There is conclusive evidence that the majority of the men who worked for a federal union and wrote the Constitution were Masons. Some of these Masons were the most influential leaders of the fraternity in America, fully conversant with Masonic principles of government. Freemasonry was the only institution at that time governed by a federal system. There is not a scrap of evidence left by any member of the Constitutional Convention indicating that these principles were drawn from any other source. Since the government of the United States bears such a startling similarity to the government of the Masonic fraternity in theory and in structure, it is difficult to ascribe the similarity to coincidence.
On June 21, 1778, New Hampshire became the required ninth state to ratify the new Constitution. On July 2, the last Congress under the Articles of Confederation resolved that the states should choose presidential electors on the first Wednesday in January 1789, that one month later they should select a president and vice president, and that a congress elected under the Constitution should meet the first Wednesday in March in New York. The unanimous choice for president was Washington, with John Adams, a non-Mason, as vice president. On April 30, 1789, Washington’s oath of office was administered by Chancellor Robert R. Livingston, Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of New York. General Jacob Morton, Worshipful Master of St. John’s Lodge—the oldest in the city—and Grand Secretary of the Grand Lodge of New York, served as marshal of the inauguration ceremonies.
When Washington recited the presidential oath of office as required by the Constitution, the Bible was opened to Genesis, chapters 49 and 50, consisting of the prophecies of Jacob concerning his sons and his son Joseph’s death. Printed by Mark Baskett, “Printer to the King’s Most Excellent Majesty,” in London in 1767, the Bible’s first page bore a steel-engraved portrait of King George II. The second page was inscribed, “On this sacred volume, on the 30th day of April, A. L. 5789, in the City of New York, was administered to George Washington, the first president of the United States of America, the oath to support the Constitution of the United States. This important ceremony was performed by the Most Worshipful Grand Master of Free and Accepted Masons of the State of New York, the Honorable Robert R. Livingston, Chancellor of the State.” This was followed with:
Fame stretched her wings and with her trumpet blew
Great Washington is near. What praise is due?
What title shall he have? She paused and said
“Not one—his name alone strikes every title dead.”
A King James version, complete with the Apocrypha and elaborately supplemented with the historical, astronomical, and legal data of that period, the Bible contained numerous artistic steel engravings portraying biblical narratives from designs and paintings by old masters and engraved by the celebrated English artist John Stuart. It had been presented to the lodge by Jonathan Hampton on November 28, 1770.
This Bible was used at the inaugurations of Presidents Warren Harding (1921), Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953), Jimmy Carter (1977), and George H. W. Bush (1989). It was also to have been used for the inauguration of George W. Bush in 2001, but rain prevented it. It has also been present at numerous public and Masonic occasions. They include Washington’s funeral procession in New York, December 31, 1799; dedication of the Masonic Temple in Boston, June 24, 1867, and in Philadelphia in 1869; the dedication of the Washington Monument, February 21, 1885 (and its rededication in 1998); and the laying of the cornerstone of the Masonic Home at Utica, May 21, 1891. It was also used at the opening of the present Masonic Hall in New York on September 18, 1909, when St. John’s Lodge held the first meeting, and conferred the first Third Degree in the newly completed temple. It was displayed at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York, at the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia, and at the Famous Fathers and Sons exhibition at the George H. W. Bush Memorial Library in Texas in 2001. When not in use by St. John’s Lodge or on tour, it is on permanent display in what is now Federal Hall in New York, where Washington took the oath.
Of those who accompanied Washington in the inauguration ceremony, Roger Sherman, Alexander Hamilton, Baron Friedrich von Steuben, General Henry Knox, and John Adams, all except Adams were Masons. The governors of the thirteen states at the time of Washington’s inauguration were Masons. Washington chose for his first cabinet men who were Masons or sympathetic to the Craft’s ideals: Thomas Jefferson became secretary of state; Alexander Hamilton, secretary of the treasury; General Henry Knox, secretary of war; and Edmund Randolph (the grand master of the Grand Lodge of Virginia in 1788), attorney general. While they were chosen because of their fitness for public office, in the minds of Washington and other men of that time Masonic membership was another evidence of a man’s reliability and fitness for trust. Washington wrote that “being persuaded that a just application of the principles on which the Masonic fraternity is founded must be promotive of private virtue and public prosperity, I shall always be happy to advance the interests of the Society and be considered by them a deserving Brother.” One of Washington’s first duties was to appoint the chief justice and four associate justices of the Supreme Court. Four were Masons: Chief Justice John Jay and Associate Justices William Cushing, Robert H. Harrison, and John Blair.
The first Congress elected under the Constitution had several Masons. In the House of Representatives were Abraham Baldwin, Theodorick Bland, John Brown, Daniel Carroll, Elbridge Gerry, Frederick A. Muhlenberg, John Page, Josiah Parker, John Sevier, Nicholas Gilman, Thomas Hartly, James Jackson, John Lawrence, James Madison, Roger Sherman, William Smith, John Steele, Thomas Sumter, and Jeremiah van Rensselaer. Muhlenberg was elected Speaker of the House. Of twenty-six senators, thirteen are known to have been Freemasons: Oliver Ellsworth, James Gunn, William S. Johnson, Samuel Johnston, Rufus King, John Langdon, Richard Henry Lee, James Monroe, Robert Morris, William Paterson, George Read, and Phillip Schuyler Freemasons find connections between Masonry and the U.S. government in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. Pointing out that many leaders in the development of the federal union were Masons, they claim that the idea of a free public school system supported by the state was fostered by Masons. The policy of admitting new states to the Union on a basis of complete equality with the old, has a counterpart in Masonry in the creation of new lodges “equal in every respect to the position held by older lodges.” Men who had an influence on the writing of the Constitution were Masons who were “well informed in Masonic philosophy, practice and organization.” Freemasons occupied influential offices in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the government at the birth of the nation.
On September 25, 1793, Washington left New York for the laying of the cornerstone of the Capitol building in a city that had been named for him in the federal District of Columbia. He was, said the Columbian Mirror and Alexandria Gazette, the central figure in “one of the grandest MASONIC Processions” ever seen. The newspaper reported:
About 10 o’clock, Lodge, No. 9, were visited by that Congregation, so graceful to the Craft, Lodge, No. 22, of Virginia, with all their Officers and Regalia, an directly afterwards appeared on the southern banks of the Grand River Potomack: one of the finest companies of Volunteer Artillery that has been lately seen, parading to receive the President of the United States, who shortly came in sight with his suite—to whom the Artillery paid their military honors, and his Excellency and suite crossed the Potomack, and was received in Maryland, by the Officers and Brethren of No. 22, Virginia and No. 9, Maryland whom the President headed, and preceded by a bank of music; the rear brought up by the Alexandria Volunteer Artillery; with grand solemnity of march, proceeded to the President’s square in the City of Washington: where they were met and saluted, by No. 15, of the City of Washington, in all their elegant regalia, headed by Brother Joseph Clark, Rt. W.G.M.—P.T. and conducted to a large Lodge, prepared for the purpose of their reception. After a short space of time, by the vigilance of Brother C. Worthy Stephenson, Grand Marshall, P.T. the Brotherhood and other Bodies were disposed in a second order of procession, which took place amid a brilliant crowd of spectators of both sexes.
The assemblage consisted of the surveying department of the city of Washington; the mayor and officials of “George-Town”; the Virginia Artillery; the commissioners of the city of Washington and their attendants; stone cutters; mechanics; two sword bearers; Masons of the first, second, and third degree; bearers of “Bibles &c on the Grand Cushions”; stewards with wands; a band; Lodge No. 22 of Virginia,