Loyalists and Malcontents

Download or read book Loyalists and Malcontents written by Ric Berman and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2015-04 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ric Berman examines the genesis of freemasonry in South Carolina and Georgia and how the lodge gained status and influence as a result of the prominence of its leading members. Although there were other clubs and societies that may have been more exclusive, none possessed the deemed antiquity and reputation of freemasonry. Indeed, the lodge carved out a position as the South's leading social forum to the extent that membership became self-reinforcing. 'Loyalists & Malcontents' explores the multiple interconnections that made up the cousinage of planters, merchants and lawyers that dominated the Deep South, and provides portraits of the patriots and loyalists that gave freemasonry its political influence before, during and after America's War of Independence. The book sheds new light on the origins of freemasonry in the Deep South and throws into relief its close interaction with American politics and society. The principal appendices offer insights into slavery in the colonial South and into America's masonic shift away from the Grand Lodge of England towards an embrace of 'Antients' freemasonry.