The Madison / Mercer / Bates Letters

Appearing below are transcriptions of two letters. The first is from John Francis Mercer to James Madison written in February, 1795. The second is from James Madison to Stephen Bates written January 24, 1831. Full copies of each letter appear below the transcriptions.

Source: National Archives

Transcription Assistance By: Carolyn Harrison and Lloyd Lyon

From John Francis Mercer to James Madison:

Marlbrough, Feby. 11th. 1795.

Dear Sir

Mr. John Fenton Mercer the bearer of this is the eldest Son of my late Brother. By a clause in his fathers Will his Estate cannot be divided for three years to come, & that time he proposes to pass in some of the Armies of france probably the Northern Army. I know no situation more improving for a young Man than the family of an old experienc’d General Officer, & from my knowledge of this young Gentleman’s talents & disposition I have great expectation of the benefits he would derive from such an opportunity. He only wants prudence to make a most valuable man & that can only come from experience. Your forwarding him in this view if in your power will be an additional obligation to many which I acknowledge.

I have had no opportunity of congratulating you before on your becoming a free mason — a very ancient & honorable fraternity. I am sure you are now much wiser & I do not doubt you are much happier altho’ you were very wise & happy before, at least in my opinion. I hold a lodge on your road pray let me take you some time by the hand in it & let Mrs. Mercer welcome, the fair prophetess who has converted you to the true faith. A Man who has got his head somewhat clear of a large load of leaden politics — feels of course a little light headed to that you must attribute the levity of this style which is only intended to assure you of my respect & friendship for you & yours.

John F Mercer

From James Madison to Stephen Bates Written by J.C. Payne:

Bates Stephen 24th Jany, '31

Dear Sir

I received long ago your interesting favor(?) on the 31st of Oct with a pamphlet referred to, and I owe an apology for not sooner acknowledging it.  I hope it will be a satisfactory one that the state of my health crippled by a severe rheumatism, restricted my attention to which seemed to have immediate claims upon it, and in that light I did not view the subject of your communication, ignorant as I was of the true character of Masonry and little informed as I was of the grounds on which its extermination was contended for, and incapable as I was and am, in my situation of investigating  the controversy.  I never was a mason, and no one perhaps could be more a stranger to the principles, rites and fruits of the institution I had never regarded it as dangerous or notorious (noxious?); nor on the other hand as deriving importance from any thing publicly known of it. From the number and character of those who now support the charges against Masonry I cannot doubt that it is at least susceptible of abuse outweighing any advantage promised by its patrons.  With this apology and explanation I tender you Sir my respectful & cordial salutations.
James Madison

The Letter From Mercer to Madison:

The Letter To Bates from Madison, Written by J.C. Payne:

The Pipe Organ

When Adolph Hitler came to power in Germany he was determined to squash any people or groups he perceived as a threat. Among those groups were the Freemasons, who were among the first to feel the impact of his ruthlessness.  In 1935, there were 80,000 members of the Fraternity in Germany, with many majestic lodges throughout the country.

The temple in Frankfurt was one of the premiere Masonic halls there.  The Lodge hall was on the top floor. It was beautifully decorated with the pride of the Lodge, an elaborate pipe organ standing in the southwest corner.  The dazzling instrument supplied the music and added to the majesty of every Masonic occasion.

When Hitler dissolved the Masonic Lodges, his thugs moved in and gutted the buildings, taking records, books, furniture and paraphernalia, either destroying what they had taken or selling it.  In the wake of this, the Brethren in Frankfurt learned their great pipe organ had been dismantled and taken away. The Brothers attempted to find what had happened to the instrument, but their requests were only met with scorn. The great organ was lost and its music, along with the Frankfurt Lodge itself, had been silenced.

A decade passed. Finally the war was over, Hitler defeated and Lodges in Germany and, for that matter, all over Europe were able to take up labors again.  One of the first orders of business in Frankfurt was to attempt to locate and reclaim the magnificent pipe organ. Brother Karl Nuckell, organist and Grand Secretary led a group of Brothers in the search.  They appealed to the company that built and maintained the organ, feeling it would have been employed to maintain the instrument wherever it had been taken. The company refused to cooperate until Brother Nuckell threatened to sue.  With that, the company's management told him they had installed the organ in a small Catholic Church in Wiesbaden.

Nuckell and his Brothers traveled to Wiesbaden where they found their precious instrument.  The head priest there refused even to discuss the possibility of returning it.  The Brothers then filed a claim with the government which, conducted an inquiry.

Karl Nuckell at the Frankfurt pipe organ

The priest claimed he was the rightful owner of the pipe organ, having legally purchased it from the government in power at the time. It came out, however, that the Nazis had sold the organ to the church for a fraction of its value. With that, the inquiry ruled the instrument had been illegally seized and returned it to its rightful owners, the Lodge.

Once the organ was returned and installed, the Brothers gathered to hear its music fill the Lodge hall once again. Brother Nuckell selected a piece he thought appropriate for the occasion and which would emphasize the grandeur of the priceless instrument.  As the Brothers waited with anticipation, Brother Nuckell sat down and struck up the booming notes of A Mighty Fortress Is Our God. The great pipe organ was back home.

Three Encounters of the Close Kind

My seemingly never-ending quest into Masonic research has taken a strange turn lately. I blame Google; promising links gone bad. We all know there is some off-the-wall stuff out there about Freemasons, but lately I just seem to be hitting an abundance of space/alien/Masonic connections. It's not always a direct link, but I've found mysteries with multiple theories where the author spirals into a shotgun approach that ends up with, "If you can't blame the Freemasons, blame it on aliens." The treasure buried on Oak Island is a perfect example: "If the Freemasons didn't put it there, ET did." Then there is my personal favorite — Freemasons get mystic powers from the hexagon on Saturn. Really, I wish these creative conspiracy theorists were right. I could use a few mystic powers.

In our Masonic Lodges we are not to discuss politics or religion. I think we should add UFO discussions to that. I have learned differences in opinion about the nature of UFOs can lead to big trouble between two people who are otherwise friends. Suffice it to say, I'm a skeptic. That's all you get. I don't want any big trouble.

Having said that, hitting a bonanza of links about Masons and aliens lately has given me reflections about my three UFO experiences. That's right, I've had three encounters of the close kind. All three happened when I was in college. I should add, none of those experiences were enhanced by any recreational chemicals so prevalent on campuses then... and now.

Trash Bag UFO

Encounter One: Strange Lights I personally never saw the strange lights hovering over the campus, but I knew people who did. For a few days talk of the lights was all the rage. They were rumored to appear just after dark. I made a couple of rooftop excursions with friends. We didn't see any UFOs, but at least it was a diversion from studying... which was good enough for me. Apparently, the lights just hovered in the sky. Some saw one light, some saw a group of lights. It remained a mystery until one of the lights "crashed." Turned out to be a prankster or group of pranksters who fashioned miniature hot-air balloons out of garbage bags, and launched them in the same manner as Japanese sky lanterns. The flame at the bottom created the mysterious light and kept the contraption airborne. As I heard it, their first effort was an experiment with one balloon, but the fact that it attracted attention inspired the perpetrators to expand their efforts. Mystery solved.

Encounter Two: A Cover-Up My roommate during my sophomore year was a level-headed guy. He was, in fact, the president of our dormitory's student government group (I understand it's debatable any politician could be level-headed, but let's move on anyway). One night he raced into our room and announced he had just seen a UFO. Mr. Levelhead went into great detail describing the thing, and said he was convinced it was the real deal. According to him it had a flashing light, moved in three dimensions, turned at right angles and changed direction rapidly. He finally decided it should be reported, so he called the Campus Police (not exactly the FBI, but again I digress). He gave them a description in great detail. When pressed further about the object's appearance he said, "I guess you could say it looked kind of like a helicopter with a strobe light." The next day, much to our initial delight, the story appeared in the campus newspaper (never in danger of winning a Pulitzer). The writers there checked the campus police logs daily and got the story from my roommate's report. It pretty much followed his description of the object and the way it moved, but we were a bit surprised when we read the last line: "Authorities determined the object was a helicopter with a strobe light." If that's not proof of a cover-up, I don't know what is.

Encounter Three: Contact! Then there was the night my friend Carl (That's his real name. This is, after all, non-fiction) came running down the hall banging on doors yelling that he had seen a flying saucer. Carl was not a levelheaded guy. It seems he and his girlfriend had been out in a remote area... uh... collecting plant samples for biology class... nocturnal plants. "We saw it land," he assured us. Well, it was either keep studying or save the world from space aliens, a no brainer. So a few of us grabbed cameras and headed for the hinterlands. We soon found ourselves on farmland a few miles outside of town. It was a moonless night and pitch black. Good thing we remembered cameras. Too bad we forgot flashlights. We spread out to search the area. I headed for a dim light which turned out to be some kind of outbuilding. I stumbled up to the side of it, felt my way along to a corner, rounded it and... There wasn't enough light to see how big the spaceship actually was. I could see it was made of metal and had rounded edges. Even though it was completely dark, the thing almost gleamed in front of me. I froze. I couldn't hear any of my friends who were out there somewhere hunting the amazing thing I had found. It was just me and the space aliens. I didn't know what to do, so I just stood and stared. As I did my eyes became more accustomed to the dark. Gradually I could see more of it until I saw its entire shape. No space alien was going to get me. Boldly I walked up to it and smacked it with my open palm. It made the metallic ping I had expected. Suddenly I heard one of my buddies yell and ask if I had found anything. I smacked it again. "Naw," I said, "just this propane tank." Can't fool me, no sir.

So that's where my Masonic research has taken me lately: to sites linking us with space aliens — and fuzzy memories of encounters long past. I think I'll resolve to sticking to the first few hits on Google searches. You never really find much worthwhile on page 27. But I am happy to know about the hexagon on Saturn, which is, in fact, very real. That's cool.

The Gift

Dr. Gibbon W. "Gib" Carson

Grand Commander, Knights Templar,

Missouri, 1908

Thursday, September 26, 1929, the annual communication of the Grand Lodge of Missouri culminated with a formal dinner in the third floor dining hall of the new Masonic Temple in St. Louis.  Four hundred guests had gathered there to honor Dr. Gibbon W. Carson and his wife Betty on their fiftieth year of marriage.

Brother Carson, then 75, was a St. Louis area physician who had held many posts and committee chairmanships in Missouri Freemasonry, most notably having been Past Grand High Priest, Past Grand Illustrious Master and Past Grand Commander of the Grand York Rite bodies in Missouri.  In short, he was a well respected fixture in the fraternity.

In the ceremony after the dinner, John Q. Brown,  Commander of St. Aldemar Commandery, presented a gift to the Carsons on behalf of those in attendance.  It was a small purse containing $1,000 – fifty $20 gold pieces, one gold coin for each year the couple had been married.

Even today a gift of $1,000 would be a significant gesture of appreciation.  In 1929, however, that amount of money had substantially more buying power than it does now.  According to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator, the present-day value of $1,000 in 1929 makes that an equivalent gift of nearly $15,000. Today the gold in each of those coins would have a "melt value" of about $1,300, or a total of $65,000.

Moreover, assuming the Brothers presented the Carsons with gold coins of that era, most likely the St. Gaudens $20 gold piece, today's numismatic value of those coins (in average circulated condition) would be a minimum of $800,000!

Of course, as we Freemasons would say, the gift was given "not for its intrinsic value or worth," but as a gesture of appreciation for the Carsons' service to the fraternity.  Still, it's enticing to speculate what the Carsons, who had no surviving children at the time, might have done with the treasure.

Absolute Power

Power corrupts. Absolute power, they say, corrupts absolutely. We in Freemasonry, however, elect men to whom we then hand absolute… well, nearly absolute power. Apparently, that's the way we like it.

Not long ago I had dinner with a Brother who was indignant at the fact a Grand Master had expelled an officer out of the Grand Line, "He can't do that!"

What do you mean he can't do that? He's the Grand Master. I'm not bylaws expert but I believe he was well within his rights to do it. The expelled member, in fact, was appointed, not elected. I then gave the Brother a couple examples I've seen where a Grand Master and a Master of the Lodge of Research each had expelled elected line officers. We actually had one Grand Master who said no Lodge could have its own website and ordered all of them taken down. Can't do that? Of course they can. And do.

Absolute power — it's practically an aphrodisiac. You've been Master of your Lodge? You've had it, felt it, embraced it. Some use it wisely; some abuse it. Still, face the facts, we as Freemasons elect a benevolent (we hope) dictator.

When I was Master of my Lodge I tried to be reasonable as I swam in the seductive waters of absolute power. Oh, I made an "executive decision" now and then but all-in-all I think I controlled myself. Well, I controlled myself until…

...Monday, September 20, 2004. It was a week before Grand Lodge and three weeks before my final meeting as Master. I had practically the entire year behind me. I had wielded absolute power with a gentle hand but its siren song now called louder and louder. I was Clark Kent wanting to jump into a phone booth and become Superman. I was Thor unable to resist the pent-up urge to hurl thunderbolts. I was me, crazed, wide-eyed and drooling, ready to unleash my venom on the innocent, unsuspecting world of my Brothers.

"I'm going to do it," I told myself, resigned to the criticism that would surely follow. Who cares… I'm the Master, Captain Marvel, Iron Man, the Hulk, all rolled into one. I can do what I want. Damn the torpedoes, full-speed-ahead.

The unremarkable meeting neared its end. Business over, the Brothers sat on the sidelines ready for the standard closing. My next line, "Brother Senior Warden," which would set things in motion, never came.

Instead, I stood and rapped my gavel on the podium three times. The Brothers rose from their seats. I turned to my left, "Brother Chaplain, you will lead us in prayer."

The Chaplain was a little rattled. "What prayer," he whispered.

"The closing prayer."

"Supreme Architect of the Universe," he began and then ended with his usual flourish.

Then, awash in the intoxicating flood of absolute power, completely within my rights to do so, I skipped all other closing ceremonies, "Brethren, by the power vested in me as its Worshipful Master, I declare Liberty Lodge number 31 duly closed!" By God, I'm the Master. I have the authority. I can do it that way, and I did it. Live with it.

I gave a single rap of the gavel and waited for the onslaught of criticism that was about to come. I was ready. Give me your best shot.

Sometimes, in the ebb and flow of events, things don't happen exactly as we expect. Some call this "the law of unintended consequences." The thing is we usually think of that law implying a negative outcome where a positive outcome is expected.

Well, something unexpected happened here, but it was the opposite. I truly had expected a negative outcome. Instead, the entire Lodge erupted in cheers. Although the Brothers were already standing, I think it counted as a standing ovation.

Who knew giving in to the allure of absolute power could make a guy so popular? Or maybe they were just happy they could get to that second helping of dessert a little sooner. So mote it be.

An Interesting Parallel

Notice: For the next few minutes, put your politics aside. This is published without comment as a scenario from the past with an interesting parallel to today's current events. Once you have read it, take three deep breaths and count to ten before taking it to FaceBook, Twitter, or other anti-social media platform of choice. Thank you. You may now continue reading the article.

The week of February 19-24, 1947, Freemasons convened in Washington, DC, for a series of combined meetings. On Friday of that week, Frank Land, the founder of DeMolay, arranged for a select group of Brothers, mostly Grand Masters, to meet with President Truman. The meeting was more than a formality, given Truman's interest in Masonic affairs.

Truman greeted the Brothers in the Oval Office, beginning with some informal chit-chat and pointing out some of the items there. He said he was somewhat preoccupied, having just received notice his mother, 94-year-old Martha Ellen Young Truman, had fallen and broken her hip.

The group got down to business and the subject of Truman's impending trip to Mexico came up. Masonic relations between Mexico and the US were good, but there were still issues needing to be ironed out. Chief among those were concerns about some of the Spanish Ritual translations. In addition there were Masonic divisions within Mexico itself.

Truman was to meet with Mexico's President Miguel Alemán Valdés.  Alemán was a member of City of Mexico Lodge No. 35 and also a Scottish Rite Mason. They asked Truman if he would arrange for himself and Alemán to meet with a group of Mexican Freemasons in the interest of harmony.

Truman declined, saying his agenda was full. "The sole purpose of my trip," he told them, "is to discuss how to patch up the holes in the Mexico-USA border."

Masonic Roundtable: The Men Who Warped Space and Time

I love the Masonic Roundtable. It's a part of my weekly viewing fare, right behind The Curse of Oak Island, where we learn how Freemasons buried a treasure that isn't there and how the discovery of a broken mug caked in mud proves the Knights Templar founded Freemasonry. Between commercials.

I rarely watch live for two reasons. First, they never read my online chat comments on the air. I'm really put off when they can't see when I sign on and say, "I'm sorry I'm late. I had to let the cat in," doesn't add to the show; but mainly, it's because it airs past my bedtime.

So, back in the day (not too far back, though), the show aired on Tuesday evenings. Since I don't listen live, my habit was to get up early Wednesday morning and watch or listen with my morning cup (make that morning pot) of coffee. Now they've moved the show to Thursday and I have to wait until Friday for my mid-week dose of Masonic elixir. Somehow, by doing this, the Roundtablers have extended the time I have to wait for the show. They have, in effect, warped space and time, a feat that might seem impossible to the profane, but these guys are, you know… special. Freemasons can do that kind of thing, but only when they're not too busy running the world. That's our primary responsibility. Noblesse oblige, vous savez.

Those of us who are Squires and Knights can get a quick Roundtable fix during the week, but the extra wait for the big Thursday show can be excruciating.

You might argue that I'm wrong since the time between shows is still seven days. That is faulty logic. We slog our way through the workweek until we finally reach that pinnacle of existence, the weekend. There, we enjoy two glorious days of freedom from the slings and arrows of our more mundane existence during the week. That enables us to completely refresh our minds as we experience the joy and freedom of being with our families and doing the things we want. In other words, the weekend serves as a sort of cosmic reset.

Then, we start the week all over again and we have two extra days to wait for the Roundtable.  Therefore, we now have what amounts to a nine-day week! If that doesn't prove the hosts of the Masonic Roundtable are super-human, I don't know what does.

I just wish I could use that extra time more effectively.

Disclaimer: No one from the show in any way prompted me to do this episode and the members of the Roundtable were unaware it was being planned or produced. So mote it be.