MASONIC BIOGRAPHIES FAMOUS FREEMASONS AMERICAN PRESIDENTS

Abraham Lincoln LC-USZ62-13016 (1861) February 12, 1809 - April 14, 1865 The son of a Kentucky frontiersman. Abraham Lincoln was a captain in the Black Hawk War, a member of the Illinois legislature for eight years, and was elected president of the United States in 1860 and 1864. On January 1, 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation that declared forever free those slaves within the Confederacy. Abraham Lincoln was not a freemason. He applied for membership in Tyrian Lodge, Springfield, Ill., shortly after his nomination for the presidency in 1860 but withdrew the application because he felt that his applying for membership at that time might be construed as a political ruse to obtain votes. He advised the lodge that he would resubmit his application again when he returned from the presidency. On Good Friday, April 14, 1865, Lincoln was assassinated at Ford’s Theatre in Washington by John Wilkes Booth. On the death of the president, Tyrian Lodge adopted, on April 17, 1865, a resolution to say "that the decision of President Lincoln to postpone his application for the honours of Freemasonry, lest his motives be misconstrued, is the highest degree honourable to his memory." Non-mason Source: 10,000 Famous Freemasons, William R. Denslow. Note that this claim has not been corroborated by either the Grand Lodge of Illinois or Tyrian Lodge.

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