ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Abraham Lincoln
LC-USZ62-13016 (1861)
February 12, 1809 - April 14, 1865
The son of a Kentucky frontiersman. Abraham Lincoln was a captain in the Black Hawk War, a member of the Illinois legislature for eight years, and was elected president of the United States in 1860 and 1864.
On January 1, 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation that declared forever free those slaves within the Confederacy.
Abraham Lincoln was not a freemason.
He applied for membership in Tyrian Lodge, Springfield, Ill., shortly after his nomination for the presidency in 1860 but withdrew the application because he felt that his applying for membership at that time might be construed as a political ruse to obtain votes. He advised the lodge that he would resubmit his application again when he returned from the presidency.
On Good Friday, April 14, 1865, Lincoln was assassinated at Ford’s Theatre in Washington by John Wilkes Booth. On the death of the president, Tyrian Lodge adopted, on April 17, 1865, a resolution to say "that the decision of President Lincoln to postpone his application for the honours of Freemasonry, lest his motives be misconstrued, is the highest degree honourable to his memory."
Non-mason
Source: 10,000 Famous Freemasons, William R. Denslow. Note that this claim has not been corroborated by either the Grand Lodge of Illinois or Tyrian Lodge.
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BY OLIVIER FRAYSSÉ AND LAURENCE GRÉGOIRE
Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865 sparked off a real shock wave in the United States as well as abroad. In France, as in the US, many Masonic institutions and Freemasons took initiatives to honor the memory of the great man, whose virtues were glorified and likened to Masonic values and were often based on the assumption that Lincoln was a Mason himself. However, French Freemasonry was highly politicized, and a close examination of the Masonic tributes to Lincoln also tells the story of a bitter political strife thinly veiled by the literary genre of eulogies, the fight of democracy against imperial rule. This fight of 1865 led to the creation of the Statue of Liberty, via the Lincoln medal.
Early Tributes to Lincoln
1In spite of the numerous gaps in archival sources characteristic of the study of French Freemasonry, it has been possible to find quite a few of the early tributes to Lincoln. Most of the tributes we have consulted[1] were sent to the Masonic Grand Lodge of New York. That Lincoln belonged to this American lodge (he never did) was mostly taken for granted. Some candidly explained that “brother Lincoln had been one of the most accomplished personifications of what a Mason should be, and we, French Masons, may claim him as one of us on the same grounds as the United States Lodges” (Girollet 12)—while others claimed that Lincoln possessed all the virtues actually symbolized during “initiation degrees” (La Chaîne d’Union 15.2 [15 May 1865]).
2Apart from this appropriation, tributes paid by French Masons had several dimensions: they expressed genuine grief for a man admired and causes shared, were familiar instances of civic participation, and also self-serving eulogies. Like all other forms of public tribute, they were also very political. French Freemasonry had always been extremely political. In that highly centralized, politicized and polarized country, any form of Masonic activity had to ask for, and receive protection from, the powers that be, and these powers kept a close eye on Masonic activities. Conversely, Freemasonry also served as a refuge and a greenhouse for opponents to the same powers. Right after the coup that put Napoleon III in power on December 2, 1851, the main Masonic body, the Grand Orient de France, had been placed under the thumb of Prince Lucien Murat as Grand Master. He was to check republican influence in an institution that had adopted the motto of the Second Republic (1848–1851), “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité” as its own in 1849, and in which a good many republicans were awaiting better times, while others had been forced to exile. One of the major actions of Murat was indeed to change the constitution of the Grand Orient de France in 1854, moving the Republican motto Liberty, Equality, Fraternity from the first article to the third, eviscerating it of its radical message: “Freemasonry still retains its old motto ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’; but it reminds its members that, since it works on the plane of ideas, one of their first duties, as Masons and as citizens, is to respect and obey the laws of the country where they reside” (Saunier 595). When the Empire became more liberal in 1862, and as a consequence of a rebellion against Murat’s dictatorial style, the Grand Orient de France was given more leeway under Marshal Bernard Pierre Magnan, who nevertheless remained a sentinel for the Emperor and tried unsuccessfully to unify all French Masonic bodies under his tutelage. Those Freemasons who were republicans were connected with their brethren exiles in London, who benefited from the freedom granted by the British crown, through the review La Chaîne d’Union, published in London until 1864, and then in Paris starting in 1865.
READ MORE OR THE CONTINUATION AT :
ARTICLES IN ISSUE NO. 60
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