That Religion in Which All Men Agree: Freemasonry in American Culture

1. Colonial Freemasonry and Polite Society, 1733–1776

19 At sunrise on the morning of December 27, 1738, the “firing of guns from several ships in the harbor” to announce the festival of Saint John the Evangelist awakened the people of Charleston, South Carolina. At ten o’clock, the city’s Masons, clothed in jewels, aprons, white gloves, and stockings and preceded by a small band, paraded through the streets to the site of their Grand Lodge meeting, at the home of James Graeme, the soon-to-be chief justice of the province and their provincial grand master. At eleven o’clock, the brotherhood processed to the Anglican church, where they sat in their separate section of pews and listened to their brother the Reverend Mr. Durand praise the fraternity ’s values of mutual love and benevolence. “In the same order” they then marched on to the house of Thomas Shepherd, a leading attorney, for “a very eloquent speech on the usefulness of societies” and an “elegant ” dinner. This was followed by an invitation to a brother’s ship, where several toasts were given, “saluted by the discharge of 39 guns.” The evening concluded “with a ball and entertainment for the ladies.”1 In the second quarter of the eighteenth century, reports of grand parades of gentlemen Masons began to appear in the newspapers of colonial coastal cities. In New York, the order of procession was carefully described: First walked the Sword Bearer, carrying a drawn sword; then four Stewards with White Maces, followed by the Treasurer and Secretary, who bore each a crimson damask cushion, on which lay a gilt Bible, and the Book of chapter 1 Colonial Freemasonry and Polite Society, 1733–1776 20 | European American Freemasonry Constitution; after these came the Grand Warden and Wardens; then came the Grand Master himself, bearing a truncheon and other badges of his office, followed by the rest of the Brotherhood, according to their respective ranks—Masters, Fellows Crafts, and ’Prentices, to about the number of fifty. . . . We hear they afterward conferred a generous donation of fifteen pounds from the public stock of the Society to be expended in clothing the poor children belonging to our charity school; and made a handsome private contribution for the relief of indigent prisoners.2 In Philadelphia, the officers and members of the Grand Lodge procession included the governor, the mayor, a chief justice, a college provost, the secretary of the Provincial Assembly, other leading men of Pennsylvania , and Deputy Grand Master Benjamin Franklin.3 For colonial spectators, these “very grand show[s]” carried out with “grandeur and decorum” announced the elite social standing of Freemasons.4 The immediate impetus for these conspicuous displays came from the instructions and actions of the London Grand Lodge. James Anderson ’s The Constitutions of the Free-Masons, modern Freemasonry’s founding rules and principles, printed in America in 1734 by Benjamin Franklin, instructs the brethren to hold the “Annual Communication and Feast, in some convenient place on St. John Baptist’s Day, or else on St. John Evangelist’s Day, . . . in order to choose every year a new Grand Master, Deputy and Wardens.”5 As early as 1721 the London Lodge enacted these instructions through elaborate public processions. Jewels, swords, and other regalia were adopted by the lodge or given to it as gifts by the noble grand masters.6 The origins of these and other eighteenth-century public processions have been traced to late medieval towns where large religious parades involving most of the inhabitants displayed the hierarchical structure of their leadership. After the Reformation, those processions that continued to exist relegated the townspeople to spectators of the urban oligarchy of town leaders parading to church or court. Carried out with a theatrical selfconsciousness —complete with ornamented clothing, polished gestures, and the new civic authority symbols of swords and maces—the processions of eighteenth-century England were designed to separate the townspeople from their leaders by exhibiting the power and structure of the new elite. Along with these public displays came similar ritual appearances in church and occasionally a gala ceremonial to stage grand displays of the rulers’ generosity.7 Colonial American Masonic festivals emulated all of these activities, though in somewhat different circumstances. Colonial Freemasonry and Polite Society | 21 The appearance of the American Masonic fraternity accompanied the eighteenth-century development of colonial commercial cities. Between 1690 and 1740, the older seaport towns of Boston, Philadelphia , and New York and most of...