Part 7 Secret Societies of America's elite...Master Masons and their Slaves...The Masonic Betrayal

Chapter 12 

MASTER MASONS AND 

THEIR SLAVES 

From his castle in New York, Frederick Philipse looked down the Hudson River, his highway to riches. From New York ships owned by the Dutch-born entrepreneur sailed around the world. Philipse had come to America in 1647 and immediately recognized that the laws were not brought to bear on those who held the wealth. He started by selling gunpowder and rum to the pirates.1 Then he moved on to providing financial backing for the pirates' voyages. Finally he graduated to become one of the pioneers of the American slave trade. It soon became a family business, with Philipse's son Adolph arriving in America from Madagascar on a ship full of slaves. With the money from piracy and the slave trade, the Philipse family bought what was once a Yonkers plantation and established more than one mansion on the Hudson. Despite his business interests, Frederick Philipse achieved respectability and wealth. He held political office and was a long-standing member of the Council of New York. 

While many of the early colonists came to America seeking religious freedom, many also sought economic opportunity. Loosening the ties that bound society created opportunity. Not every freedom-seeking immigrant needed to exploit others to better himself. But for every Sam Adams there was a Caleb Cushing, and for every Thomas Jefferson there was a Thomas Perkins. The institutions and alliances made in the Old World prevailed in the New World. The system of an elite group that controlled the masses had existed from feudal times, and although it was altered by mercantilism the system still predominated. Men like Abraham Lincoln would carry the banner for equality and individual rights while others would perpetuate the status quo. 

There is no dividing line to say where English slave trading ended and the American trade began. Tracing the start of slavery in what would become the United States, Hugh Thomas, author of The Slave Trade, found a letter from the Reverend George Downing of Harvard that was written to his cousin John Winthrop, governor of Connecticut. The letter suggested importing slaves into New England and held British-owned Barbados as an example of the profits of slavery. George Downing's father, Emmanuel Downing, of Salem, also wrote to Winthrop suggesting the same. New England merchants had discovered that the trade was a lucrative business, even though the area itself had little need for imported labor. Massachusetts had only about a hundred slaves in the seventeenth century. But ships owned by Massachusetts firms would move tens of thousands of slaves for profit. 

The most successful American slave traders had relationships in Europe. As the slave trade grew in Europe, the English port of Liverpool went from a fishing village to a first-rate seaport. Four families dominated the trade; the wealthiest was Foster Cunliffe, who had four ships that sailed for Africa each year. His wealth grew from the trade and he was elected mayor. The American headquarters of the Cunliffe trading business was at Oxford, Maryland, where Cunliffe's American agent was the father of Robert Morris, the chief financier of the American Revolution. 

Just as many American fortunes are founded on the slave trade, opium running, and smuggling, so are many of England's. The slave trade grew in leaps and bounds in Britain and two cities, Bristol and Liverpool, became hot spots for the trade. Bristol had become an important seaport during the Crusades, and Templar ships controlled the industry there. When the slave trade exploded as an economic opportunity, Bristol's business increased, with her merchants responsible for the yearly transport of seventy thousand slaves. Liverpool's history was shorter; it evolved into  a seaport as a result of the slave trade. Prior to Liverpool's entry into the trading business, its population numbered five thousand. After entering the cotton, sugar, and slave-trade triangle, businesses such as shipbuilders, textile mills, and supporting industries enlarged the tiny port and its surrounding towns to nearly one million people. 

Prominent English families who controlled the trade included the Leylands, Ingrams, Cunliffes, Tarletons, Claytons, Bolds, Kennions, and Banastres. These families started the city's banks and industries, many of which survive today.2 Not much was done to conceal the ugly business; even the Liverpool city exchange building depicted African heads and elephants. 

New England's first slave-trading ship came from the seaport city of Marblehead, but it was built in Salem and was registered there. The Desire did not pioneer the trade to Africa but simply sailed to the West Indies and returned with slaves for sale in Connecticut.3 Marblehead and Salem were capitals of a sea-trading empire that spanned the seven seas. Those who took part in the trade were firmly connected by the Masonic lodge system. In fact, a Marblehead lodge carried American Masonry to China, where in the heyday of opium trading Massachusetts had a beachhead. 

The lodges of the Massachusetts seamen were often fraternal and would admit shipowners and common laborers, but as the owners became wealthy, they often gravitated to more prestigious lodges. Within a generation or two they frequently moved to Boston. Colonial Masonry rose above the divisive factors such as religion and color, but it reinforced the barrier between the rich and the poor.4 

Boston's first families soon entered the trade. Peter Faneuil, a Mason and a Huguenot, was an active trader. He was joined by the Belchers, the Cabots, and the Waldos. While the customers of the slave trade were the southern plantations, the shippers were New Englanders. Modern Boston tries to downplay its role in the slave trade, with Massachusetts historians pointing the finger at its neighbor Rhode Island. Historian Samuel Morison claims, "The 'Guinea trade' had never been an important line of commerce in Massachusetts,"5 yet at the same time he Master Masons and Their Slaves 209 admits that Salem had a regular trade with Africa, selling rum and fish for gold dust, palm oil, and ivory. "It would be surprising if the occasional shipmaster did not yield to the temptation," notes the author.6 Morison, who was from a prominent Brahmin family, equally warned readers against exaggerating the opium trafficking.7 But there is no denying that the bedrock of New England's wealth, including that of many of today's most successful corporations, was funded with the proceeds of both the slave trade and the opium trade. 

Despite Massachusetts's claims to the contrary, it was involved in the trade almost as far back as Virginia was. Samuel Vassall, one of the colony's first promoters, is on record complaining about the monopoly of the Guinea Company, an English institution, in the lucrative trade in 1649.8 A 1724 letter from Irish merchant Thomas Amory suggests that the shippers of the slave trade were predominantly from New England. Other historians also conclude that the slave trade's contribution to the industry of New England is much greater than most will concede. The authors of New England and the Sea claim that 30 percent of the traffic in blacks was done on New England ships. Furthermore, the tobacco and rice plantations, fueled by slave labor, were the biggest customers for New England's exports: timber, rum, and fish. As the authors put it, "The coffers of some of New England's proudest families were filled with profits from this trade."9 

Massachusetts might have been the first New England state to get involved in the trade, but as it devoted its attention to China, the state's slavery business was soon eclipsed by that of its neighbor Rhode Island. 

RHODE ISLAND AND THE TRADE 

New Englanders like to claim the slave trade was centered in Rhode Island, and they are not completely incorrect in assigning the blame.10 Rhode Islanders, in turn, like to point the finger at the Jews, which is also in part correct. In 1654 a handful of Portuguese Sephardic families fearing a new Inquisition left their country for the Netherlands. After a brief time they came to America. Rhode Island, founded by Roger Williams, offered religious freedom. It also offered something even more revolutionary to a small group of families: economic freedom. 

This handful of closely related families learned quickly, and soon came to represent most of the slave-trading business of the tiny colony. Sephardic families including those of Aaron Lopez, Abraham Redwood, Abraham Pereira Mendes, Jacob Riveras, Jacob Polock, and the De Wolfs joined English colonists like William Ellery, Henry Collins, Samuel Vernon, John Canning, and Joseph Wanton, who also made money from the trade. The slave trade was not the province of Jews, Episcopalians, or Huguenots. It did, however, pay to band together and operate in secrecy. Christian or Jewish, the slave traders had to be connected, at least to each other. Religious affiliation was often the tie that bound. But not every slave trader was from a persecuted sect. 

For this reason it was very important to be accepted into a lodge. The lodge system, which was composed of the elite shipowners, made navigating the treacherous waters of both the Atlantic Ocean and New England political life easier. The Newport Lodge was founded by a merchant from Boston, and once it was established it was populated mostly by Jews from Portugal and the Caribbean. Moses Seixas served as grand master for Rhode Island from 1791 to 1800"; he went on to become one of the founders of the Bank of Rhode Island. 

Intermarriage among Newport's first families tightened the bonds, as it did among the Boston merchant elite. But intermarriage did not mean marrying within one's race or religion; it meant marrying within one's caste. A Protestant could marry a Jew as long as they were both from the same station in life. Shipowner, sea captain, and merchant were three titles within the higher caste of Rhode Island life. 

In America, Jews in general did not suffer the degree of hostility that they encountered in Europe. While in many countries Masonry rejected Jews, and at least one still does, in America Masonry welcomed them. Moses Michael Hay, a Portuguese Sephardic Jew, was instrumental in bringing Scottish Rite Masonry to America, and Paul Revere, a Huguenot, was his deputy grand master. Hay was also instrumental in founding the Bank of Boston. 

Not all of the men who were instrumental in fomenting rebellion were Masons. Sam Adams, for example, used the taverns where lodges met as a means of getting mob support. He was very much against the slave trade and refused the gift of a slave. John Adams, too, declared that any slave who entered his house was a free man. He was against the trade and was an outspoken critic of Masonry; the cronyism it bred allowed many to be above the law. 

Among Rhode Island's Jewish merchants, Aaron Lopez was possibly the most famous, with thirty ships to his credit. After fleeing a new wave of inquisitorial zeal in Portugal, Lopez arrived in Newport in the 1750s with a second group of Sephardic Jews. He made contacts rapidly in Boston, Charleston, New York, and Jamaica, and began trading rum, furniture, candles, and slaves. In 1775 he was the single biggest taxpayer in the state and had an estate in British Antigua as well. This was Newport's golden age of trade, and Lopez was Newport's most successful merchant. His family takes credit for building Newport's famed Touro Synagogue and for introducing the sperm-oil industry to America. Before his ships went to Africa in search of black slaves, his fleet plied the oceans hunting for whales. A collection of his papers, including ship's manifests, receipt books, and various records, fills 147 volumes and is preserved today. 

Rhode Island has been called an American Venice, a tiny area unsuitable for farming but by nature a trading mecca. The state's industry would benefit from the slave trade in other ways. It may have been the center of the rum business, with thirty rum distilleries depending on the triangular trade that depended on African slaves. The rum, sugar, and slave businesses all evolved around each other, which kept Rhode Island prominent in the slave trade. Author Jay Coughtry in his book The Notorious Triangle estimates that a hundred thousand Africans were taken aboard more than nine hundred ships registered to Rhode Island owners. 

Many families descended from slave traders would later destroy family documents and alter others to absolve the family from guilt. Their wealth and power were never diluted, and many prominent  names built their fame on the triangle trade. Traders included the Wanton family, whose Joseph Wanton would be remembered as the fourth governor of Rhode Island; Abraham Redwood, benefactor of the Redwood Library; John Bannister, owner of Bannister's Wharf; Samuel and William Vernon; Philip Wilkinson; and Stephen d'Ayrault. 

One family that was extremely wealthy and prominent because of the trade and thus could not erase the past was the De Wolfs. They came to Rhode Island through the Caribbean. Marc Antoine De Wolf, whose migration started in Portugal and proceeded to Holland, Guadeloupe, and finally Bristol, Rhode Island, married the English immigrant Abigail Potter. Bristol was the namesake of England's largest slave port, and there De Wolf was introduced to the trade as a captain on the ship of his brother-in-law, Simeon Potter. Potter traded slaves and rum in the Caribbean, and De Wolf learned quickly. 

With his eight sons following De Wolf into the slave business, his extended family may have been responsible for a quarter of Rhode Island's slaving expeditions. Not everyone in his family was happy with the business, however; his youngest son, Levi, was so disgusted after one slaving voyage that he resigned from the family firm. But others showed no signs of dissension. One of Levi's brothers was famous for throwing a slave who had smallpox into the ocean. 

Rhode Island had attempted to stop the trade and took several actions against the De Wolf and Brown clans. When a slave ship was confiscated, the slavers united to help the owner to buy it at a rigged auction. When the government sent agents to correct the abuses, they were hauled away or beaten. When the federal government sent a special prosecutor, John Leonard, to try a slave trade case against James De Wolf, a Rhode Island jury failed to convict the trader. Winning the case was not enough, though, and De Wolf sent his own agents to Washington, D.C., to deliver a message. They beat Leonard on the courthouse steps. 

The Bristol and Newport trade went on long after it was illegal. James De Wolf quit in 1808, but his brother George continued until 1820, twelve years after the national ban. James married the daughter of William Bradford, who owned a rum distillery and served in the U.S. Senate. He put his slave trade profits into textile mills and became owner of the Arkwright Manufacturing Company, which survived into modern times and is currently part of a Dutch company. 

The De Wolf family would also be remembered for founding one of the first New England insurance firms. The firm insured both the slave ships and the "cargo." Today the De Wolfs' imposing mansion, Linden Place in Bristol, is a tourist attraction. It was built in 1810 by General George De Wolf, who moved his headquarters to Cuba and continued growing his fortune in plantations, the slave trade, and West Indian piracy. In 1825, when the sugar crop failed in Cuba, George abandoned his mansion and skipped out of Rhode Island ahead of his creditors. 

The family home changed hands several times, but each time to a different De Wolf. Theodora De Wolf married Christopher Colt, the brother of the famous handgun manufacturer, and had six children with him. After Theodora's death, Samuel Colt bought out his brother's interest and remained in the house. Samuel Colt is also credited with founding the Industrial Trust Company, which merged with Fleet National Bank, now called Fleet Boston Financial, one of the largest banks in New England. Samuel P. Colt, Samuel Colt's nephew and Theodora's son, became a prosperous lawyer in New England and handled the Vanderbilt estate. He is also remembered for merging small rubber companies to create U.S. Rubber, which later became Uniroyal. 

Rhode Island remained a closed society long after the slave trade was history. Membership in a Masonic lodge appears to have been a requirement for political office in the state. Governors David Russell Brown, Norman Case, Robert Livingston Beeckman, William Gregory, Charles Kimball, Herbert Warren Ladd, and Frank Licht were all Masons, as were and are numerous Rhode Island senators, congressmen, and other officeholders. 

PATRIOTS AND PROFITS 

It is often said that New England was the core of the Revolution. Those hurt by the restrictive trade covenants of the mother country were the merchants and traders. The early stages of rebellion are traced to the Stamp Act and other mercantile edicts. In 1764, when Britain tried to raise the price of sugar and molasses, the merchants and shipowners of Massachusetts banded together to oppose the action. Such commodities were essential to the slave trade, which was vital to New England commerce. Colonial shipping employed four thousand seamen in New England and was responsible for thousands of peripheral occupations. The Cabot and Russell families of Boston were two of the largest shippers. George Cabot was an Anglophile and a staunch Federalist whose family wealth was built on merchant shipping. He served as a senator from Massachusetts and was appointed the first secretary of the navy but declined the post. Although many of those who sought independence for the colonies were made wealthy through the slave trade, others were opposed to it. 

The success of the Revolution may have depended on the money and connections of the merchants, but its ideals were not dependent on the merchants whose politics would carefully straddle the proverbial fence until a decision was forced. 

NEW YORK IN THE TRADE 

The numbers of slave ships sailing from New York were small compared to those of the New England states. But the wealth of the New Yorkers who prospered through the trade is at least as great. The trade was restricted to the elite families that had often been among the feudal overlords from the colony's earliest days. The intermarried elite core that brought the Scottish Livingston family together with their Dutch neighbors the Schuylers was joined by the Philipses, Thomas Francis Lewis, the Beeckmans, the Marstons, the Van Homes, the van Cortlandts, and the Walters. Until the American Revolution, the wealth of the  philipse family might have put them among the top ten in the colonies. 

Frederick Philipse had arrived with Peter Stuyvesant as a master builder for the West India Company. Philipse exploited the valuations of native wampum, bought land, and invested in trade from the beginning. His backing of pirate voyages may have been among his greatest ventures, and he would even marry the widow of another transatlantic trader. Philipse's slave trade was just one part of his vast operation. By 1693 the Philipse lands stretched twenty-one miles along the Hudson, for a total of ninety-two thousand acres. 

Philip Philipse, an heir to Frederick's fortune, married Margaret Marston, thus linking another powerful family to his own. The Marstons owned land on Wall Street as well as the huge Prospect Farm, a country estate near what is now Eighty-fifth Street. The Marstons too were a mercantile family, and as slave traders they would keep slaves on their Manhattan estate. Margaret's father, Nathaniel, was active in the Anglican Church and is buried in the family vault in Trinity Church, a Manhattan landmark. His portrait in the Museum of the City of New York depicts him with his ledger book, a reference to his participation in the China trade. 

Although the volume of ships owned by New Yorkers was less than that of New Englanders, their role might have been just as great. Even after slavery was made illegal, ships owned by New Yorkers were found conducting an Africa-to-Cuba business. In 1859 eighty-five ships from New York City were supposedly working in the Cuban slave trade. The proceeds were used to add "to the treasuries of political organizations" and "carry elections" in nearby states.12 

Only a few of those in the trade owned slaves themselves. Robert Livingston was one of these people. As the elected speaker of the New York provincial assembly in 1718, business kept Livingston in Albany while his wife, Alida, managed their plantation. One letter Robert received from Alida requested that he find old shoes for the Palatines and slaves, who were barefoot. Robert Livingston is one of the few New Yorkers who actually tried farming with black slaves, and when the experiment did not work the Livingstons kept the slaves as servants. Another letter shows Robert buying a Negro girl for his son Philip.13 

As early as 1690 Robert Livingston had an interest in a Dutch ship that sailed to Madagascar, then Barbados, and finally Virginia. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, there was still prejudice against the Scots, even in the melting pot of New York. In order to rise above one's station, the ticket was to marry into a Dutch family, comprising the aristocracy of New York. At the peak of the slave-trading business owned by Philip Livingston, Robert's son, the merchant endowed Yale's first professor's chair. 

Alexander Hamilton, the illegitimate son of a Scottish plantation owner in the Caribbean, followed Livingston's road to fame and fortune by marrying a Dutch woman, Elizabeth Schuyler. He became a Freemason for the connections it offered. After the war the fact of his low birth was completely forgotten, as he became a member of the elite Society of Cincinnati. 

Hamilton became the antithesis of what Thomas Jefferson held as a role model for the country-in-formation. Like Jefferson, Hamilton owned slaves and called for their freedom; unlike Jefferson, who targeted New York as a city of money-grubbers, Hamilton's lifetime ambition was to found a bank. Hamilton understood that he who controls the money has the most power. George Washington appointed Hamilton the first secretary of the treasury. His first act was to announce that the debts of the new country were to be paid. It was ostensibly a noble idea, but one that was built on an early version of insider trading. Hamilton and his cohorts bought up as much of the war debt as possible at a rate of pennies on the dollar. They were made wealthy when these were paid. Many cried foul at this action, yet Hamilton was a proponent of power without limitation and despised the checks-and-balances system. 

Hamilton then founded New York's first bank, the Bank of New York, in 1784 and brought in three other Scots to fill the board. Another early New York bank, the Manhattan Company, was founded by Aaron Burr, who promptly loaned himself a fortune. The Manhattan Company was seized in a hostile takeover by Hamilton's allies—the Livingstons—who ousted Burr. A war between Hamilton and Burr ended in the infamous duel that left Hamilton dead, Burr a fugitive, and the Stock Exchange (the Tontine Coffee House, at that time) closed for a day. The bank survived the scandal and is still alive and well today under the new name Chase Manhattan. 

America's Scottish immigrants were tightly knit through Masonry and other connections and were particularly adept at using these connections to organize syndicates, companies, and institutions. Another Scotsman and merchant, Archibald Gracie, started the first savings bank in New York. He had emigrated from Dumfries in 1784, and within two decades the sea trade made him one of New York's wealthiest citizens. Gracie is described as fabulously wealthy, and there were probably fewer than five men in New York whose fortunes could rival his. Today the Gracie mansion serves as the home of New York City's mayors. Neighbor of the Astors, Rhinelanders, Crugers, and Schermerhorns, Gracie's parties were legend, and the New York glitterati, including Alexander Hamilton, James Fenimore Cooper, and Washington Irving, were frequent guests. In addition, Gracie is often given credit for developing New York as a seaport. 

Scotsmen played a key role in establishing banks in Europe as well. The Bank of England was founded in 1694 by William Paterson, a farm-born Scotsman who had a vision of a world banking system controlled by central banks. That system is in place today. Paterson is also remembered as the promoter of the ill-fated Darien scheme, in which many Scotsmen died (see chapter 4), which Livingston would find himself connected to by marriage. Another son of Scotland, John Law, was born around the same time as Paterson and left his homeland for France, where he started the Banque Generale. The bank brought prosperity to France as it made trade more viable. Law, however, lost his proverbial shirt in his own American adventure. He combined the bank with the Mississippi Company, which he established to develop the Louisiana territories in America. The venture ended in bankruptcy and with Law fleeing for his life. 

Scots even brought the word dollar into the English language. King  James VI introduced a thirty-shilling coin that became known as the sword dollar because of the design. The Scots used the term dollar to distinguish their currency from that of their overbearing neighbor to the south. The word took on an anti-English, independent connotation which the Scots brought with them to the Americas. 

PENNSYLVANIA 

The first Continental Congress was held in Philadelphia, one of the colonies' most important port cities. The meeting was attended by many in the slave trade. While Pennsylvania was not a plantation state and Philadelphia was not as active in the trade as some colonies, its merchants did participate. Thomas Willing, of the Willing and Morris firm, was one of the merchants in attendance. His partner, Morris, represented one of Europe's largest slave merchants, Foster Cunliffe. Philip Livingston, whose slave ship the Wolf plied the Atlantic, also attended. Present from the South were plantation owners including future president Madison, George Mason of Virginia, and Henry Laurens of South Carolina. 

Philadelphia's Society of Friends, also called the Quakers, did not approve of the trafficking of human lives. However, some individual Quakers did make profits from the trade. Friends involved in slave trading included William Frampton, who carried the first slaves to Philadelphia, as well as James Claypole, Jonathan Dickinson, and Isaac Norris. Even the always-industrious Benjamin Franklin, who was a friend to the Montaudoin family, considered entering the slave trade. He also entertained the idea to breed slaves, rather than import them, in Florida. 

The City of Brotherly Love was founded by William Penn, whose Quaker beliefs earned him the enmity of his own father. In England Penn fought for religious toleration and was imprisoned in the Tower of London. There he penned his text No Cross, No Crown and advised his jailers they had better issue his death sentence, as he would not change his philosophy. After his release, Penn continued his fight and was jailed several times. He finally petitioned the king for a charter to start a colony in the New World. The king, no doubt relieved to be getting rid of the trouble-stirring Penn, granted the man's wish. 

Penn was a paragon of religious toleration and envisioned a land where all were free to practice their faith. Voltaire, Ben Franklin's brother in the Masonic Nine Sisters Lodge, called Penn the one who could boast of bringing a new Golden Age to earth. From his Pennsylvania paradise Penn wrote that men were "born with a title to perfect freedom." Sadly, followers of this paragon of toleration and freedom were silent on the issue of slavery, although the Quakers would later be counted among the first abolitionists. 

VIRGINIA 

Virginia was a planter state, and as such the state's aristocracy was made up of people who had great expanses of land and slaves to maintain the plantations. Its history starts with the chartering of the Virginia Company in 1606 to London's leading merchants, including Richard Hakluyt and Sir Thomas Smith, the son of one of Raleigh's financial backers. 

From the earliest days, life in Virginia was tough and the actions of the powerful handful that constituted the authority might shock those who accept religious freedom as the reason for the colonization of the Americas. Blasphemy and sacrilege were crimes that were subject to the death penalty, as was the crime of killing a chicken.14 For stealing oatmeal, one man had a needle driven through his tongue and was then chained to a tree and left to die of starvation.15 But the white colonists' inhuman treatment of each other for the pettiest of crimes did not extend to the elite members of the colony. 

The Virginia Company charter included the island of Bermuda, which allowed Virginia's founders, like Lord Robert Rich, to make a fortune in piracy as they sailed from safe harbor in Virginia to safe harbor in Bermuda. Slave labor would simply replace one cruel system, servitude, with another. Men earned transatlantic passage by agreeing to work for the planter families, often for an indefinite period of time.The  planters took advantage of the system and extended the length of service. London's poor and troublesome were disposed of by workhouses prisons, the gallows, the military, and this new option, Virginia. 

Black slave labor came to replace the indefinite servitude of the whites. A head of cattle worth five pounds in Virginia was worth twenty-five pounds in Barbados, and that island would be a great source of slaves for the Virginia plantations. Unlike the sugar industry, in which the way to profits was working one's slaves to death, the tobacco business featured easier work, and slave families were imported to maintain the plantations for a longer term. 

Despite the nature of tobacco planting, which was easier than that of the sugar industry, life was still dangerous for people who had no legal recourse. In 1669 the Virginia assembly passed a law allowing the murder of a slave as discipline for bad behavior. When Robert Carter applied to the court in order to be allowed to dismember two disobedient slaves, his application was granted.16 

Virginia's first families, like the Ludwells, the Byrds, the Carters, and the Spencers, shared the spoils of office and a series of well-placed marriages to become a new aristocracy. They built huge mansions on their landed estates: The Harrisons built Berkeley; the Lees built Stratford; the Carters built Sabine Hall, Nomini Hall, and Carter's Grove; the Byrds built Westover; the Randolphs built Tuckahoe; and the Washingtons built Mount Vernon. 

Masonry united the Virginia aristocrats, and important members of high society were lodge members as well. Although lodge records often did not survive the centuries, the membership of George Washington, George Whyte, and George Mason is without doubt. There is evidence that future presidents Monroe and Madison were also Masons, and the Masons do not claim only one of Virginia's aristocracy, Benjamin Harrison, as a lodge brother. 

James Madison, a scion of the planter aristocracy, played an active role in the Constitutional Convention. Like fellow planter George Washington, Madison had doubts about the concept of slavery and worked toward sending the black slaves back to Africa.

Benjamin Harrison, the ancestor of Presidents William Henry Harrison and Benjamin Harrison, and a cosigner of the Declaration of Independence, was the descendant of still another Benjamin Harrison, who was most likely a Bermuda planter.17 The Tucker clan started with William Tucker, a sea captain who arrived in Virginia before 1620. He was entrusted with trading on behalf of the colony. In doing so he concluded a treaty with the Pamunkey Indians by killing two hundred of their tribe with poisoned wine.18 The Tuckers also had one foot in Bermuda, with plantations there and in Virginia dating to the early days of the Virginia Company. 

THE DEEP SOUTH 

North Carolina had a plantation-driven economy, although only one Constitutional Convention member from that state, William Blount, was a plantation owner. Like several other signers, he was a lawyer and a Freemason. Blount was also a Revolutionary War hero who earned the respect of many in battle. 

Blount started anew after the Revolution as a land speculator. His threatened finances, however, induced him to take a subversive role designed to lead the country back into war. He wanted to see the new country defeat the Spanish and open the West. For this reason Blount became part of a conspiracy that attempted to turn over Florida to the British. He was booted from the Senate as a result. Blount had many friends, including fellow Mason Andrew Jackson, whom he had named attorney general of the Tennessee Territory. These friends in high places and important lodges prevented Blount's impeachment from hindering his family's political dynasty, which would prosper into the next century. 

In South Carolina the elite caste, which built its fortunes in the slave trade and plantation industry, was all-powerful and ran the colony in much the same way as the Caribbean states were run. The first governor of South Carolina was Sir John Yeamans, a Barbados planter who founded Charleston and introduced slaves to clear his own plantation. A hundred years later the planter aristocracy was in full control of the state, even though the country was at the doorstep of democracy. 

Henry Laurens, who was at the Philadelphia Convention, was a partner in the firm of Austin and Laurens. The company was the largest of twelve firms in Charleston, capturing 25 percent of the slave trade.19 Laurens held some of the largest plantations in the colony and was one of the biggest merchants, handling rice, indigo, rum, beer, and wine. Slave traders usually earned a commission of 10 percent of the sale price of their trades, and the slave trade was big enough that the greatest mansions of Charleston were owned by the merchants and slave traders. 

Henry's father, John Laurens, was a Huguenot from La Rochelle in France. He was part of the Huguenot wave of immigration that fled Catholic France because of religious war and persecution. John would send his son Henry to England in 1744 to be trained as a merchant. 

Henry's education was furthered in South Carolina by making the right friends. He became a member of the Solomon's Lodge and was trained in the craft by another wealthy Charleston merchant, James Crokatt.20 Membership in the lodge was very important in being accepted by other merchants and businessmen. Stephen Girard of Philadelphia had also joined Masonry through this influential lodge. 

Henry Laurens started the family trade, importing rum and other tropical goods from the West Indies, bringing manufactured goods from England, exporting rice and indigo, and buying slaves from British traders and then selling them to South Carolina planters. He was soon sending his own ships to Africa to eliminate the British middlemen. The profits from his trade were invested in land, and by the Revolution he owned eight plantations. He also entered politics, first at the local level and later in increasingly important positions. In 1770, with his fortune made, Henry brought his son to England to arrange for his son's education. There Henry became involved with the American contingent protesting grievances to Parliament. Once he returned to South Carolina, he withdrew from the merchant life and from the slave trade. This did not stop him from keeping his own slaves, however, who numbered three hundred.  

While on a mission to Europe to arrange a loan from the Netherlands, Henry Laurens was captured by the British and spent fifteen months in the Tower of London. He returned to South Carolina to find his business ravaged by the Revolution, so he resigned from public life. When asked to join the Constitutional Convention as a representative of South Carolina, he declined, instead sending his new son in-law. 

After the battle of Yorktown, when England's willingness to support the protracted war was over, Laurens's English connection, Richard Oswald, was sent to negotiate the peace. Oswald, a Scottish slave trader who had appointed Laurens as his American agent, was sent by Lord Shelburne to Paris to meet with Benjamin Franklin. As the merchant caste was an elite minority, it was in its best interest to keep the group exclusive. From New England to the Carolinas intermarriage was the norm of the times. Charles Pinckney was the son of Colonel Charles Pinckney, a wealthy plantation owner, a lawyer, and a prominent Mason. Young Charles followed in his father's footsteps but did himself one better: He married Mary Eleanor Laurens. Shortly after Pinckney's marriage, his career and his wealth soared. He became the governor of South Carolina, and along with his cousin Charles Cotesworth Pinckney he represented the state at the Constitutional Convention. Cousin Charles was also the son of a plantation owner and was trained as a merchant and a lawyer. He too was in Washington's elite Society of Cincinnati. South Carolina's third and fourth delegates were also planters and lawyers. 

Pierce Butler was the son of a member of Parliament. He came to America because of the institution of primogeniture, which did not allow him to inherit the family estates as he wasn't the eldest son. In 1771 he married Mary Middleton, the daughter of a wealthy plantation owner. They moved south, with Butler resigning his military commission in the British army. He was outspoken in making sure the interests of the slave owner in South Carolina were represented and served in both the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention. 

John Rutledge was born in Charleston and was sent to London to  study law at the Middle Temple. He returned to amass a fortune in plantations and slaves. He served as governor of his state, and after the war he was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Senate rejected his appointment because of what was perceived as declining mental health and an anti-Federalist position. 

James Oglethorpe, the man who founded Georgia, started his career with the Royal African Company. He became a director of the company, whose charter gave it the right to import gold into England and black slaves into the Americas—for a thousand years. Oglethorpe's company included some powerful gentlemen, such as James, the Duke of York, who was the largest shareholder, Lord Shaftesbury, Lord Craven, Sir George Carteret, and Sir John Colleton. All were involved in the plantation business in one way or another; Colleton was a landowner in Barbados before he bought land in the Carolinas. Smaller shareholders included John Locke, the philosopher whose call for liberty obviously did not include all. 

Oglethorpe was a Mason in England, and he organized the first lodge in Georgia in 1733 without the benefit of a charter for the first two years. The Grand Lodge soon came around and warranted his lodge, even assisting it financially. Most of Oglethorpe's family were Jacobins and supporters of the Stuart cause. Oglethorpe was placed in an awkward position in 1745; as a military commander for the English he was supposed to help put down the rebellion led by Bonnie Prince Charlie. His lack of concern earned him a court-martial, although he was eventually acquitted.21 

FLORIDA 

Florida still belonged to Spain during the American Revolution. When the state was admitted to the Union, it had a unique status among the slave states in that it allowed blacks many of the same rights as whites. The polarization of early-nineteenth-century politics would eliminate those rights. 

The first black slaves were brought from Spain, not Africa, where they were employed in mines and in agriculture. Spanish slaves had unique rights; they were able to hold property, buy and sell goods, and initiate legal suits. These rights added up to the ability to gain their freedom. Free blacks sailed with the Spanish to America and were part of slaving expeditions against the Taino Indians. After 150 years of being part of Spanish Florida, black militias and black fortresses made up of free blacks developed. Members gained status by serving in the militia, and this gave them the ability to acquire titles and privileges. 

Many blacks, including Prince Witten, used such activities to achieve a high degree of status in Florida. He and his wife, Judy, fielded a large amount of requests to act as godparents to children in the community, and they evolved into a sort of royalty, with Judy having a slave of her own. The slave revolt in Saint Domingue was led by Jorge Biassou, who commanded an army of forty thousand. Biassou's brother in-law, Jorge Jacobo, married Prince Witten's daughter Polly, Unking a leading Florida family with a leading Haitian family. 

Juan Bautista Collins was another northern Florida black whose achievements stand out among both the free black community and the white Florida colony. He became a merchant and built a mercantile firm in Saint Augustine that developed trading links in South Carolina, Saint Domingue, Havana, New Orleans, and central and western Florida. Collins's agents were able to trade among the Seminole nation, which became an amalgamation of the Creek Indians and the runaway blacks. Collins raised cattle, bought and sold livestock, owned property, and, like the upper-caste Spanish, kept the Catholic faith and served in the militia. 

In 1763 the British took Florida from the Spanish. British colonies, especially the neighboring Carolinas, felt threatened by armed blacks so close to home, and the rights and status enjoyed by free blacks became threatened. King George III gave his favorite prime minister, the Scottish Earl of Bute, the charge of picking Florida's first British governors; both were aristocratic Scots. The first, James Grant, conceived of a colony where massive plantations, owned by absentee Scottish aristocrats like him, would employ black slave labor to raise cash crops such as indigo. Grant's own plantation was created in 1774, three years after his retirement from the governorship, and produced one quarter of the entire state's indigo production. 

In 1763 American and British investors united to form a slave breeding experiment. Richard Oswald, a Caithness-born trader who started his career in Glasgow and later became a member of London's slave-trading community, teamed up with Henry Laurens and Benjamin Franklin to import and breed Africans. Oswald owned an island in the Gambia Paver, married into the Scottish Ramsay family (who brought estates in Jamaica into his portfolio), started his own holdings in Virginia near the James River, and by 1764 had a huge home built for himself in Ayr, Scotland. 

Britain's designs on Florida did not last long, as the 1783 Treaty of Paris returned Florida to Spain. Freed blacks who had emigrated to the Caribbean islands returned to Florida and went into Spanish courts to confirm their status. Such status was attainable until the U.S. flag flew over Florida in 1821. The years between Florida's becoming a state in the Union and the Civil War witnessed racism become a reality. Independent Spanish Florida did not require that economic status be accorded by color; American Florida saw blacks as a threat, and free blacks soon watched their status disappear. All blacks were soon accorded the status of slaves. 

The institution of slavery was not inflicted on the world because of white Europeans, black Africans, or Islamic traders. It was not the exclusive province of Freemasons, Huguenots, Jews, or Muslims. The blame for any institution that allows the rights of one class to be taken away by another class can rarely be assigned to any group or religion, but as an organization religion can lead the way to elitism. The handful who believed they had the right to profit from slavery caused many others to feel that handful was an abomination in a land built on individual freedom. Ultimately the blame lies in the ability of the elite class to dominate through the institutions it could manipulate and control. 

Although most American dockworkers and shipwrights were not smugglers or slave traders, their livelihood depended on those who were. As a lodge, union, or congregation, the rank and file went along with whatever they needed to in order to ensure their own incomes, to advance the greater good of the group, or simply to remain a part of the status quo. Thus the world begets blacks trading in black slaves, signers of the Bill of Rights owning slaves, and freedom fighters willing to enslave others. 

Still, the worst was yet to come. Many who fought for an American nation, an experiment in individual liberties, a refuge from the tyranny of royalty and religious leaders, would commit to criminal conspiracies to tear apart the nation. Assassination, murder, conspiracy, and a backlash of racial hatred were unleashed upon America because of the manipulations of a few people. This led to America's most deadly war and to the murder of American presidents.

Chapter 13 

THE MASONIC BETRAYAL 

In 1826 the New York Freemason William Morgan decided to go public with the secrets of the order. Morgan's "brothers" had him arrested on bogus charges, imprisoned, and taken by force to a Masonic lodge, where he was murdered. Prosecutors brought charges against a handful of the conspirators. The jury was packed with Masons, however, and the accused were acquitted. After a special prosecutor was brought in, a few of the Mason murderers were actually convicted, but the longest sentence was thirty months. As an anti-Mason backlash swept the country, membership was lost and lodges disbanded. 

The conspiracy that the American public had feared had simply gone underground. Prominent Freemasons controlled the slave trade, the plantations, and the cotton industry, and through their wealth they controlled American politics—from the North to the Deep South. 

The history books tell us that the issues of slavery and states' rights led the United States down the path to Civil War. But most Americans did not own or trade slaves, or even own the plantations that required the work of slaves. The average citizen also did not own the textile mills that processed the cotton produced on the slave plantations. A handful of elite and wealthy people did, and they stirred the public to racial hatred and the Civil War. 

The southern United States was one of the few remaining areas that still practiced slavery, as did Portuguese Brazil and Spanish Cuba. As the causes of the war are studied, it appears that the "free" states of the North were opposed to the "slave" states of the South. The lines were not always geographical. An abolitionist movement did exist in the North, especially in states that enjoyed no commercial benefits from slavery. The abolitionist movement existed in the South and the West as well. 

In the North some people did benefit from the slave trade, and as a result they formed some odd alliances that fought against the tide of emancipation in the twenty years prior to the war. One such alliance was that of Northerner Caleb Cushing and two Southerners, John Anthony Quitman (the governor of Mississippi) and Jefferson Davis. Although Cushing was an active and high-ranking Mason, his mentor, Daniel Webster, advised him to move out of his Newburyport, Massachusetts, home because of his unpopularity. But the thirty-third degree Mason controlled the plantation trade and the opium trade from his mansion and had friends in high places. 

Cushing's coconspirator John Anthony Quitman was born in the Roosevelt territory of Rhinebeck, New York, but moved to Mississippi to become grand master of that state's Masonic hierarchy. He was the grand master for seventeen years. His power in the lodge and the capitol building of Mississippi gave him unbridled ambition, and he was very active in determining the fate of Texas. Quitman, who was against the admission of any new states as "free" states, proposed raising an army and marching west to conquer the new territory that had been taken from Mexico. It was an act of treason that caused Quitman to be brought up on charges of violating American neutrality laws. The other coconspirator, Jefferson Davis, would later become president of the Confederate states. 

The three conspirators joined forces to get General Franklin Pierce into the White House. The enemy of this alliance was President Zachary Taylor, who had assumed the presidency in March 1849. Taylor, a slaveholder, had wanted the southwestern states to be admitted as free states. In February 1850 the new president called a meeting of Southern leaders and told them he would hang secessionists who took arms against the Union "with less reluctance than he had hanged deserters and spies in Mexico." It wasn't the last time he threatened hanging. Taylor again publicly spoke out against those who committed acts of treason. He specifically referred to Quitman and his cabal, threatening to see them hanged for their deeds.

The very next day, July 4, 1850, the president took ill. The day was to be a celebration of both the independence of the country and the consecration of the almost finished Washington Monument. It was very much a Masonic celebration, as was everything surrounding the erection of the obelisk. When work was started two years before, the architect wore George Washington's Masonic apron. The stone was quarried from a quarry owned by a Mason. Twenty-one lodges were in attendance at the monument's dedication. 

President Taylor, who was surrounded by enemies, did not realize his days were numbered. Later some would insist that the general who had blazed through Mexico in much greater heat to win a war could not handle the climate of Washington. His death, it was said, was brought on because Taylor drank too much cold milk and ate a large quantity of cherries during the celebration, which allegedly causes a stomach inflammation. 

Many believe that Taylor was the victim of a plot. Numerous people survived the July 4th picnic. Investigative techniques may not have been as developed back then as they are today, but arsenic was a well known poison in the nineteenth century. The symptoms of arsenic poisoning include nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, and diarrhea. Taylor exhibited these symptoms, yet somehow the diagnosis was an overdose of cherries and cold milk. Arsenic can be easily discovered in the body, as it is deposited in the fingernails and hair. When the body of the president was exhumed in 1991 to test for arsenic, the poison was detected, although not in a large enough quantity to kill him. The test was done 140 years after Taylor's death, however, rendering the results inconclusive. 

John Quitman and his cohorts were not hanged as Zachary Taylor had threatened. Instead Quitman was elected to Congress, and the conspirators succeeded in getting their man into the White House. When Franklin Pierce was sworn in, Caleb Cushing was rewarded with the post of attorney general and Jefferson Davis became secretary of war. Governor Quitman was exonerated of criminal charges. 

COTTON WHIGS 

In those critical years, the Whig party of the North relied on the leadership of the aristocrat Robert C. Winthrop, who was not concerned with the slavery issue. Although the antislavery movement was strong among the common voters, the people in Winthrop's class—the shippers, merchants, insurers, and railroad builders—relied on cheap labor. But instead of relying on blacks for labor, Northerners exploited the immigrants and the average citizens. The Whig ties with the plantations of the Deep South and the English banking establishment, which financed the cotton trade, were strong. 

Georgia planter and Mason Howell Cobb led the Southern Democrats. Cobb was an aristocrat who owned more than a thousand slaves. Between Cobb and Winthrop there was an attempt to maintain the status quo. The spoiler was a party called the Free-Soilers, an antislavery group that had a poor showing in the presidential election but was riding a groundswell of abolitionist opinion. 

The fateful ten years between Pierce and Lincoln witnessed the destruction of the Whig party, as it became obvious that the group was playing to the Southern elite. As the antislavery movement grew, the Republican party replaced the Whig party, and the antislavery movement finally had a candidate: Abraham Lincoln. 

As the movement against slavery grew, the opposition to it became more violent and secretive. The Knights of the Golden Circle, which was founded by Dr. George W L. Bickley in Ohio, had secret passwords, handshakes, temples, sworn oaths, and supreme councils. It drew its membership from Masonic lodges. The Knights of the Golden Circle attempted to create one huge slave state, and its largest membership came from Texas, where Governor Sam Houston was a member. 

With its funding from England and its push toward secession, the group would be, in the eyes of Abraham Lincoln, the greatest threat to the United States. Lincoln had thirteen thousand members arrested for disloyalty, with Bickley himself being charged with spying.1 The Knights of the Golden Circle were then led by General Albert Pike, a thirty-third-degree Mason. He too recruited among Masonic lodges often in the border states and Ohio. Pike also recruited among the Native American tribes. In the spring of 1860 Pike raised to thirty-second degree Peter Pitchlyn, the chief of the Choctaw Nation; Holmes Colbert, national secretary of the Chickasaw; and Elias Boudinot of the Cherokees. 

Before the war, Pike was a member of the Democratic American party, which is commonly known as the Know-Nothings. He joined the Confederacy and was among the numerous Masons picked by fellow Mason Jefferson Davis to run the Confederate states. After the Civil War, Pike was the driving force of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, in which he was the chief justice. This organization also recruited among Masonic lodges, and in some areas the local Klan membership was limited to Masons. Though the Klan was started in 1866, it was officially disbanded after three years as the wave of violence and riots incited by the organization created a backlash. 

In 1905 Walter L. Fleming wrote a pro-Klan book featuring the late Pike on the cover. The organization started up once more, again drawing its membership from Masonic lodges. Somehow Pike, who had been charged with treason for his role in the Civil War, has been honored with a statue in Judiciary Square in Washington. While there have been modern protests against the statue's presence, there is an equally strong movement to keep it there. 

THE REVENGE OF THE SLAVE TRADERS 

The Civil War did not just end with the surrender at Appomattox. The final act of the war took place at Ford's Theater, where the president was killed by an assassin who was part of a very large conspiracy. John Wilkes Booth, the shooter, was a Mason and a member of the Knights of the Golden Circle. The conspiracy, of course, was much larger than Booth. Four members of the organization were hanged for their roles and several others went to prison, but still a wider circle provided financial support. The conspiracy in the Lincoln assassination had as many mysteries as the Kennedy assassination would a hundred years later. 

After Lincoln's death, Congress formed an Assassination Committee to determine if Andrew Johnson had played a role in the murder. Booth had visited Johnson's residence hours before the shooting. The assassin reportedly met with the future president in 1864 and even earlier, when he was the military governor of Tennessee. Johnson was one of three presidents to come from Tennessee; all three were Masons. He was the first president to receive the Scottish Rite degrees. Johnson was also the target of anti-Masons, and because the clergy had spoken out against him, he later requested that no clergy be present at his funeral. 

Lincoln had basically ignored Johnson since the president's Inauguration Day, and his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, wrote a letter to a friend claiming that Johnson had a hand in her husband's murder. Congress, however, was no more able to find evidence of a conspiracy than it was a hundred years later when President Kennedy was removed from office by a bullet. 

Years after the Warren Commission determined that a lone assassin managed to kill President Kennedy with an antique rifle, a new theory emerged: Kennedy had attempted to have Fidel Castro eliminated, and Kennedy's assassination was the retaliation. Coincidentally, Lincoln actually did instigate a plot to attack the Confederate capitol at Richmond and kill the Confederate president, Jefferson Davis, and his cabinet. 

Colonel Ulrich Dahlgren was handpicked by Lincoln to lead the attack. Dahlgren was killed in the attempt, and papers found on his body pointed to the plot's origin in Washington. In retaliation, the plot to kill Lincoln was hatched by none other than Davis and his secretary of state, Judah Benjamin. 

Benjamin was a unique individual who started in the Confederate government as attorney general and later became the secretary of state. Born in the British West Indies of Sephardic Jewish parents, he was part of a large and active Jewish community that thrived in the Southern pre—Civil War states. Benjamin's mentor in the pre-Civil War period was John Slidell, an influential New Yorker who became a transplanted Southerner. Because it was in the interest of slave traders to expand the slave states, both Democrat Slidell and Whig leader Caleb Cushing pushed first to declare war on and then to attempt to annex Mexico. Slidell's connections were very much tied to Europe, where his daughter married into the prestigious French-Jewish banking house Erlanger et Cie. Slidell's niece married August Belmont, who represented the even more prestigious Rothschild Bank. The friendships of Slidell helped Benjamin develop connections in Europe that benefited the South during the war. One of these benefits was the floating of a war bond by Erlanger in Europe to raise funds for the Confederate states. 

Benjamin also became the head of the Confederate intelligence. He established operations in Canada, where the South had hoped to bring in an ally against the Union. This failed, but the Canada connection was useful in getting money and in running operations. More than one million dollars was held in Canada for the attempt to attack the White House and kill or kidnap the president. Two weeks before the Lincoln assassination, Benjamin dispatched John Surratt to Canada. While there is little indication that Benjamin knew Surratt would play a role in the conspiracy, the Confederate secretary of state helped destroy any evidence by burning all his papers and fleeing to England, where he practiced law. Benjamin was the only member of the Confederate government never to return to the United States. 

The murder of Lincoln was most likely planned from at least the time of his second inauguration, when five of the co conspirators— Lewis Paine, George Atzerodt, David Herold, John Surratt, and Ned Spangler—were photographed together. Booth was a guest of the inauguration courtesy of Lucy Hale, the daughter of a senator from New Hampshire and Booth's fiancee. 

Just what precautions, if any, were taken to protect the president prior to the assassination is unknown. There was no Secret Service detail, although Lincoln had a bodyguard, John Parker, a member of the Washington Metropolitan Police. Apparently not very diligent, Parker showed up late and took his seat outside the president's box at the theater. Since Parker could not see the play, he decided to find a better vantage point and simply left his post. Parker then invited two other Lincoln employees, his footman and coachman, to join the bodyguard for a drink in a nearby tavern. Investigators have never discovered where Parker actually was when the president was killed. 

There was no question where John Kennedy's security detail was many years later in the hours leading up to his assassination. Nine of them spent the previous night in a nightclub run by a friend of Jack Ruby, Pat Kirkwood. Ruby sent over strippers from his Carousel Club to entertain the Secret Service men, who were still drinking at 3:30 A.M.2 A telexed warning that the president would be assassinated in Dallas was ignored, and the parade route was changed at the last minute and not secured. The driver of the president's car hit the brakes after the first shot and moved again only after the third.3 Like Lincoln's security detail, Kennedy's much larger Secret Service was not held accountable for his death. 

Mortally wounded, President Lincoln was brought to the home of William Peterson, where several doctors, including Charles C.Taft, were present. Dr. Taft wasn't able to save the president, but he reportedly saved some of his hair, which ended up in a locket worn by Teddy Roosevelt at his inauguration. What went on at Peterson's house is lost to history, but another mysterious death occurred shortly after: William Peterson later committed suicide. 

The mortally wounded John Kennedy was brought to Parkland Hospital and later to Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland. The Parkland doctors completely disagreed with the inexperienced Bethesda doctors about the wounds and the directions of the bullets' entries and exits.4 Yet the Dulles-controlled Warren Commission ignored the discrepancy,5 instead claiming that the Bethesda doctors were right and the Parkland doctors had agreed with Bethesda's findings. 

The killers of both presidents were soon found and killed. There were persistent rumors that Booth actually survived his shooting, while the body of a patsy was used to give the illusion of Booth going to the grave. Other guests of the Lincolns at Ford's Theater also met with gruesome deaths. For example, Henry Rathbone's wife, Clara, was reportedly stabbed to death by her husband before he tried to end his own life. He would be placed in an insane asylum.

Ten years later Mary Todd Lincoln would also find herself committed to an asylum. Her son Robert was in the White House when his father was shot, with President Garfield in 1881 when he was shot, and in Buffalo when President McKinley was shot in in 1901. For a while Robert Lincoln had been business partners with some of the people connected to his father's death. Later Robert was shocked to discover documents implicating others who survived the plot. He is said to have destroyed the papers. 

The conspirators of Lincoln's assassination fled the scene, first to find help for Booth, who was wounded. The group, which included the soldier Boston Corbett, was caught. Corbett shot Booth, and was later declared insane and sent to an asylum. 

Mary Surratt, another arrested conspirator, was the first American woman condemned to death by hanging. Just before Mary's death her daughter, Anna Surratt, attempted to see President Andrew Johnson to get clemency for her mother. Two men, both onetime senators, stopped Anna Surratt. Senator Preston King would not see the year's end; he committed suicide by tying a bag of bullets around his neck and jumping off a ferry. Senator James Lane shot himself months later. While there was evidence that the Lincoln conspiracy included his secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, Stanton was involved in the investigation, which would proceed only after those who benefited from its conclusions were in control. 

The list of suspicious deaths surrounding the Kennedy murder is even lengthier and has been the focus of several books. 

Allen Dulles, the former head of the CIA, was chosen to investigate the assassination of the man who fired him. Kennedy had threatened to dismantle the CIA. Dulles's right-hand man, Charles Cabell, the deputy director of the CIA, was the brother of the mayor of Dallas, where the assassination was staged.6 The commission that investigated Kennedy's death was named after a thirty-third-degree Mason and Supreme Court justice, Earl Warren. Senator Richard Russell, a Mason from Georgia, and Gerald Ford, another thirty-third-degree Mason, joined the commission. The Warren Commission basically rubber-stamped the findings of the FBI, whose investigation concluded faster than one could fill out a job application. The FBI, of course, was headed by another Mason, J. Edgar Hoover. With the detractors quickly becoming victims and a favorable media system in place, the conclusion of the Warren Commission was allowed to stand—despite its glaring inaccuracy and the sentiment of the public. 

The role of secret societies such as the Knights of the Golden Circle did not end with the defeat of the secessionist South. The damage to the United States was already staggering: More than six hundred thousand men had been killed in a population of only thirty million. The national debt rose 2,500 percent. And the divisive politics that existed before the war did not cease. The North generated further hatred through the harsh punitive politics of Reconstruction. In the South and in states like Ohio that sympathized with the South, a new group of secret societies thrived. The Ku Klux Klan became a resurrected version of the Knights of the Golden Circle.7 Members fostered racial hatred even in areas of the country that were not previously divided by race. As a secret society, the Ku Klux Klan claimed kinship to Masonry and recruited among the ancient order's members. This time the policy of the elite was preached loud enough to become the voice of the mob.  

Next
THE OPIUM BROTHERHOOD

notes
Chapter 12 
1. Thomas, p. 204. 
2. Ibid., p. 248. 
3. Ibid., p. 177. 
4. Bullock, p. 59. 
5. Morison, The Maritime History of Massachusetts, p. 32. 
6. Ibid., p. 33. 
7. Ibid., p. 278. 
8. Thomas, p. 176. 
9. Robert G. Albion, William A. Baker, and Benjamin W Labaree, New England and the Sea (Mystic, Conn.: Mystic Seaport Museum, 1972), p. 37. 
10. Pope-Hennessy, p. 226. 
11. Bullock, p. 59. 
12. Thomas, pp. 771—2 
13. Brandt, pp. 68-9. 
14. Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom (New York: W W Norton, 1975), p. 77. 
15. Ibid., p. 80. 
16. Ibid., p. 315. 
17. Ruth Harrison Jones, ed., Harrison Heritage vol. VI, no. 4 (Dec, 1986) "Unknown Possible Ancestors of the Presidents Harrison," from the Web site http://moon.ouhsc.edu/rbonner/HHDOCS/86decHH.html. 
18. Morgan, p. 121. 
19. Pope-Hennessy, pp. 223-4. 
20. Bullock, p. 80. 
21. Baigent and Leigh, p. 180. 
Chapter 13 
1. Jim Marrs, Rule by Secrecy (New York: HarperCollins, 2000), pp. 209-12. 
2. John Davis, The Kennedy Contract (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), p. 81. 
3. Jim Garrison, On the Trail of the Assassins (New York: Warner Books, 1988), p. 328. 
4. David S. Lifton, Best Evidence (New York: Penguin, 1992) pp. 64-7. 
5. Robert J. Groden and Harrison Edward Livingstone, High Treason (New York: Berkley Books, 1989), p. 104. 
6. Groden and Livingstone, p. 154. 
7. Marrs, p. 216.