Who Was Albert Pike?

Readers who wish to learn something about the life of Albert Pike, the man, are recommended to consult the Dictionary of American Biography, which should be on the shelves of any good Reference Library.

As the most renowned Freemason of his generation, there are many references on the Web which may be viewed by searching for "Brother Albert Pike". Anti-Masons seem to have it in for Pike, and have no compunction in traducing his memory. However, an informative and "friendly" account may be found at Albert Pike.

Pike was born in Boston, Mass. on 29 December, 1809. From 1824, he devoted himself to teaching and private study. He took up a teaching post in Pope County, Arkansas, in 1833. In 1835, he became Owner and Editor of the Arkansas Advocate, and was licensed as a legal practitioner in 1837. Harvard conferred upon him the Honorary degree of Master of Arts in 1859.

When the American Civil War broke out, Pike had been living in Arkansas for nearly thirty years. Although not personally friendly to slavery, he sided with the Confederacy rather than desert his friends and abandon his property. Such are the hard decisions people may sometimes be called upon to make in turbulent times. That Pike was not what might today be called a "racist" is obvious from his upholding the cause of the native Indians, for which reason he resigned his commission as brigadier-general in the Confederate army in 1862.

Pike moved to Washington in 1868, and continued to practise law, combined with writing and further study.

Made a Mason in 1850 and a Scottish Rite Mason in 1853, Pike was elected Sovereign Grand Commander of the Supreme Grand Council for the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States in 1858. He died at his desk in Washington on 2 April, 1891. His best known work is Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, published in 1872, 1878, 1881, and 1905.

He would certainly have been a champion of the American Constitution, several of whose authors were Freemasons. Some observers might wish for such a champion to arise in our own time to shore up the American and other idealistic democratic Constitutions against erosion in the interests of political expediency.

Readers of the Ardue pages will have plenty of opportunity to judge the quality of the man from his revision of the Scottish Rite Lectures. To me, Albert Pike comes across as a scholarly historian and as a moral and political philosopher of a high order.