-am-Main in Hesse. In
1765, two decades before the French Revolution, Rothschild managed
to gain a hard-won audience with Prince William IX, who was still at
that time living in Hesse-Hanau. Mayer Amschel strove to ingratiate
himself with the Hessian prince by selling antique coins to William
at extremely low prices.
William, who always had an eye open to
increasing his material fortunes in any way possible, was delighted
to take advantage of Rothschild’s generous bargains. As a reward,
William granted Rothschild’s request to be appointed a “CrownAgent
to the Prince of Hesse-Hanau.” This appointment, made in 1769, was
more honorary than substantial, but it gave Mayer Amschel a big boost
in his community standing and aided his efforts to create a
successful banking house.
During the twenty years following his appointment, Mayer Amschel
continued to keep in close contact with Prince William IX.
Rothschild’s goal was to become one of the Prince’s personal
financial agents. Rothschild’s perseverance finally paid off. In
1789, the year in which the French Revolution began and four years
after William IX inherited the wealth of Hesse-Kassel, Mayer was
given his first financial assignment on behalf of Prince William.
This, in turn, led to the coveted position as a personal financial
agent to the Prince.
Rothschild made a fortune from various activities while serving
under William IX. The French Revolution and the wars it triggered
created many shortages throughout Hesse. Rothschild capitalized on
this situation by sharply raising the prices of the cloth he was
importing from England. Rothschild also struck a deal with another
of William IX’s chief financial agents, Carl Buderus. The deal
enabled Rothschild to share in the profits from the leasing of
Hessian mercenaries to England. Virginia Cowles, writing in her
excellent book, The Rothschilds, A Family of Fortune, described the
arrangement:
At this point Mayer made a proposition to the enterprising Carl
Buderus. England was paying the Landgrave J William IX] large sums of
money for the hire of Hessian soldiers; and the Rothschilds were
paying England large sums of money for the goods they were importing.
Why not let the two-way movement cancel itself out, and pocket the
commissions both ways on the bills of exchange? Buderus agreed, and
soon this extra string to the Rothschild bow was producing
an impressive revenue.6
Out of those beginnings rose
the House of Rothschild, named after
the red shield (“roth” [red] and “schild” [shield]) used as its
emblem. The Rothschild family soon became synonymous with wealth,
power, and banking. For generations, the Rothschild house was
Europe’s most powerful banking family and it remains influential in
the international banking community today. Sharing the Rothschild
house in Frankfurt during its early days was the Schiff family. The Schiffs also became a major banking family and they have done
business with the Rothschilds all the way up until our own time.
Control of the Rothschild house, as well as many other banking
houses, passed from father to son(s) over the generations. The
Rothschilds, Schiffs, and other banking families were truly part of a
hereditary “paper aristocracy” to which Brotherhood revolutionaries
had given a great deal of power when they established the inflatable
paper money system and its attendant central banks.
Many historians writing about the Rothschild family focus on the
fact that Mayer Amschel was Jewish. The Rothschilds have been
important supporters of Jewish causes throughout the family’s
history. Less frequently mentioned is the fact that the Rothschilds
were also associated with German Freemasonry. This association
apparently began with Mayer Amschel, who accompanied William IX on
several trips to the Masonic lodges. Whether or not Mayer actually
became a member is uncertain. It is known that his son, Solomon
(founder of the Rothschild bank in Vienna), had become a Freemason.
According to Jacob Katz, writing in his book, Jews and Freemasons in
Europe, 1723-1939, the Rothschilds were one of the rich and powerful
Frankfurt families appearing on a Masonic membership list in 1811.
The Scottish degrees used in the German lodges were Christian in
nature. This created problems for Jewish men like Rothschild who may
have wanted to participate. To solve the dilemma, efforts were made
in Jewish communities to change certain rituals in order to make
Freemasonry acceptable to Jews. Special Jewish lodges were created,
such as the “Melchizedek” lodges named in honor of the Old Testament
priest-king whose importance we discussed in an earlier chapter.
Those who belonged to the Melchizedek lodges were said to be members
of the “Order of Melchizedek.” This was an extremely interesting
development, for across the Atlantic Ocean the name of Melchizedek
was about to be resurrected on the American continent during what
some people believe to have been a series of significant UFO
episodes. Those episodes gave the world a new religion: the Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, better known as
the Mormon
Church.
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