Masonic Order

Masonic Order. The Ancient and Accepted Order of Freemasons originated in London in the early 1700s and spread to colonial America. The all‐male secret organization flourished among colonial leaders who were attracted to its deistic religion and its ideology of equality and fraternity. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, and Paul Revere were among the prominent American Masons of the Revolutionary Era. An Anti‐Masonic furor in the 1820s nearly destroyed the order, however. Opponents accused the Masons of subverting democracy and orthodox Protestantism. When William Morgan, who threatened to expose Masonic secrets, disappeared in Batavia, New York, in 1825, suspicions of the fraternity's conspiratorial nature seemed confirmed. Anti‐Masonry became embroiled in partisan politics and decimated the fraternity's ranks.

Shortly before the Civil War, the fraternity regrouped and became the model for dozens of other fraternal organizations that enjoyed tremendous popularity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. With the leadership carefully assuaging fears about its secrecy, religious ideas, and effects on politics, the Masonic order flourished. The organization claimed to stand for morality, piety, and charity. And, although it consisted primarily of white skilled workers and middle‐class Protestants, it boasted that in the lodge room, all men were equal. The order's most egregious lapse from its egalitarian ideal was its steadfast refusal to acknowledge the Prince Hall Masons, a black version of the fraternity founded in 1787. White and black Masonry continued as separate organizations throughout the twentieth century.

Roman Catholics were absent from Masonic lodges primarily because of a Papal interdiction against Masonic membership. Masons, however, also were influenced by the anti‐Catholicism that pervaded much of Protestant America.

With over three million members, Freemasonry reached a high point in the 1920s but it never completely recovered from the devastation of the Great Depression. While many men continued to enjoy membership in the fraternity as the twentieth century ended, the organization proved too static and old‐fashioned to sustain its popularity.
See also Antebellum Era; Anti‐Catholic Movement; Anti‐Masonic Party; Deism; Fraternal Organizations; Roman Catholicism; Twenties, The.

Bibliography

Dorothy Ann Lipson , Freemasonry in Federalist Connecticut, 1977.
Lynn Dumenil , Freemasonry and American Culture, 1880–1930, 1984.

Lynn Dumenil