Masons on Both Sides of Civil War
Fraternal Bond Transcended Enmity Between Blue and Gray
Jun 3, 2009
Even today, Masonry tends to lighten the scars from 145 years ago. the A 21st century visitor to Alabama was greeted at the state line by an African-American who told him he carried an American flag across the historic Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma during the historic voting-rights march in 1965. He said he kept a Confederate Battle Flag in his home. That flag, he said, symbolized Masonry as much as it did anything, and he was a Mason.
Any Connection Is Accidental
If there is a connection between Masonry and the Confederate flag, it’s accidental, said Jay Higgenbotham, archivist for the city of Mobile, Ala., whose great-grandfather was a close friend of Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard. It was Beauregard who commissioned the design of the Battle Flag.
Wayne Sirmon of Mobile, who has been active in public relations and education for the Masons, said there was no relationship between the flag and the Masons, but there was a rich Masonic strain running through the Civil War.
Masonic Ring Recovers Mules
Wayne Flynt, distinguished historian at Auburn University, recalled the story of Horace King, an Alabama mulatto famous as a designer of bridges and fortifications for the Confederacy. Once he was captured by Union forces, who relieved him of his mules. King showed the Yankees his Masonic ring, and they turned him loose and gave him back his mules.
Sirmon said a number of cases have been recorded in which Masons on one side of the war extended kindnesses to those on the other side.
Fraternizing at Vicksburg
Two days after Vicksburg fell, Masons on both sides got together and held a meeting, he said. Confederate lodge members even assisted in the burial of the captain of one of the Union vessels used to capture the strategic town.
Dying Comfort at Gettysburg
A Confederate general who died in Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg asked about a fellow Mason on the Union side. The Mason, an aide to a Union general, gave him dying comfort.
Rings Spare the Torch
Sirmon and Hardy Jackson, head of the History Department at Jacksonville State University in Alabama, said stories are plentiful about Southern plantation owners displaying Masonic rings or Aprons to marauding Yankee troops, who then obligingly left their plantations unharmed.
Jackson said he knows of no documents proving that Sherman’s men spared the torch when confronted with Masonic symbols, but that you can find a number of plantation houses still standing where one would expect to find charred ruins.
A Mason Commanded the Hunley
When Lt. George Dixon, commander of the CSS Hunley, boarded the little submarine on Feb. 17, 1864, he carried with him a badge from Mobile (Ala.) Lodge 40, A&FM. The Hunley sank the USS Housatonic that night, becoming the first submarine to sink an enemy vessel, but the badge went to the bottom of Charleston Harbor with its owner. They stayed there for 136 years. The Hunley was lifted off the bottom in August 2000, and three years later the bones of Dixon and his crew were buried in a Charleston cemetery. Dixon was buried with Masonic rites, provided by modern-day members of his lodge.
