Page 16 : Beale Ciphers Analyses
The Freemasons and The Confederate Treasury
The Beale story has more angles than Jennifer Lopez. When Brad Andrews first presented his theory to me, I was very skeptical. After many email exchanges and net searching, I now believe this may be what happened.
Brad's ideas, in his own words, can be downloaded here in MS WORD format (40 Kb). The page below contains the highlights from Brad's paper as well as other links.
Today, the Freemasons are generally viewed as a community service club like many others. They are men of charity and good works and are well known, for example, for their childrens' hospitals throughout the world.
As an old and secret fraternal order however, they have been accused of many evils such as influencing international affairs, working to create a new world order, having a secret alliance with Satan, black magic, and being anti-Christian to name a few.
Indeed the masons are still a fraternal society with secret rituals, handshakes, oaths, signals, and an intricate system of levels of seniority within the order. Candidates for promotion within this system must undergo tests and challenges. The foundations for these rites go to the dawn of recorded history.
In particular, the Freemasons had knowledge of, and interest in codes for secret writing. Their main historical code pictured below, known as the Freemason's Cipher, or The Pigpen Code, was child-like in simplicity.
In addition, stone-lined underground vaults with gold and jewels are an important part of masonic symbolism as the source of all knowledge and wisdom. The quote below is from The Legend of Enoch which describes the source of this symbol. The underline is my own.
Enoch... constructed underground... brick vaults... He then caused a triangular plate of gold to be made... he enriched it with the most precious stones... He then encrusted the plate upon a stone of agate of the same form... Enoch made a... door of stone, and, attaching to it a ring of iron, by which it might... be raised, he placed it over the aperture of the uppermost arch, and so covered it over with soil that the opening could not easily be discovered... and on his death... all knowledge of this building and of the sacred treasure which it contained was lost... and... he inscribed in hieroglyphic characters the information that near the spot where they stood a precious treasure was deposited in a subterranean vault.
James B. Ward was a freemason. Records show he joined Dove Lodge No. 51 in 1862. From The Beale Papers:
It was in 1862, the second year of the Confederate war, that Mr.
Morriss first
intimated the possession of a secret that was destined to make some persons
wealthy...About this time, however, affairs of importance required my presence in
Richmond...
This time frame for the writing of The Beale Papers agrees with several researchers' findings that the papers were written a few decades later than claimed, based on the vocabulary used.
All the persons named in The Beale Papers, with one notable exception, are real historically verifiable people. They are:
James B. Ward
Robert Morriss, and his wife Sarah Mitchell
Max Guggenheimer
Personal friends Jackson, Clay, Coles, Witcher, Chief Justice Marshall
Chief Justice Marshall is known to have been a mason, as was Andrew Jackson. So were many other Founding Fathers, including eight of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence. There are many claims of confirmed or probable freemasons amongst the signers, for example: http://bessel.org/declmas.htm
The masons were the pillars of society, the most respected and reliable men. In this honored position, they were often entrusted with the safekeeping of valuables. The history of the freemasons as bankers goes back to medieval times and their legendary predecessors, The Knights Templar.
It was in 1952 that a mysteries cooper scroll was found in the Qumran caves. It made reference to another scroll, made of leather, which had been hidden under the Temple. The scroll told of 26 tons of gold and 65 tons of silver plus other precious objects that had been buried.... In the process of providing protection and transportation to the pilgrims, they became fabulous bankers. The Templars were doing financial transactions throughout Europe. They even had royalty and wealthy merchants as their clientele. Europe was reaping such a benefit from the Templars that Pope gave them a waiver from paying taxes.
The notable exception in The Beale Papers which is not a verifiable person is Thomas Jefferson Beale. Remove the initials TJB from the name, and the remaining letters form an anagram for "freemason safe hole", or, with a small poetic license, "freemason holy safe".
Brad also speculates that if ever there was a real treasure, its source is probably The Confederate Treasury. The fall of the government seat, Richmond, was in 1865. It is possible that monies were hidden well before then.
Brad's theory can be summarized as follows:
The Confederate Government, fearing part of their treasury could fall into Union hands, or confiscated if banked, called on the freemasons, many of whom were no doubt confederate officials, to safeguard a portion. Wealthy families close to the masons may have also worried about pillaging and joined in to protect their valuables. Part of the arrangement was that if the amount remained unclaimed for a number of years, it would be divided among a list of persons, probably the original owners or relatives, masons and government officials. Ward and/or Morriss were directly involved. They, or another mason, wrote the ciphers and The Beale Papers for record keeping and as a cover story. Brad also states that Ward was expulsed from the masons in 1867. By this time the war had been lost and there may have been some disagreement as to the disposition of the stash. Something had gone wrong. This could explain why, in 1885, in some form of revenge, perhaps because he didn't receive his promised share, Ward decided to publish the pamphlet, and why they subsequently disappeared, eg. the work of the masons.
Clearly, here is here an opportunity for more research.
Comment
Another reader has advised me that there exists historical evidence that James Ward was active in the Ku Klux Klan after the war, and that this may be the real reason for his ouster from the masons.
This story makes far more sense than the tall tale of a party of adventurers out west. It explains many of the mysteries surrounding The Beale Papers, specifically:
