"Greatest Brotherhood Quarrel Ever Known."

" GREATEST BROTHERHOOD QUARREL EVER KNOWN . "

ALTHOUGH labour has been suspended for tho season by almost every one of tho City Lodges , tho Masons are in a prodigious excitement in consequence of the receipt of intelligence that , following in tho wako of tho Grand Masters of Ohio , Iowa , Kentucky * , and

Pennsylvania , M . W . Harrison Dingman , Grand Master of the District of Columbia , has issued , 25 th July , his decree pronouncing tho " Cerneau organisation " to bo a body of Clandestine Masons , and ordering Muster Masons to

withdraw from it , under penalty of expulsion from tho Order . A similar decree in Ohio , fulminated some two years since , has led to ono of the bitterest internal fights shaking the Fraternity for the past fifty years ; Lodgo warrants havo

been arrested , and some revoked ; many Masons have been suspended , and others expelled on suspicion of being Cerneauites ; while more than half a dozen law suits wero awaiting trial , in which tho Grand Lodge Officers aro defendants from tho Grand Lodcre of Ohio .

Tho proclamation mania has spread to other States , threatening " chaos to come again / ' but this final decree of Grand Master Dingman , charging tho " Cerneau organisation" with having mado alliauco with tho

proscribed Grand Orient of Prance , must culminate into a serious complication , morally certain to embroil the entire Fraternity in an internecine quarrel to be waged to tho death .

All American Masons are awaro thafc fraternal relations with tho Grand Orient of Franco have been severed for many years pasfc , still ninety-nino in every hundred are in blissful ignorance as to tbe causes leading to this

dissolution of friendly tics and to practical rupture of boasted Masonic unity , a condition of affairs which can bo best illustrated by stating that wero Lafayette alivo and visiting us , as in 1824 , the guest of tho nation , any

Masons entertaining him as a brother would bo expelled from tho Order for treason to a Grand Lodgo [ that is , in thoso jurisdictions where thoanti-Cerneau mania rages ] . This French difficulty finds its origin in tho distant State

of Louisiana , as iar back as 1857 , and was the sequence of a Scotch Rito quarrel . At tho time of tho formation of the Grand Loclgo of Louisiana thero was but one English-speaking Lodge in tho jurisdiction working with

tho York , or rather American , Rite , the other Lodgea practising the French Rites . After the close of the Mexican war , hundreds of Americans , unaffiliated Masons , settled in New Orleans , who disliked foreign Masonic

rule , and conspired against the Grand Lodge , which had recognized the Grand Council of Princes of the Royal Secret Thirty-Second , or Cerneau creation , as of concurrent jurisdiction . Obtaining dispensations from Grand

Master John A . Quitman , of Mississippi , for some nine or ton York Rite Lodges , fche Americans then organised an Ancient York Grand Lodge in opposition to the ono formed in 1812 and then in existence .

The two Grand Lodges combated for a time , but finally united and worked in harmony until fche Creole population [ meaning the descendants of tho old French settlers ] became irritated afc a passage of a resolution by the Grand Lodge , declaring that it would henceforth

grant no warrants except to Lodges working the York Rite . There was organised , by the Marquis Santangelo , at Now Orleans , in 1836 , a Supreme Council for the United States , which was declared to be illegitimate by

fcho Supreme Council of France , which recognised tho Supreme Council [ Cernean ' s ] at Now York , bearing a similar title , which tho Marquis had appropriated . Santangelo ' s Council was recognised in 1857 by James

Foulhouse as the Supreme Council for the Independent Sovereign State of Louisiana , under whose jurisdiction the French and Scottish Rito Lodges placed themselves after their withdrawal from the Grand Locl ^ e . Persecuted

by tho Supreme Council of tho Southern Jurisdiction , Foulhouse went to France , and gained recognition for his Supremo Council and its subordinates from the Grand Orient . To break up this Council , the Southern Council

under Albert Pike , induced the Louisiana Grand Lodge to declare the Lodges under its obedience [ that is , under Foulhouse ' s Grand Council ] to bo clandestine , and to

demand of the Grand Orient of France a severance of fraternal relations with thoso of the Foulhouso Council . With this demand the Grand Orient refused to comply ,

"Greatest Brotherhood Quarrel Ever Known."

aud thereupon tho Grand Lodgo of Louisiana cut off her communications with French Masons , on the ground of invasion of her territory , and requested her sister Grand

Lodges to imitate her example , which [ of course ] they did , although the Grand Orient had committed no trespass upon their rights aud prerogatives .

Although Foulhouse had abjured [ Masonry ] and returned to the Roman Catholic Church , of which he had

formerly been a priest , and his Grand Council and its Lodges have disappeared over a quarter of a century since , the inhibition of tho Grand Orient of Franco by tho American Grand Lodges still remains in full force , so that

when M . Dcrmous , one of its high dignitaries , visited this country , as a representative of the Chamber of Deputies , he received a cold shoulder from the Masons of high and low degrees . Still during this long period of suppression tho Grand Orient has committed offences which in American

eyes justify its own expulsion from Masonry . It has decreed a belief in the existence of a Supreme Being not to bo necessary to insure initiation into the Craffc , while York Masons contend such a belief to be the corner-stone

of tho Templo . Again , tho Grand Orient has recognised tho colonred Grand Lodges [ bufc which tho God-believing pious Christian ] American Masons claim to be bogus in the extreme , inasmuch as the Prince Hall ( or African Loclgo )

Charter was originally obtained through fraud , and afterwards revoked for non-payment of duos . Finally , there aro in this city four Lodges , meeting in Blecker-street Buildings , working at present under the Grand Orient of Franco .

Somewhere about 1870 Harry I . Seymour , actor and costumier , [ was ] Grand Master of Ceremonies for tho United States of America [ meaning tho Cerneauites ] , whence he had been expelled . Finding himself

impecunious , ho conferred the thirty-third and last degree upon a number of Master Masons , whom ho formed into a Supreme Council , which ho claimed as being a continuation of tho Sovereign Grand Consistory , founded by Joseph Cerneau , in

1807 , in this city , although expelled from fche Scottish Rite Masonry by tho self-samo body , whose name he , like his fellow impostor Santangelo , appropriated . Despite its unmitigated illegitimacy , Seymour ' s creation has at tho

present moment a largo following , particularly in Kentucky , Virginia and Maryland , who have been ingeniously entrapped through fraudulent assumption of fche fcitlo and history of another Now York Supreme [ Cerneauite ]

Council , still extant , [ which was ] declared by the treaty of Paris , at which it was represented by Lafayette , to be the only legitimate Council in America , of which Judge John I . Gorman is present Grand Commauder . In April 1888 ,

Ferdinand J . S . Gorgas Grand Commander of the [ Seymonrite ] Cerneau Grand Consistory visited Paris , saw Frederick Dermous ancl other officers of the Grand Orient , established fraternal relations with ifc , and appointed Alpha

0 . Munro , of Parip , hia representative , " in guarantee of friendship . " Strange to say , this same Gorgas was chairman of the Maryland Grand Loclgo Committee , [ and ] recommended perpetual severance of fraternal relations with the Grand Orient , as a promoter of infidelity .

Remarks On The Above.

REMARKS ON THE ABOVE .

"RY BRO . JACOB NOKTON .

I copied tho above from a newspaper slip , I know not tho namo of the paper . I infer , however , from its contents that the said paper was printed in New York , in

August last . As tho writer mentions tho visit of Lafayette , I thought of something I have read and of something Dr . Folgcr , the historian of the A . and A . Rite , told mo about Lafayette . I must , however , preface the anecdote ,

. : — From 1807 to 1813 the Cerneauites alone had a 33 rd concorn in Now York . In 1813 a Charlestonian came to New York and established a rival Scotch Rite concern by tho

name of Gorgas and Co . This new concern , however , soon disappeared : ifc remained right down dead until 1844 , when Gorgas aud Co . was revived by Bostoniaus . When Lafayette came to New York , in 1824 ,. the Cerneauites

thero at once thirty-thirded him . Tho New York Cerneauites had a branch , in 1824 , in Charleston , South Carolina , which was then the sanctum sanctorum of tho earliest Scotch Riters in America , and of conrso there existed the fiercest hatred between the originals and the