Ten essays on the most consequential Freemasons Tennessee has produced, and the role each played in the American story.
From the cabin lodges of the Cumberland frontier to the marble corridors of the United States Capitol, Tennessee Masons have shaped the American narrative from its first chapters. The essays gathered here are written for the visitor, the student, the descendant, and the curious, a brief introduction to ten lives lived under the square and compass.
President
7th U.S. President · Past Grand Master, 1822, 1824
The hero of New Orleans, the founder of the Democratic Party, and the only sitting United States President ever to serve as Grand Master of a Masonic Grand Lodge.
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Founder
First Governor of Tennessee · Hero of Kings Mountain
"Nolichucky Jack", the frontier soldier whose riflemen broke the British line at Kings Mountain and whose oath of office launched the State of Tennessee in 1796.
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General & Statesman
Governor of Tennessee · President of the Republic of Texas
Raised among the Cherokee, raised a Master Mason in 1817, and the only American ever to serve as governor of two different states and president of an independent republic.
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President
11th U.S. President · The "Napoleon of the Stump"
The Tennessee Mason who, in a single term, stretched the Republic from the Rio Grande to the Pacific, and kept his promise to leave office after one.
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Frontier Hero
Congressman · Frontiersman · Defender of the Alamo
The Tennessee frontiersman whose plain-spoken motto, "Be sure you're right, then go ahead", carried him from a backwoods cabin to the floor of Congress and at last to the walls of the Alamo.
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Founding Father
Signer of the U.S. Constitution · Governor of the Southwest Territory
The Mason who carried the seal of the new federal government across the Appalachians, organized the territory that would become Tennessee, and signed both the Constitution and the petition for statehood.
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Nobel Laureate
Secretary of State · Father of the United Nations
The Pickett County mountain boy who served the longest tenure of any U.S. Secretary of State, and won the 1945 Nobel Peace Prize for laying the foundations of the postwar international order.
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Senator
U.S. Senator · Presidential Candidate, 1836
The Knoxville jurist and Mason whose stern integrity made him a Whig presidential candidate against his old friend Andrew Jackson, and whose name still adorns a Tennessee county.
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Statesman
U.S. Senator · Attorney General of the United States
The greatest criminal lawyer of the early Republic, the War Hawk of 1812, and the Tennessee Mason whose mentorship of a young James K. Polk would, decades later, change the map of the continent.
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Governor
Governor of Tennessee · Hero of New Orleans
Twelve years governor, the longest of any Tennessean, Andrew Jackson's right-hand at New Orleans, and the Mason who modernized the laws, schools, and prisons of the Volunteer State.
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