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Antients & Moderns in South Carolina: Sir Egerton Leigh and his Legacy

Dr Richard Berman

The history of Freemasonry is part of economic and social history, and the rise of Antients Freemasonry1 in America and its shouldering aside of Moderns Freemasonry is no exception. Although the popularity of Antients Freemasonry was driven in part by the Antients’ greater social inclusivity and thus accessibility, and by the burgeoning economic success and social aspirations of the growing number of lower middling in America,2 in South Carolina it was also a function of more specific issues. The legal contretemps and later personal falling-out between Henry Laurens, one of South Carolina’s most powerful merchant traders in the 1760s and early 1770s, and Sir Egerton Leigh, a prominent British placeman in the colony and later President of the Royal Council, had profound implications for South Carolina Freemasonry and was at the same time a metaphor for Britain’s fast deteriorating relationship with its American colonies. On 31 December 1764 the South Carolina Gazette reported that around 120 Freemasons were present at that year’s St. John’s Day festival. Their number included William Bull, the colony’s lieutenant governor, and the Hon. Lord Adam Gordon, MP for Aberdeenshire and Colonel of the 66th Foot, then touring America. Three Masonic (Moderns) lodges were at this time working in Charleston: Solomon’s Lodge, where George Sheed was now master; Union Kilwinning Lodge,3 where John Deas presided; and the Masters’ Lodge, with William Gibbes [or Gibbs] in the chair. Other lodges had been established at Dorchester (1738); Winyaw (1743); Beaufort (1755); Saxe Gotha, now Columbia (1763); and at Ponpon, a settlement roughly midway between Beaufort and Charleston (1765).4 They operated under the authority of the Provincial Grand Lodge of South Carolina whose Provincial Grand Master from 1761 until 1768 was Benjamin Smith (1717-1770), a merchant and ship owner. Smith had succeeded Peter Leigh (1711-1759), the former Chief Justice to the colony, as PGM following the latter’s death from fever in 1759, and Leigh’s son, Egerton Leigh (1733-1781), had been appointed by Smith to be his Deputy. Leigh became acting PGM in 1767 on Smith’s retirement due to ill health, and in 1769 was installed formally as his permanent replacement following receipt of a warrant from the Grand Lodge of England (Moderns).

1 There is a dispute over whether ‘Antients’ Freemasonry should be written as ‘Antients’ or ‘Ancients’. Both forms of spelling were in use in the eighteenth century and ‘Antients’ has been used throughout this paper other than where the spelling differs in direct quotes. 2 Cf., in particular, Steven C, Bullock, Revolutionary Brotherhood: Freemasonry and the Transformation of the American social order, 1730-1840 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), and Ric Berman, Schism: the Battle that Forged Freemasonry (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2012). 3 South Carolina’s Union, later Union Kilwinning Lodge, No. 4, whose Scottish connections are clear from its name and membership list, was nonetheless a (largely loyalist) Moderns’ lodge. It appears as such in the letter written from Charleston to the Grand Lodge of England in 1784 setting out a definitive list of Moderns’ lodges in South Carolina then in existence. Union Kilwinning was chartered in May 1755. Among the founders were Samuel Bowman, D. Campbell, John Cooper, Robert Wells, William Michie, John Bassnet and John Stewart. Other Scottish surnames on the membership roll in the 1750s included a Gordon, Rowand, Macaulay and Bailie. 4 The dates are the date of warrant, not the date when the lodge first commenced working.

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Educated at Westminster School, Egerton Leigh had lived in South Carolina since he was twenty. Although he was described as being ‘late of Lincoln’s Inn’ when his father admitted him to the South Carolina Bar six months after their arrival from England, there is no evidence that Leigh had any English legal qualifications. Regardless, Leigh nonetheless built a successful legal practice in the colony. A key building block was his appointment by his father as Clerk of the Court of Common Pleas. The position lay at the centre of Charleston’s legal community and Leigh used the opportunity to establish a network of contacts and professional relationships. A second factor lay in his initiation of a business relationship with Henry Laurens (1724-1792), one of South Carolina’s most successful merchants, traders and planters. Laurens gave Leigh a slice of his firm’s litigation business and on the back of this endorsement Leigh obtained instructions from other successful Southern plantocrats, including Peter Manigault (1731-1773), the only son of the uber-wealthy Huguenot banker and merchant Gabriel Manigault, and Miles Brewton (1731-1775), a merchant and planter who was connected through marriage to several of the colonies more important families. According to his own account, Leigh’s legal practice in the mid-1760s generated earnings of up to £1,200 annually, a figure that might be equivalent to some £600,000 today.5 Leigh’s relationship with Laurens was by then so robust that when he visited England in 1764 he did so knowing that Laurens had written to his correspondents in Britain with an assurance that Leigh was trustworthy and a man for whom Laurens had the highest regard; Laurens even offered surety against his own credit for any loans that Leigh might require.6 Leigh’s commercial relationship with Laurens was cemented by his marriage in 1756 to Martha Bremar, the daughter of Francis Bremar (1720-760), a planter married to Laurens’ sister. Martha was thus Laurens’ niece. But in addition, Leigh and Laurens were also linked via their mutual Freemasonry. Both became Provincial Grand Stewards, appointed in December 1754 by Peter Leigh as part of his first slate of grand officers. Laurens was at the time the Treasurer of Solomon’s Lodge, Charleston’s principal Masonic lodge. Leigh was appointed Junior Warden the same year. Leigh’s legal practice granted gave him status and income, and he used his growing wealth to build a stake in the colony. He acquired a number of landholdings, including ‘The Retreat’, a 500 acre plantation on the Santee River, and a second estate on the Cooper River, as well as property in Charleston and several land grants elsewhere.7 London also looked favourably upon Leigh, appointing him the colony’s Surveyor General in 1755, a pivotal role which he held for two decades and that entrusted him with responsibility for surveying and, more influentially, allocating land within the colony. Leigh discharged the role personally until 1758, when he appointed deputies, albeit that he nonetheless retained many of the perquisites of office.

5 H. Hale Bellot, ‘The Leighs in South Carolina’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, 6 (1956), 161-87, esp. 175. 6 Robert M. Calhoon and Robert M. Weir, ‘The Scandalous History of Sir Egerton Leigh’, William & Mary Quarterly, 3rd series (26.1 (1969), 47-74, esp. 51. 7 Egerton Leigh was also awarded a land grant of 1,000 acres in Georgia south of the Altamaha River and 900 acres in the South Carolina backcountry. It is notable that despite his seat on the Council and position as surveyor general, a combination which gave him access to the best land in the province, there is no evidence that Leigh acted exploitatively and his landholdings were a fraction of the size of many of his peers.

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Leigh’s political career in the colony was launched shortly before his marriage to Martha with his election to the Assembly in 1755 to represent St. Peter’s Parish. Leigh was re-elected in 1757, notwithstanding sailing for London to study at the Inner Temple where he would remain for two years. Although Leigh’s fees are recorded in the Inner Temple’s account books as having been paid, there is no mention of him being admitted to the bar.8 In 1759, prior to Leigh’s return to Charleston, two vacancies had arisen on South Carolina’s Royal Council. William Wragg (1714-1777), a prominent merchant, had been suspended then dismissed;9 and Charles Pinckney (c.1699-1758), a leading lawyer, had died. Governor Lyttelton proposed that the vacancies be filled by Egerton Leigh and George Austin (d.1774), Laurens’ business partner. The recommendations were accepted by the Privy Council and it was ‘Ordered, that the draught [sic] of a Representation to His Majesty be prepared, proposing that George Austin and Egerton Leigh, Esquires, may be appointed of the Council of South Carolina in the room of William Wragg, Esq. removed, and Charles Pinckney, Esq. deceased’.10 Since it was not permissible to sit simultaneously in the Commons House of Assembly and on the Council, Leigh resigned as an assemblyman. It was clear that London considered him loyal and reliable, and Leigh was rewarded in subsequent years with a string of legal offices. In 1761, he was appointed sole judge of the Court of Vice-Admiralty and, after a short visit to London in 1764 and intensive lobbying, was selected to be South Carolina’s Attorney General in June 1765. This gave rise to an obvious conflict of interest, but it was not the only one. As a member of the Council, Leigh was also a Justice of the Quorum and in the Court of Chancery. The first blow to Leigh’s standing in South Carolina came in 1765 with his (loyalist) response to the imposition of the Stamp Act. Taxes and restrictions on America’s foreign trade had been broadly accepted by most colonists as a necessary corollary of being a part of Britain’s empire and had many offsetting benefits, principally military and naval protection. But the stamp tax was seen differently. Although the British parliament may not have doubted its right to levy taxes, the thirteen colonies raised what would become a defining constitutional issue: whether it was legitimate for taxes to be levied without due representation. The issue has been positioned as a failure by Britain to observe one of the core tenets of democracy but this is an oversimplification. London had invited America’s colonists to propose alternative means of raising monies to finance the standing army in the thirteen colonies prior to the passage of the act. But the schemes proposed by the colonists’ London agents were limited and, based on past experience, were considered likely to fail. Indeed, requisitions from America’s assemblies had in the past always fallen short of producing adequate funds to cover the cost of the colonists’ defence. George Grenville, the British prime minister, saw no alternative to the Stamp Act. And with the exception of a vocal minority led by Colonel Isaac

8 R.A. Roberts (ed.), A Calendar of Inner Temple Records (London, 1936), vol. 5, p. 88; part of F.A. Inderwick and R.A. Roberts, A Calendar of Inner Temple Records, 1506-1800 (London: Inner Temple, 1896-1937). 9 William Wragg was a loyalist and firm supporter of the Crown’s authority in South Carolina. His dismissal was part of and added to the incremental transfer of political power to the Commons from the Council. The comments from Governor William Henry Lyttleton are in W. Stitt Robinson, James Glen: From Scottish Provost to Royal Governor of South Carolina (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996), p. 113. 10 K.H. Ledward (ed), Journals of the Board of Trade and Plantations, January 1759-December 1763, (London: IHR, 1935), vol. 11, 1 June 1759.

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Barré, the British legislature was near unanimous in its agreement.11 The Stamp Act passed by 205 votes to 49 in the House of Commons and without opposition in the House of Lords. According to the arguments advanced by Charles Townshend, the Stamp Act should have been regarded as fair and reasonable. America’s colonists were ‘children planted by our care, nourished up by our indulgence until they are grown to a degree of strength and opulence, and protected by our arms [who] grudge to contribute their mite to relieve us from heavy weight of the burden which we lie under’.12 Barré set out an alternative view; one that was shared by the opponents of the act, most especially America’s Sons of Liberty:

... planted by your care? No! Your oppression planted them in America. They fled from your tyranny to a then uncultivated and unhospitable [sic] country where they exposed themselves to almost all the hardships to which human nature is liable, and among others to the cruelties of a savage foe, the most subtle, and I take upon me to say, the most formidable of any people upon the face of God’s earth … nourished by your indulgence? They grew by your neglect of them. As soon as you began to care about them, that care was exercised in sending persons to rule over them, in one department and another, who were perhaps the deputies of deputies to some member of this house, sent to spy out their liberty, to misrepresent their actions and to prey upon them; men whose behaviour on many occasions has caused the blood of those sons of liberty to recoil within them … protected by your arms? They have nobly taken up arms in your defence, have exerted a valour amidst their constant and laborious industry for the defence of a country whose frontier while drenched in blood, its interior parts have yielded all its little savings to your emolument … The people, I believe, are as truly loyal as any subjects the king has, but a people jealous of their liberties and who will vindicate them if ever they should be violated; but the subject is too delicate and I will say no more.13

Opposition to the Stamp Act in South Carolina was widespread, as was the vilification of those who supported it. Leigh was the only member of the South Carolina bar who opposed opening the colony’s courts without formal approval and, as attorney general and an officer of the Crown, attracted even more opprobrium for refusing to prosecute cases or enter judgments without stamped authority. Leigh’s inflexibility led to many of his clients removing their business from his law practice and to Leigh being shunned by his colleagues at the bar. Moreover South Carolina’s Commons House of Assembly, outraged at Leigh’s behaviour over the Stamp Act and at his unaddressed conflicts of interest, resolved that he should either resign as attorney general or leave his positions on the bench. The sentiment against Leigh

11 Isaac Barré was an Irish Huguenot who had served in North America and sat in the 2nd earl of Shelburne’s interest. 12 Jared Ingersoll to Governor Thomas Fitch, 11 February 1765, in Edmund S. Morgan (ed.), Prologue To Revolution: Sources And Documents On The Stamp Act Crisis, 1764-1766 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1959), pp. 24-43, esp. 29-35. 13 Ibid.

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was so great that South Carolina’s parliamentary agent was instructed to raise the matter with the administration in London. But notwithstanding ‘the incompatibility of some of the offices held by Mr Leigh’ there was no redress.14 Lord Shelburne, the Secretary of State, may have sympathised privately but his formal response made clear that there would be no relief: the offices held by Leigh were ‘by or under patents from the Crown and [there had been] no representation of misbehaviour or omission of duty’.15 Unfortunately for Leigh, Shelburne’s unwillingness to act reinforced the general view in Charleston that Leigh was simply one of London’s ‘downright placeman’.16 Ironically, Leigh’s support for the Stamp Act was for nothing. Britain repealed it in March 1766 a mere six months after it was implemented; stamp tax revenues were non-existent and domestic opposition in Britain from merchants unable to import from or export to the American colonies had become irresistible. The Act’s abolition was celebrated in Charleston with a ball and gala dinner - ‘a very elegant entertainment’ - sponsored by the colony’s acting governor, William Bull.17 With his earnings from his law practice diminished, Leigh believed that he now had no alternative but to rely on his Crown appointments to maintain his income, regardless of the conflicts of interest posed and the advice he had received from Laurens that he needed to address the issue.18 But what had previously been only a theoretical problem became a practical concern when two of Laurens’ vessels were seized by Charleston’s Customs Officers and the resulting disputes brought before Leigh in the Court of Vice-Admiralty. The details are too involved to set out in this paper, but with Leigh acting as legal counsel to the Customs Office, as the judge trying the cases, and subsequently as the prosecuting attorney general in a derivative case, it is not difficult to see how questions could be raised. Having tried the cases and attempted to balance his conflicting responsibilities with the incompatible considerations he owed Laurens and the Customs Office, Leigh handed down judgments that left everyone unhappy. Charleston’s Customs Officers raised a formal complaint to the Treasury in London who responded by instructing Leigh to resign his position as attorney general or his place on the Vice Admiralty bench. (Leigh chose to retain the more lucrative of the two offices and resigned from the bench.) And Laurens, who had been found guilty in one case and innocent in a second, but who had had two rulings for costs made against him, reacted by instigating a pamphlet war with Leigh.19

This last act of the judge's proceedings, added to his Honour's total neglect of the Deputy Collector's untrue and evasive deposition, must increase the abhorrence of American subjects against the establishment and jurisdiction of courts of Vice-Admiralty in their present extent ... What claimant and owner, conscious of their own

14 South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine, 28 (1927), 228 15 South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine, 29 (1928), 45. 16 Ibid., 216. 17 Daniel J. McDonough, Christopher Gadsden and Henry Laurens: The Parallel Lives of Two American Patriots (Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press, 2000), pp. 69, 76-77. 18 Calhoon & Weir, ‘The Scandalous History of Sir Egerton Leigh’, esp. 52. 19 In 1773, five years later, a prohibition on new land grants in the American colonies served to bring to an end Leigh’s income from his position as surveyor-general.

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integrity, acquitted from all suspicion of fraud, ‘trepaned’ and ‘surprised’ by the custom house officers, thus cunningly dismissed with compliments upon their conduct and characters, with partial restitution, exorbitant fees and with effectual bar against recovering satisfaction for damages, could refrain from expressing the highest dissatisfaction at the proceedings and final sentence of a double minded judge thus greedily running after the error of Balaam; or could forbear complaining as we complain against judge and officers all, who, jugglers like, trick us and trick one another!20

Leigh defended himself in print against Laurens’ accusations of incompetence and bias, and responded in March 1769 by publishing The Man Unmasked, a rejoinder to Laurens’ Extracts from the Proceedings in the Court of Vide Admiralty.21 Leigh accused Laurens of a ‘specious show of an exalted kind of virtue’ and of using ‘sly dollars’. He charged Laurens with having no regard for law, or for friendship, alliances or ties of blood, and accused him of seeking ‘to gain a popular name’ and of being ‘a man in the meridian of his days’.22 Leigh’s self-justification and insults inflamed the quarrel between the men, especially his accusation that Laurens was a hypocrite. Leigh had made the point that although Laurens had now ceased to be active in the slave trade, he had taken this decision only after he had accumulated substantial wealth - and that he was prepared to retain that wealth, notwithstanding its ‘immoral’ origins. Laurens’ defence against Leigh’s charges appeared in a second, extended, edition of Extracts in which he posed the rhetorical question ‘what benefit is it to the public to know the motives and principles from which I quitted the African branch of commerce’. Regardless, Laurens rejected the charge that morality was involved and gave his rationale for departing the slave trade as purely economic. There the matter rested. However, Leigh’s difficulties were not over and two years later he chose to fold his private chancery practice. In doing so, he may simply have pre-empted having his hand forced over the conflicted offices he still retained, those of judge, attorney general and surveyor general. But he may also have appreciated that his days of operating a private legal practice in Charleston were over. Shorn of Laurens’ business and friendship and on poor terms with other merchants and planters, Leigh had become isolated with far fewer clients now willing to trust him with their legal affairs. Indeed, Leigh’s much diminished standing in the colony was the key factor in his decision to sail for London with his wife and family in June 177123 to lobby for an honour, preferably a peerage, arguing that only this would retrieve his and the Crown’s standing in the colony. In his words, an appropriate honour would ‘re-introduce him into the province with more weight as to himself, but in an especial manner in his public stations’.24

20 Henry Laurens, Extracts from the Proceedings of the Court of Vice-Admiralty in Charlestown, S.C. ... and some general observations on American Customs House officers and courts of Vice Admiralty (Philadelphia, PA: published privately, 1769). 21 Egerton Leigh, The Man Unmasked (Charleston, SC: published privately, 1769). 22 Ibid. 23 General Evening Post, 30 May – 1 June 1771. 24 Egerton Leigh to Lord Rochford, 29 July 1772; and to Sir Stanier Porten, 7 August 1772: NA, SP Domestic, 37/9.

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Leigh was not received warmly in London and failed to make progress. Nonetheless, a few weeks before the date set for his departure, Leigh made a final plea to Sir Stanier Porten,25 the under-secretary of state, in which he reiterated his argument that the grant of a suitable title would assist in raising his and the Crown’s prestige in the colony.26 The government relented and in June leaked the prospect to the press: ‘we hear that the Hon. Egerton Leigh Esq., his Majesty’s Attorney General etc. of South Carolina will shortly be created a baronet in this kingdom’.27 The honour was granted in September and by the time Leigh returned to Charleston at the end of October his baronetcy had been announced formally. Unfortunately, any possible fillip to Leigh’s status by his receipt of a knighthood would be undermined by a subsequent sex scandal. While in London Leigh had slept with his ward, his wife’s younger sister and another of Laurens’ nieces. The act, her pregnancy, the subsequent death of the child, his public disavowal of responsibility, and his delayed confession a year later, would decimate Leigh’s reputation in Charleston Society and destroy any scintilla of his relationship with Laurens. Laurens’ association with Leigh and with South Carolina’s Provincial Grand Lodge broke down irretrievably in the wake of Leigh’s adultery and its aftermath. Whether Leigh had seduced Mary Bremar or vice versa is irrelevant; their liaison in London in 1771 resulted in her pregnancy and in an attempt to disguise the affair it was arranged that Mary would return separately from London to Charleston. A few months later and shortly before her due date, Leigh placed Mary on a vessel sailing for England, hoping that she would give birth at sea. In the event, her labour began shortly into the voyage and the ship turned back. When Mary attempted to disembark, Leigh initially prevented it. Perhaps as a consequence, the child died within a week of birth. Laurens deemed the death murder and suspected that Leigh had hoped or intended that both mother and child would die on the voyage to England. Although Leigh publicly denied complicity for almost a year, and Mary also changed her story, Leigh finally confessed and attempted to apologise.28 Laurens remained furious and rejected Leigh’s offer of a financial settlement as a gratuitous insult.

I have now received advices from my brother informing me that notwithstanding Mr Leigh had owned himself guilty of the horrible fact charged upon him by Miss Bremar in several letters to his mother and sister and desired them to make up the affair with me upon the best terms they could, of which I received a full account from Miss Leigh in the presence of a third person. Notwithstanding the conviction of himself which appears in a letter which he wrote to me dated in May last, in short, notwithstanding all the proofs that can be possibly given in a case of this nature and the belief and persuasion of everybody in Carolina of his guilt in consequence of which he is abandoned and detested by everybody, yet he is wicked and hardened enough to deny the truth on that side of the water under the most solemn assertions. My

25 W.P. Courtney, ‘Porten, Sir Stanier (bap. 1716, d. 1789)’, rev. Ian K. R. Archer, ODNB (Oxford: OUP, 2004) accessed 7 January 2015. 26 National Archives, State Papers Domestic 37/9, Leigh to Lord Rochford, 29 July 1772; to Sir Stanier Porten, 7 August 1772. 27 Middlesex Journal or Chronicle of Liberty, 9 – 11 June 1772. 28 Calhoon & Weir, ‘The Scandalous History of Sir Egerton Leigh’.

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brother writes that Mr Leigh cannot remain in the country where he is universally detested, that he believes he would leave it instantly but dread meeting me on this side, that as soon as he hears I am embarked for Carolina he will come from thence. I must confess that he has disappointed me. I thought it barely possible under so many proofs as stand against him that he might make a bold and impudent denial but I had no idea of the possibility of such wickedness and folly in any man as that of perpetrating so horrible a deed then to deny it to one man in terms which clearly convict him, own it to other persons, at the very same time and both under his hand.29

In 1772, with the matter unknown in the community at large, Leigh’s re-installation as Provincial Grand Master and the St. John’s Day feast and parade had been well-attended and celebrated in style ‘with unusual splendour’. 30 Two hundred masons, ‘the largest number that had ever appeared before the public’, paraded through Charleston from Leigh’s house where the Provincial Grand Lodge had been opened and a lavish celebratory breakfast taken. From there the procession moved to Holliday’s Tavern where Solomon’s Lodge was to be held, Leigh in a coach and others following in sedan chairs. The lodge meeting was followed by a church service at St. Philip’s and an entertainment at Pike’s New Rooms featuring an ode that Leigh had composed for the occasion. The day was capped by a grand feast with some 150 attendees.31 The position was radically different the following year. With knowledge of Leigh’s adultery and hypocrisy now commonplace, there was no meeting of Provincial Grand Lodge nor any other Masonic celebration: ‘we had neither a pompous ode [nor] procession of masons ... and we have not heard a word of masonry for many months’.32 Leigh’s disgrace and subsequent absence in England placed South Carolina’s Provincial Grand Lodge in abeyance. Although Mackey wrote that ‘there can be little doubt that the annual ... and quarterly communications ... were continued’, he was almost certainly incorrect. There is no record of any meeting of Provincial Grand Lodge from 1773 until 1776 and it is unlikely that one was held.33 Indeed, Henry Laurens writing to his son, John, in 1774 confirmed that there had been ‘no procession [and] no talk of Masonry’ in Charleston: ‘in short, the fraternity are quite ashamed of their Grand Master’.34 The Provincial Grand Lodge may not have ceased to exist, but it had ceased to meet. Leigh now embarked on a near-desperate strategy. Aware that his position in South Carolina was probably irrecoverable, Leigh attempted to bolster his loyalist credentials and political standing with London. From his vantage point as President of the Royal Council, a promotion

29 Henry Laurens to Edwards Pierce, 6 December 1773 in The Papers of Henry Laurens (Columbia, SC: USC Press, 1992), vol. 9, pp. 193-4. 30 Albert G. Mackey, History of Freemasonry in South Carolina (Columbia, SC: South Carolinian Steam Press, 1861), pp. 43-4. 31 Ibid. 32 James Laurens to Henry Laurens, 29 December 1773, in The Papers of Henry Laurens, vol. 9, pp. 211-3. The ‘ode’ refers to a loyalist poem composed by Leigh in 1770 and set to music and performed before the Provincial Grand Lodge in previous years 33 Mackey, History of Freemasonry, p. 46. 34 Henry to John Laurens, 21 February 1774 in The Papers of Henry Laurens (Columbia, SC: USC Press, 1992), vol. 9, pp. 298-305.

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obtained two years before, Leigh began an attack on the South Carolina Assembly over which of the two bodies – Council or Assembly - had the right to control tax in the colony. Leigh lambasted the Assembly by means of an address to William Bull, the acting governor, published in the Charleston press and reprinted verbatim in at least six London papers:35

We, his Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Upper House of Assembly, with an ardent desire to discharge our duty to our most gracious sovereign and to the public do beg leave to address your Honour upon the state of the Treasury which we have taken into our most serious consideration. We have made an enquiry into this truly momentous subject with that candour and temper of mind which ought to take place in all deliberations tending to promote public good. The result of our enquiries we are truly sorry to say has impressed upon us ideas of the most alarming nature no less alarming than the certain prospect that the public treasury must very shortly stop payment unless the most speedy and most crucial steps are taken to prevent so fatal an event. Although we are not immediate representatives of the people yet we are among the guardians of the public; we therefore cannot with a criminal silence see the interests and the honour of this province suffer a cruel wound by the failure of the pubic treasury, the credit of which has always been and is as yet at least equal to the credit of any in America.

Leigh’s political assault caused a furore in South Carolina and reinforced the majority view that the Royal Council - and Leigh in particular - were no more than London’s creatures and only the Commons House of Assembly could safeguard the colony’s interests. The dispute was exacerbated with the circulation in Charleston of a loyalist pamphlet: Considerations on Certain Political Transactions of the Province of South Carolina.36 Although the writer was anonymous, Leigh was identified correctly as its author.37 Copies arrived in Charleston in early 1774 only a few months after its publication in London. Although the missive had been designed to bolster Leigh’s political fortunes in London it led to pillory in Charleston.38 The patriots within South Carolinian freemasonry were not alone in rejecting Leigh. The South Carolina Society took a similarly robust stance, almost certainly as a result of Laurens’ influence. Indeed, only one South Carolina society was willing to permit Leigh to remain a

35 For example, Daily Advertiser, General Evening Post, Lloyds Evening Post, London Chronicle, London Evening Post, Middlesex Journal, 12 October 1773. 36 Egerton Leigh, Considerations on certain Political Transactions of the Province of South Carolina (London: privately published, 1774). 37 Leigh had written to his patron, Earl Gower, the Lord President of the Council, in September 1773 advising that he intended to ‘publish a pamphlet ... respecting the state of public affairs in this country.’ Leigh indicated that he intended not ‘to avow being the author & therefore beg my name may not be mentioned’. Egerton Leigh to 2nd Earl Gower, 18 September 1773, National Archives, Domestic Records of the PRO 30/29/3/3, ff. 299-300. 38 Cf., also, Arthur Lee, Answer to the Considerations on Certain Political Transactions of the Province of South Carolina (London: privately published, 1774). The publication was financed by Henry Laurens.

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member: the St. Andrew’s Society. By the mid-1770s, the society had become dominated by loyalists, who included several of its senior officers: John Stuart, its president; James Simpson, the vice-president; Alexander Hewatt; William Holliday; George Roupell and Robert Wells. (Meetings of the society were suspended during the initial revolutionary period, but when Charleston was recaptured by the British in 1780 it reconvened, opening its doors to the British officers now in the city. Sixty-four new members were admitted post-1780, all loyalists, of whom more than twenty were British officers, including Colonel Nisbett Balfour, the commander of British forces in Charleston.39) The publication of Considerations on Certain Political Transactions added to the social ostracism that Leigh faced over his adultery and incest and, unable or unwilling to withstand further pressure, he pleaded ill health and sought leave to return to London. A letter from John Laurens, then in London, detailed a chance meeting with Leigh and offers an insight into Leigh’s then state of mind.

I must tell you, what has happened between Sir Egerton Leigh and me. As I was standing in one of the Committee Rooms with a Counsellor of my Acquaintance, I discovered the baronet with his face turned towards me. A little rapid reasoning in my own mind, made me think proper to give him the usual compliment of the hat, which he did not return; pride hindered me from changing my countenance to any other than a look of contempt and indifference, though I felt that spice of mortification which I believe most people would be sensible of upon a similar occasion. After a minute or two had passed and we had advanced nearer to the scene of business, he came up to me, took off his hat and made a very decent apology for not knowing me. He thought it had been a gentleman unknown to him bowing to some other person in the crowd. In effect, the sun had shone so directly into his eyes through a neighbouring window that I suppose he could not know, then pass'd complimentary inquiries from each party about friends. I had not then received your Letter. The next day he paid me a visit and was admitted before I knew who it was. He introduced himself by saying that if I had not yet heard from you, he could tell me that you were arrived. I was much obliged to him but had received a letter soon after I parted from him yesterday. After some conversation, he said he hoped I would come and see him, that Lady Leigh particularly entreated it. I bowed and told him he was very kind, made him no promise and turned the conversation to something else. I was booted and prepared for a ride with Mr Manning, so that his stay with me was not long. At taking leave, he again pressed me to come and take a dinner with him in a friendly way and to appoint a day for that purpose begged that I would promise him; feared that I had some reason for not coming that I did not choose to express; asked me whether you would have any objection to it. Upon the whole he was so very solicitous, that I was obliged to tell him that you did not think it proper. He said he was sensible that there could not be on a sudden that cordiality on our parts but that he hoped you would permit it to come by degrees; begged me to write on the subject to you; asked me if you would take it amiss of him if he were to write you a Letter. I answered you would be glad to hear from him. He took his leave in an affectionate manner. I must confess

39 J.H. Eastbury, History of the St Andrew’s Society in Charleston, South Carolina (Charleston, SC: privately published, 1929).

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that from my knowledge of the people I would rather do them service at a distance, than be within the reach of their civilities.40

Leigh received no succour from the Laurens family. Henry Laurens’ view of Leigh remained negative and he continued to regard Leigh as ‘that wretch in Charles Town’ and looked to him ‘to own his guilt and ... do justice to the injured party’.41 Although Leigh was granted two royal audiences and engaged in sustained political lobbying, his request for an alternative office in another colony was denied. He was instead given an ultimatum that he must either return to South Carolina or resign.42 Leigh took the latter course and resigned formally from the Council in 1775. Although the temporary restoration of British rule in 1780 allowed him to return to South Carolina as a member of the military advisory council and briefly to resume his position as PGM, Leigh’s request for the return of civilian rule with himself installed as governor was ignored. Leigh died in British occupied Charleston in September 1781. His political reputation had been trashed not merely by what was viewed by many as his blind loyalism but also by his hubris and unwillingness to address the conflicts of interest to which his incompatible legal and public offices gave rise. Leigh’s social standing had declined similarly, decimated by his adultery and its denial. The hostility directed against Leigh extended to the institutions he fronted. And this was not limited to the Royal Council. With Leigh still formally Provincial Grand Master, his impoverished reputation also tarnished the Provincial Grand Lodge of South Carolina and Moderns Freemasonry in the colony. The contrast with Henry Laurens’s was one of opposites. Writing to his wife in 1777 from the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, John Adams, later the second American President, described Laurens as ‘a great acquisition – of the first rank in his state, Lt. Governor, of ample fortune, of great experience, having been twenty years in their assembly, of a clear head and a firm temper, of extensive knowledge and much travel’.43 For Adams, Laurens represented the finest America had to offer; indeed, he wished that ‘all the States would imitate this example and send their best men.’44 Adams’ respect for Laurens was undimmed two years later; a diary entry noted that Laurens’ approach and manner continued to reflect his ‘long experience in public life’, ‘amiable character for honour and probity’ and a ‘great landed fortune free from debt’.45

40 John Laurens to Henry Laurens, 15 November 1774, in ‘Letters from John Laurens to His Father, Hon. Henry Laurens, 1774-1776’, South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine, 5.4 (1904), 197-208. 41 Cf. Henry Laurens to Mary Bremar, 29 October 1773, in The Papers of Henry Laurens (Columbia, SC: USC Press, 1992), vol. 9, p. 137-8. 42 Cf. Jack P. Greene, ‘The Political Authorship of Sir Egerton Leigh’, South Carolina Historical Magazine, 75.3 (1974), 143-52. 43 John Adams to Abigail Adams, 17 August 1777. Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive. Massachusetts Historical Society, http://www.masshist.org/digitaladams, accessed 23 July 2013. 44 Ibid. 45 John Adams, Diary, 12 March – 31 July 1779. Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive.

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From the early 1750s and for more than two decades afterwards both in partnership and as a sole trader, Laurens was pre-eminent among South Carolina’s merchants. Carried by the tide of South Carolina’s booming economy and directed with considerable commercial skill, his first business venture, Austin & Laurens, grew rapidly and profitably. By the mid-1750s the trading house was the largest of the many merchant traders importing slaves into South Carolina, handling forty-five slave cargoes between 1751 and 1758, and, with the addition of a third partner, Austin’s nephew, and trading as Austin, Laurens & Appleby, landing another sixteen between 1759 and 1761. In comparison, their closest competitor, Middleton & Brailsford managed a comparatively modest thirty-seven cargoes during the same period.46 Austin retired in 1762 to settle in England. From that point until his own retirement Laurens traded on his own account and in the period to 1769 was responsible for a further seven slave shipments. In total Laurens is likely to have imported in excess of 7,500 slaves from West Africa to South Carolina, a figure that excludes the dozens of cargoes he facilitated for other merchants both before and after his retirement. Laurens’ trading firms were also prominent in the other two legs of the tri-lateral Atlantic trade: exporting Carolina’s agricultural output, principally to England; and importing wine from Europe, manufactured goods from Britain, and rum and sugar from the Caribbean. In each area Austin & Laurens, Austin, Laurens & Appleby and Henry Laurens traded as commission agents and as principals on their own account. In the decade from 1749 to 1759, Austin & Laurens was ranked in the colony’s top three importers of general merchandise with over 120 cargoes, and over the following three years, 1759 to 1762, the successor partnership, Austin, Laurens & Appleby, handled some forty-six cargoes. From 1762 through to 1770, Laurens, trading as Henry Laurens, was responsible for some thirty more.47 All three legs were vastly profitable. Wholesale factors charged a 5% commission on the import and export of general merchandise, and a 10% commission on slaves, albeit that they paid away local freight and handling charges from these fees. And perhaps as significantly, being central to the flow of sensitive market information allowed Laurens to trade opportunistically and profitably on his own account: ‘in 1759 there was a brisk trade in sugar captured by a privateer; and hardly had England seized Guadeloupe when we find [Laurens] importing thence a cargo of coffee’.48 At the peak of his career in the 1760s, Laurens stood astride a network of correspondents in Britain, Spain, Portugal and the Low Countries, and at the centre of relationships he had cultivated with producers and importers in South Carolina and Georgia, along America’s transatlantic coast from New York to Philadelphia and Boston, and across the Caribbean. Laurens described his empire as ‘as large a business as was ever done in South Carolina’, and this was less a boast than a statement of fact.49 In 1762 in a letter to Monkhouse Davison, one of his London correspondents, Laurens reflected that he had ‘settled two plantations in the country and ... [owned] two valuable and very improvable lots of land in this town, and

46 W. Robert Higgins, ‘Charles Town Merchants and Factors Dealing in the External Negro Trade 1735-1775’, South Carolina Historical Magazine, 65.4 (1964), 205-17. 47 Stuart O. Stumpf, ‘South Carolina Importers of General Merchandise, 1735-1765’, South Carolina Historical Magazine, 84.1 (1983), 1-10. 48 David Wallace, The Life of Henry Laurens (New York, NY: G.P. Putnam & Sons, 1915), p. 47. 49 Ibid., p. 55.

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besides these, which shows you that I have no intention to wander from my own country, I have reserved a sum sufficient to carry on my little plan of trade without putting me to the trouble of borrowing or the inconvenience of being in debt. I am as contented and generally as cheerful as most folk and travel on with patience through life's chequered paths endeavouring to prepare myself for submitting when I arrive at its uncertain period with a becoming resignation’.50 Politically, Laurens was elected to his first public office in 1751 - a vestryman in St. Philip’s Parish; he was subsequently appointed a churchwarden and later Charleston’s Firemaster. More commissions followed: for preventing smallpox; financing an expedition against the Cherokee; regulating harbour pilots; and constructing an Exchange, Customs House and powder magazine for the city. Laurens became an assemblyman in 1757 and sat in the Commons House of Assembly virtually continuously through to Independence. The supervision of his sons’ education led to Laurens spending time in Europe in the early 1770s; he returned to South Carolina in late 1774. In the run-up to the Declaration of Independence, Laurens was elected President of the first Provincial Congress in 1775 and appointed to the first Council of Safety, and became President of the second in 1775-6. He was subsequently elected to the first, second, third and fourth General Assemblies from 1776 to 1782, and to the sixth in 1785. Although the consequences of separation from Britain were a major concern, and Laurens was acutely aware of the threat war posed to commerce, he was committed to the revolutionary cause and fought in defence of Charleston in June 1776 while simultaneously seeking to prevent civil war between the majority patriots and minority loyalists. He represented South Carolina at the Second Continental Congress from January 1777 until December 1779, and was its President from 1 November 1777 to 9 December 1778 when the Articles of Confederation were approved and an alliance with France ratified. Asked to sail to the Netherlands in 1780 to negotiate a treaty, Laurens was captured by the Royal Navy in 1780. He was charged with high treason and imprisoned in the Tower of London for over a year from October 1780 to December 1781. Although initially refused release, bail was later arranged by Benjamin Franklin and Laurens was exchanged for Charles Cornwallis, the commander-in-chief of British forces in America. On his release from the Tower, Laurens sailed for France and joined Franklin and Adams at the Paris peace conference, arriving two days before the preliminary treaty was signed which confirmed American Independence. He returned to America in 1784 and to Charleston in 1785. The death of his son, John, a lieutenant colonel in the Continental Army, killed at the age of 27 at Combahee River in 1782, had broken him. Laurens declined to serve in South Carolina’s Assembly and refused to attend the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. He died at Mepkin, his country estate, on 8 December 1792. * * * * * In contrast to Leigh’s Moderns, South Carolina’s Antients Freemasons were perceived as – and were - deeply patriotic. Mackey’s History is vague on the date of introduction of Antients Freemasonry into South Carolina: ‘at what precise date the Athol or Ancient York Masons

50 Laurens to Monkhouse Davison, 15 October 1762 in Wallace, The Life of Henry Laurens, p. 59.

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invaded the Masonic jurisdiction of South Carolina, I am unable to say. On this subject, the deficiency of records leaves us entirely in the dark, except with such dim and uncertain light as is furnished by conjecture’.51 Nonetheless he suggests that there were at least five Antients’ lodges in the state at the conclusion at the War of Independence, of which three had been constituted by the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania and two by the Antients Grand Lodge in London. These were lodge No.s 38, 40 and 47 (Pennsylvania) and No.s 190 and 236 (London). Robert Gould’s comments regarding Freemasonry in South Carolina are brief. His History of Freemasonry52 and A Library of Freemasonry53 hold slightly less than a page of text on the subject, however, he suggests that ‘the rival system was represented by eight Lodges, warranted between 1760 and 1786 - one by the Grand Lodge of Scotland, and three and four respectively by those of Pennsylvania and England (Ancients)’. Despite his partiality against the Antients and their ‘innovations’, Mackey concedes that ‘the York Grand Lodge soon became very popular, and embraced a much larger number of the intelligent and influential citizens of the State within its fold than fell to the lot of its rival. Beginning in 1787 with five Lodges, it had in 1791, only four years after its establishment, thirty-five upon its registry’. In contrast, ‘in fifty-five years of its existence the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons had accomplished just one-third of that amount of work’. He continues, commenting that ‘it is clear that the Ancient York Masons had more enterprise and energy than their opponents ... [and] extended all over the country. In fact there were few [Moderns] lodges … outside of the city, and, therefore, the most important part of Freemasonry in South Carolina is identified with the Ancient York Grand Lodge’.54 The Antients Grand Lodge for the State of South Carolina was created at a convention in January 1787 and in March of that year elected their grand officers, after which a letter addressed to the Grand Lodges of England, Ireland and Scotland, and to those within America, was distributed:

We, the Grand Lodge of Ancient York Masons for the State of South Carolina, and the masonic jurisdiction thereunto belonging, legally and constitutionally erected and organized, and in ample form assembled; beg leave, with all due respect, and in the true spirit of brotherly love, to announce to you our formation as such ; to declare the purity of those motives which led to it; to assure you that, by this act, we mean not to dissolve, but to strengthen that union by which the ancient brethren throughout all nations are connected, and to request your countenance and correspondence. This act, brethren, is not without precedent, nor was the measure hastily or unadvisedly adopted; the truth of this assertion will appear from the facts stated in the preamble to those warrants we have granted the Lodges under our jurisdiction; a copy of which we have above prefixed, as containing a precise account of the foundation of this Grand Lodge.

51 Mackey, History, p. 61. 52 R.F. Gould, The History of Freemasonry (London: Thomas C. Jack, 1887), vol. VI, p. 457. 53 R.F. Gould et al, A Library of Freemasonry (London: John C. Yorston Publishing Co., 1906), vol. IV. 54 Ibid., pp. 69-73.

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The necessity of the measure, and the motives which actuated the brethren to proceed in this important business, will appear obvious to the masonic world from a few plain facts. The Ancient Lodges in this State were constituted under different authorities, and subject to different and very distinct jurisdictions ; consequently the funds (the first natural object of which is the relief of such distress as comes immediately under the observation of the brethren) were necessarily subject to be diffused to distant regions, and thereby divided into such inconsiderable portions, that the charity was rendered of less effect than if those funds were more compact; add to this, that under the foregoing circumstances, and without a local head, it might become at least possible for the Lodges in this State to differ in sentiment, to deviate by degrees from the strict union of Freemasonry, and to vary from that conformity to ancient landmarks, and uniformity in working, which ought ever to be held sacred among the brethren. To render the divine principle of charity more effectual, to cement harmony and brotherly love, to preserve union, conformity and uniformity among our Lodges, and to cultivate strict fellowship with all the Ancient Masonic bodies, within reach of our correspondence, were our motives for forming and establishing a Grand Lodge in this State, to ‘guide, govern and direct’ our local proceedings; and for the sincerity of those motives, we appeal to that Great Architect, who built up the human heart, and searches the inmost recesses of its fabric. We entreat you to honor us with your friendly advice and fraternal assistance in the great work of Masonry, and we pray that the Supreme Builder and Ruler of Heaven and earth may graciously continue you, Right Worshipful brethren, in his holy keeping.55

Post-war, the Antients Freemasons’ popularity in South Carolina was underpinned by the political standing and patriotic reputation of their Grand Masters and Grand Officers. William Drayton (1732-1790), a prominent patriot and the former Deputy Grand Master of East Florida, served as Grand Master from 1787 until 1789. He was followed by General Mordecai Gist (serving from 1790-1791) and Major Thomas Bowen (elected in 1792). All were war heroes. In contrast, the Moderns’ leadership rested on less certain ground. John Deas (1735-1790) succeeded the returned Egerton Leigh as the Moderns’ Provincial Grand Master in 1781 and was installed during the British occupation of Charleston. Although Deas had fought in the ranks in defence of Charleston in 1778 and in 1779 loaned South Carolina’s new state government almost £18,000, when Charleston fell to the British in 1780 he switched political allegiance. Following the war Deas was penalised and fined 12% of his estates. His brother and business partner, David Deas, was also a loyalist and in 1773 and at least until 1776, Vice President of the St. Andrews Society.56 It is reasonable to conclude that the correspondence between the Provincial Grand Lodge of South Carolina and the Grand Lodge of England (Moderns) at the beginning of 1788 was

55 Mackey, History, pp. 67-8. 56 J.H. Easterby, History of the St. Andrew’s Society of South Carolina, 1729-1929 (Charleston, SC: St. Andrew’s Society of South Carolina, 1929).

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instigated in large measure by the former’s concern over its reduced standing compared to South Carolina’s Antients Freemasons. The first letter to London was dated 4 January 1788,57 with a second sent five days later. 58 The content was the same in each case:

Petition of the Regular Constituted Lodges in the State of South Carolina ... That from divers causes the lodges in this state acknowledging the jurisdiction of the Grand Lodge of England have for a considerable time past been without a Grand Master to preside over them. That in consequence thereof on the Festival of St John the Evangelist, we being congregated in Grand Lodge unanimously made the choice of John Deas Esquire to be Grand Master of this state pro tempore and has been so since St John’s day in the year 5781 [1781]. And we have to assure you that he is a hearty & zealous Mason, and who has served in all offices, as well in private lodges, as in the Grand Lodge of this state, who reveres the Craft and by his worth and character may reflect honour on the office of Grand Master of South Carolina. May it therefore please your Worship to appoint John Deas Esquire to be Grand Master of South Carolina. And your Petitioners shall ever pray etc. etc.

That there had been no Masonic contact between Charleston and London for some years is clear. The 9 January letter asked the Grand Secretary (to whom it was addressed) to ‘insert at the top of the petition the name, titles etc. of the Grand Master of England’. And a later paragraph asked ‘for a list of names of all the lodges in Europe, Asia, Africa and America who acknowledge the jurisdiction of the Grand Lodge of England’. The rationale for the correspondence is confirmed by a paragraph asking for advice on ‘how we should govern ourselves towards [the Antients]’ and a postscript that recorded the success of Antients Freemasonry. It noted (erroneously) that whereas South Carolina’s Antients had previously operated under the Scottish Constitution, they had now ‘declared independence’ and formed their own Grand Lodge:

we are sorry to observe that ... there has been introduced into this and the Northern States a kind of Schism in the Craft by a set of Masons who style themselves ‘Free and Accepted Masons established in this State according to the Old Constitutions’.

The postscript also provided details of another Masonic competitor, a group working under the name of ‘Knights & Princes of Free Accepted Perfect and Sublime Masons within the jurisdiction of the Grand Elect ineffable and sublime Lodge of Perfection’. It ended by once

57 UGLE: GBR 1991 HC 28/E/7. 58 UGLE: GBR 1991 HC 28/E/8. Signed by Provincial Grand Officers John Troup, DPGM; Barnard Beckman, PSGW; John McCall, PJGW; John Sandford Dart, PGTr; James Ballantine, PGSec; and James Lynah, PGSwBr.

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again stressing the importance of receiving confirmation that Deas’ appointment as Grand Master had met with London’s approval. That the letters were dated and dispatched within five days of one another confirms their importance. Sending the same letter twice via different vessels was a means of ensuring delivery. Indeed John Deas despatched a third letter, dated 16 January 1788, a week later, which reconfirmed his willingness to accept the position of South Carolina’s Grand Master, if permitted by London.59 The success of the Antients in South Carolina and their forming a rival grand lodge had undermined the Moderns’ confidence and put their legitimacy and that of Deas under severe pressure. Indeed, the number of lodges affiliating to the Antients rose from five in 1787 to thirty-five only four years later, a figure that more than three times greater that the number of Moderns’ lodges in the state.60 The Moderns themselves added only one additional lodge to their stable. This was No. 12, La Candeur, established in Charleston on 24 July 1796. It affiliated with the Moderns some eighteen months later on 27 December 1798. Two years on and having received no reply, South Carolina’s Moderns sent a follow-up letter to London. Dated 8 January 1790, the letter referred to the previous correspondence, enclosed copies and once again requested a response.61 On this occasion a reply was forthcoming and the South Carolina Grand Lodge minutes record that Deas responded by writing to London on 7 June 1790 confirming receipt of the letter from the Grand Lodge of England (Moderns) and asking for guidance as to the fees required and the appropriate reporting arrangements.62 The development of post-revolutionary Freemasonry in South Carolina is discussed briefly in Bernheim’s Little-Known Documents about the Early Masonic Life of South Carolina.63 The dispute between the Antients and Moderns in the state is also covered tangentially in Mayfield’s Doctrine of Exclusive Territorial Jurisdiction.64 Bernheim notes the timelines of the five lodges that founded the Grand Lodge of the State of South Carolina, Ancient York Masons, and concludes with a discussion of the temporary union of South Carolina’s rival grand lodges in 1808 and their subsequent schism before reuniting in 1817. Unfortunately, Bernheim in common with Mackey, Gould and other Masonic historians, omits to consider causality and, in particular, the social and political divisions within American Freemasonry which in this author’s view underlie the Masonic schism in South Carolina and elsewhere. It should be remembered that almost from its inception and through to the first decade of the nineteenth century, Moderns Freemasonry in South Carolina was an integral part of the social establishment and political plantocracy that dominated the Deep South. In contrast, Antients Freemasonry was built on and reflected the social and political changes that were beginning to mould post-revolutionary American society. It was Antients Freemasonry that

59 UGLE: HC 28/E/10. 60 Mackey, History, pp. 70-1. 61 UGLE: HC 28/E/11. 62 UGLE: HC 28/E/13-14. 63 Alain Bernheim, ‘Little-Known Documents about The Early Masonic Life of South Carolina’, Heredom, 15 (2007), 129-66. 64 Grayson W. Mayfield III, ‘The Doctrine of Exclusive Territorial Jurisdiction’, Heredom, 17, (2009), 137-58.

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captured the prevailing spirit of democracy, republicanism and Enlightenment idealism, and for many adherents the Craft exerted an almost spiritual influence in promoting morality and virtue. The connection of Moderns Freemasonry with the disgraced Sir Egerton Leigh, not only the Provincial Grand Master but also President of the Royal Council, and of the opposition to Leigh with Henry Laurens, among others, a war hero, revolutionary politician par excellence and one of the best connected men in the Deep South, added to the baggage. Immediately before and after Independence, Antients Freemasonry had become almost synonymous with American revolutionary romanticism. This was epitomised in the person of George Washington, the nation’s founding father, commander-in-chief, president and Enlightenment and Antients Freemason.65 Washington visited Charleston on 2 May 1791 where he remained for a week before travelling on to Georgia. He was met by General Mordecai Gist, a former Master of the Military Lodge in the Maryland Line, No. 27 (Penn.), and the Grand Master of the Antients Grand Lodge of South Carolina,66 who gave the following address:

Sir - Induced by a respect for your public and private character, as well as the relation in which you stand with the brethren of this society, we the Grand Lodge of the State of South Carolina, Ancient York Masons, beg leave to offer our sincere congratulations on your arrival in this state. We felicitate you on the establishment and exercise of a permanent government, whose foundation was laid under your auspices by military achievements, upon which have been progressively reared the pillars of the free republic over which you preside, supported by wisdom, strength, and beauty unrivalled among the nations of the world. The fabric thus raised and committed to your superintendence, we earnestly wish may continue to produce order and harmony to succeeding ages, and be the asylum of virtue to the oppressed of all parts of the universe. When we contemplate the distresses of war, the instances of humanity displayed by the Craft afford some relief to the feeling mind; and it gives us the most pleasing sensation to recollect, that amidst the difficulties attendant on your late military stations, you still associated with, and patronized the Ancient Fraternity. Distinguished always by your virtues, more than the exalted stations in which you have moved, we exult in the opportunity you now give us of hailing you brother of our Order, and trust from your knowledge of our institution, to merit your countenance and support. With fervent zeal for your happiness, we pray that a life so dear to the bosom of this society, and to society in general, may be long, very long preserved; and when you leave the temporal symbolic lodges of this world, may you be received into the celestial lodge of light and perfection, where the Grand Master Architect of the Universe presides.67

Washington replied formally:

65 George Washington was initiated on 4 November 1752 at Fredericksburg, Virginia. 66 Gist had been initiated, passed and raised in 1775 in Baltimore Lodge, No. 16, and had co-founded No. 27 in 1780. 67 Julius F. Sachse, Washington’s Masonic Correspondence as found among the Washington Papers in the Library of Congress (Philadelphia, PA: New Era Printing, 1915), pp. 57-64.

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Gentlemen: I am much obliged by the respect which you are so good as to declare for my public and private character. I recognize with pleasure my relation to the brethren of your Society, and I accept with gratitude your congratulations on my arrival in South Carolina. Your sentiments, on the establishment and exercise of our equal government, are worthy of an association, whose principles lead to purity of morals, and are beneficial of action. The fabric of our freedom is placed on the enduring basis of public virtue, and will, I fondly hope, long continue to protect the prosperity of the architects who raised it. I shall be happy, on every occasion, to evince my regard for the Fraternity. For your prosperity individually, I offer my best wishes.68

Moderns Freemasons may have met with Washington as individuals, but institutionally the Moderns were disregarded. The position would remain substantially the same over the following decade. Nine years later in February 1800, John Drayton (1766-1822), South Carolina’s Governor and Grand Master of Antients Freemasons led the state’s Masonic mourning for Washington who had died on 14 December the prior year. South Carolina’s Moderns were absent from both the commemorative ceremony and the formal Masonic procession attended by some two hundred and fifty Antients Freemasons.69 Washington’s death was marked with the resolution ‘that the symbols of the Grand Lodge be dressed with mourning at every meeting, for the space of six months; that the Lodges under this jurisdiction be required to dress in the like manner for the same space of time, reckoning from the date of their receiving notice of this resolve’; and ‘that the mark of mourning, recommended by the Grand Officers to be worn by the brethren on their hats, for the space of thirty days, be continued for three months’.70 A week later on 22 February, the Antients conducted a formal Masonic funeral ceremony in Washington’s memory. Once again, the Moderns were excluded.

On Saturday evening, the 22 of February, 1800, Masonic Funeral Honors, in memory of the late General George Washington, who was the friend and brother of the Ancient Craft, were performed in the new Lodge Room, in Charleston, by the Friendship Lodge, No. IX, Ancient York Masons. There were present, besides the members of the said Lodge, the Right Worshipful Grand Master, Lieutenant Governor Drayton; the Right Worshipful Deputy Grand Master, Colonel John Mitchell; the rest of the Grand Officers; the Officers of the private Lodges, who hold their meetings in town; and a numerous assemblage of visiting brethren. The room was shrouded with black, strewed with tears, death's head’s etc. In the centre was a dome, supported by five columns, dressed with crape and Masonic funeral decorations, resting upon a platform elevated a number of steps from the floor - the whole suitably lighted. Under the dome was placed a coffin, with the appropriate emblems; over the dome, a gilt urn, inscribed with the name of the deceased. Many other emblems and inscriptions were displayed, in a style adapted to the occasion.

68 Ibid. 69 The event took place on 15 February 1800. 70 Mackey, History, pp. 80-3

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The ceremonies were performed in a most solemn and impressive manner, and agreeably to Ancient form. Several excellent admonitions, and a Masonic funeral service, were delivered by the Worshipful Master. A band of music assisted, and anthems, and a solemn dirge, composed for the purpose, were performed. It is not easy to express the profound respect and veneration, the deep regret for departed worth and excellence, and, at the same time, the melancholy pleasure which filled every heart, and were displayed in every countenance.71

The funeral and the events that followed were a symbol of how Antients Freemasonry had become part of the core of post-revolutionary American society and how the Moderns, post-Leigh, were increasingly disregarded. It was not difficult to understand why. With iconic members that included Washington, Warren, Revere and Lafayette, and an intellectual rubric that had given voice to concepts that included broader democracy and republicanism, it is arguable that Antients Freemasonry had become imbued with a superior ethical rubric. The Antients had pioneered accessible mutual benevolence and were a by-word for sociability and spirituality. Following Independence, to be a ‘good man and true’ could be regarded almost as a sacred cause, ranking alongside concepts of decency, integrity and equality (at least among whites). All were components of an existential post-revolutionary ideal. And with such intellectual and emotional winds in its sails, and with the Moderns still associated with Leigh and his legacy, Antients Freemasonry in South Carolina would remain in the political and Masonic ascendancy. Some historians hold that Moderns Freemasonry in South Carolina survived until 181772 and that unity with the Antients was only achieved with the creation of the Grand Lodge of Ancient Free Masons of South Carolina that year. Such a view may be false. As Mackey recorded,73 in 1809 Thomas Bacot,74 referring to the abortive union of 1808, noted that ‘the number of “Free and Accepted” being very few, compared with that of the “Ancient York” Masons, the Grand Lodge of South Carolina adopted the mode of work [in its entirety] of the latter’. Mackey continues, ‘the committee of this new Grand Lodge of South Carolina were therefore justified by the record when, in 1809, while sending a Letter to the Seceding Masons, they said that “by the abolition of Modern Lodges, there is not at present a single person of that denomination in the State”. It was true. The old Masonry derived from the Provincial Grand Lodge … was extinct. And, although from 1809 to 1817 there were two contending Grand Lodges, they were no longer the representatives of Ancient and Modern Masonry - of two parties, the “Yorks” and the “Free and Accepted” - of two disciplines, the “Dermott” and the “Anderson” - but were both Ancient York Lodges, separating only on a single point, the refusal of the seceders to take an additional test, which the others insisted on administering …’ Moderns Freemasonry in South Carolina had been dealt a fatal blow by its association with loyalism and Leigh, and by the class bias of its membership. The movement attracted few new members after the 1780s and no new lodges were warranted. Within the following two decades Moderns Freemasonry would wither in South Carolina, with the growth in

71 Ibid., pp. 83-4. 72 Cf., for example, Alain Bernheim, ‘Lodges and Grand Lodges in South Carolina, 1788-1824’, AQC, 125 (2012), 131-70. 73 Mackey, History, pp. 108-9. 74 Thomas W. Bacot was elected Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of South Carolina in 1809.

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membership numbers and the constitution of new lodges within the state restricted entirely to Antients Freemasonry.

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Endnotes