ALS as a Massachusetts Congressman, four pages on two sheets, 7.5 x 9.5, August 22, 1831. On the eve of the 1831 National Anti-Masonic Convention, John Quincy Adams pens a candid and lengthy handwritten letter to Stephen Bates, vehemently refuting the suggestion that his father was ever a member or supporter of Masonry. In part: "The letter from my father to the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts which Mr. Sheppard has thought proper to introduce into his address, was a complementary answer to a friendly and patriotic address of the Grand lodge to him. In it he expressly states that he had never been initiated in the Order. He therefore knew nothing of their Secrets-their Oaths-nor their Penalties. Far less has their practical operation been revealed, by the murder of William Morgan-nor had the hand of the Avenger of blood been arrested for five long years-and probably forever, by the contumacy of witnesses getting justice at defiance in her own sanctuary. Nor had the trial of an accomplice in guilt marked the influence of one juror under Masonic Oaths, upon the verdict of his eleven fellows.
That Mr. Sheppard should resort to a letter from my father, a professedly uninitiated man, to liberate the Masonic Institution from the unrefuted charge of unlawful Oaths of horrible and disgusting penalties, and Secrets, the divulging of which had been punished by a murder unsurpassed in human atrocity, is to me passing strange. All that my father knew of Masonry in 1798 was that it was favourable to the support of civil authority, and this he inferred from the characters of intimate friends of his, and excellent men who had been members of the Society. The inference was surely natural; but he had never seen this civil authority in conflict with Masonry itself. To speak of the Masonic Institution as favorable to the support of civil authority at this day and in this country, would be a mockery of the common sense and sensibility of mankind. My father says he had known the love of the fine arts, the delight in hospitality, and the devotion to humanity of the Masonic Fraternity-all the qualities no doubt ten were, and yet are conspicuous in many members of the Society. They, and qualities of a yet higher order were not less conspicuous in the Orders. In the Inquisition itself, whole ministers in the very act of burning the body of the heretic to death were always activated by the tenderest and most human regard for the Salvation of his Soul.
The use of my fathers name for the purposes to which Mr. Sheppard would now apply it is an injury to his memory, which I deem it my duty as far as may be in my power to redress. You observe he says, he never had been initiated in the Masonic Order. And I have more than once heard from his own lips why he had never enjoyed that felicity. Mr. Jeremy Gridley whom he mentions as having been his intimate friend, was Grand master of the Massachusetts Lodge. He was also the Attorney General of the Crown, when in October 1758…Mr. Gridley in his own office examined the youthful assistant [John Adams] with regard to his professional acquirements; gave him advice truly paternal, and dictated by the purest virtues; and then presented him to the Court, with a declaration that he had himself examined him and could assure their Honours that his legal acquirements were very considerable…
This kindness of Mr. Gridley was never forgotten by my father. I trust it will never be forgotten by his children. From that day forth, while Mr. Gridley lived he was the intimate friend, personal and professional of my father…[who] once asked his advice whether it was worth his while to become a member of the Society. In the candour of Friendship, Mr. Gridley answered him-NO, adding that by aggregation to the Society a young man might acquire a little artificial support, but that he did not need it, and that there was nothing in the Masonic Institution worthy of his seeking to be associated with it. So said at that time, the Grand Master of the Massachusetts Masons, Jeremy Gridley; and such I have repeatedly heard my father say was the reason why he never joined the Lodge."
Adams proceeds to erroneously claim that George Washington was not a freemason: "The use of the name Washington to give an odour sanctity to the Institution as it now stands exposed to the world, is in my opinion as unwarrantable as that of my father's name. On the mortal side of human existence, there is no name for which I entertain a veneration more profound than that of Washington. But he was never called to consider the Masonic Order. In the light in which it must now be viewed if he had been, we have a pledge of what his conduct would have been far more authoritative than the mane fact of his having been a Mason can be in favor of the Brotherhood. If you wish to know what the pledge is, please to consult the recently published writings of Thomas Jefferson Vol. 1 from page 416 to 422 and especially the paragraph beginning at the middle of page 418. I would earnestly recommend the perusal and meditation of the whole passage to all virtuous and conscientious Masons, of whom I know there are great numbers. If they wish to draw precepts for their own conduct from the example and principles of Washington or from the deliberate and anxious opinions and solicitude of Jefferson, they will find in those pages lessons of duty for themselves which they might consider it as presumption to offer them in me. The application of the principles in a case not identically the same but in every essential point of argument similar, and in many respects from a weaker to a much stronger basis, I would leave to their own discretion, though first divested of its passions. It is in my opinion an unanswerable demonstration of the duty of every Mason in the United States at this day.
I never heard, and do not believe that the Rev'd Dr. Bentley ever delivered or published a Sermon censuring my father for anything he had ever said upon the subject of Masonry. The electoral vote of Massachusetts in 1801 was unanimous for my father. You are at Liberty to make what use of this Letter you please; giving notice if you publish it, that it is in answer to a Letter of enquiry received by me." Matted and framed to an overall size of 22 x 15.25; frame backing features windows for viewing other pages. In fine condition, with a few small stains to the last page.
The Anti-Masonic party, the first third-party movement in the United States, was founded in 1826 when William Morgan threatened to pen a book divulging the secrets of Freemasonry; after publicizing his intentions, he suddenly disappeared. The founders of the Anti-Masons, along with many other American citizens, masons or otherwise, believed that Morgan had been kidnapped and murdered by the Order. Support for the Anti-Masons grew rapidly, drawing much aid from rural areas in the Northeast. The movement thoroughly opposed freemasons' secrecy, rituals, and aristocratic character, believing these qualities to be in direct opposition to a republican democracy. Thousands of masons renounced their memberships during this tumultuous time, reducing the number of lodges from 507 before 1826 to only 48 by 1832 (Dictionary of American History, I:82). The present letter, written by Adams just weeks before the September 1831 National Anti-Masonic Convention, clearly reveals his backing of the Anti-Masons and his fervent desire to distance not only his father from the Order, but also one of the nation's founding fathers.
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