"basically all the founders of the United States."
Yet, when it serves your rhetorical purposes, it's just a fraternity, right?
It sorta seems like Freemasons disappear after the American Revolution, except for folks like Brigham Young and Joseph Smith, and then re-emerges in the mid-20th century to ruin the Constitution formed, admittedly, with the strong influence of the 18th-century Masons (presuming, of course, that the KKK and other ignoble organizations are not, in fact, Masonic).
Your claims that "basically all the founders of the United States" were Masons is about as loopy as claiming to have constructed the Great Pyramids.
"Your claims that "basically all the founders of the United States" were Masons is about as loopy as claiming to have constructed the Great Pyramids."
You are either an liar or an idiot (or maybe an idiotic liar).
Just starting from 1776 and working forward without any serious research:
George Washington
Ben Franklin
Paul Revere
Ethan Allen
John Hancock
Capt. Henry Williams (battle of Lexington)
John Paul Jones (father of US Navy)
James Otis (no taxation without represenation)
Bennington Wentworth (led Vermont into the Revolution)
James Monroe
Andrew Jackson
Major General Henry Knox (Washington's Secretary of War, Ft. Knox)
John Adams
Benjamin Rush
Robert Morris
John Witherspoon
George Wythe
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Richard Henry Lee
Masonic signers of Constitution whose names you probably don't know (not repeating those who happend to be listed above):
Elbridge Gerry,
William Hooper,
Richard Stockton,
Matthew Thornton,
Baron Von Steuben
George Walton
William Whipple
Roger Sherman
Josiah Bartlett
Philip Livingston
Joseph Hewes
Robert Treat Paine affiliation
Thomas McKean Samuel McKean
John Penn
Lyman Hall
William Ellery
Thomas Nelson, Jr
Caesar Rodney
George Read
Samuel Huntington
From the 1800's to the Civil War we have guys like:
Lewis& Clark,
Daniel Boone,
Davey Crocket,
William B. Travis, Sam Houston (almost half of the men who died in the Alamo were masons --- the Gonzales Mounted Voluneers consisting of the Gonzales Lodge)
Then from Civil War on:
Daniel Butterfield (Union General --- wrote "taps"),
Mark Twain,
Sam Colt
and hundreds of others.
And that's just what I felt like typing today.
Presidents: James Monroe ( 1758 - 1831 ), Andrew Jackson ( 1767 - 1845 ), James K. Polk ( 1795 -1849 ), James Buchanan ( 1791 - 1868 ), Andrew Johnson ( 1808 -1875 ), James A. Garfield ( 1831 -1881 ), William McKinley ( 1843 - 1901 ), Theodore Roosevelt ( 1868 - 1919 ), William H. Taft ( 1857 -1930 ), Warren G. Harding ( 1865 - 1923 ).
That's ten, TEN presidents, who were Masons, prior to FDR's presidency and all after the Revolution, but YOU claim that there were NO MASONS between Washington and FDR! Keep on posting and show just HOW ill educated you are, as we all laugh our socks off AT you.
You want to talk about Masons on the Supreme court? Okay.........John Marshall was a Mason and the CHIEF JUSTICE of the SC, from 1801-1835 and it was he, who made the SC the final authority on questions of constitutionality.
John Philip Sousa was a Mason. You do know who he was, don't you? :-)
Most of the great heroes at the Alamo and those who were also responsible for Texas joining the union and making Texas great, were.....MASONS : Austin, Travis, Crockett, Houston.
Would you like the names of other famous Masons, who, though NOT members of the American political class, certainly DID marvelous things for America and its populace? I'd be more than happy to keep on educating you. :-)
Masonry WAS A BIG DEAL and Washington was King of the Hill!!
I was stunned to find out recently that a particular person was a Mason. It was then that I realized is "IN" for everything at the time....Robert Morris via GW!!