Declaration of Independence

All civilizations have their mythologies and their cult of heroes, designed to reinforce the legitimacy of the current ruling power. America’s mythology is based on the idea that it represents the culmination of human progress. Since the Age of Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, Westerners have rejected all ideas of a non-physical source to creation as superstition. Thus, a particular interpretation of the history of Western Civilization has been fabricated, such that it supposedly represents the progressive abandonment of religious beliefs, beginning in Greece and progressing through Rome and the Renaissance before culminating in the French and American Revolutions, and the establishment of secular democracy through the separation of Church and State in order to institute “Liberty” and “Freedom.” The city of Washington DC has since become a sort of pilgrimage site and sacred memorial of America’s secular religion, celebrating these ideals and venerating the demi-gods who contributed to the evolution of the republic, the Founding Fathers, revered with almost religious fervor. The reality is, however, that America was founded by occult secret societies, who were bent not so much on preserving religious freedom of all religions, but rather of upending the power of the Catholic Church, which for centuries had been the source of their brutal suppression. This agenda has been advanced under the guise of Freemasonry.

The Grand Constitutions of 1762 declared that after Frederick II the Great’s death, his powers were to be vested in Supreme Councils of the Rite all over the world. It declared that there should be one such Supreme Council in each Empire, Kingdom or State in Europe, Africa and Asia, but two Supreme Councils in the continent of North America, and two similar Supreme Councils in the continent of South America. In 1761, the Council of Emperors of the East and the West had granted a patent to a French Jew named Stephen Morin, creating him “Grand Inspector for all parts of the New World,” and signed by officials of the Grand Lodge in Paris, under the authority of the Grand Master, the Count of Clermont. Morin was invested with the title of “Grand Elect Perfect and Sublime Master” was sent to America by the “Emperors” with a warrant from the Grand Lodge of Paris to carry the “Rite of Perfection” to America.[1] American Masons recruited to this rite provided the network that helped bring about the American Revolution, the second of the major modern political success of the occult secret societies.

All civilizations have their mythologies and their cult of heroes, designed to reinforce the legitimacy of the current ruling power. America’s mythology is based on the idea that it represents the culmination of human progress. Since the Age of Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, Westerners have rejected all ideas of a non-physical source to creation as superstition. Thus, a particular interpretation of the history of Western Civilization has been fabricated, such that it supposedly represents the progressive abandonment of religious beliefs, beginning in Greece and progressing through Rome and the Renaissance before culminating in the French and American Revolutions, and the establishment of secular democracy through the separation of Church and State in order to institute “Liberty” and “Freedom.” The city of Washington DC has since become a sort of pilgrimage site and sacred memorial of America’s secular religion, celebrating these ideals and venerating the demi-gods who contributed to the evolution of the republic, the Founding Fathers, revered with almost religious fervor.

After 1763, Britain gained a new expanded Empire, and to increase revenues, Parliament turned to the Navigation Acts, a long series of English laws that developed, promoted, and regulated English ships, shipping, trade, and commerce between other countries and with its own colonies. That provoked unrest among the Thirteen Colonies of North America. To punish the 1773 Boston Tea Party, Parliament’s Intolerable Acts closed the port of Boston and suspended their colonial legislature. Twelve colonial house assemblies sent delegates to the First Continental Congress, that met from September 5 to October 26, 1774 at Carpenters’ Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They ultimately agreed to impose an economic boycott on British trade, but when a Petition to the King had no effect, the colonies convened the Second Continental Congress the following May. In June 1775, George Washington was appointed as its commander-in-chief to create a Continental Army and to oversee the Siege of Boston, marking the opening phase of the American Revolutionary War. Their July 1775 Olive Branch Petition was answered by King George III with a Proclamation of Rebellion.

In July 1776, Congress appointed the Committee of Five consisting of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman and Robert Livingston to draft a Declaration of Independence to politically separate the United States from Britain. Franklin earned the title of “The First American” for his tireless campaigning for colonial unity, and initially as an author and spokesman in London for several colonies. From 1779 until 1781, Franklin was the onetime Grand Master of the French Illuminati-affiliated Loge des Neuf Soeurs (“The Nine Sisters”), established in Paris in 1776, a prominent lodge of the Grand Orient de France that was influential in organizing French support for the American Revolution.

The signers of the Declaration of Independence were influenced by John Locke’s arguments concerning liberty and the social contract. Effectively, “liberty” is a Gnostic ideal which refers to “freedom,” but freedom from God. That formed the basis of the ideals of the Enlightenment, which spread across Europe then to America, where they influenced Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, among many others, and played a major role in the American Revolution. The principle of the “Separation of church and state,” which is related to, but not found within, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution adopted on December 15, 1791, in the Bill of Rights, is paraphrased from Jefferson:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.[2]

As the French Revolution, the American Revolution succeeded in creating a new secular state, removing the authority of Christianity, and replacing it with ideals secretly promulgated by the secret societies. These ideals were then enshrined in the American Declaration of Independence, the United States Bill of Rights and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. The National Assembly of France even used the American Declaration of Independence as a template when drafting the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in 1789. Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette saw the French Revolution as a direct consequence of the American Revolution, sending the key to the Bastille, the symbol of the Ancien Régime, to George Washington, where it hangs today in Mount Vernon.

As a cryptic clue to their true origin, the Declaration of Human Rights adopted in France after the Revolution features several prominent occult symbols. First, is the Illuminati symbol of the All-Seeing Eye within a triangle, now found on the Great Seal of the United States. Underneath the title is an Ouroboros, an ancient Gnostic symbol of Satan, found in Western alchemy.[3] Underneath it is a red Phrygian cap, derived from the pagan Mysteries of Mithras. The entire Declaration is guarded by the twin Masonic pillars. As the Bonnet, the orator at the Grand Orient Assembly boasted in 1904:

When the Bastille fell, Freemasonry had the supreme honour of giving to humanity the chart which it had lovingly elaborated. It was our Brother, de la Fayette, who first presented the “project of a declaration of the natural rights of the man and the citizen living in society,” to be the first chapter of the Constitution. On August 25, 1789, the Constituent Assembly, of which more than 300 members were Masons, definitely adopted, almost word for word, in the form determined upon in the Lodges, the text of the immortal Declaration of the Rights of Man.[4]

Among the fifty-six American rebels who signed the declaration, only six were not Masons. At the time of his election in 1789, Washington was Grand Master of Alexandria Lodge no. 22 in Virginia. His Vice President, John Adams, was also a Mason. The oath of office was administered by Robert Livingston, Grand Master of New York’s Grand Lodge. The Marshall, General Jacob Morton, was a Freemason. Washington’s escort, General Morgan Lewis, was a Mason. Three of Washington’s first Cabinet of four were Freemasons: Thomas Jefferson, head of the Department of Foreign Affairs, Edmund Randolph, Attorney General, and Henry Knox, Secretary of War. Twenty-four of Washington’s major-generals and 30 of his 33 brigadier-generals were Masons.[5]

Both Washington and Jefferson were ardent defenders of Adam Weishaupt, while Jefferson even referred to him as an “an enthusiastic philanthropist.” George Washington wrote instead that he did not deny “the Doctrines of the Illuminati, and principles of Jacobinism had not spread in the United States.” “On the contrary,” he replied “no one is more truly satisfied of this fact than I am.” He continued:

The idea that I meant to convey, was, that I did not believe that the Lodges of Free Masons in this Country had, as Societies, endeavored to propagate the diabolical tenets of the first, or pernicious principles of the latter (if they are susceptible of separation). That Individuals of them may have done it, or that the founder, or instrument employed to found, the Democratic Societies in the United States, may have had these objects; and actually had a separation of the People from their Government in view, is too evident to be questioned.[6]

Similarly, Thomas Jefferson defended Weishaupt saying:

As Weishaupt lived under the tyranny of a despot and priests, he knew that caution was necessary even in spreading information, and the principles of pure morality. This has given an air of mystery to his views, was the foundation of his banishment… If Weishaupt had written here, where no secrecy is necessary in our endeavors to render men wise and virtuous, he would not have thought of any secret machinery for that purpose.[7]

The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union was drafted by the Second Continental Congress from mid-1776 through late 1777 was the first constitution of the United States. Although the Treaty of Paris of 1783 was signed between Great Britain and the US, ending the American Revolutionary War and setting the boundaries of the United States, various states proceeded to violate it. In 1787, the Confederation Congress called a convention of state delegates at Philadelphia to propose a plan of government. The constitution was ratified on June 21, 1788, was influenced by Edmund Burke, William Blackstone, John Locke and the French philosopher and Freemason Montesquieu (1689 – 1755). Montesquieu’s work remained a powerful influence on many of the American founders, most notably James Madison of Virginia, the “Father of the Constitution.” Montesquieu is the principal source of the theory of separation of powers, and the adoption of the word “despotism” in the political discourse. His anonymously-published The Spirit of Law in 1748, which was received well in both Great Britain and the American colonies, influenced the Founding Fathers in drafting the United States Constitution.

Illuminatus Thomas Paine (1737 – 1809), one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, was the author of two highly influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution, and inspired the Patriots in 1776 to declare independence from Britain. Born in England, Paine emigrated to the British American colonies in 1774 with the help of Benjamin Franklin, arriving just in time to participate in the American Revolution. Virtually every rebel read his Common Sense (1776), which advocated complete independence from Great Britain, and which became proportionally the all-time best-selling American title. Although there is no evidence he was himself a Freemason, Paine wrote An Essay on the Origin of Free-Masonry, repeating the claim that Freemasonry derived from the religion of the ancient Druids.

Paine lived in France for most of the 1790s, becoming deeply involved in the French Revolution, writing the Rights of Man (1791), partly in its defense. Beginning in 1791, Paine would live in Paris with Nichalas de Bonneville, who had been converted to the ideals of the Illuminati by Weishaupt's leading associate Christian Bode.[8] Worried by the possibility of the spread of the French Revolution, the British government of William Pitt the Younger began suppressing radical publications, such as Paine's work, which advocated the right of the people to overthrow their government when it does not safeguard their natural rights. When a writ for his arrest issued in early 1792, Paine fled to France, where he was quickly elected to the French National Convention.

In December 1793, Paine was arrested and was taken to Luxembourg Prison in Paris, and was to be executed by the guillotine, but was released the following year James Monroe, a future President of the United States, exercised his diplomatic connections. In was while in prison that Paine continued to work on The Age of Reason (1793–1794). More of an influence on Paine than David Hume was Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-politicus (1678). Although Paine promoted natural religion and argues for the existence of a creator-god, he advocated reason in the place of revelation, leading him to reject miracles and to view the Bible as an ordinary piece of literature, rather than a divinely-inspired text. “All national institutions of churches,” wrote Paine, “whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.”[9] Paine wrote that once one relinquishes the idea that Moses was the author of Genesis, “The story of Eve and the serpent, and of Noah and his ark, drops to a level with the Arabian tales, without the merit of being entertaining.”[10]

Paine became notorious because of his pamphlets. Undeterred by the government campaign to discredit him, Paine issued his Rights of Man, Part the Second, Combining Principle and Practice in 1792. An indictment for seditious libel ensued, and government agents followed Paine and instigated mobs, hate meetings, and burnings of effigies of Paine and his political ally and significant influences, Joseph Priestley (1733 – 1804), a separatist theologian and chemist credited with the discovery of oxygen.[11] Illuminati historian Le Forestier reports that an energetic attack was published in German in 1793 against the order in two anonymous factums. Le Forestier summarized one of their conclusions:

It is enough to read the Original Writings, the Supplement to these Writings and the Latest Works of Spartacus and Philo to see that Illuminism wanted to annihilate religion and the State, and that it entered into Freemasonry in order to dominate it and make it serve its purposes, and to understand how a Weishaupt, a Knigge, a Nicolaï, a Campe, an Orleans, a Siêyès, a Pêtion, a Condorcet, a Paine, a Priestley could put everything upside down in Europe.[12]

The controversial nature of Priestley’s publications, combined with his outspoken support of the French Revolution, aroused public and governmental suspicion. He was eventually forced to flee in 1791, first to London and then to the United States, after a mob burned down his Birmingham home and church. Priestley lived in Philadephia where gave a series of sermons which led to the founding of the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia. He exchanged letters regarding the proper structure of a university with Thomas Jefferson, who used this advice when founding the University of Virginia. In the late 1790s, Paine also fled from France to the United States, where he wrote Part III of The Age of Reason: An Examination of the Passages in the New Testament, Quoted from the Old and Called Prophecies Concerning Jesus Christ. Fearing unpleasant and even violent reprisals, Thomas Jefferson convinced him not to publish it in 1802. Nevertheless, future President John Quincy Adams wrote in 1805, “I know not whether any Man in the World has had any more influence on its inhabitants or affairs for the last thirty years than Tom Paine.”[13]

Philadelphia

Philadelphia would play an instrumental role in the American Revolution as a meeting place for the Founding Fathers of the United States, who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776 at the Second Continental Congress, and the Constitution at the Philadelphia Convention of 1787. Playing a leading role in these events was the Mikveh Israel, the oldest Jewish congregations in Philadelphia, which was founded with contributions from Benjamin Franklin and David Rittenhouse an American astronomer, inventor and member of the Royal Society of London.[14] Many of its members, along with sister synagogues of Shearith Israel in New York and Beth Elohim in Charleston, were important contributors to the cause of independence, and Freemasons responsible for the formation of Scottish Rite Freemasonry. At the time, the number of Jews living in the American colonies were estimated at less than 2,000 inhabitants.[15] However, because of their extraordinary wealth and international commercial networks, they were able to play a role in the coming political events that far outweighed their meager proportion relative to the overall population.

According to James Arcuri, author of a biography titled For God and Country: A Spy and A Patriot, Haym Salomon gave his Fortune and his life for Liberty and The Cause, Haym Salomon (1740 – 1785), a Polish-born American Jewish businessman and member of Mikveh Israel who financed the American Revolution, was agent of the House of Rothschild, despite the fact that they were simultaneously supporting the British on the opposing side of the same conflict. The Rothschild business emerged through the provision of banking services to Crown Prince Wilhelm (1743 – 1821), who became Wilhelm IX, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel in 1785. Wilhelm IX was the brother of Prince Charles of Hesse-Kassel, Illuminati member and Grand Master the Asiatic Brethren, and friend of Comte Saint-Germain. As the sons of Princess Mary of Great Britain, the great-granddaughter of Frederick V of the Palatinate and Elizabeth Stuart of the Alchemical Wedding, the brothers were also cousins of King George III of England, who led the war against the Americans. The Rothschild business expanded rapidly following the French Revolution when they handled payments from Britain for the hire of Hessian mercenaries to King George III during the American Revolution.

Mikveh Israel was a sister congregation of Bevis Marks synagogue in London, founded by followers of Menaseh ben Israel after Cromwell granted the Jews readmittance to England. Mikveh Israel is Hebrew “Hope of Israel,” named after Menasseh ben Israel’s book, which he used to petition the return of the Jews to England following the Puritan revolution. In his 1650 Hope of Israel and his 1655 Humble Address to Oliver Cromwell to admit the Jews to England, Menasseh proclaimed the necessary dispersal of the Jews to all countries of the world, including America, before their final return to the Holy Land as a fulfillment of Daniel’s prophecy of the Last Days. But he also saw the Jews as bringing “profit” to the lands in which they dwell: “they do abundantly enrich the Lands and Countrys of strangers, where they live.”

Congregation Mikveh Israel traces its history to 1740 when the Province of Pennsylvania and Thomas Penn (1702 – 1775), son of William Penn, founder of the Province of Pennsylvania, authorized the burial ground that became the Mikveh Israel Cemetery. William Penn, founder of the Province of Pennsylvania, was a Quaker with Rosicrucian connections. Penn was a friend of John Dury, who assisted Menasseh ben Israel in petitioning Cromwell for readmittance of the Jews to England. Penn also belonged to Benjamin Furly’s Lantern.[16] In 1681, King Charles II of England signed the patent that granted Penn land between New York and Maryland, west of the Delaware River. Penn informed the King he wished to embark on a “Holy Experiment,” and would establish a “Great Towne,” which he would name Philadelphia, which is Greek for “brotherly love,” after the city of Amman, Jordan, which was mentioned as the site of an early Christian congregation in the Book of Revelation. Northeast from the center of the city is Bensalem, which was named for the Bensalem envisioned in Bacon’s New Atlantis.[17]

The Mikveh Israel Cemetery was originally a private burial ground for the family of Nathan Levy (1704 – 1753), who came from a large and prominent Jewish family in England, and was the founder of the Jewish community of Philadelphia. Born in New York City, Levy moved to Philadelphia at a young age where he would engage in business with his nephew David Franks (1720 – 1794), under the firm name of Levy & Franks, the first Jewish business-house in Philadelphia. Levy and Franks were sons of New York merchants who had business connections throughout the Atlantic world, and their partnership further entwined families that were already closely associated through marriage alliances that supported their commerce. Nathan’s father was Moses Levy, a wealthy merchant, formerly a Marrano born in Spain.[18] Moses daughter, Bilhah Abigail, married David’s father Jacob Franks, who had been born in Germany. Franks established himself in a variety of trades, including “the slave trade, privateering, general commerce, and shipping,” and became quite wealthy.[19] Franks is said to have gained his share of business in armaments and slaves during Queen Anne’s War (1702–13), which gave Britain a monopoly in the slave trade.[20] Moses Levy and Jacob Franks were co-owners of the slave-ship Abigail, and together with Adolphe Philipse and John Van Cortlandt, two of New York’s other successful merchants of Dutch heritage, they co-owned the ship Charlotte with John Van Cortlandt.[21]

Moses Levy became the pumas, or president, of Shearith Israel. Moses’s daughter Abigail’s younger sister, Rachel married Isaac Mendes Seixas, a former Marrano who had come to New York from Lisbon by way of Barbados. The two sisters are said to have founded the first charitable society of Shearith Israel. Jacob Franks was one of the trustees of the lot on Mill Street where the synagogue was built. Jacob Franks succeeded his father-in-law as parnas of Shearith Israel, a position he held when the synagogue was dedicated in 1730. As merchant, Franks had acted as agent of the king of England and furnished supplies to the British troops in New York and the Northern colonies.[22] Franks and Levy built relationships with several merchants including Thomas Hyam, a Philadelphia merchant who was the Penn family’s agent.[23]

On September 1752, on the Myrtilla, a ship owned by Levy and Franks, docked in the port of Philadelphia and delivered one of the most important and recognizable symbols of American freedom and liberty, the Liberty Bell. The General Assembly in Philadelphia had decided to build a State House, which is now Independence Hall. In 1751, a letter was written to Robert Charles, the Colonial Agent for Pennsylvania who was working in London to purchase a bell for the State House. The bell was ordered to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of William Penn’s 1701 Charter of Privileges, which speaks of religious freedoms, liberal stances on Native American Rights, and in the inclusion of citizens in enacting laws.

This was despite the fact that David Franks was among the early American Jews who were prominent in the slave trade.[24] During the heyday of the slave trade in the colony, Franks participated with several non-Jewish partners in two ventures to Africa. In 1761 and 1762, Franks advertised the sale of several hundred slaves from Africa. In 1729, when growing criticism to the slave trade in Pennsylvania persuaded the colony’s Assembly in 1761 to raise the duty on each imported slaves, David Franks and a second Jewish merchant, Benjamin Levy, were among the twenty-four of Philadelphia’s merchants who submitted a petition to the colony’s governor pleading for temporary relief.[25]

David Franks’ sister, Phila (Bilhah) married a Gentile, Major-General Oliver De Lancey (1718 – 1785), whose mother was Anne van Cortlandt (1676 – 1724), third child of Gertrude Schuyler (b. 1654) and Stephanus van Cortlandt (1643 – 1700), the Chief Justice of the Province of New York. The Schuyler family ancestry and ties were factors in several major American families, including the Livingston family, the Oyster Bay branch of the Roosevelt family, the Bayard family, the Bush family and the Kean family, among others. De Lancey was a merchant and Loyalist politician and soldier during the American Revolutionary War. De Lancey was a member of the provincial executive council from 1760 until the American Revolutionary War. In 1768, he allied himself with Isaac Sears and the Sons of Liberty.

Franks, along with his wife Margaret Evans (1720 – 1780) of one of Philadelphia’s Christian families, was socially prominent in the city. Franks had been a practicing Christian for several years before his marriage. During the conflict, David Franks was conspicuous for his loyalty to the British cause, being the English agent in charge of the prisoners. David Franks’ daughter, also named Abigail, married Andrew Hamilton, attorney-general of Pennsylvania in 1768, and nephew of Governor James Hamilton. Franks’ other daughter, Rebecca, married Sir Henry Johnson, then a lieutenant-colonel and later a general in the British Army, and took part in the “Mischianza,” the famous fête given in honor of General Howe, the commander-in-chief of the British forces in America, during the British occupancy of Philadelphia.

Michael Gratz (1740 – 1811) was Parnas of Mikveh Israel from 1784 to 1785. Michael arrived from Germany in 1758, following his older brother, Bernard, who was previously apprenticed to David Franks. Together they set up a coastal shipping service between New Orleans and Quebec. The French & Indian Wars interfered with shipping, and drove the brothers to western frontier trade in Pennsylvania, Illinois and Kentucky. They, along with David Franks, Mathias Bush and others, signed the Non-Importation Resolutions of 1765 to protest the Stamp Act. Later, the Gratz brothers supplied the Continental Army. During the British occupation of Philadelphia, the firm relocated to Lancaster, home of the father-in-law of Michael Gratz, Joseph Simon.

Great Awakening

Mikveh Israel was founded with contributions from Benjamin Franklin and David Rittenhouse an American astronomer, inventor and member of the Royal Society of London.[26] Franklin also played a leading role in the Great Awakening, which refers to the first of a number of periods of religious revival in American Christian history. The Great Awakening energized the Baptist movement, which experienced spectacular growth. As John Adams would later write, “The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations.”[27] In Religion and the American Mind, Professor Alan Heimert has argued that a major impact on American Revolution was exercised by the Great Awakenings.[28]

Historians trace the earliest church labeled “Baptist” back to 1609 in Amsterdam, Dutch Republic, with English Separatist John Smyth as its pastor. Both Roger Williams and John Clarke, his compatriot and co-worker for religious freedom, are variously credited as founding the earliest Baptist church in North America. Roger Williams, who founded the city of Providence and is remembered as a staunch advocate for religious freedom, separation of church and state, and fair dealings with Native Americans, and as one of the first abolitionists, is considered an important historical figure of religious liberty at the time of American independence, and he was a key influence on the thinking of the Founding Fathers. In 1639, Williams established a Baptist church in Providence, Rhode Island, and Clarke began a Baptist church in Newport, Rhode Island. New members, both black and white, were converted chiefly by Baptist preachers who traveled throughout the South during the First Great Awakening and Second Great Awakening.

The major effect of the First Great Awakening, which began in the 1730s and lasted to about 1740, was led by religious revivalists largely influenced by the crypto-Sabbatean Count Nicholas von Zinzendorf, founder of the Moravian Church, was a rebellion against authoritarian religious rule which spilled over into other areas of colonial life.[29] Zinzendorf’s order proclaimed its purpose to be the extension of the Kingdom of Christ all over the world.[30] The Moravian leader Augustus Gottlieb Spangenberg, a former professor at Jena, had come to live in the Skippack, Pennsylvania, with Christopher Wiegner, a Schweckfeldian.[31] In 1722, Zinzendorf had offered asylum to a number of persecuted wanderers from Moravia and Bohemia, and permitted them to build the village of Herrnhut on a corner of his estate of Berthelsdorf. As Herrnhut grew it became known as a place of religious freedom, and attracted individuals from a variety of persecuted groups, including the Schwenkfelders, founded by Kaspar Schwenkfeld, who had flourished in Görlitz in Jacob Boehme’s time and who were later closely related to the Collegiants.[32] Although Schwenckfeld did not organize a separate church during his lifetime, in 1700 there were about 1,500 of his followers in Lower Silesia, who became known as Schwenkfelders. Many fled Silesia under persecution of the Austrian emperor, and some found refuge on Zinzendorf’s lands of and his Herrnhuter Brüdergemeinde. A group arrived in Philadelphia in 1731, followed by five more migrations up to 1737.[33]

In 1732, the community at Herrnhut began sending out missionaries among to numerous parts of the world, including among the slaves in the Danish-governed West Indies and the Inuit of Greenland, Surinam, Jamaica, the Gold Coast, Algeria. Russia, Norway, Switzerland, The Netherlands, England, Ireland, Wales, Georgia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Maryland and the black slaves of North Carolina. In 1739, Zinzendorf himself left Europe to visit the mission work on St. Thomas, one of the Virgin Islands. In 1741, Zinzendorf visited Pennsylvania, thus becoming one of the few eighteenth-century European nobles to have actually set foot in the Americas. Moravians founded missions with Algonquian-speaking Mohican in the British colony of New York in British North America. The converted Mohican people formed the first native Christian congregation in the present-day United States of America. However, the Moravian missionary activity soon came under suspicion of conspiring with the Jesuits. The French employed Jesuits to rally the Indian tribes against the English. The Indians were generally regarded as enemies, and anyone who befriended them was looked upon as a spy of the French.[34] Although supporters defended their efforts, at the end of 1744, the colonial government based at Poughkeepsie expelled the Moravians from New York.[35]

On Christmas Eve 1741, Count Zinzendorf and David Nitschmann, the first Bishop of the Moravian Church, led a small community to found a mission in the colony of Pennsylvania. In 1735 in Berlin, Nitschmann had been consecrated the first Bishop of the Moravians by Daniel Ernst Jablonski, grandson of the Rosicrucian John Comenius. Local settlers in Pennsylvania became alarmed at the presence of the Moravians. Zinzendorf was denounced in Pennsylvania as “the best of Revelation,” a “false prophet,” the leader of a ban of “devils” and “locusts” from “the bottomless pit.”[36]

The mission was named Bethlehem, which is today the seventh largest city in Pennsylvania. The land was purchased on behalf of the Moravians by Johann Heinrich Antes, who had also served as agent on behalf of the Moravians in the purchase of a tract which became the city of Winston-Salem in North Carolina. The origin of the town of Winston-Salem dates to 1753, when Spangenberg, on behalf of the Moravian Church, selected a settlement site in the three forks of Muddy Creek. He called this area “die Wachau,” from the Latin Wachovia, named after Zinzendorf’s ancestral estate. The name Salem was chosen by Zinzendorf from Shalom, the Hebrew for “Peace,” after the Canaanite city mentioned in Genesis. Salem was a typical Moravian settlement congregation with the public buildings of the congregation grouped around a central square, today Salem Square. For many years only members of the Moravian Church were permitted to live in the settlement.

Zinzendorf’s visit to Pennsylvania was partly in response to letters sent to him by George Whitefield (1714 – 1770), one of the founders of Methodism and the evangelical movement.[37] The First Great Awakening began in 1740, when Whitefield, who was influenced by the Moravian Church, traveled to North America. Whitfield joined forces with Jonathan Edwards (1703 – 1758) to “fan the flame of revival” in the Thirteen Colonies in 1739–40. Edwards married Sarah Pierpont, the daughter of James Pierpont (1659 – 1714), the head founder of Yale College, and her mother was the great-granddaughter of Thomas Hooker, (1586 – 1647), a prominent Puritan colonial leader, who founded the Colony of Connecticut after dissenting with Puritan leaders in Massachusetts. Jonathan Edwards’ son, Piermont Edwards, served as the first Grand Master of a Masonic lodge in New Haven, Connecticut.[38]

Soon the First Great Awakening stirred Protestants throughout America.[39] By 1737, Whitefield had become a national celebrity in England where his preaching drew large crowds, especially in London where the Fetter Lane Society, the first flowering of the Moravian church in the UK, had become a center of evangelical activity.[40] Whitefield, John Wesley (1703 – 1791) and his brother Charles are credited with the foundation of the evangelical movement known as Methodism, which was heavily influenced by Moravian pietism. Wesley corresponded with Count Zinzendorf, and the two met face-to-face in Germany and England, when he was sent to London at request of King Frederick William I of Prussia.[41] In 1735, John Wesley and his brother Charles sailed for Savannah, when he met with a group of Moravian Brethren led by August Gottlieb Spangenberg. After an unsuccessful ministry of two years at Savannah Wesley returned to England and aligned himself with Fetter Lane.[42] Wesley was initiated at a Masonic lodge at Downpatrick in Ireland in 1788.[43]

Benjamin Franklin

Also closely associated with Whitefield and Zinzendorf was Benjamin Franklin. Prominently displayed in the Granary Burying Ground in Boston is an obelisk erected in 1827 to the parents and relatives of Benjamin Franklin who was born in Boston and is buried in Philadelphia. The cemetery, which was founded in 1660, is the final resting place of many notable Revolutionary War-era patriots, including Paul Revere, the five victims of the Boston Massacre, and three signers of the Declaration of Independence: Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and Robert Treat Paine. Also buried there were John Endecott (c. 1588 – 1665), First Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, who was succeeded by John Winthrop; Samuel Sewall (1652 – 1730) a Salem witch trials judge; and Mary Goose (1665 – 1758), who locals claim as being the original Mother Goose.

The cemetery’s Egyptian revival gate and fence were designed by architect Isaiah Rogers (1810–49), who also designed the Boston Masonic Temple. Rogers designed an identical Egyptian revival gateway for the Jewish Cemetery at Newport, the Touro Synagogue Cemetery, dedicated in 1677. The synagogue is the oldest surviving synagogue building in the United States, and the cemetery is the second oldest Jewish cemetery in the country. Both cemeteries feature the “Soul Effigy” motif, a skull or “death’s head” with a wing on each side that was a representation of the soul flying to heaven after death. The symbol has its roots in sixteenth century New England. Over three centuries, the symbol evolved from the skull and crossbones to a human face with wings. By the mid-nineteenth century, the soul effigy was replaced by the winged cherubs.[44]

Franklin had founded the Pennsylvania Gazette, which was one of the United States’ most prominent newspapers from 1728, before the time period of the American Revolution, until 1800. Franklin was first initiated into the local Masonic lodge in 1730 or 1731, and became a Grand Master in 1734. The same year, he edited and published the first Masonic book in the Americas, a reprint of James Anderson’s Constitutions of the Free-Masons. He was the Secretary of St. John’s Lodge in Philadelphia from 1735 to 1738. The middle name of Franklin’s illegitimate son William Temple Franklin was said to have been derived from his having been conceived while he was studying at the Middle Temple, the former headquarters of the Templars.[45]

In addition to visiting leaders of the Iroquois, Zinzendorf also met with leaders in Philadelphia such as Franklin, who came to know Zinzendorf well.[46] Franklin used his paper to publish defenses of the Moravian Church. Franklin owned a print shop in Philadelphia where many of the early Moravian publications were printed.[47] Franklin interviewed Zinzendorf shortly after he arrived in Pennsylvania and he was present as a witness when Zinzendorf met with Pennsylvania officials in 1742 to renounce his noble titles. He published Zinzendorf’s replies to the charges of his critics in the Pennsylvania Gazette, and he published many Moravian sermons and disputations, along with the proceedings of the seven ecumenical “synods” of different religious groups convened that Zinzendorf during his time in Pennsylvania. Franklin called Spangenberg “my very much respected friend.”[48]

Franklin was a close friend of George Whitefield. Franklin published Whitefield’s sermons and journals and had covered the revival in the Pennsylvania Gazette.[49] And in 1749, Franklin chose the Whitefield meeting house, with its Charity School, to be purchased as the site of the newly formed Academy of Philadelphia which opened in 1751, followed in 1755 with the College of Philadelphia, both the predecessors of the University of Pennsylvania.

From the mid-1750s to the mid-1770s, Franklin spent much of his time in London. Franklin is known to have occasionally attended meetings of the Hellfire Club during 1758.  In England, Franklin emerged as the leading spokesman for American interests in England, writing popular essays on behalf of the colonies. Georgia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts also appointed him as their agent to the Crown. Franklin conversed and corresponded with many important Britons during this period. Among his inner circle were the printer William Strahan (1715 – 1785) and the jurist Richard Jackson. Strahan was Samuel Johnson’s chief publisher, being entrusted with the printing of Johnson’s Dictionary, among the most influential dictionaries in the history of the English language, and also published the works of the philosophers David Hume and Adam Smith, and the historian Edward Gibbon, whose most famous work was The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Gibbon was initiated as a Freemason of the Premier Grand Lodge of England in late 1774.[50] Prominent eighteenth-century Freemason William Preston (1742 – 1818) was employed by Strahan, particularly as an editor of David Hume’s works. It was under Preston that the Lodge of Antiquity seceded from the Moderns Grand Lodge to become “The Grand Lodge of All England South of the River Trent” for ten years.[51]

Richard Price (1723 – 1791) was a British Dissenting preacher and Fellow of the Royal Society who became famous for his support to the colonies of British North America in the American War of Independence. English Dissenters or English Separatists were Protestant Christians who separated from the Church of England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Also a Freemason, Price became Grand Master of a new Bridgend lodge in 1777.[52] Price also held the lectureship at the famous meeting-house, built in Old Jewry, in what had traditionally been a Jewish ghetto in the City of London. The minister at Old Jewry was the Nonconformist Samuel Chandler (1693 – 1766), another member Fellow of the Royal Society. Chandler has been called the “uncrowned patriarch of Dissent” in the latter part of George II's reign.[53] At home, or at his church itself, Price was visited by Founding Fathers of the United States, Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine. Other American politicians such as Ambassador John Adams, who later became the second president of the United States, and his wife Abigail were also guests. Price also knew also the philosophers David Hume and Adam Smith.

Price was also a member of the “Bowood circle,” a group of liberal intellectuals around William Petty, 1st Marquess of Lansdowne (1737 – 1805), known as Lord Shelburne, and named after Bowood House, his seat in Wiltshire. Price was introduced by his wife Elizabeth Montagu, a leader of the Blue Stocking intellectual women, after the publication of his Four Dissertations in that year. By 1770, Montagu’s home on Hill Street became the premier salon in London. Samuel Johnson, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Edmund Burke, David Garrick, and Horace Walpole were all in the circle. In 1765, Burke became private secretary to the liberal Whig politician Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham (1730 – 1782), then Prime Minister, who remained Burke’s close friend and associate until his untimely death in 1782. Rockingham also introduced Burke as a Freemason.[54] In 1772, Price recruited Joseph Priestley whom Price and Franklin nominated as a Fellow of the Royal Society.[55] Another member of the circle was Benjamin Vaughan (1751 – 1835), who along with Price, Priestley and Thomas Paine were members of the Society of 13, a deistic circle founded by Franklin in 1774.[56] Vaughan was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Vaughan was a commissioner in the negotiations between Britain and the United States at the drafting of the Treaty of Paris, signed in Paris by representatives of King George III of Great Britain and representatives of the United States of America. Representing the United States were Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, Henry Laurens, and John Adams.

In early 1776, Price had published Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, the Principles of Government, and the Justice and Policy of the War with America. Price’s pamphlet commended Shelburne’s proposals for the colonies, and attacked the Declaratory Act, an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain, which accompanied the repeal of the Stamp Act 1765 and the changing and lessening of the Sugar Act. Representatives from a number of the Thirteen Colonies assembled as the Stamp Act Congress in response to the Stamp Act 1765, to call into question the right of a distant power to tax them without proper representation. When George Grenville was replaced as Prime Minister by Lord Rockingham, who was more favorable towards the colonies, he invited Franklin to speak to Parliament about colonial policy and he portrayed the colonists as in opposition to internal taxes, but not external taxes. Parliament then agreed to repeal the Stamp Act on the condition that the Declaratory Act was passed. On March 18, 1766, Parliament repealed the Stamp Act and passed the Declaratory Act.

Shelburne was Grand Master of English Freemasonry.[57] Shelburne was also on good terms with Franklin and David Hume, and claimed to have been converted to the economics of free trade from long conversations in 1761 with Adam Smith.[58] Shelburne had served as President of the Board of Trade in the Grenville Ministry but resigned this position after only a few months and began to associate with the opposition leader William Pitt (1759 – 1806). Pitt was a close friend of William Wilberforce. When Pitt was made Prime Minister in 1766, Shelburne was appointed as Southern Secretary, a position which he held for two years. Along with Pitt, Shelburne was an advocate of a conciliatory policy towards Britain’s American Colonies and a long-term critic of the measures of the North Government in America. Lord North (1732 –1792), who was also Grand Master of Freemasonry, was Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1770 to 1782 and led Great Britain through most of the American War of Independence.[59] Following the fall of the North government, Shelburne joined its replacement under Lord Rockingham. Shelburne was made Prime Minister in 1782 following Rockingham’s death, with the American War still being fought. Shelburne’s government was brought down largely due to the terms of the Peace of Paris which brought the conflict to an end. Its terms were considered excessively generous, because they gave the new nation control of vast trans-Appalachian lands.[60] In that same year, Shelburne was appointed to Order of the Garter.

By the time Franklin had returned to Philadelphia on May 5, 1775, after his second mission to Great Britain, the American Revolution had begun. The Pennsylvania Assembly unanimously chose Franklin as their delegate to the Second Continental Congress. In June 1776, he was appointed a member of the Committee of Five that drafted the Declaration of Independence, where Franklin made several “small but important” changes to the draft sent to him by Thomas Jefferson.[61]

Franklin often visited the Moravian community in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania staying at the Moravian Sun Inn, an eighteenth-century inn built to provide accommodations for non-Moravian merchants who had business with the Moravians. Many prominent people of the American Revolution stayed there, including George Washington, Martha Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and the Marquis de Lafayette. Bethlehem served twice during the American Revolution, as medical headquarters for George Washington’s forces. On September 22, 1777, fourteen members of the Continental Congress signed the register and stayed overnight.[62] Franklin founded the University of Pennsylvania which was to become influential in guiding the founding documents of the United States, such as the Continental Congress, and over one-third of the college-affiliated men who contributed the Declaration of Independence between September 4, 1774, and July 4, 1776, was affiliated with the College.[63]

In December 1776, Franklin was appointed as commissioner for the United States to France. During his stay in France, Benjamin Franklin was active as a Freemason. Among his associates in France were Illuminati member comte de Mirabeau. In July 1784, Franklin met with Mirabeau and contributed anonymous materials that he used in his first signed work: Considerations sur l’ordre de Cincinnatus. In 1784, when Franz Anton Mesmer began to publicize his theory of “animal magnetism,” Louis XVI appointed a commission to investigate it, which included the chemist Antoine Lavoisier, the physician Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, the astronomer Jean Sylvain Bailly, and Franklin.[64]

In 1998, when a group called the Friends of Benjamin Franklin House decided to convert Franklin’s London townhouse, where he resided from 1757 to 1777, into a museum, they discovered a pit full of about 1,200 human bones. The bones, which date to the time Franklin was living in the house were determined the bones to belong to ten bodies, six of which were children. Most of the bones show signs of having been dissected, sawn or cut. One skull has been drilled with several holes. The proposed explanation is that the dissections were performed by Franklin’s young friend and protege, William Hewson, who had been a pupil of the most brilliant anatomist of the day, William Hunter. Anatomy was still frowned upon however, so Hewson, Hunter, and others would have had to rely on grave robbers, known as “resurrection men” to procure cadavers or digging them up themselves. There was also a weekly public execution at the gallows that took place on the other side of the garden wall.[65]

Sons of Liberty

Haym Salomon received his first two degrees of Freemasonry in Philadelphia’s Lodge No. 2, Ancient York Rite in 1764.[66] On September 23, 1743, the John Ward, Grand Master of England, nominated Thomas Oxnard of Boston, Provincial Grand Master of all North America, who on July 10, 1749, appointed Benjamin Franklin, Provincial Grand Master of Pennsylvania, with authority to appoint other Grand Officers, hold a Grand Lodge, issue warrants, etc.[67] Salomon joined the New York branch of the Sons of Liberty a secret society who were largely composed of Freemasons and who instigated the Boston Tea Party.[68] The Sons of Liberty planned their activities at the Green Dragon Tavern in Boston, known by historians as the “Headquarters of the Revolution.” The tavern was owned by the St. Andrews Lodge of Freemasons in 1766.[69] Masons used the first floor for their meeting rooms led by Grand Master Joseph Warren followed by John Hancock. The Freemason Paul Revere was sent from there to Lexington on his famous midnight ride midnight ride to alert the colonial militia in April 1775 to the approach of British forces before the battles of Lexington and Concord, when he is remembered to have announced, “The British are coming!”

In 1776, Salomon was arrested as a spy. The British pardoned him, but only after requiring him to spend eighteen months on a British boat as an interpreter for Hessian soldiers. Solomon used the opportunity to help prisoners of the British escape and encouraged the Hessians to desert the war effort. In 1778, Salomon was arrested again and sentenced to death. Again, he managed to escape, making his way with his family to the revolutionary capital in Philadelphia. In 1781, he began working extensively with Robert Morris (1734 – 1806), the newly appointed Superintendent for Finance for the Thirteen Colonies. Morris was an English-born merchant and a Founding Father of the United States. Morris served as a member of the Pennsylvania legislature, the Second Continental Congress, and the United States Senate, and he was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the United States Constitution. Morris was considered, though a civilian, second in power only to George Washington.

Aaron Levy (1742 – 1815), a close friend and financial supporter of Haym Salomon, immigrated to Pennsylvania from Amsterdam sometime between 1760 and 1770 to trade with the native peoples and furnished supplies to the proprietary government. Levy founded of the town of Aaronsburg, Pennsylvania, the first town in Pennsylvania and possibly in the United States laid out by and named after a Jew. He speculated in land in Pennsylvania, and soon became one of the largest landed proprietors, owning immense tracts in nearly every county in the state. Robert Morris was Levy’s partner in many of these speculations, and borrowed considerable sums of money from him. Through the influence of Morris, Levy loaned a large amount of money to the Continental Congress for the purpose of carrying on the war.[70]

From 1781 to 1784, Salomon served as the Superintendent of Finance of the United States, becoming known as the “Financier of the Revolution.” He made private loans to prominent statesmen such as James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, General Arthur St. Clair and James Monroe, from whom he would not take interest.[71] Along with Alexander Hamilton and Albert Gallatin, he is widely regarded as one of the founders of the financial system of the United States. Salomon’s brokerage business became so big that he was the largest depositor in Robert Morris’ Bank of North America. But his activities were not limited to his relations with the American government. He had been appointed broker to the French consul and the treasurer of the French army, and fiscal agent of the French minister to the United States, Chevalier de la Luzerne (1741 – 1791), during which enormous sums passed through his hands. Descended from an illustrious Normandy family, as a Knight of Malta and the Order of Saint Louis, Luzerne was styled Chevalier before King Louis XVI created him a Marquis in 1785. For the most part, the money advanced by King Louis XVI and the proceeds of the loans negotiated in Holland were also mediated by Salomon. So successful had Salomon become by 1784 that in the spring of that year he opened an establishment in New York in partnership with Jacob Mordecai (1762 – 1838).[72]

Mordecai had served as a rifleman when the Continental Congress was resident in Philadelphia and later helped supply the Continental Army as a clerk to David Franks’ nephew, David Salisbury Franks (1740 – 1793), aide-de-camp for General Benedict Arnold during the American War of Independence and the quartermaster to General George Washington.[73] Born in Philadelphia in 1740, David Salisbury Franks was living in Quebec with his parents when the American Revolution broke out. In 1775, he was president of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue of Montreal, the oldest Jewish congregation in Canada. When an army led by Benedict Arnold and Richard Montgomery invaded Canada in 1775, Franks joined the American forces. He was appointed paymaster of the Continental Army in Quebec and was promoted to major and was assigned as Arnold’s aide-de-camp. After Arnold switch over to support of the British, Washington had Franks assigned to his command. Franks was entrusted with carrying secret documents to diplomats Benjamin Franklin in Paris and John Jay in Madrid. After the war, Franks was made American vice-consul at Marseilles. In 1786, he served as American envoy in the treaty negotiations between the United States and the potentates of Morocco. Franks’ name is mentioned in a list of member of the St. Andrews Society, dedicated to promoting the preservation of Scottish heritage.[74] The St. Andrew’s Society of Charleston, South Carolina, founded in the year 1729, is not only the oldest, but it is also the progenitor of some, possibly a great number, of other St. Andrew’s societies.

In August 1781, the Continental Army had trapped Lieutenant General Charles Cornwallis in the Virginian coastal town of Yorktown. Washington and the main army and Count de Rochambeau with his French army decided to march from the Hudson Highlands to Yorktown and deliver the final blow. But Washington’s war chest was completely empty. A legend claims that, in either 1779 or 1781, George Washington burst into a Yom Kippur service at Mikveh Israel to beg for money to supply the bankrupt Continental Army. Salomon apparently interrupted the service to write him a check for hundreds of thousands of dollars, adding to it the contents of the collection box.[75] With that contribution, Washington conducted the Yorktown campaign, which proved to be the final battle of the Revolution.[76] Salomon brokered the sale of a majority of the war aid from France and the Dutch Republic, selling bills of exchange to American merchants. Salomon also personally supported various members of the Continental Congress during their stay in Philadelphia, including James Madison and James Wilson. In all, Salomon is thought to have contributed $650,000 (more than $9.4 billion in 2017 dollars) to the Revolutionary War effort.[77]

In 1941, the same year Howard Fast wrote Haym Salomon, Son of Liberty, the Heald Square Monument, a sculpture designed by Lorado Taft, was erected at Wacker Drive and Wabash Avenue in downtown Chicago, depicting George Washington flanked by Salomon and Robert Morris and grasping hands with both men, bearing the inscription: “Symbol of American tolerance and unity and of the cooperation of people of all races and creeds in the upbuilding of the United States.” In 1975, the United States Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp in the “Contributors to the Cause” series honoring Salomon This stamp, like others, was printed on the front and the back. On the glue side of the stamp, the following words were printed in pale green ink: “Financial Hero – Businessman and broker Haym Salomon was responsible for raising most of the money needed to finance the American Revolution and later to save the new nation from collapse.”

Great Seal

When the new Constitution went into effect in 1789, one of the first acts of the new Congress was to provide “that the seal heretofore used by the United States in Congress assembled, shall be, and hereby is declared to be, the seal of the United States.” This was to be the Great Seal of the United States, the new country’s new principal national symbol. There has been much debate as to the origin of the Masonic or “Illuminati” symbolism incorporated into the Great Seal, particularly the thirteen-step pyramid and the All-Seeing-Eye. One symbol in particular points to a source of influence which has been little recognized: the Jewish Star of David, composed of thirteen five-pointed stars, which early magical and Kabbalistic traditions had referred to as the “Seal of Solomon.” There is a legend that during the design process of the Great Seal, President George Washington asked Haym Salomon what compensation he wanted in return for his important contribution. Washington apparently reported that “he wanted nothing for himself but that he wanted something for his people.” While there is no evidence, there is a theory that the thirteen stars representing the colonies on the seal were arranged in the shape of the Star of David in commemoration of Solomon’s contributions.[78]

The several key symbols of the United States are associated with a mysterious man sometimes referred to as an “influential person” or “the Professor” who influenced the design of the American flag, the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the design of the Great Seal, whose both sides now appear on the reverse of the American one-dollar bill. At a dinner party attended by the flag committee in the house of a rebel leader in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in December 1775, a stranger staying with the family of the house was introduced, who according to Robert Allen Campbell in Our Flag was described as “evidently far beyond his threescore and ten years; and he often referred to historical events of more than a century previous just as he had been a living witness of their occurrence.”[79] The stranger was a vegetarian, and brought with him a large oak chest containing rare books and ancient manuscripts, and seemed to know Franklin. The professor put forward several proposals about the design of the flag and these were eagerly accepted by the committee without any argument. When the dinner was over, the professor remained in conversation with Franklin and Washington for several hours, allegedly telling them that America would soon become a new nation recognized by all the governments of the world and that it was destined to be a future leader of civilization.[80]

Manly P. Hall describes an incident on the evening of July 4, 1776, in the old State House in Philadelphia, at a gathering to declare independence from England, when a “fierce voice rang out.” The gathered men were moved the sign the declaration when the strange man they had never seen before announced that “God has given America to be free!” and then sank back exhausted in his chair.[81] One dark evening, Thomas Jefferson was approached by a black-cloaked stranger handed him a design of the Great Seal that his committee immediately recognized as perfect.[82]

On July 4, 1776, the same day as the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the Continental Congress named the first committee to design a Great Seal, a principal national symbol of the United States. The first committee consisted of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams. Franklin proposed to design a scene of Moses parting the Red Sea, with the Egyptian Pharaoh being overwhelmed by the waters and the phrase “Resistance to Tyrants is Obedience to God.” Jefferson suggested a depiction of the Children of Israel in the wilderness, led by a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.  Adams chose a painting known as the “Judgment of Hercules” where the young Hercules must choose to travel either on the uphill path of duty to others and honor to himself. The committee sought the help of Pierre Eugene du Simitiere (1737 – 1784), who first suggested the use of the All-seeing Eye.

By June 13, 1782, the Congress had yet to approve a design, and turned to its Secretary Charles Thomson (1729 – 1824), and provided all material submitted by the first three committees. Thomson took elements from all three previous committees, coming up with a new design which provided the basis for the final seal. Thomson used the bald eagle on a shield with thirteen stripes, and the eagle’s claws held an olive branch and a bundle of thirteen arrows. For the crest, he used a constellation of thirteen stars shaped in a six-pointed Star of David, designed by Francis Hopkinson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence who designed the American flag. The motto was E Pluribus Unum was also composed of thirteen letters. Franklin owned a 1702 emblem book, which included an eagle with olive branch and arrows near its talons, which may have been a source for Thomson.[83]

For the reverse, Thomson essentially kept the design of William Barton (1754 – 1817), a heraldry expert from Pennsylvania who contributed to the third committee, of a pyramid of thirteen steps, with the radiant Eye of Providence overhead, but re-added the triangle around the Eye of Providence and changed the mottos to Novus Ordo Seclorum, Latin for “a new order of the ages,” and Annuit Cœptis, also composed of thirteen letters, which signifies that Providence has “approved of (our) undertakings.”

Society of the Cincinnati

The new Constitution, which took effect in March and April 1789, gave the newly organized Congress of the United States authority to establish a federal district up to ten miles square in size. President Washington chose a marshy swamp as the site and in 1791 he selected Pierre Charles l’Enfant (1754 – 1825), an engineer in the continental army and a Templar Freemason, to design the new city. The site was later called the “District of Columbia.” Columbia, the female personification of the United States, which originated from the name of Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, paralleling Britannia, Gallia, and others, and was also a historical name applied to the Americas and to the New World. l’Enfant, who was also a Freemason, was also a close friend of Alexander Hamilton.

L'Enfant was recruited by Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (1732 – 1799), a French inventor, playwright, musician, diplomat, spy and Freemason, who lobbied the French government on behalf of the American rebels during the American War of Independence. Beaumarchais was a musical advisor for the French royal family, whose plays included Le Barbier de Séville, La Mère coupable and Le Mariage de Figaro, which formed the basis of Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro. Beaumarchais was also instrumental in preserving many of Voltaire’s later works which otherwise might have been lost. Beaumarchais was also a participant in the early stages of the 1789 French Revolution. L’Enfant arrived in 1777 and served as a military engineer in the Continental Army with Major General Lafayette.[84]

L’Enfant proposed rectangular streets with broad avenues like spokes of a wheel, which produced octagonal patterns much like the splayed cross used by Masonic Templars. In 1795, the streets of Washington were laid out to form Masonic symbols: a compass, square, rule, pentagram, pentagon and octagon. Edward Decker describes facing the Capitol from the Mall. Above the White House to the north is an inverted five-pointed star or pentagram. The center of the pentagram is 16th Street, where 13 blocks north of the center of the White House is the Masonic House of the Temple. Within the hypotenuse of the right-angled triangle are many of the headquarters of the most important government departments, such as the Justice Department, the US Senate and the Internal Revenue Service. On September 18, 1793, Washington laid the foundation stone of the Capitol building, wearing full Masonic regalia and surrounded by his fellow Masons. It is believed that he used the square and level, and of course the trowel, to lay the stone according to traditional Masonic rites.[85]

The United States Capitol cornerstone laying was also laid by Washington, assisted by the Grand Master of Maryland Joseph Clark, in a Masonic ritual. Washington, accompanied by three Worshipful Masters carrying sacrifices of corn, wine, and oil, then struck the stone three times with a gavel, as prescribed by Masonic custom. Washington exited the foundation trench to ritual chanting by the assembled Masons and a fifteen-gun salute) from the Alexandria Volunteer Artillery. Clark then delivered a short invocation, after which a 500 ox was slaughtered and roasted.[86] The apron and sash worn by Washington during the ceremony, according to popular belief, was embroidered several years earlier by the Marquise de La Fayette and gifted to Washington.[87]

L’Enfant also designed coins and medals, among the medals was the eagle-shaped badge of the Society of the Cincinnati, a hereditary society with branches in the United States and France, founded in 1783, to preserve the ideals and fellowship of officers of the Continental Army who served in the Revolutionary War, of which he was a founder. At the request of George Washington, the first President of the Society, L'Enfant had the insignias made in France during a 1783-1784 visit to his father and helped to organize a chapter of the Society there. The suggestion of the bald eagle as the Cincinnati insignia was made by L'Enfant. It is the second official American emblem to use the bald eagle, following the Great Seal of the United States. One of the first acts of the meeting of May 13, 1783, was to extend membership to certain grades of French officers.

Washington wrote to in October 1783, “The officers of the American Army, in order to perpetuate that mutual friendships which they contracted in the hour of common danger and distress, and for other purposes which are mentioned in the instrument of their association have united together in a society of Friends under the name Cincinnati.” A specially commissioned “Eagle” worn by President General George Washington was presented to Marquis de Lafayette in 1824 during his grand tour of the United States.

On June 19, 1783, Washington was elected the first President-General of the Society, the office which he held until his death. The society’s members have included notable military and political leaders, including 23 of the 39 signers of the United States Constitution. Many prominent military Freemasons belonged to both organizations. From the early issue of the New York Directory (1786), many members of the Cincinnati are known to have been Freemasons. Those mentioned are George Washington, the Marquis de Lafayette, General Friedrich Von Steuben, Chancellor Robert R. Livington (Grand Master), John Paul Jones, and General Henry Knox, the society’s founder and a friend of George Washington.[88] Following the adoption of the United States Constitution, Knox became President Washington's Secretary of War.

The society included officers of the French Army and Navy above certain ranks. King Louis XVI ordained the French Society of the Cincinnati, which was organized on July 4, 1784 (Independence Day). Among its members were Chevalier de La Luzerne and Conrad Alexandre Gérard (1729 – 1790), best known as the first French diplomatic representative to the United States. Early in 1778, under instructions from Charles Gravier, Count of Vergennes (1719 –1787), Louis XVI’s Foreign Minister, Gérard conducted the negotiations with the American representatives, Benjamin Franklin, Silas Deane, and Arthur Lee, which resulted in the signing of two treaties by which the France recognized the United States as a sovereign and independent nation. In March, 1778, he travelled to America, as the first accredited Minister from France to the United States. He sailed in company with Silas Deane aboard the flagship of the seventeen-ship battle fleet of the comte d’Estaing’s (1729 – 1794), another member of the Society of the Cincinnati, transporting four thousand French troops. This post Gérard held until superseded by the Chevalier de la Luzerne in 1779. His activity in America consisted chiefly in subsidizing writers, of whom was Thomas Paine.

The comte d’Estaing was among several members of the Society of the Cincinnati associated with the French Admiral François Joseph Paul de Grasse (1722 – 1788). At the age of eleven de Grasse entered the Order of Malta working as a page for the Grand Master. By the time he was twelve, de Grasse had become an officer working on the Galleys of the Knights Hospitaller and six years later joined the French Navy. When France committed naval forces and other resources to support the rebels in the American Revolutionary War, Admiral de Grasse became a hero after he Grasse commanded the French fleet in the Battle of the Chesapeake in 1781 in the last year of the American Revolutionary War, leading directly to the British surrender at Yorktown and helped gain the rebels’ victory. Because he spoke French, David Salisbury Franks, who was also a member of the Cincinnati, had been assigned as liaison officer to the Comte d'Estaing.

The members of the Cincinnati were among those developing many of America's first and largest cities to the west of the Appalachians, most notably Cincinnati, Ohio and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. General Arthur St. Clair (1737 – 1818), was a member of the Society, was made the first governor of the Northwest Territory, and then the portion that would become Ohio in 1800. Genera St. Clair was born in Caithness, Scotland, and was descended from Sir William Sinclair, builder of Rosslyn Chapel.[89] In 1759, he fought under the command of General James Wolfe at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham which resulted in the capture of Quebec City. During the American Revolutionary War, he rose to the rank of major general in the Continental Army. After the war, he served as President of the Continental Congress. St. Clair assisted at the inauguration of his old friend, General George Washington, as the first President of the United States. St. Clair renamed a small settlement “Cincinnati” to honor the Society and to encourage settlement by Society members.

Later in the eighteenth century, the Society’s rules adopted a system of primogeniture whereby membership was inherited by the eldest son after the death of the original member. Present-day hereditary members generally must be descended from an officer who served in the Continental Army or Navy for at least three years, from an officer who died or was killed in service, or from an officer serving at the close of the Revolution.

The trowel used by Washington during the Capitol cornerstone ceremony has occasionally been used in other Masonic cornerstone ceremonies for important buildings in the Washington metropolitan area, including the Herbert Hoover Building, the chancery of the British embassy, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, the Washington Monument, and the National Cathedral. The Washington Monument, begun in 1848, is in perfect line to the intersection of the Masonic square stretching from the House of the Temple to the Capitol. Washington Monument is an Egyptian obelisk, identified by Plutarch with the castrated phallus of Osiris. Brigadier General Thomas Lincoln Casey (1831 – 1896), the Army engineer who oversaw completion of the Washington Monument, was a member of the Society of the Cincinnati. The House of the Temple, constructed in 1911, is a Masonic temple that serves as the headquarters of the Supreme Council Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, Southern Jurisdiction. The full name of the Supreme Council is “The Supreme Council (Mother Council of the World) of the Inspectors General Knights Commander of the House of the Temple of Solomon of the Thirty-third degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry of the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States of America.” 

King David Lodge

Morin had been involved in high-degree Masonry in Bordeaux, France, since 1744 and in 1747 he founded an Écossais lodge in the city of Le Cap Français, on the north coast of the French colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti). Morin returned to the West Indies in 1762 or 1763, to Saint-Domingue, where he spread the high degrees throughout the West Indies and North America. Morin stayed in Saint-Domingue (later Haiti) until 1766 when he moved to Jamaica. At Kingston, Jamaica, in 1770, Morin created a “Grand Chapter” of his new Rite (the Grand Council of Jamaica). Henry Andrew Francken (1720 – 1795), a naturalized French subject born as Hendrick Andriese Franken of Dutch origin, was most important in assisting Morin in spreading the degrees in the New World. Morin, acting under the authority of Frederick II of Prussia, appointed Francken Deputy Grand Inspector General (DGIG) as one of his first acts after returning to the West Indies.[90] Francken traveled to New York in 1767 where he granted a Patent for the formation of a Lodge of Perfection at Albany, which was called “Ineffable Lodge of Perfection.”[91]

While in New York, Francken also communicated the degrees to Jewish businessman Moses Michael Hays (1739 – 1805), the leading figure among the Jews in connection with early Masonry in the United States.[92] The Hays family was one of the most important Jewish families in New York with connections to other wealthy Jewish families across the colonies through marriage. As a young man, Hays was involved in his father’s successful import and export business, and was a prominent member of Shearith Israel, where he served as Second Parnas and as a Trustee.[93] In 1769, Hays organized King David’s Lodge of Freemasons in New York, the nation’s oldest Jewish Masonic lodge. The warrant for this was issued by Provincial Grand Master of New York George Harrison, Provincial Grand Master of New York, and made Hays its first Master Mason.[94] However, the next year, he and his family moved to Newport, and used the same warrant to transfer King David Lodge.[95] For their first meeting, Moses Seixas and David Lopez served as the Senior and Junior Wardens.[96]

The early Jewish community of Newport flourished before the American Revolution, and included such families as Rivera, Lopez, Hart, Seixas, Levy, Pollock, deToro (Touro), Gomez and Hays. Moses Mendes Seixas (1744 – 1809) was a merchant, helped organize the Bank of Rhode Island in 1796, helped Hays found the King David Lodge in Newport, and was Grand Master of the Masonic Order of Rhode Island.[97] Moses Seixas became the president of the historic Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, the oldest synagogue building still standing in the United States. The Touro Synagogue was built from 1759 to 1763 for the Jeshuat Israel congregation in Newport under the leadership of Hays’ brother-in-law, Hazzan Isaac Touro (1738 – 1783), whose family came to America from Amsterdam via the West Indies, though originally from Spain where family name was “de Toro.” Touro Synagogue was designed by Peter Harrison (1716 – 1775), a colonial American architect credited with bringing the Palladian architectural movement to the colonies.

The cornerstone of the Touro Synagogue was laid by Aaron Lopez (1731 – 1782), an Anglo-Portuguese Jewish slave trader, merchant, and philanthropist.[98] Lopez was born in Lisbon, Portugal, to a family of Conversos, and through his varied commercial ventures, became the wealthiest person in Newport. Between 1761 and 1774, Lopez was involved in the slave trade and owned a slave ship called Abigail with Moses Levy and Jacob Franks. According to Eli Faber, Lopez underwrote 21 slave ships during a period in which Newport sent a total of 347 slave ships to Africa.[99] By the beginning of the American Revolution, Lopez owned or controlled 30 vessels engaged in the European and West-Indian trade and in whale-fisheries. [100]

With the significant assistance of Newport’s Jews, such as Moses Seixas and Ephraim Hart, Newport, Rhode Island became one of the most active slave trading ports of North America. As Jewish historians Edwin Wolf and Maxwell Whiteman reported, the Newport Jews “traded extensively in Negroes.”[101] Rhode Island became the second largest slave dealing center behind only South Carolina.[102] Feingold described how the Jews were connected:

From Africa they imported slaves and from the West Indies they received molasses from which they distilled rum. A key aspect of the triangular trade involved the notorious middle passage, the transportation of slaves from the west coast of Africa to the West Indies and eventually directly to the Colonies. Newport was the major Colonial port for this traffic in people, so that it comes as no surprise that Colonial Rhode Island boasted a higher proportion of slaves than any other colony.[103]

In June, 1776, Hays subscribed to a statement affirming his allegiance to the newly independent  thirteen American  colonies. The next month, July 12, 1776, Hays was summoned to appear before a committee of the Rhode Island General Assembly to sign an additional test of loyalty to the revolutionary regime, an oath  requested only of those suspected of  hostility to the new American government. Five days later, he sent the General Assembly a letter justifying his stand:

We, the subscribers, do solemnly and sincerely declare that we believe the war resistance and opposition in which the United American Colonies are now engaged against the fleets and armies of Great Britain is on the part of said colonies just and necessary and that we will not directly nor indirectly afford assistance of any sort or kind whatsoever to the said fleet and armies during the continuance of the present war, but that we will heartily assist in the defense of the United Colonies.[104]

On August 17, 1790, the day that President George Washington visited Newport, the synagogue’s warden, Moses Seixas, wrote to Washington, expressing the support of the Congregation for Washington's administration and good wishes for him: “to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance—but generously affording to All liberty of conscience, and immunities of Citizenship: deeming every one, of whatever Nation, tongue, or language, equal parts of the great governmental Machine.” Washington’s famous reply borrowed Moses’ exact words: “…happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”[105]

Mikveh Israel

During the War of Independence, Jews from New York, Richmond, Charleston, Savannah, Lancaster and Easton fled to Philadelphia seeking refuge from the British. Among them was Moses’s younger brother, Gershom Mendes Seixas (1745 – 1816), Hazzan (Minister) of Shearith Israel, who also found his way to Philadelphia in 1780. Like David Franks, Gershom was a grandson of Moses Levy. Seixas became known for his civic activities as well as his defense of religious liberty, participating in George Washington’s inauguration as President and helping found King’s College, the precursor of New York City’s great Columbia University.[106]

Gershom Seixas also helped establish Mikveh Israel, which built its first synagogue in 1782 at Third and Cherry Streets. Benjamin Franklin and Robert Morris contributed to its building fund.[107] On the completion of its construction, Seixas invited the governor of Pennsylvania to attend the dedication, during which he invoked the blessing of Almighty God on “the Members of these States in Congress assembled and on his Excellency George Washington, Commander-General of these Colonies.”[108] Gershom Mendes’s brother, Benjamin Seixas (1748 – 1817), who possessed the Masonic degree of Prince of Jerusalem, was Treasurer of Mikveh Israel in 1782, one of the founders of the New York Stock Exchange in 1792, and served early in the Revolutionary War.[109]

Mikveh Israel was founded with the financial support of Ephraim Hart (1747 – 1825), who was registered as an elector of Shearith Israel. By 1792, Hart had become one of the most successful merchants in Philadelphia, and helped to organize the Board of Stock-Brokers, now known as the New York Stock Exchange.[110] Ephraim’s son, Joel Hart (1784 – 1842), was well known in masonic circles in New York city.[111] In 1817, Joel would be appointed by President Madison United States consul at Leith, Scotland. The daughter of Jacob Hart (1746 – 1822), who served as parnas of Shearith Israel, married Haym Moses Salomon, son of Haym Salomon.[112]

Isaac Franks (1759 – 1822), whose sister married Haym Salomon, is said to have been an aide-de-camp to General Washington. A native of New York, Isaac Franks was the son of a nephew of Jacob Franks and thus related to David Franks.[113] Franks, on December 5, 1786, received the Masonic degree of Secret Master, and on February 21, 1788, was elected Steward.[114] Franks served on George Washington’s staff. In 1793, during the yellow fever epidemic that ravaged Philadelphia, Franks rented his house to Washington for use as a substitute for the White House. Washington met there with his cabinet until the epidemic passed and he returned to Philadelphia. Franks hosted the Washington and his wife again in 1794 while they were on vacation.[115]

Jonas Phillips (1736 – 1803), also a Mason and founder and President of Mikveh Israel, was a veteran of the American Revolutionary War and an American merchant in New York City and Philadelphia. In July 28, 1776, Phillips wrote in Yiddish to a relative and business correspondent, Gumpel Samson of the Netherlands, discussing the conflict and included an appendix of items he wanted to import for sale in America. Thrilled with the Revolution, Phillips enclosed a copy of the Declaration of Independence. Phillips’ use of Yiddish prevented most British from being able to read the letter who thought the letter was in code.[116]

Another Freemason associated with Mikveh Israel was Simon Nathan (1746 – 1822), was a brother-in-law of Benjamin Seixas. Nathan was born in England, went to the colonies in 1773 by way of Havana. During the American Revolution, he helped ship supplies to the colonists from Jamaica where he was residing. After leaving the island, he proceeded to New Orleans and from there went to Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1779. He loaned large sums of money to the Virginia state government for which he was thanked by then governor, Thomas Jefferson. When these loans were not repaid he suffered great financial loss, and was involved in protracted litigation with Virginia for many years. In 1780, he met and married Grace Mendes Seixas, the daughter of Isaac Mendes Seixas. Nathan became a Freemason the following year, a trustee of the Mikveh Israel in 1782, and president in 1782 and 1783. He moved to New York, where he served as president of Shearith Israel in 1785, 1786, 1794, and 1796.[117]  

After Gershom Mendez Seixas was recalled to Shearith Israel, Mickveh Israel elected the Rev. Jacob Raphael Cohen in his stead (1738 – 1811). Cohen had served as Hazzan of the Spanish and Portuguese synagogue in Montreal and in a similar capacity in New York during the British occupation. In celebration of Pennsylvania's ratification of the United States Constitution on July 4, 1788, Cohen walked arm-in-arm with two ministers, one of whom was Reverend William White (1748 –1836) of Christ Church, bishop of Pennsylvania. White’s younger sister Mary was married to Robert Morris. White was a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania as well as a member of the American Philosophical Society (APS), originally founded in 1743 by Benjamin Franklin, James Alexander and others.

The APS was an offshoot of an earlier club, the Junto, also known as the Leather Apron Club, established by Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia in 1727, and inspired by Benjamin Furly’s Lantern society. Another offshoot of Junto was the Library Company founded in 1731 also by Franklin. The Library Company of Philadelphia operated out of Library Hall, directly across Fifth Street from Philosophical Hall, the meeting place of the APS. David Franks became a member of the Library Company in 1754.[118]

Many members of the Society of the Cincinnati were among the APS’s first board members and contributors. Early members included John Dickinson, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, James McHenry, Thomas Paine, David Rittenhouse, Nicholas Biddle, Owen Biddle, Benjamin Rush, James Madison, Michael Hillegas, John Marshall, and John Andrews. The society also invited members from around the world, including Alexander von Humboldt and the Marquis de Lafayette, Baron von Steuben, and Yekaterina Vorontsova-Dashkova, the closest female friend of Empress Catherine the Great and a major figure of the Russian Enlightenment. In Paris, Vorontsova-Dashkova also secured the friendship and admiration of Diderot and Voltaire. In 1788, as a result of the departure of its members, Mikveh Israel ran into financial difficulties, and a subscription list was started to meet the existing debts, and among those who contributed to it were Benjamin Franklin and American astronomer David Rittenhouse (1732 – 1796), a member of the APS and the first director of the United States Mint.[119]

Sublime Rite of Perfection

Although Moses Michael Hays had introduced the Scottish Rite to America in 1768, it is the Sublime Lodge of Perfection in Philadelphia that, through its membership, is given credit for popularizing it throughout the States.[120] Hays’ appointment by Morin’s emissary Francken was made with the view of establishing the Scottish Rite in America, and power was given to Hays to appoint others with like powers. After the Revolution, Hays moved to Boston where he became involved in brokerage and insurance and owned a shipping office and counting house with his son Judah. Here he became the first Jewish benefactor of Harvard College. He is credited as being one of the founders of the Massachusetts Fire and Marine Insurance Co., which grew to become the Bank of Boston. Hays was accepted into the Massachusetts Lodge in Boston in November 1782. Hays was then elected Master with Paul Revere, a friend of Thomas Paine, as his deputy, a position which he served in for three years, and then became the “Most Worshipful Grand Master” from 1788 to 1793.[121]

At the first official meeting of the Rite of Perfection, recorded on October 23, 1782, of the eleven men listed as present, over half of them were Jewish, including the two top officials, Isaac da Costa (1721 – 1783) and Solomon Bush (1753 – 1795).[122] In 1781, Hays appointed Solomon Bush Deputy Inspector-General for Pennsylvania and Baren M. Spitzer Deputy Inspector-General for Georgia.[123] Solomon’s father was the son of Mathias Bush, a native of Prague who arrived in New York City in the 1740’s and later moved to Philadelphia or Germantown. He was a merchant and ship owner, and during the French and Indian War an army purveyor. He married the sister of Barnard Gratz, of the prominent Simon Gratz family, and became a leader in the Mikveh Israel synagogue. In 1765, Mathias signed the Philadelphia Merchants Non-Importation Act, the first American document, the first Non-importation agreements to protest taxation without representation, and calling for a boycott British imports until Parliament repealed the stamp tax.

Solomon Bush joined the Pennsylvania Militia in 1776 and the following year he was appointed Deputy Adjutant General of the Militia of the State of Pennsylvania. Because of an injury sustained during the war, he could not work, so Benjamin Franklin, while President of the Pennsylvania Council, granted him a pension. In 1782, Solomon contributed toward a new building for Mikveh Israel. He married a non-Jew, Nancy Marshall, daughter of the wealthy Christopher Marshall Jr.. Upon his death in 1796, by his request, he was buried in the Quaker Friends burial ground in Germantown. Solomon was made a Grand Master and is recorded as being “in the Chair” at almost every meeting of the Sublime Lodge of Perfection from 1782 to 1788.[124] Bush became instrumental in 1788 in bringing about fraternal relations between the Pennsylvania Grand Lodge and the two rival Grand Lodges of England, Ancients and Moderns.[125]

Along with Haym Salomon, Bush was a member of Philadelphia’s Masonic Lodge No. 2.[126] Numerous other members of Mikveh Israel had also members of Masonic Lodge No. 2 in Philadelphia. Jewish members included: Solomon Bush, Isaac Da Costa, Simon Nathan, Samuel Myers, Barnard M. Spitzer, Moses Cohen, Myer M. Cohen, Benjamin Nones, Isaiah Bush, Solomon Etting, Joseph M. Myers, Solomon M. Cohen, Solomon M. Myers, Michael Gratz and Isaac Franks. Spitzer was among four of eight Jewish Masons from Mikveh Israel that Hays appointed Deputy Inspectors General, who later played important in the establishment of Scottish Rite Freemasonry in South Carolina, and which included Isaac Da Costa Sr. for South Carolina; Abraham Forst for Virginia and Joseph M. Myers for Maryland.[127] Forst was the son-in-law of Rabbi Jacob R. Cohen, minister of Mikveh Israel from 1784-1811, and was connected with it in a ritual capacity.[128]

Scottish Rite

By 1786, when the Rite of Perfection was reorganized and rechristened the “Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite,” it is said to have been Frederick who conducted operations, drew up the new Constitutions of the Order. The signatories of the Grand Constitutions were D’Esterno, Stark, Weellner and H. Willelm, and the initial letter D. . . . Johann Christoph von Wöllner, was Frederick William II of Prussia’s Minister of Justice, who led the Golden and Rosy Cross’ opposition to the Illuminati, and was a member of the Asiatic Brethren.[129] Johann August Starck, another opponent of the Illuminati, claimed to be an emissary of the Clerici Ordinis Templarii, which was amalgamated to the Strict Observance.[130] Starck quarreled with Illuminati publisher Nicolai Nicolai who accused him of Jesuitisms.[131] D’Esterno was the French Ambassador at Berlin, when Mirabeau went there, who referred to him in Histoire Secrete de la Cour de Berlin (“Secret History of the Court of Berlin”).[132]

Frederick re-arranged the degrees to bring the total number up to thirty-three, and plays an important part in the last four. In the thirtieth degree of Knight Kadosch, largely modelled on the Holy Vehm (Vehmgerichts), the Knights wear Teutonic crosses, the throne is surmounted by the double-headed eagle of Prussia, and the President, who is called Thrice Puissant Grand Master, represents Frederick. Frederick is described as the head of Continental Freemasonry in the thirty-second degree of Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret. In the thirty-third degree of Sovereign Grand Inspector-General, the jewel is again the double-headed eagle, and Frederick is the Sovereign Grand Commander, who at the time the degree was instituted figured with Duke of Orleans, or Philippe Égalité, Grand Master of the Grand Orient, as his lieutenant.[133] As the American Scottish Rite Mason Albert Pike observed:

There is no doubt that Frederick came to the conclusion that the great pretensions of Masonry in the blue degrees were merely imaginary and deceptive. He ridiculed the Order, and thought its ceremonies mere child's play; and some of his sayings to that effect have been preserved. It does not at all follow that he might not at a later day have found it politic to put himself at the head of an Order that had become a power…[134]

When first Supreme Council ever established under the new constitution of 1786 was organized in 1801, at Charleston, South Carolina, as a transformation of the former Rite of Perfection or Ancient Accepted Rite which had been established in Charleston in 1783, through his appointee, Isaac DaCosta, Hays was listed as an honorary member of the Sublime Grand Lodge of Perfection, and holder of the thirty-second degree.[135] In Charleston resided “the most cultured and wealthiest Jewish community in America.”[136] 1820, Charleston had a Jewish population numbering about 800 souls. New York’s Jewish community by comparison was the second largest, numbering approximately 550. Philadelphia was third, with about 450 Jews. When the Marquis Lafayette made his famous visit to the United States. to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the American Revolution, a Frenchman in his party commented on the prominence of Charleston’s Jews and remarked that in no other place in the country were the Jews a significant element.[137]

After the end of the American Revolutionary War, many of these Jews moved back from Philadelphia to their original communities, such as Charleston, helping to spread Scottish Rite Masonry. Among those returning to Charleston was Isaac Da Costa (1721 – 1783), the Grand Warden, Grand Inspector General for the West Indies and North America of the Sublime Lodge of Perfection in Philadelphia. Da Costa was born in London, scion of an illustrious Spanish-Portuguese family, who played an important part in the Anglo-Jewish community during the early days after the Resettlement under Cromwell.[138] He received religious training from Isaac Nieto (1702 – 1774), who succeeded his father Rabbi David Nieto (1654 – 1728) as haham of the Bevis Marks synagogue of London, which was dominated by Jewish Freemasons who were early member of the Premier Grand Lodge of London.[139]

Da Costa, who is the earliest recorded Jewish Mason in South Carolina, arrived in Charleston in 1747, where he established himself as a merchant, shipping-agent, and slave-trader, who built a sizeable fortune bringing hundreds of slaves from Africa.[140] In 1749, he helped found Congregation Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim, one of the oldest Jewish congregations in the United States, serving as ḥazzan. The driving force behind the founding of Beth Elohim was Moses Cohen (1709 – 1762), who was also Sublime Lodge of Perfection in Philadelphia and a member of Mikveh Israel. By 1753, Da Costa’s name appears in the records of King Solomon’s Lodge No. 1, the oldest constituted Masonic lodge in South Carolina.[141] An ardent partisan of the patriot cause, Da Costa was banished and his property seized by the British when Charleston fell in 1780. Da Costa returned to Charleston in 1782 where he organized his own Sublime Grand Lodge of Perfection.[142]

Under the authority he had received through Spitzer, Hyman Isaac Long, a Jewish physician from Jamaica, who settled in New York City, went to Charleston in 1796 to appoint eight French men who arrived as refugees from Haitian revolution of 1804. Isaac Long was the son of Isaac Long, a Dutch writer, one of the foremost members of the Moravian Church, and closely connected with Count Zinzendorf.[143] In 1796, in Charleston, Long issued a patent to Alexandre Francois Auguste de Grasse (1765 – 1845), the son of Admiral François Joseph Paul de Grasse, of the Society of the Cincinnati, making him and his father-in-law Jean-Baptiste Marie de La Hogue and six other French refugees from Saint-Domingue, each Deputy Grand Inspector General (DGIG).[144] After his father’s death, de Grasse was stationed in Saint-Domingue in 1789, where he acquired a large plantation and 200 slaves. After the Royal Navy defeated the French fleet there in 1793, during the Haitian Revolution, de Grasse was among officers who surrendered and were allowed to leave. He migrated with his family and settled for several years in Charleston. There he and several fellow French colonial refugees joined the Freemasons in Charleston, forming a French chapter named La Candeur with La Hogue.

The Rite of Perfection changed its name and appearance in 1801, when Dr. Frederick Dalcho and Colonel John Mitchell, who was nominated Deputy Grand Inspector by Francken, arrived in Charleston with a document dated to 1786 granting the bearer the right to establish new chapters of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, allegedly under the authority of Frederick the Great.[145] Écossais Freemasonry, as explained by Alain de Keghel in American freemasonry: its revolutionary history and challenging future, “was officially born in its jurisdictional translation in Charleston in May 1801, is in some way the culmination of a theorization going back originally to Chevalier Ramsay.”[146] In 1801, six years after his return from Europe, according to Domenico Margiotta, a former high-ranking Freemason, Long brought with him the Baphomet idol of the Templars and what he claimed was the skull of their Grand Master Jacques de Molay which they had purportedly manage to purchase from his executioner before fleeing to Scotland. With John Mitchell, Doctor Frederic Dalcho, Abraham Alexander, Isaac Auld and Emanuel de la Motta, Long’s plan was to create a rite of 33 degrees destined to become universal. They adopted twenty-five degrees of the system of Heredom, six Templar grades in which were merged four degrees borrowed from the Weishaupt’s Illuminati, and two grades called grades of administration, the last of which supplanted the function of Deputy Inspector (Sovereign Prince of Jerusalem) and took the title of Sovereign Grand Inspector General 33rd and last degree.[147]

The bodies already established in Charleston accepted the new regime and adopted the new degrees, and in 1801 a convention was held and preliminary steps inaugurated to form a Supreme Council of the 33rd and Last Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, after which the Charleston lodge in became the Mother Council of the World.[148] The Founding Fathers of the Scottish Rite who attended became known as “The Eleven Gentlemen of Charleston”: Isaac Da Costa, John Mitchell, James Moultrie, Frederick Dalcho, Alexandre Francois Auguste de Grasse, Jean-Baptiste Marie de La Hogue, Thomas Bartholemew Bowen, Abraham Alexander, Emanuel de la Motta, Isaac Auld, Israel de Lieben and Moses Clava Levy. The Supreme Council, Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction, USA, in Charleston—commonly known as the Mother Supreme Council of the World—was the first Supreme Council of Scottish Rite Freemasonry. It claims that all other Supreme Councils and Subordinate Bodies of the Scottish Rite are derived from it.[149]

De Grasse continued his development work with Masons in France and across Europe. In 1804, de Grasse formed a second Grand Lodge to counter the Grand Orient, called the Supreme Council of France. The Grand Orient of France signed a treaty of union with it in December of that year, after which it took ownership of the Scottish Rite. In March 1805 he established a Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite for Italy, based in Milan. In October 1809 he established a Supreme Council for Spain, based in Madrid. He was elected as the Grand Commander of the Supreme Council of France, a position he held until 1821, when he resigned. The Suprême Conseil des Isles d'Amérique, founded in 1802 also by de Grasse and revived around 1810 by his father-in-law de La Hogue, who had also returned from the United States, breathed new life into the Supreme Council for the 33rd Degree in France. They merged into a single organization: the Supreme Council of France, which eventually created the Grand Lodge of France, the second largest Masonic obedience in France.

The Scottish Rite adopted the double-headed eagle, or Reichsalder, symbol of the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperors, which was the personal emblem of Frederick the Great, who was the First Sovereign Grand Commander and who conferred upon the Rite the right to use in 1786. It was introduced in France in the early 1760s as the emblem of the Kadosh degree.[152] The double-headed eagle represented the dual realms of the Council of Emperors of the East and West.[153] The Knights of the East, according to Masonic tradition, represented the “Freemasons” who remained in the East after the building of the First Temple, while the Knights of the East and West represented those who traveled West and disseminated the “Order” over Europe, but who returned during the Crusades and reunited with their ancient Brethren. In obvious allusion to the Templars, they were said to have organized the Order in the year 1118 upon the return of the Holy Land.[154] Albert Pike cited several of alchemical works featuring the double-headed eagle as evidence for the true meaning and significance of the symbol, which he equated with the alchemical Stone of the Philosophers.[155]

[1] Rebold Emmanuel. Histoire des Trois Grandes Loges (Collignon, 1864). p. 49.

[2]  Bacon, Locke, and Newton. “The Letters of Thomas Jefferson: 1743–1826.”  http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/presidents/thomas-jefferson/letters-of-thomas-jefferson/jefl74.php

[3] Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson’s Letter to the Danbury Baptists: The Final Letter, as Sent. The Library of Congress Information Bulletin: June 1998.

[4] David Livingstone. The Dying God, p. 94.

[5] Monsignor George Dillon. Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked (London: Britons Publishing Company, 1950) p. 16.

[6] Nicholas Hagger. The Secret Founding of America.

[7] George Washington, 1732-1799. The Writings of George Washington from the Original manuscript sources. Electronic Text Centre, University of Virginia Library. Retrieved from https://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=WasFi36.xml&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=388&division=div1

[8] Webster. Secret Societies and Subversive Movements, p. 174.

[9] Billington. Fire in the Minds of Men, p. 96.

[10] Paine. The Age of Reason (1974), 50.

[11] Paine. The Age of Reason, Part II, Section 4.

[12] Craig Nelson. Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations (Penguin, 2007), p. 166.

[13] le Forestier. Les Illuminés de Bavière et la franc-maçonnerie allemande, p. 650.

[14] James Peobody, ed. John Adams (New York, 1973), p. 387.

[15] William Pencak. “Jews and Anti-Semitism in Early Pennsylvania” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 126, No. 3 (Jul., 2002), pp. 365-408.

[16] Menasseh ben Israel. Hope of Israel, 142–43, section 24; cited in Natalie Zemon Davis. “Regaining Jerusalem: Eschatology and Slavery in Jewish Colonization in Seventeeth-Century Suriname.” The Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, 3,1 (January 2016).

[17] Elaine Pryce. “‘A New Order of Things’: Benjamin Furly, Quakers and Quietism in the Seventeenth Century.” Quaker Studies, vol. 23/2 (2018).

[18] Steven Sora. “Rosicrucian America.”

[19] Charles Reznikoff. “A Gallery of Jewish Colonial WorthiesSome Loyalists, Some Patriots: II.” Commentary (January 1955). Retrieved from https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/charles-reznikoff/a-gallery-of-jewish-colonial-worthiessome-loyalists-some-patriots-ii/

[20] “Guide to the Papers of the Franks Family 1711–1821, [1965–1968].” American Jewish Historical Society (2003).

[21] Jacob Rader Marcus. Memoirs of American Jews 1775-1865 (New York: KTAV Publishing House, Inc., 1974), Volumes 3, p. 293.

[22] Toni Pitock. “Commerce and Connection: Jewish Merchants, Philadelphia, and the Atlantic World, 1736-1822.” PhD dissertation. University of Delaware (Spring 2016).

[23] Charles Reznikoff. “A Gallery of Jewish Colonial WorthiesSome Loyalists, Some Patriots: II.” Commentary (January 1955). Retrieved from https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/charles-reznikoff/a-gallery-of-jewish-colonial-worthiessome-loyalists-some-patriots-ii/

[24] David Franks to Naphtali Franks, March 14, 1743, in Gelles, Letters of Abigaill Levy Franks, 119, 119n. p. 58.

[25] Marc Lee Raphael. Jews and Judaism in the United States: a Documentary History (New York: Behrman House, Inc., 1983).

[26] Faber. Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade.

[27] David B. Green. “This Day in Jewish History 1788: Benjamin Franklin Helps Save Floundering Philly Synagogue.” Haaretz ( April 30, 2015).

[28] John Adams to Hezekiah Niles (February 13, 1818). The Works of John Adams, vol. X, ed. Charles Francis (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1850-6), p. 282.

[29] Alan Heimert. Religion and the American Mind: From the Great Awakening to the Revolution (Harvard University Press, 1966).

[30] “Great Awakening.” Encyclopedia Britannica.

[31] Jim Keith. Secret and Suppressed, p. 105.

[32] John Joseph Stoudt. “Count Zinzendorf and the Pennsylvania Congregation of God in the Spirit: The First American Oecumenical Movement.” Church History, Vol. 9, No. 4 (December, 1940), p. 370.

[33] Andrew Cooper Fix. Prophecy and Reason: The Dutch Collegiants in the Early Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), p. 45.

[34] “Schwenckfelder Church.” New Catholic Encyclopedia (The Gale Group, 2003).

[35] Philip H. Smith. “Pine Plains.” General History of Duchess County from 1609 to 1876, inclusive (Pawling, NY: 1877).

[36] Ibid.

[37] Alan Sica. The Anthem Companion to Max Weber (Anthem Press, 2016), p. 77.

[38] John Joseph Stoudt. “Count Zinzendorf and the Pennsylvania Congregation of God in the Spirit: The First American Oecumenical Movement.” Church History Vol. 9, No. 4 (Dec., 1940), p. 370.

[39] The Freemason’s Repository, Volume 18 (E. L. Freeman & Son, 1889), p. 557; The Freemason’s Chronicle, Volume 30, (W.W. Morgan., 1889) p. 90.

[40] David W. Bebbington. Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 20.

[41] Mark A. Noll. The Rise of Evangelicalism: The Age of Edwards, Whitefield, and the Wesleys (InterVarsity Press, 2004), pp. 87, 95.

[42] Heather Hahn. “A little-known big influence on John Wesley.” UM News (May 15, 2015). Retrieved from https://www.umnews.org/en/news/a-little-known-big-influence-on-john-wesley; Albert C. Mackey. Encyclopedia of Freemasonry and its Kindred Sciences.

[43] Kai Dose. “A Note on John Wesley’s Visit to Herrnhut in 1738.” Wesley and Methodist Studies. 7 (1) 2015: 117–120.

[44] Bro. W.J. Chetwode Crawley, LL.D. Senior Grand Deacon, Ireland. “The Wesleys and Irish Freemasonry.” Ars Quatuor Coronatorum (VolumeXV, 1902).

[45] Mike Runge. Deadwood’s Mount Moriah Cemetery (Arcadia Publishing, 2017), p. 126.

[46] Eric Stockdale & Randy J. Holland. Middle Temple Lawyers and the American Revolution (Thompson-West, 2007), p. 41.

[47] A.J. Lewis. Zinzendorf the Ecumenical Pioneer (London, UK: SCM Press, 1962), pp. 149-50.

[48] Paul Peucker. “Benjamin Franklin and the Moravians.” This Month in Moravian History, 7 (May 2006).

[49] Alan Sica. The Anthem Companion to Max Weber (Anthem Press, 2016), p. 84.

[50] Nicholas Hagger. The Secret Founding of America.

[51] London’s Lodge of Friendship No. 3. Gibbon’s freemasonry. Retrieved from http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/biography/gibbon_e/gibbon_e.html

[52] Pietre Stones & H. L. Haywood. “Various Grand Lodges.” The Builder (May 1924).

[53] Philip Jenkins. The Making of a Ruling Class: The Glamorgan Gentry 1640-1790 (Cambridge University Press, Aug. 22, 2002), p. 185.

[54] Paul Langford. A Polite and Commercial People, 1727-1783 (Oxford, 1989), p.85

[55] William R. Denslow. 10,000 Famous Freemasons, 4 vol., (Missouri Lodge of Research, Trenton, Missouri, 1957–61). vol. 1, p. 155.

[56] Robert E. Schofield. The Enlightenment of Joseph Priestley: A Study of his Life and Work from 1733 to 1773 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), 143–44

[57] Margaret C. Jabob. “Civil Society in an Uncivil Age: An Agenda for Freemasonry, Past and Present” Proceedings of the PSO, New Series No. 30.

[58] Tim Wallace-Murphy. The Templar legacy and the masonic inheritance within Rosslyn Chapel (Friends of Rosslyn Chapel, p. 32.

[59] James Ashley Morriso. “Before Hegemony: Adam Smith, American Independence, and the Origins of the First Era of Globalization.” International Organization. 66, 3 (July 2012), pp. 395–428.

[60] Wallace-Murphy. The Templar legacy and the masonic inheritance within Rosslyn Chapel, p. 32.

[61] John Cannon. “Petty, William, second earl of Shelburne and first marquess of Lansdowne (1737–1805),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004).

[62] Walter Isaacson. Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (Simon & Schuster, 2003), pp. 311–12.

[63] “National Historic Landmarks & National Register of Historic Places in Pennsylvania” (Searchable database). CRGIS: Cultural Resources Geographic Information System. Note: This includes unknown (n.d.). “National Register of Historic Places Inventory Nomination Form: Moravian Sun Inn.”

[64] Neil C. Olsen. Pursuing Happiness: The Organizational Culture of the Continental Congress (Nonagram Publications), p. 308.

[65] Stephan A. Schwartz. “Franklin’s Forgotten Triumph: Scientific Testing.” American Heritage (October 2004).

[66] Maev Kennedy. “This article is more than 16 years old Benjamin Franklin's house: the naked truth.” The Guardian (August 11, 2003).

[67] William R. Denslow. 10,000 Famous Freemasons (Missouri Lodge of Research, 1957–60).

[68] Julius F. Sachse. “Roster of the Freemason’s Lodge Philadelphia No. 2, of the Moderns.” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 31, No. 1 (1907), p. 19.

[69] “Knights of the Golden Circle.” Encyclopaedia Britannica (November 03, 2017); “Today in Masonic History: The Sons of Liberty.” Masonry Today (accessed December 28, 2017).

[70] Samuel Adams Drake. Old Boston Taverns and Tavern Clubs (Boston: W. A. Butterfield, 1917).

[71] Cyrus Adler & A.S.W. Rosenbach. “Levy, Aaron.” Jewish Encyclopedia.

[72] Cyrus Adler & Herbert Friedenwald. “Salomon, Haym.” Jewish Encyclopedia.

[73] Ibid.

[74] “Early American Jews.” Ambassador John L. Loeb Jr. Visitor Center. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20090106145312/http://www.loeb-tourovisitorscenter.org/jll_jews.shtml

[75] Barnett A. Elzas. The Jews of South Carolina (Philadelphia: J.P. Lippincott Company), p. 25.

[76] Olivia B. Waxman. “George Washington and the Real History Behind a Yom Kippur Legend.” Time (September 29, 2017).

[77] Donald N. Moran. “Haym Salomon –The Revolution's Indispensable Financial Genius.” Liberty Tree and Valley Compatriot Newsletter. “Sons of Liberty Chapter.” (Sons of the American Revolution, October 1999).

[78] Olivia B. Waxman. “George Washington and the Real History Behind a Yom Kippur Legend.” Time (September 29, 2017).

[79] “The Stars on the American Flag and the Great Seal.” GreatSeal.com [Retrieved 13 February 2013].

[80] Robert Allen Campbell. Our Flag: The Evolution of the Stars and Stripes (Hansebooks, 2016).

[81] Michael Howard. Secret Societies: Their Influence and Power from Antiquity to the Present Day (Inner Traditions/Bear & Company), pp. 95-96.

[82] Manly P Hall. The Secret Teachings Of All Ages.

[83] Robert Hieronimus & Laura Cortner. The United Symbolism of America: Deciphering Hidden Meanings in America's Most Familiar Art (Red Wheel/Weiser, Apr. 1, 2008).

[84] McMillan, Joseph. “The Arms of the USA: Blazon and Symbolism.”

[85] Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, D.C., Volume 2. Columbia Historical Society (Washington, D.C., 1899).

[86] Robert Hieronimus. America’s Secret Destiny (Destiny Books, 1989), pp. 136-7.

[87] William Allen. History of the United States Capitol (U.S. Government Printing Office, 2001). pp. 24, 365.

[88] Centennial Anniversary of the Laying of the Cornerstone (Capitol Centennial Committee, 1893). pp. 25–27.

[89] “Washington and the Society of the Cincinnati.” The Masonic Trowel. Retrieved from http://www.themasonictrowel.com/masonic_talk/stb/stbs/90-04.htm

[90] Michael Baigent & Richard Leigh. The Temple and the Lodge.

[91] Samuel Oppenheim. “The Jews and Masonry in the United States Before 1810.” American Jewish Historical Society, No. 19 (1910), p. 7.

[92] William L. Fox. Lodge of the Double-Headed Eagle: Two centuries of Scottish Rite Freemasonry in America's Southern Jurisdiction (University of Arkansas Press, 1997).

[93] Zimmerman. “Men of Honour and Honesty,” p. 47.

[94] Julius F. Sachse. Ancient Documents relating to the A. and A. Scottish Rite in the Archives of the Free and Accepted Masons of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: The New Era Printing Company, 1915), p. 19.

[95] Sachse. Ancient Documents, p. 21.

[96] William Pencak. Jews & Gentiles in Early America, 1654-1800 (Ann Arbor, Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 2005), p. 92.

[97] “From the East Cometh Light,” in Henry W. Rugg, History of Freemasonry in Rhode Island (Providence: E.L. Freedman & Son, State Printers, 1895), p. 44.

[98] “Rhode Island, United States.” Jewish Virtual Library. Retrieved from https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/rhode-island-jewish-history

[99] William Pencak. Jews & Gentiles in Early America: 1654–1800 (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 2005), p. 95.

[100] Faber. Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade, p. 138.

[101] Joseph Jacobs, L. Hühner & Max J. Kohler. “Newport.” Jewish Encyclopedia.

[102] Edwin Wolf & Maxwell Whiteman. The History of the Jews of Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1957), pp. 190-91.

[103] “Some Old Papers Relating to the Newport Slave Trade.” Newport Historical Society Bulletin, no. 62 July, 1927), p. 12.

[104] Henry L. Feingold. Zion in America: The Jewish Experience from Colonial Times to the Present (New York: Twayne Publishing, Inc., 1974), p. 42.

[105] 1776, June, Session of Assembly, M. M. Hayes; cited in “Jews and the American  Revolution.” American Jewish Archives, Vol XXVII, No. 2 (November, 1975).

[106] Dan Pine. “Descendant of rabbi born in 1745 to relive inauguration of George Washington.” The Jewish News (April 18, 2014).

[107] Cyrus Adler, L. Hühner, Frederick T. Haneman. “Seixas.”  Jewish Encyclopedia.

[108] Hannah Lee. “An Odyssey From Amsterdam to Philadelphia.” Philadelphia Jewish Voice (October 12, 2011).

[109] Cyrus Adler, L. Hühner & Frederick T. Haneman. “Seixas.” Jewish Encyclopedia.

[110] Samuel Oppenheim. “The Jews and Masonry in the United States Before 1810.” American Jewish Historical Quarterly, Vol 19 (1910).

[111] Cyrus Adler, A. S. W. Rosenbach, Frederick T. Haneman & Clarence I. de Sola. “Hart.” Jewish Encyclopedia.

[112] Ibid.

[113] “Early American Jews.” Ambassador John L. Loeb Jr. Visitor Center. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20090106145312/http://www.loeb-tourovisitorscenter.org/jll_jews.shtml

[114] Charles Reznikoff. “A Gallery of Jewish Colonial WorthiesSome Loyalists, Some Patriots: II.” Commentary (January 1955). Retrieved from https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/charles-reznikoff/a-gallery-of-jewish-colonial-worthiessome-loyalists-some-patriots-ii/

[115] Samuel Oppenheim. “The Jews and Masonry in the United States Before 1810.” American Jewish Historical Quarterly, Vol 19 (1910).

[116] “Early American Jews.” Ambassador John L. Loeb Jr. Visitor Center. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20090106145312/http://www.loeb-tourovisitorscenter.org/jll_jews.shtml

[117] Jacob Marcus. “Jews and the American Revolution A Bicentennial Documentary.” American Jewish Archives, 27, 2 (1975), p. 111.

[118] D. de S. Pool. Portraits Etched in Stone (1952).

[119] William Pencak. “Jews and Anti-Semitism in Early Pennsylvania” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 126, No. 3 (July, 2002).

[120] William Pencak. “Jews and Anti-Semitism in Early Pennsylvania” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 126, No. 3 (Jul., 2002), p. 372.

[121] Sachse. Ancient Documents, p. 29.

[122] Sachse. Ancient Documents, p. 22.

[123] “Minute Book for the Lodge of Grand Elect Perfect & Sublime Masons in the City of Philadelphia," in Sachse, Ancient Documents, p. 41.

[124] Charles T. McClenachan. The Book Of The Ancient And Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (Masonica, 2020), p. 20.

[125] “Minute Book for the Lodge of Grand Elect Perfect & Sublime Masons in the City of Philadelphia," in Sachse, Ancient Documents, pp. 41-161.

[126] Oppenheim. “The Jews and Masonry in the United States Before 1810.”

[127] Ibid.

[128] Ibid.

[129] Ibid.

[130] Alain de Keghel. American freemasonry: its revolutionary history and challenging future (Inner Traditions, 2015).

[131] Christopher Mcintosh. Rose Cross and the Age of Reason (SUNY Press, 2012), p. 163; Jacob Katz. Jews and Freemasons in Europe 1723-1939. Translated from the Hebrew by Leonard Oschry. (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massaschusetts, 1970).

[132] “Johann August, Freiherr von Starck (1741-1816).” The Bloomsbury Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century German Philosophers, ed. Heiner F. Klemme & Manfred Kuehn (Bloomsbury, 2010).

[133] A Historical Enquiry in Regard to the Grand Constitutions of 1786 (Freemasons. United States. Scottish Rite. Supreme Council for the Southern Jurisdiction, 1883), p. 144.

[134] Albert Pike. Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry: The Grand Constitutions and Regulations of 1762 (New York, Masonic Publishing Company), p. 164.

[135] Webster. Secret Societies and Subversive Movements.

[136] Albert Pike. Scottish Rite of Freemasonry: the Constitutions and Regulations of 1762, p. 138.

[137] Samuel Oppenheim. “The Jews and Masonry in the United States Before 1810.” American Jewish Historical Society, No. 19 (1910).

[138] Historia Judaica, vol. 13 (October, 1951), p. 160.

[139] Jeffery Kaplan. “The Chosen People in the Holy City: Three and a quarter centuries of Jewish life in Charleston.” Charleston Mercury (January 8, 2020).

[140] Barnett A. Elzas. The Jews of South Carolina (Philadelphia: J.P. Lippincott Company), p. 35.

[141] B.A. Elzas. The Jews of South Carolina (1905), index; C. Reznikoff and U.Z. Engelman. The Jews of Charleston (1950), passim; J.R. Marcus. Early American Jewry (1953), index; J.R. Rosenbloom. A Biographical Dictionary of Early American Jews (1960), pp. 28–29; Aubrey Newman. “Jews in English Freemasonry.” Transcript of a lecture delivered by Professor Aubrey Newman, Emeritus Professor of History at Leicester University, England, to the Israel Branch of the Jewish Historical Society of England in Jerusalem, Israel, on 14 April 2015.

[142] Henry L. Feingold. Zion in America: The Jewish Experience from Colonial Times to the Present (New York: Twayne Publishing, Inc., 1974), p. 42.

[143] Barnett A. Elzas. The Jews of South Carolina (Philadelphia: J.P. Lippincott Company), p. 36.

[144] Sara A. Zimmerman. “‘Men of Honour and Honesty’: Connections Between Jews and Freemasons in Early America” (March 19, 2014) CUREJ: College Undergraduate Research Electronic Journal, University of Pennsylvania. Retrieved from http://repository.upenn.edu/curej/186.

[145] Edith Queenborough. Occult Theocracy (Jazzybee Verlag, 2012).

[146] A.C.F.Jackson. Rose Croix: A History of the Ancient and Accepted Rite for England and Wales (rev. ed. 1987) (London: Lewis Masonic Publishers, 1980), pp. 66-68.

[147] Mark Stavish. Freemasonry: Rituals, Symbols & History of the Secret Society (Llewellyn Worldwide, 2007), p. 126.

[148] Margiotta. Adriano Lemmi; cited in Queenborough. Occult Theocracy.

[149] Nicholas Hagger. The Secret Founding of America. Kindle Location 3109.

[150] “The Story of Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim of Charleston, SC.” Retrieved from https://images.shulcloud.com/1974/uploads/Documents/The-Story-of-KKBE

[151] “Scottish Rite History” WebCite Scottish Rite California. Retrieved from https://www.webcitation.org/6EUOU3dHW?url=http://www.scottishritecalifornia.org/scottish_rite_history.htm

[152] Pierre Mollier (2004), "The Double-Headed Eagle: Iconographic Sources of the Masonic Symbol" (PDF), The Chain of Union (Special issue No.3): 5–15, archived (PDF) from the original on 2011-09-16, retrieved 2011-10-30

[153] “Double-headed Eagle (Eagle of Lagash).” Symbol Dictionary. Retrieved from http://symboldictionary.net/?p=2443

[154] Albert C. Mackey. “Knight of the East and West.” Encyclopedia of Freemasonry and Its Kindred Sciences; see also Baron de Tschoudy. L'Étoile Flamboyante, I. 20 (1766), pp. 24-9.

[155] Bro. Gregory H. Peters 32°. “Solve et Coagula: Alchemical Symbolism of the Double-Headed Eagle.” Pietre Stones Review of Freemasonry. Retrieved from http://www.freemasons-freemasonry.com/double-headed-eagle.html

Volume Two

1. The Elizabethan Age

2. The Great Conjunction

3. The Alchemical Wedding

4. The Rosicrucian Furore

5. The Invisible College

6. 1666

7. The Royal Society

8. America

9. Redemption Through Sin

10. Oriental Kabbalah

11. The Grand Lodge

12. The Illuminati

13. The Asiatic Brethren

14. The American Revolution

15. Haskalah

16. The Aryan Myth

17. The Carbonari

18. The American Civil War

19. God is Dead

20. Theosophy

21. Shambhala