A Deserving Brother: George Washington and Freemasonry by Mark A. Tabbert

Abstract

Reviewed by: A Deserving Brother: George Washington and Freemasonry by Mark A. Tabbert Andrew M. Schocket A Deserving Brother: George Washington and Freemasonry. By Mark A. Tabbert. (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2022. Pp. xxviii, 271. $34.95, ISBN 978-0-8139-4721-1.) Mark A. Tabbert, the author and compiler of this volume, and longtime George Washington scholar Edward G. Lengel, who contributed its introduction, define eighteenth-century Freemasonry and George Washington’s engagement with it as much by what they were not as by what they were. In this respect, while swatting the swirling popular myths concerning its subject, A Deserving Brother: George Washington and Freemasonry falls squarely within mainstream scholarship. Freemasonry emerged from artisanal guild rites in seventeenth-century Scotland, which shaped its terminology and iconography. But by the 1800s, the organization was no longer particularly [End Page 344] Scottish, and it appealed to members of the gentry rather than to craftsmen. Freemasonry did entail a few secret rituals, and a pamphlet or two appeared during the 1700s warning of masonic conspiracy. But despite the fervid imaginings of more recent novels and movies, including the National Treasure film franchise, Freemasonry operated more as a benign, fairly passive, and loose network of men’s social clubs. Freemasonry was aligned with a vaguely non-sectarian Christianity but did not promote deism. Notwithstanding the bizarre Anti-Masonic conspiracy theories of the 1820s and 1830s, Freemasonry seems not to have taken up much mental bandwidth among Revolutionary-era Americans. Similarly, while George Washington was an early member of a masonic lodge in Fredericksburg, Virginia, he was probably not among its founders. He reached the highest of the society’s three levels—“Master Mason”—but never led a chapter (p. 4). Though he supported the establishment of masonic lodges in the Continental army, Washington did not join one, nor did he join—or, it seems, attend—the many lodges across the new nation that invited him. He was neither officially asked to head a national association of freemasons, nor did he decline such an office. Washington appeared to value his Freemasonry brotherhood, but no evidence indicates that he gave fellow masons a leg up when considering appointments or promotions. He included freemasons in the ceremonial laying of the Capitol’s cornerstone, but he did not push for masonic imagery to be included in the Great Seal of the United States and other official insignia. Echoing this analysis, Tabbert describes this handsomely published book, which includes dozens of glossy, full-color photographs of images and artifacts, as much by what it is not as by what it is. Unfolding in five chronologically arranged chapters corresponding with stages of Washington’s life and a fascinating epilogue on freemasons’ commemoration of Washington to the present, A Deserving Brother makes no explicit attempt to biographize. Instead, Tabbert aims to “present all known physical evidence” associated with Washington’s Freemasonry (p. xviii). Each chapter begins with a succinct, clear narrative covering Freemasonry and Washington’s involvement during the period under examination. With considerable authority (Tabbert has long served as the George Washington Masonic National Memorial’s director of archives and exhibits), the volume claims to include the transcribed text of every written source and the image of every artifact that has a strong provenance directly associating Washington with Freemasonry. Most of these are lightly contextualized, usually with enough explanation for readers to understand the logic of the sources, but not extending to broader analysis of their meanings for Washington, Freemasonry, or eighteenth-century Anglo-American society. A Deserving Brother is not an edited papers project along the lines of the many heavily footnoted volumes presenting the archives of prominent early Americans. That is not to say that this book should be ignored by scholars. For historians considering Washington’s life, Freemasonry, the history of voluntary associations, or the material culture of the memory of the Founders, there is much here of potential research value, surprise, and occasional delight. [End Page 345] Andrew M. Schocket Bowling Green State University Copyright © 2023 Southern Historical Association