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Charlotte: |
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Ride with George Washington as he visits Charlotte both as President and Mason
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It is Saturday, May 28, 1791, just before 3pm. President George Washington is arriving in Charlotte.
Since he is the foremost Mason in this new nation, Freemasons are usually involved in welcoming him on his long tour. Enthusiastic crowds have been gathering in the towns and often can be seen along the road as he passes in his white carriage, equipped with venetian blinds and glass windows and pulled by four horses. A white riding horse, given to him by his Masonic brother Emperor Frederick the Great of Prussia, is led behind the carriage for Washington’s use whenever he stops.
He has just come from the Harrison place in South Carolina, 13 miles south of Charlotte. With him are 14 cadets selected from a company of 55 in Salisbury who went to the SC line to meet the President and escort him into this community. Heading those cadets is Charles Caldwell, 19, who, on facing Washington, promptly forgets his welcoming speech.
To put him at his ease, Washington invites Caldwell to ride beside him at his left and suggests the other 13 uniformed cadets follow behind. Caldwell later wrote these historic words:
(Washington) “During the late war, if my information is correct, the inhabitants were true to the cause of the country, and brave in its defense.”
(Caldwell) “Your information is correct, Sir…In Mecklenburg County, where we now are, and in Rowan, which lies before us, a Tory did not dare show his face—if he were known to be a Tory.”
(Washington) “Pray, what is the name of the town?”
(Caldwell) “Charlotte, Sir, the county town of Mecklenburg, and the place where independence was declared about a year before its declaration by Congress…”
Caldwell wrote, “He at length inquired of me whether he might expect to meet in Charlotte any of the leading members of the convention which prepared and passed the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence…I replied that…Dr. Brevard, the author of the Declaration, was dead; that of the members of the convention still living I knew personally but two—Adam Alexander and John Knitt Alexander, his brother, who had been secretary.”
The 14 cadets deliver the President to a reception committee in Charlotte and withdraw. Washington meets with his host, General Thomas Polk, “and a small party invited by him, at a table prepared for the purpose.” The location is Polk’s house, on the Square—the same house British General Cornwallis had appropriated for his headquarters and the only painted home in a town of log cabins. It sits across the street from the Mecklenburg Courthouse where the Meck Dec was proclaimed sixteen years ago on May 20, 1775.
Washington, Polk, Adam Alexander and John McKnitt Alexander are all Masons. This becomes known the instant they all shake hands. They then surely talk about the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence.
Washington’s diary continues: “Sunday, 29th. Left Charlotte about 7 o’clock, dined at Colo. Smith’s 15 miles off, and lodged at Majr. (Martin) Fifers 7 miles farther.”
Washington was such a beloved and respected Freemason that the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania unanimously elected him “Grand Master of Masons throughout the United States.” He was so devoted to Masonry that he declined a superb design by Thomas Jefferson for the new city of Washington in favor of another drawn by a Mason to make Washington a Masonic image city.
An exchange of letters in 1819 between Adams and Jefferson—neither of them Masons—touched off the argument about validity of the Meck Dec. By then Washington had been dead 20 years. Jefferson was 76 and Adams was 84. It was 44 years after the Meck Dec, not at all contemporaneous.
Adams wrote Rev. William Bentley, “I was struck with so much astonishment on reading this document that I could not help inclosing it immediately to Mr. Jefferson, who must have seen it, in the time of it, for he had copied the spirit, the sense and the expressions of it verbatim into his Declaration of July, 1776…”
George Washington lived 24 years after the 1775 signing of the Meck Dec until his 1799 death. He personally met and talked with Thomas Polk, the Meck Dec leader, and two other signers. In all those years Washington never expressed any doubt in the integrity of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence or its signers.
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Produced by the public relations committee of the Grand Lodge AF&AM of Masons in North Carolina,
2921 Glenwood Avenue, Raleigh, NC 27628 MMVIII
Author/editor: Walter J. Klein wklein(at)carolina.rr.com
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