Newburyport's Albert Pike Toppled, Part Three

To read previous articles about Albert Pike, click here and here. 
Warning: this article contains racist language.

A couple of weeks ago, I was walking downtown when an old acquaintance fell into step with me. We walked along together, chatting about this and that. She asked me what I was working on, and that, gentle readers, is often a mistake unless you want a ten-minute explosion of information about whatever long-gone Newburyporter I’m obsessed with at the moment. Generally, there is a pause and a smile, and my listener says something like, “well, you clearly love your work”. This time, I went into a tear about Albert Pike, stopping only when my companion’s eyes began to widen, and she looked visibly worried. I paused. “Well, that’s not very nice, is it,” she said, and turned a corner. 

Friends, Albert Pike is not very nice. In fact, one of my first interactions with him was this quote from a letter published in 1875, when he was the Grand Commander of the Supreme Council A.A.S.R (Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite) Southern Jurisdiction (Freemasons). 

“I took my obligations to white men, not to Negroes. When I have to accept Negroes as brothers or leave Masonry, I shall leave it…I am interested to keep the Ancient and Accepted Rite uncontaminated, in our country at least, by the leprosy of Negro association.”

Albert Pike in Masonic regalia, c. 1880, private collection.

Albert Pike, the only Confederate general whose statue stood in Washington D.C., was so honored because of his Masonic leadership, though his racist views clearly extended to Masonic governance. At least, this leadership was the argument made when the Masons began planning his monument shortly after Pike’s death in 1891. And he was a very important leader – the highest-ranking Mason in the world at the time of his death.  

Lest one argue that it is unfair to judge a man of the past by today’s standards, let me assure you that this memorial to a deeply racist man accused of war atrocities, treason, and a host of other crimes was objectionable from the outset. As the sculptor, Gaetano Trentanove, worked on the statue, Pike supporters looked for sympathetic Congressmen to offer public land on which it would be placed. Numerous branches of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), a fraternal organization of Union veterans, petitioned Congress to reject the statue, submitting their case in the most strident terms. As one Connecticut GAR leader wrote:

“We desire to express our solemn and unqualified disapproval of said bill as pregnant with evil for the future welfare of our beloved country, and dangerous in its tendencies as a gross perversion of history (when northern statesman advocating its passage, eulogize said Pike as “a distinguished citizen and a brave soldier” instead of a traitor to his country and a convicted coward in battle). Further, we consider the bill an insult to the memory, not alone of those brave boys in blue who at Pea Ridge were murdered and mutilated by his orders but equally so to every patriot who gave his life for liberty and a source of deep and lasting regret and humiliation to every loyal citizen.” 

Newburyport's GAR Post 49 does not seem to have formally protested the installation of the memorial statue of Albert Pike, though chapters across the country testified against it.

Despite these objections, public lands were given for the memorial on April 9, 1898 with the agreement that Albert Pike would be portrayed as a citizen and not a soldier. The reconstruction of Albert Pike’s legacy had begun. Or, rather, it was enshrined in 11 feet of bronze on our national land. In his 1901 acceptance speech on behalf of the American people, President of the District Commission H. B. F. McFarland praised Pike as a “victor in the honorable rivalries of peace”. In fact, so thoroughly had Pike’s legacy been twisted to suit the times, McFarland set him up as a noble foil to the war memorials throughout the city. “It is well that you thus add to the comparatively small number of statues in the city of Washington that honor the victories of peace rather than of war.”

Back home in Newburyport and Byfield, as the years rolled by, Albert Pike became a bit of a local hero, his Confederate past described as unfortunate at worst, heroic at best. In 1943, George W. Adams, then the oldest living alumnus of Governor Dummer Academy, swelled with pride when he wrote of Pike, “perhaps the most distinguished and honored son of this (Byfield) parish…” As for his Confederate service, Adams wrote that he “naturally and properly went with his state”. And his firmly entrenched, well-documented support of slavery? Adams claims a reluctance that Pike's own words prove false. “Never a lover of slavery, his attitude was that of Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln whose hand was forced by the fanatical abolitionists.” The enslaved people themselves, including those who fled from his service? “Pike’s own slaves were a few domestic servants who at the close of the war refused to leave him and whose support was a burden.”  

1957 Daily News article was even more effusive. “He had an unbounded physical energy, an avid mind, marked independence and a great determination, all of which he may have inherited from that old major Robert Pike of Salisbury, one of his early ancestors.” The piece ends with this apology. “It is felt by many that Gen. Pike was illegally imposed upon, and he did not deserve much of the opprobrium that was cast upon him. There is nothing to show that his conduct was other than honorable at all times.”

The Albert Pike Memorial at the corner of Indiana Avenue and 3rd St.NW, a decade after its installation in 1901. Library of Congress

Albert Pike, at least the bronze effigy of him, was not destined to rest in peace, however. In 1992, amid weekly protests, Washington D.C. Councilmember Bill Lightfoot introduced legislation to remove the statue, though according to Lightfoot, his efforts “kind of faded away”. D.C. had more pressing issues to attend to at the time. One protest saw Pike in the mask and robe of a Ku Klux Klan member. A Washington Post editorial reprinted his poem Death Brigade, long seen as a love-letter to the secret violence of the Klan, and this straightforward characterization. “Pike was not just another soldier poet. He was a supreme grand commander, chief justice and cofounder of the KKK, according to published histories of the Klan." Though Pike’s leadership in the Klan is disputed, the Post left no doubt as to his statue’s inappropriateness in a place called Judiciary Square, quoting Pike, “with negroes for witnesses and jurors, the administration of justice becomes a blasphemous mockery…"

A protest gathered at the memorial in August, 2017 in the wake of violence in Charlottesville. Photo credit Ted Eytan, DCIst.

As the far right became more visible following the 2016 election, there were protests and counter-protests at the feet of Albert Pike. The mayor and the majority of City Councilors called for its removal. The Freemasons, besieged, offered that they would not oppose the removal of the statue to private property. The Ward 2 Councilor hired a crane, but the statue could not come down without Congressional approval. In 2017 and 2019, Washington D.C.’s Congressional delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton introduced bills to that end, but no action was taken. 

And then, on Juneteenth, 2020, armed with ropes and chains, protesters were done waiting and pulled down Albert Pike themselves.

The toppling of Albert Pike, June 19, 2020. Courtesy images.

Washington D.C. Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, who fought for years to remove the Pike statue, has the last word before we pull the curtain on Albert Pike...for now.

"Adding to the dishonor of taking up arms against the United States, Pike dishonored even his Confederate military service. He certainly has no claim to be memorialized in the nation's capital. Even those who do not want Confederate statues removed would have to justify awarding Pike any honor, considering his history.."