In Stone

Marble City, USA

Andrew Jackson ⟦Harmony Lodge #1⟧ links Tennessee to Washington through road, office, and stone. On his journeys between Nashville and the capital, Andrew Jackson ⟦*⟧ was associated with the Crab Orchard route and the Crab Orchard Inn. The road carried statesmen east. The stone of that region later traveled in the same direction.

Crab Orchard stone was one of Tennessee’s physical contributions to American architecture. Quarried from the Cumberland Plateau, it was cut from layered sandstone and used in buildings beyond the state. Local accounts connect Crab Orchard stone to work in Washington, D.C., including renovations at the vice-presidential residence.

East Tennessee supplied another important building material: Tennessee marble. Knoxville became known as the Marble City because it was a major center for quarrying, finishing, and distributing the pink, gray, and rose-colored stone found in East Tennessee. Though technically a crystalline limestone, Tennessee marble was valued by architects as marble because it could be polished and used in major public buildings.

Tennessee marble appeared throughout Washington, D.C. It was used in the United States Capitol, including interior stairs, balustrades, columns, and the Marble Room. It was used in the Lincoln Memorial, including the chamber floor, wall base, pedestal, platform, and interior details. It also appeared in the National Gallery of Art, the National Archives, the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History, and other federal buildings.

Tennessee therefore entered Washington in physical form. Crab Orchard stone carried the Cumberland Plateau into national architecture. Tennessee marble carried East Tennessee and Knoxville’s Marble City into the Capitol, the Lincoln Memorial, the Smithsonian, the National Archives, and the public buildings of the capital.

The same state that produced Andrew Jackson ⟦*⟧, James K. Polk ⟦Columbia Lodge #31⟧, and Andrew Johnson ⟦Greeneville Lodge #119⟧ also supplied stone for the buildings where the nation preserved law, memory, art, history, and ceremony. Tennessee’s presence in Washington was not only political. It was built into walls, floors, stairs, chambers, and monuments.

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Cornerstone and Crisis

Tennesseans during the country's first moment of imbalance.

James K. Polk ⟦Columbia Lodge #31⟧ carried Tennessee into two national cornerstone moments. On May 1, 1847, James K. Polk ⟦Columbia Lodge #31⟧ presided over the cornerstone ceremony for the Smithsonian Institution. The event joined public procession, national learning, and Masonic ceremony.

On July 4, 1848, the cornerstone of the Washington Monument was laid in Washington, D.C. The formal Masonic act was performed by Benjamin B. French, Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of the District of Columbia. James K. Polk ⟦Columbia Lodge #31⟧ attended as President of the United States. The ceremony drew thousands of people and placed the monument within the same public language of stone, memory, and national order.

Abraham Lincoln was present at the Washington Monument cornerstone ceremony. So was Andrew Johnson ⟦*⟧, who would later become Abraham Lincoln’s vice president and then inherit the presidency after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. The image is severe: Tennessee stood at the monument’s beginning through James K. Polk ⟦Columbia Lodge #31⟧, and Tennessee stood at the nation’s rupture through Andrew Johnson ⟦Greeneville Lodge #119⟧.

The Friend to Friend Masonic Memorial is a highly detailed, poignant bronze sculpture located in the Gettysburg National Cemetery Annex

Andrew Johnson ⟦*⟧ entered national power under the hardest possible circumstances. He had been chosen as Abraham Lincoln’s vice president during the Civil War. After Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, Andrew Johnson ⟦*⟧ inherited a broken country, a murdered president, defeated Confederate states, newly freed people, and the unresolved question of reunion.

A Tennessean now stood at the center of national repair.

Tennessee did not speak with one voice during the Civil War. Much of the state joined the Confederacy, but East Tennessee held a strong Unionist current, along with earlier antislavery and abolitionist voices. Andrew Johnson ⟦*⟧ came from that divided Tennessee. He was not handed a simple inheritance. He was handed a broken republic and a state whose own loyalties had been split by war.

For enslaved people, Unionists, abolitionists, and those seeking freedom, the North Star was more than a point in the sky. It was a guide through darkness. In Memphis, that same image appears in North Star Lodge #164, a Prince Hall lodge.

Prince Hall ⟦African Lodge #459⟧ started in the colonial period. In 1775, Prince Hall ⟦*⟧ and fourteen other Black men were made Masons in Boston through a lodge attached to the British Army. In 1784, African Lodge No. 459 received its charter from the Grand Lodge of England. Prince Hall Masonry was therefore not a late addition to American Freemasonry. It began in the same colonial and revolutionary world that produced the United States.

Prince Hall Masonry developed as a separate Masonic tradition among Black Americans. Its lodges carried the same basic Masonic principles: belief in God, moral improvement, brotherhood, charity, truth, obligation, lawful order, and service to the community. They also carried the weight of American history, where race often shaped access to public life, institutional recognition, and fraternal standing.

In Tennessee, Prince Hall Masonry became established after the Civil War. Prince Hall lodges formed during the Reconstruction period, when the state was rebuilding political, social, and civic life. These lodges gave Black Tennesseans a Masonic structure for ritual, leadership, education, charity, public dignity, and moral instruction.

The regular Grand Lodge of Tennessee and the Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Tennessee developed as separate Masonic bodies. Each carried its own history. Each maintained its own lodges, officers, procedures, and traditions. Their separation reflected the history of American society, not the absence of Masonic principle.

In 2021, the Grand Lodge of Tennessee recognized the Most Worshipful Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Tennessee. The Prince Hall body had already voted to seek and accept recognition. The act did not erase separate histories. It did not merge two institutions into one. It placed distinct Masonic houses into proper relation.

That moment brings Andrew Johnson ⟦*⟧ back into the frame. After the Civil War, he stood before the problem of reunion. The country had to be held together after separation. Tennessee itself stood between regions, loyalties, and memories. The work was not clean. It was not simple. But the question was ancient: how can divided houses become one political body again?

To answer that question, Tennessee, the shifted its attention to Memphis, Egypt.

Memphis and Reunion

In Egyptian memory, Narmer united Upper and Lower Egypt and established Memphis as a royal center. Memphis was associated with Ptah, the creator god and patron of craftsmen, architects, and builders. The comparison is not that Andrew Johnson ⟦*⟧ was a pharaoh, or that America was Egypt. The comparison is one of form: divided lands, restored rule, capital city, builder’s order, and the burden of unity.

Memphis, Tennessee had already carried that name westward. The city stood above the Mississippi River, near the head of the Mississippi Delta. Memphis, Egypt stood near the head of the Nile Delta. Both names join river, city, trade, monument, and memory.

Memphis, Tennessee also sits near the line of zero magnetic declination, where magnetic north and true north nearly agree. For a story concerned with divided houses, restored order, and corrected direction, that detail gives Memphis another symbolic role. It becomes a place where river, name, monument, memory, and alignment meet.

Tennessee’s Memphis therefore becomes more than a city name. It becomes a symbolic hinge between American river civilization and ancient monumental order.

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Laus Deo - The country returns to stable form.

The same pattern moves to New York.

After his inauguration, George Washington ⟦Fredericksburg Lodge #4⟧ attended worship at St. Paul’s Chapel. The new republic began under public ceremony, civil authority, and acknowledgment of divine providence. George Washington ⟦*⟧ became the American figure of ordered beginning: soldier, president, Mason, and national cornerstone.

Later, an Egyptian obelisk crossed the ocean as a diplomatic gift. Cleopatra’s Needle was erected in Central Park. The old world placed stone inside the new. Egypt’s monument stood in New York, while Washington, D.C. raised its own national obelisk in honor of George Washington ⟦*⟧.

The Washington Monument began with its cornerstone ceremony on July 4, 1848, during the presidency of James K. Polk ⟦*⟧. Abraham Lincoln was present, but not yet president. He attended as a congressman from Illinois, years before the Civil War and his own presidency. The monument therefore holds several American moments at once: George Washington ⟦*⟧ as the honored founder, James K. Polk ⟦*⟧ as the sitting president at the cornerstone, Abraham Lincoln as the future president who would face disunion, and Andrew Johnson ⟦*⟧ as the future president who would inherit reunion.

The Washington Monument joined several lines at once. It honored George Washington ⟦*⟧. It began with a Masonic cornerstone ceremony. It gathered presidents, public officers, citizens, and future presidents around a national act of memory. James K. Polk ⟦*⟧ stood there as President. Abraham Lincoln stood there before the crisis that would later divide the country. Andrew Johnson ⟦Greeneville Lodge #119⟧ stood there before the burden of reunion would fall to him.

At the apex of the monument, on the aluminum capstone, are the words Laus Deo: “Praise be to God.” The inscription cannot be read from the ground, but it stands at the highest point of the structure. It is above the city, above the mall, above the public line of monuments, and above the unfinished struggles of the nation below.

St. Paul's Chapel in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Built in 1766

At the bottom of this section, the image returns to George Washington ⟦*⟧ at St. Paul’s Chapel. A prayer attributed to George Washington places the political beginning of the republic beneath divine protection. St. Paul’s Chapel gives the scene a fixed house of worship. The Washington Monument gives it a later national obelisk. One stands at the beginning of the republic. The other rises over its memory.

The phrase brings the story back to its title.

Tennessee stone moved toward Washington. Andrew Jackson ⟦*⟧ traveled the road from Tennessee to national power. James K. Polk ⟦*⟧ stood at national cornerstone ceremonies. Abraham Lincoln stood at the Washington Monument before the nation broke apart. Andrew Johnson ⟦*⟧ inherited a fractured republic and faced the problem of reunion. Prince Hall ⟦*⟧ carried an older Black Masonic line from the colonial period into American history. North Star Lodge #164 preserved the image of direction in Memphis. The 2021 recognition placed separate Masonic houses into proper relation. Memphis, Egypt recalled the ancient builder’s city. George Washington ⟦Fredericksburg Lodge #4⟧ linked the republic to public ceremony and providence. The Washington Monument ended in Laus Deo.

The whole movement is held together in stone: quarried stone, cornerstone, obelisk, monument, inscription, and memory.

Stone does not solve history. Stone preserves the problem. It records what people believed they were building. It marks the places where divided ground was turned into public order.

In Tennessee and in Washington, the question remains the same: what kind of house is being built, and under what higher rule?

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*** Part 6 ***

In Song

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