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The Civil War had been fought out and peace had returned to the land when a group of churchmen and reformers led by the Rev. Charles G. Finney of Oberlin, who had long served as president of Oberlin College, turned to make war on secret societies and the Masonic order in particular. The crusade mildly agitated a part of the country for some years, but lacking as it did the frenzy, hysteria, and political potency of the anti-Masonic move- ment of the 1820's and 1830's it eventually fell of its own weight.1 The persistent crusaders in the Finney camp were fond of referring to recusant Masons as proof that the principles of the order were repugnant to thinking Christian men--that they renounced the order once its secrets and NOTES ARE ON PACES 78-79 |
JOHN BROWN AND THE MASONIC ORDER 25
its binding oaths had been made known to
them. John Brown, the firebrand
of Kansas and the raider at Harpers
Ferry, was among those mentioned
whose religious principles impelled them
to leave the order and to become
bitter enemies of all secret societies.
But proof of John Brown's affiliation
was lacking--those who knew the
circumstances were not talking. In the
face of strong denials of such membership
by Masons who knew as little
about the truth of the matter as did the
anti-Masonic advocates, his name was
dropped. The dispute, however, was not
settled.
Was John Brown a Mason? Some argued that
he was; others claimed that
he was not. Members of the family
remained silent. It took a long time for
the record to become clear.
The long dispute as to whether John
Brown was a regularly initiated
Mason and a member of a lodge operating
under proper authority was
definitely settled only a few years ago
when the records of the old, disbanded
Hudson Lodge No. 68 were uncovered in
the archives of the Grand Lodge
of Ohio. There it was found that Brown's
membership was fully established,
with dates of initiation and, further,
his election to an office in the lodge.2
His record as an opponent of secret
societies--with Masonry as his chief
target--had been no secret, though he
had nothing to say about the subject
in his later years. Behind the brief
notes in the old lodge record is a story
that has never been fully told.
It was not until 1881, when Mrs. Brown
in a newspaper interview casually
mentioned that her husband had once been
a Mason, that the argument was
renewed.3 Again there was
quick denial by Masons who were zealous to
protect the good name of their order
against aspersions of association with
a character as controversial as John
Brown. Apparently, save for the sur-
viving members of the family, there were
none to defend John Brown--the
friends who had known him as a Mason
some fifty years earlier had either
passed from these worldly scenes, or did
not want to add fuel to the flames
of controversy, or perhaps withheld
their knowledge of his membership and
his later renunciation of Freemasonry as
a lodge secret. Brown himself had
little or nothing to say about his
Masonic record and, if one of his associates
is to be believed, even wanted to
conceal his anti-Masonic activities from his
associates in the later days of his
life.4 Thus the incidents surrounding his
renunciation and activity as an
anti-Mason have been generally blurred by
inaccurate and misleading statements
made by members of his family, and
by anti-Masons who wanted to use his
change of attitude for propaganda
purposes.
John Brown, who is yet one of the most
controversial characters in Ameri-
can history, was born at Torrington,
Connecticut, on May 9, 1800, but in
26 OHIO HISTORY
1805 was taken by his parents to the
then frontier town of Hudson, Ohio,
where he was reared. The Western Reserve
was then being settled largely
by emigrants from New England, and
Hudson was one of its newer towns-
in all respects a New England village
pulled up by its roots and transplanted
in Ohio. Members of the Masonic
fraternity who had been made master
masons in lodges in their old home towns
were among the settlers, but it
was not until January 26, 1823, that
Hudson Lodge No. 68 was constituted.5
The first worshipful master was Gideon
Mills, Jr., who was an uncle of John
Brown--it may have been the influence of
this uncle, or it may have been
his own curiosity to see what this
secret order was all about that caused him
to apply for membership. At any rate,
his application was filed in late 1823,
and after the usual course of
investigation and waiting he was found worthy.
The records of the old lodge disclose
that he appeared and received the
entered apprentice degree on January 13,
1824, and on February 10 received
the fellow craft degree. After a lapse
of three months he was raised to master
mason on May 11.6 His attitude at that
time must have been in all ways
satisfactory to members of the craft,
for he was elected junior deacon for the
1825-26 term--and he was holding that
office, whether actively serving or
not, when in May 1826 he hastily pulled
up stakes and moved to Crawford
County, Pennsylvania, relinquishing a
prosperous tanning business in his
old home town.
It has been claimed by a son that he was
hounded out of his native town
because of his renunciation of
Freemasonry,7 but the facts so far as dis-
covered seem to prove otherwise. Young
John Brown, then twenty-six years
old and with a rapidly increasing
family, saw better opportunities in the
newer settlements near Meadville,
Pennsylvania, and, in addition, he had
formed a partnership with a kinsman,
Seth Thompson of Hartford, Trumbull
County, Ohio, to go into tanning and
cattle dealing on a very extensive scale.
All evidence found strongly indicates
that he did not break with the Masons
until the anti-Masonic hysteria was
fanned into a national frenzy. At that
time he was comfortably settled on his
farm at Randolph, twelve miles east
of Meadville, Pennsylvania, with an
adequate acreage cleared, his tannery
constructed, and hides in the vats.
The anti-Masonic frenzy was touched off
by the reported abduction and
murder of William Morgan at Batavia, New
York, in September 1826.8
Morgan, himself a member of the craft,
had published a book, Illustrations
of Masonry, which was designed to expose the order as subversive of
Ameri-
can democracy--the work itself was
poorly done and would probably have
soon been forgotten had it not been for
the violent methods resorted to by
28 OHIO HISTORY
zealous members to suppress it. The
office in which it was printed was
burned, and Morgan, after his release
from imprisonment for a small debt,
was abducted and was presumed to have
been killed. The incident was
seized upon by reformers, church groups,
opportunist politicians, and dissi-
dent Masons and was quickly fanned into
a national issue based on principle,
prejudice, and hysteria. Led by political
herdsmen--such as Thurlow Weed
in New York and Thaddeus Stevens in
Pennsylvania--the Anti-Masonic
political party was hastily formed and
until 1836 offered a serious threat
to the balance of political power in New
England and the upper tier of
northern states. As the first
"third party" in American political history,
the Anti-Masons offered William Wirt of
Maryland as their candidate for
president in 1832--he polled a heavy
popular vote and won the seven elec-
toral votes of Vermont. Pennsylvania and
Vermont elected Anti-Masonic
governors, and the party won many other
state and local offices. It thrived
in New York, where it once achieved a
position as second in voting strength.9
The crusade precipitated a crisis in
Masonic affairs. In New York, for
instance, the membership dwindled from
20,000 in 1826 to 3,000 in 1836,
and the number of lodges was reduced
from 507 in 1826 to 48 active units
in 1832.10
The prevailing sentiment in Crawford
County, Pennsylvania, was anti-
Masonic, and the political party under
that name carried the county re-
peatedly. John Brown renounced his
membership and roundly denounced
the order--he was with the majority this
time, something strange for him,
and it seems likely that the threats of
personal injury mentioned by members
of his family were largely magnified in
repetition. An active, working lodge
was located in Meadville--Western Star
Lodge No. 146, constituted on
August 15, 1816--and certainly the order
had some friends in that area.
But the lodge was not strong enough to
withstand the assaults of the opposi-
tion; it ceased its labors in 1828, but
the charter was not actually vacated
until 1837.11
In an interview given a reporter in
1895, a short time before his death,
John Brown, Jr. (himself a Mason,
1859-95, and buried with Masonic
honors), said: "Father denounced
the murder of Morgan in the hottest kind
of terms.... Father had occasion to go
to Meadville. A mob bent on lynching
him surrounded the hotel, but Landlord
Smith enabled him to escape through
a back entrance."12 Owen Brown,
another son, said in 1886 that his father
"was active in the anti-Masonic
campaigns at that time, circulating Giddins'
Anti-Masonic Almanac, but so high was the excitement and so loud the
threats that he kept a pistol and
keen-edged knives in his house for self-
protection."13
JOHN BROWN AND THE MASONIC ORDER 29
Owen was interviewed by Henry L.
Kellogg, an editor of the Christian
Cynosure--one of the last religious papers devoted to
anti-Masonry--and the
story as it appeared in that publication
was probably colored or slanted to
meet the editorial policy. Another
statement in that interview was that the
senior Brown's "detestation of
lodge literature was shown by the fact that
Owen once found the by-laws of the
order in a swill barrel where his father
had thrown them." Owen was born
late in 1824, and if it is presumed that
Brown disposed of his lodge papers
within two or three years after severing
his membership, it seems hardly likely
that a three- to five-year-old child
would retain a clear memory of such a
minor incident.
Still another explanation was given by
a daughter, Sarah Brown, in 1908,
when she was interviewed by Katherine
Mayo, who was then doing field re-
search work for Oswald Garrison
Villard's monumental biography of John
Brown. Said she: "John Brown was
deeply opposed to all forms, even in
church. He did not like formal worship.
It was the forms of the initiatory
ceremonies of the Masons that struck
him as silly and disgusted him. He was
in sympathy with Morgan. He bought
Morgan's book--and it was in the
North Elba house for years."14 But
Sarah, like Owen, had no first-hand
knowledge--she was not born until 1846.
Henry Thompson, a son-in-law who was in
the Kansas wars with Brown,
was more forthright and just as
inaccurate. "When Morgan's pamphlet came
out it made a great sensation among the
Masons. I got it. Captain Brown
saw it in my house, took his pencil and
wrote across the back of it, 'This story
could not be better told.' But he never
uttered a word concerning it. . . . I
was asked to join the Masons myself
later, but always refused. Captain
Brown's verdict was good enough for
me."15
John Brown himself did not dwell on this
incident in his life--in fact in
later life he wanted to suppress
knowledge of it.16 So far as found the only
written statement about his
anti-Masonic activities is in a letter to his father,
which was written at Randolph on June
12, 1830:
You mention some difficulty in the
church arising out of Masonry. I wish you
would at some leisure moment give me a
little history of it. I hope the church in
regard to that subject will pursue a
mild but persevering & firm course, not
undertaking with any unmanageable
point, but such as may undergo easy general
& thorough investigation. I make no
doubt that some of the Masonic brethren
yet think their oaths binding as much as
Herod the Tetrarch did his to the
daughter of Herodias. I have aroused
such a feeling toward me in Meadville
by shewing Anderton's statement as leads
me for the present to avoid going about
the streets at evening & alone. I
have discovered that my movements are narrowly
watched by some of the worthy
brotherhood. This I ought to consider as right
30 OHIO HISTORY
according to the views of some
distinguished professors of religion at Hudson
who are of their own craft. Some of them
have said to me that the courts of
justice have no right to compel a mason
to testify anything about masonry, of
course they are above the laws of the
land. Some of them I suppose intend
pleading to the jurisdiction of the
great Supreme, at least their actions say who
is Lord over us.17
The reference to "Anderton's
statement" in the letter is easily understood;
it refers to a sworn statement made by
Samuel C. Anderton of Boston, Mas-
sachusetts--a recusant Mason--that he
had been chosen by lot one of three
members in a lodge at Belfast, Ireland,
to cut the throat of a brother member
who had revealed some of the secrets of
the order. This statement was widely
published in the anti-Masonic press,
including the Crawford Messenger at
Meadville, which Brown probably read
every week.18 But as the lodge at
Hudson was disbanded in 1828, the
reference to an investigation by the
church two years later is a bit obscure.
Later, in 1847, when he wrote a series
of parable-like articles for the
Ram's Horn, a paper published by Negroes in New York City, he
expressed
dislike for secret societies in general
in some words of advice to the colored
people. The series was titled
"Sambo's Mistakes." In looking back over
his past life, "Sambo"
discovers that "another of the few errors of my life
is that I have joined the Free Masons[,]
Odd Fellows[,] Sons of Temper-
ance, & a score of other secret
societies instead of seeking the company of
intelligent[,] wise & good men from
whom I might have learned much that
would be interesting, instructive, &
useful & have in that way squandered a
great amount of most precious time &
money."19
That is mild enough, but it strongly
indicates that Brown retained his
dislike and opposition to secret
societies as he verged into middle age. Not-
withstanding his attitude, two of his
sons, John, Jr., and Salmon, were re-
ceived into the order, while a third
son, Owen, apparently adopted the views
of his father. John, Jr., was raised in
Jerusalem Lodge No. 19 at Hartford,
Ohio, less than a month before the raid
at Harpers Ferry. And the fact that
some of Brown's men looked kindly on
Masonry indicates that the militant
leader became more interested in the
anti-slavery crusade than in contesting
with secret societies. Francis J.
Meriam, one of the men who escaped from
Harpers Ferry, was inducted into the
order within a few months after the
execution of his commander.
According to George B. Gill, who was one
of Brown's men in Kansas,
Brown became angry when he found that
Owen had mentioned to Gill that
his father had once been a Mason, but
had renounced the order. "He was
vexed when he found that Owen had told
me of his troubles with the Masons,"
JOHN BROWN AND THE MASONIC ORDER 31
said Gill. "Owen should not have
done that," said Brown. "Never tell it.
Some of our friends back East are
Masons. If they ever hear of it they might
not like it--and might refuse further
help. Never tell it." 20
Another sidelight of the Kansas campaign
is a story, which is most prob-
ably apocryphal, that in the course of
the Pottawatomie massacre on the
night of May 24, 1856, when Brown with a
small company called five pro-
slavery men from their homes and hacked
them down with short swords,
Brown sent his son-in-law Henry Thompson
and Theodore Wiener to kill
Allen Wilkinson. It is said that
Wilkinson was a Mason and that Brown
remained at a distance from the scene of
summary execution. The story is
in part supported by the admission of
Salmon Brown, who was with the
party, that Thompson and Wiener did kill
Wilkinson.21
As it was not generally known in Kansas
that Brown had once been a
Mason, it seems very probable that the
Wilkinson story came about as an
afterthought, as did many other tales
relating to John Brown and his works
in Kansas Territory.
More authentic is the fact that Brown
did not hesitate to use the cloak of
Freemasonry to conceal the purpose of
his convention at Chatham, Canada,
on May 8-10, 1858, when to account for
the presence of so many strangers,
white and Negro, in the small town he
caused word to be spread that he was
there to organize a lodge of colored
Masons.22
Less susceptible of proof--and less
creditable if true--is the story widely
circulated and just as widely believed
that John Brown solicited (and re-
ceived) aid from the lodge at
Clarksburg, West Virginia, in early August
1859, under pretense of being a Mason in
good standing. The story was told
by John J. Davis, father of John W.
Davis, the Democratic nominee for
president in 1924, to whom the
application was made.23 Mr. Davis examined
the stranger, whom he described as
having a long, flowing beard, and the
answers to his queries left no grounds
for suspicion that the man was an im-
postor, but on the contrary gave Mr.
Davis every reason to believe that he
was a Mason in good standing. Mr. Davis
then took the stranger to William
P. Cooper and Charles Lewis, both
prominent Clarksburg citizens, who were
members of the committee appointed by
the lodge to care for such matters.
On the recommendation of Mr. Davis the
stranger was given $20 to help him
on his way to Martinsburg.
After the raid at Harpers Ferry, Mr. Davis
and the two committee members
identified the brother they had
befriended as John Brown, the identification
being based on a picture published in Leslie's
Weekly. And that is one of the
strongest points that serve to cast
serious doubt on the correctness of the
identification.
32 OHIO HISTORY
The portrait in Leslie's was
reproduced from a photograph made in Boston
in May 1859, when Brown wore a long
beard. But, just after the photograph
was taken and before his arrival at
Harpers Ferry, he visited his home at
North Elba, New York, and while there
had his hair and beard closely
trimmed. The date of the supposed visit
to Clarksburg is definitely fixed as
the day on which a colored woman Charlotte
Harris, was on trial for aiding
slaves to escape. This was August 1,
1859.24 If Brown was there as an on-
looker at the trial, as he is claimed to
have been, his beard would have been
a short, bristly stubble of not more
than two or three inches in length.
It is not possible to pinpoint Brown's
exact whereabouts on August 1, but
on July 27 he was at Chambersburg,
Pennsylvania, and was at that place
again on August 2. He could have
traveled by rail from Harpers Ferry to
Clarksburg, but another witness who
claimed to have observed him in the
courtroom, says that he rode his horse
in company with the stranger to
Shinnston, some ten miles distant and
away from the railroad line to
Martinsburg, after the court proceedings
had been concluded.25
It seems very unlikely that the
impostor, if he was an impostor, was John
Brown. No doubt it was a case of
mistaken identity such as occurred in a
number of other instances where error
could be easily established, though
Mr. Davis, whose honesty, sincerity, and
truthfulness cannot be questioned,
believed to his dying day that he had
been instrumental in rendering Masonic
aid to the Harpers Ferry raider.
When John Brown came to the end of the
road on the gallows at Charles
Town, he could have no good claim on the
tender sympathies of the brother-
hood in America--it remained for the
Freemasons of France to pay the
final fraternal tribute. That tribute,
it may be said, was not paid to him
because of any pretense to Masonic
membership, but in sympathy for the
man who had dared to declare a one-man
war on the institution of human
slavery. It was at the solstitial winter
feast in the lodge of St. Vincent-de-
Paul in Paris on January 6, 1860, that
M. Ulbach, orator, paid a glowing
tribute to the memory of John Brown, and
offered a toast to him and his
work.26
THE AUTHOR: Boyd B. Stutler is the man-
aging editor of the West Virginia
Encyclopedia.
A noted collector of Browniana, he was
chair-
man of the John Brown Centennial
Commission
of West Virginia in 1958-59.
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The Civil War had been fought out and peace had returned to the land when a group of churchmen and reformers led by the Rev. Charles G. Finney of Oberlin, who had long served as president of Oberlin College, turned to make war on secret societies and the Masonic order in particular. The crusade mildly agitated a part of the country for some years, but lacking as it did the frenzy, hysteria, and political potency of the anti-Masonic move- ment of the 1820's and 1830's it eventually fell of its own weight.1 The persistent crusaders in the Finney camp were fond of referring to recusant Masons as proof that the principles of the order were repugnant to thinking Christian men--that they renounced the order once its secrets and NOTES ARE ON PACES 78-79 |