Revolutionary Brotherhood: Freemasonry and the Transformation of the American Social Order, 1730-1840. - Review - book reviews

Journal of Social History, Winter, 1998 by William R. Weisberger

By Steven C. Bullock (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Va., 1996. xviii plus 421pp. $49.95).

This encompassing and stimulating study by Steven C. Bullock reveals much about the prominent place of Freemasonry in America between 1730 and 1840. Bullock's major aims are to examine the ideological features of Masonic ritualism and to explain the institutional functions and operations of the order's grand and local lodges. He advances convincing theses concerning the ritualistic attractiveness of Enlightenment doctrines associated with deism and Newtonianism, concerning the privacy and sociability of Masonry's local lodges, and concerning the great appeal of the order to members of middle-class elites in America. Bullock well demonstrates also that Masonry was intimately involved in attempting to create an enlightened republic and a mercantile society in America between 1790 and 1825 and that as a result of the Antimasonic movement, the Craft was seriously discredited in many regions of the North between 1826 and 1840. This work is both chronologically and topically arranged and contains eleven chapters and four parts.

In the first part of the book, Bullock explains the origins and evolution of Speculative Freemasonry in Augustan England and in colonial America. Unlike most scholarly studies which deal with the rise of the modern Masonic movement, Bullock's work does devote attention to occult legacies and to operative masonry in its treatment of the formation of the Modern Grand Lodge. However, Bullock, like Margaret C. Jacob and this reviewer, accentuates the ideological and institutional connections between the Enlightenment and Modern London Masonry. The author lucidly demonstrates that the first three Masonic degrees, among other things, embodied doctrines of deism, Newtonianism, and Palladianism; he also argues that these three degrees fused the teachings of classical civilization with those of eighteenth century society and thus revealed the importance of order and harmony within Nature. There also are fine sections about the activities of the London Grand Lodge and its local lodges; Bullock shows that this grand lodge, which was established in 1717, operated according to Whiggish doctrines specified in a constitution. Local lodges were involved with tavern and club life, helped to foster genteel practices, and recruited their members from noble and middle-class elites and from the Royal Society and other cultural institutions in the city.

Under the jurisdiction of the Modern London Grand Lodge, colonial Freemasonry flourished. Bullock shows that local lodges, which were responsible to provincial grand masters, quickly emerged during the 1730s in Boston, Philadelphia, New York, and Charleston; he maintains that colonial Masons constituted a "United Party of Virtue" and that the concepts of love, honor, benevolence, gentility, and privacy explained why they wished to associate with the order. The author presents a fine occupational analysis of members of lodges in Boston and in Philadelphia; these lodges - and probably others in the colonies during the 1750s and 1760s - consisted predominantly of merchants, of some physicians, lawyers, and soldiers, and of a few artisans. Many members of these lodges occupied leadership positions in other civic institutions and consequently were boosters.

In the second part of the book, Bullock first discusses Ancient Masonry and then the Craft's role in the American Revolution. There is a detailed chapter concerning the emergence and the consolidation of Ancient Freemasonry in the colonies. Bullock shows that this system, which came in the 1750s from England to America, and which had slightly different rituals and practices from those of Modern Masonry, especially appealed to members of artisanal groups in Boston, in Philadelphia, and in other eastern colonial cities. Forcing the decline of Modern Masonry, Ancient lodges by the 1760s became firmly established in colonial settlements in both piedmont and backcountry regions. The members of lodges in these two regions perceived Ancient Masonry as being a source of cosmopolitanism and republicanism and looked to it for social activities and contacts. Ancient lodges as well assimilated into a common setting individuals of diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds and recruited to their ranks professionals, merchants, military men, and artisans. The book contains a suggestive chapter about Masonry and the American Revolution. Bullock persuasively argues that Masons who embraced the revolutionary cause were inspired by the teachings of the order concerning republicanism and honor and, in many instances, held membership in Ancient lodges. The author also presents strong cases for Ancient military lodges, which consisted of officers from George Washington's general staff, and for the unsuccessful efforts of Masonic revolutionary leaders to establish a national Masonic Grand Lodge. Bullock also comments on the ties between American Masonry and the Society of the Cincinnati. He correctly explains that while consisting of some similar military elites, Masonry and the Society of the Cincinnati greatly differed, for the Craft, which didn't have a political agenda and wasn't sharply renounced, emerged during the late 1780s as an encompassing and a respected movement.