Biographies

Masonic education of a different sort

Here in the United States, lots of our Founding Fathers were Freemasons. Many signed the Declaration of Independence, Many signed the Constitution. At least one Grand Master fell in battle against Britannia’s Huns.¹

Plenty of Freemasons served as President of the United States. Even before Washington was first elected to the Presidency.²

Here in my own State of Washington, the great majority of our Founding Fathers were Freemasons. The first Legislatures met in Olympia Lodge No. 1. That Lodge today stands on land donated to it by one of its members; the same member who donated the land to the State that our Capitol resides upon.

It is much the same throughout the Western Hemisphere. Benito Juarez is the founder just to our south. Traveling further south, one finds a great many more.

Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash

Golly! The fellow on those 20’s sure looks like a MW PGM of Tennessee.

The thing is, almost all of these men and Masons have books written about them and their lives.

And by reading those books we can learn about our Craft, and how it influenced our nation’s most prominent men.

I’ve been reading quite a lot recently about MW Andrew Jackson. Because I believe that he, and his Presidency have a lot of parallels to our present time. That by coming to an understanding of him, we can better understand the United States today. And I think that’s important.

Washington’s ritual includes the following snippet:

To learn to subdue my passions and improve myself in Masonry.

In MW Jackson’s time the word ‘passions’ was a reference to temper. And he was undoubtedly famous for his flights of anger. Most of us might raise our voice once in a while. MW Jackson raised his and backed it up with pistols.

But he tried to control his temper. To keep his anger in check. He called successfully doing so his ‘Philosophy.’

And this ‘philosophy’ led him to always striving towards working to befriend those he’d previously been angry with. In many cases he was successful in doing so, and that in turn helped lead him to success on the field and in politics.

I think that by learning about MW Jackson’s fiery temper, and how he worked to subdue it, we can easily see how he was putting a prominent Masonic teaching to work in his own life. And how he benefited from doing so.

That’s some fine Masonic education. If we do it alone, solely for our own benefit, or if we share it in a Lodge discussion.

We can learn from the prominent jerks of the world too.

John Quincy Adams was President immediately prior to Jackson.

He was the most prominent anti-Mason in our nation’s history. Indeed he and his allies came really close to destroying American Freemasonry.

If we read about the truly horrible things Adams’ second campaign against Jackson for the Presidency had to say about Jackson’s wife we can get a good measure of the man. (And remind ourselves that perhaps campaigns early in the years of our Republic were even more nasty than those we see today.)

Methinks President Adams X2 could have benefited from Masonry, had he joined it instead of trying to destroy it. But his dad, President Adams X1 was a bit of an odd duck too. At least in my humble opinion, but what can I say, I’m a Jefferson man.

Freemasonry and the history of the United States are strongly intertwined from the very beginning. We could make a lifetime of study of our Masonic Founders and Presidents, surely their lives are a truly worthy source of Masonic education within the Lodge, and outside of it.

1. Sorry, I’ve still got the Foggy Dew on the brain from St. Patrick’s Day.

2. https://www.constitutionfacts.com/us-articles-of-confederation/presidents-who-served/