FREEMASONRY IN THE CIVIL WAR

BY BROTHER DR. ALBERT G. MACKEY

THE BUILDER DEC 1922

As explained in the preceding article, a public Testimonial was given to
Brother Mackey, author of Mackey's Encyclopedia, Mackey's History of
Freemasonry, etc., on the night of May 20th, 1865.  Space does not permit
the reproduction of the whole or the remarkable speech delivered by him
at that time, but it is believed that many brethren will be delighted to read
that part which contains his stirring account of Masonic relief during the
soul-racking days of the Civil War.


AS A MASON, holding a not altogether obscure position in the Order, I
have, in the course of my life written and said much about its excellence
and beauty.  I know that it teaches fraternal love.  I know that it inculcates
kindness to the destitute, and sympathy for the sorrowing.  I know its
pretensions to be a science of morality and a development in one direction
of the religious sentiment.  But until this war came upon us, in all its horror
of want and suffering, of demoniac hate and inhuman passion, I did not
know how successfully theory and practice could be mingled in the
teachings of the Order and the actions of the disciples.  I did not know how
surely and steadfastly its rays of light could dispel the gloom of this dark
night of our national history.

When the first struggles of the infant rebellion began to threaten the
gigantic future of ruin and desolation, which it subsequently too
successfully achieved, all the other social, moral and religious societies of
the country preserved a deathlike silence.  No voice of warning, no voice
of entreaty, no prayer or suggestion for forbearance came from any section
of the land, already upheaving with the throes of a fratricidal conflict.  The
Church where peace on earth and good will toward men should have been
at all times, but then more especially, the constant theme, was dumb as the
grave. The dark funeral pall of war was closing around the land, and there
was none to raise its gathering clouds and let in one solitary ray of peace,
or hope, or love.

Masonry alone, mindful of its divine mission on earth, spoke out with
persuasive tongue of exhortation, that men and brethren should abstain
from this cruel conflict.  That it thus spoke is a noble incident of its history. 
And although its voice was then unheeded, none shall henceforth, forever,
rob it of the glory of the attempt.

Scarcely sixty days had elapsed after the first shot had been fired at Fort
Sumpter, when, from the National Capitol, the true-hearted Grand Master
of the Templars of the United States issued a memorable address to the
knights of his command, who were scattered over both sections of our
discordant country, in which he "implored each one, after humbly seeking
strength and aid from on High, to exert all means at his command to avert
the dread calamity and prevent the shedding of fraternal blood."

Not a month had passed ere the officers of the Grand Lodge of Tenessee
made a similar invocation for peace; and in the tones of entreaty that ought
to have been heard, "as Masons, as members of a common brotherhood,
as brethren bound together by fraternal ties not to be broken save by the
hand of death," they appealed for a cessation of the unnatural strife.

And a few weeks later, the Grand Masters of Kentucky, of Ohio, and of
Indiana, united in a similar work of attempted reconciliation; and crying out
from the very depths of their hearts, "Is there no balm for the bleeding
wounds of our nation? Is there no hand to hold out the olive branch? No
saviour to still the troubled waters?" - they concluded their earnest appeal
by inviting a Masonic convention, which should recommend some plan to
heal the wounds of the country.  Had the acerbity of political strife, and the
cunning of political corruption which were then overbearing the deluded
people with their pressure, permitted the holding of such a convention, who
can tell what blessed results might have been brought forth from the
communion of men who had been taught the duty of mutual kindness and
mutual forbearance at the same sacred altar and in the same mystic
language?

And then came with like counsels the gentle voice of Cyril Pearl from his
far-off home on the very borders of our land.  He lived to see the
culmination of the war which he deprecated.  Before its decline he was
called from his earthly labours of love.  Masonry can illy spare such
noble-hearted men.

And when at last the clouds of war had not only gathered all over the land,
but had burst forth in a storm of carnage; when there was no more hope
of peace until the discordant passions of men should be diluted with the
flow of blood, the Grand Master of South Carolina, whose heart, strongly
beating with Union sympathies, has long since been quelled in death,
addressed an encyclical letter to his brethren, in which he charged them in
the name of our Supreme and Universal Master, "to suffer not the disputes
and broils of men to impair the harmony which has existed and will exist
throughout the fraternity." "Let us not," he said, in his own emphatic
language, "let us not hear among us that there is war; that strife and
dissension prevail.  As Masons, it concerns us not."

And I rejoice in my heart that these teachings were not unheeded.  If there
was war without, there was always peace within our lodges.

Will you bear with me while I say of my native jurisdiction, where I think I
have some Masonic influence, that in South Carolina, reproached as I fear
she justly is, as birthplace, the benignant principles of Freemasonry were
never for a moment forgotten.  In its capital city, the only place, I fear, on
the whole continent where the same deed of love was enacted, prisoners
of war, who were Masons, were relieved on their parole by the officer of
their guard, himself a Mason, and carried from the prison to the lodge
room, to relieve the weariness of their captivity by witnessing and
participating in the secret services of the Order.

And I can solemnly aver that I never approached a Mason or lodge in
Charleston, with a petition for the relief of a destitute, suffering prisoner of
war, without receiving the kindest response and the most liberal donation.

Throughout the length and breadth of our land, at the North and the South,
the East, and the West, wherever there was the sin of strife, there, too, was
the atoning peace of Masonry.  It went into the prison, and gave comfort
to the captive.  It went into the hospital, and gave balm to the wounded. 
It went into the battlefield, and gave rescue of life to the conquered.

Let none henceforth speak of its unknown mysteries, or contempt for its
pretended merits.  Let its adversaries be silent before the magnitude of its
achievements; and when the history of this unnatural war is written, while
all honour is bestowed upon the hero and the patriot, let it not be forgotten,
but let it rather be inscribed in characters of living light, that when war was
beginning to whet its beak - while other associations were indifferent and
dumb - while the churches themselves gave no sign of Christian life,
Masonry done sought to avert the impending evil; and when the full tide of
conflict had rolled in upon our shores, and blood was soaked into the
ground, Masonry again came forth, a ministering angel, to clothe in some
measure the stain of our nation's fratricidal contest with a ray of cheering
light, and to give to the black cloud of war a silver lining.

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