E. H. ADDINGTON

OUTLI N E
OF THE
RISE AND PROGRESS OF FREEMASONRY
IN LOUISIANA.
PREFATORY.
THE INDIANA COMMITTEE AND FOLGEB'S HISTOBT.
AT the annual communication of the Grand Lodge of Indiana in 1870, Bro.
John Caven, from the Committee on Foreign Correspondence, presented a
report on the Grand Orient of France in which certain statements were
made that we pronounced erroneous, and remarked that we were at a loss
to understand from what source the data had been obtained. In reply, the
report of the Indiana Committee for 1871, presented by Bro. Thomas R.
Austin, cited the "Masonic History, the First to the Thirty-third Degree,"
by Robert B. Folger, as authority for the statements' made, and gave several
pages of quotations from it in support of their position. Having, in the
meantime, examined the "History" referred to, we expressed the following
opiuion upon it in our report for 1872:
We find that the book [Folger's History] was written in the interest of
the old Hays-Atwood Supreme Council of New York, and incidentally of the
Foulhouze Supreme Council of New Orleans. Advocating the claims of these
spurious bodies, the work is of an unscrupulous and bitter partisan character,
and in all our reading we have never met anything so little deserving the
name of "history." The items relating to Louisiana have evidently been
furnished by Foulhouze or one of his adherents, and the manner in which
facts are misrepresented or glossed over, renders the work wholly unreliable
as a book of reference.
Noticing this, Bro. Caven, in his report for 1872, says:
The Indiana Committee can, of course, have no other purpose than to be
correct, and their position is fully sustained by the extracts from Folger's
History. It is immaterial for what purpose the book was written, or what his
prejudices may have been. The extracts which he recites from the records of
the Grand Lodge of Louisiana, the Grand Consistory of Louisiana, and the
Grand Orient of France prove our position without one word of comment
from the author. We took it for granted the book was true. It contains
three hundred and sixty-one pages of discussion, and four hundred and
seventeen of what purports to be copies from authentic records. The documents
we have copied from his book bearing upon this case, it will be
observed, purport to be literal transcripts, reciting even the formal parts, such
as the addresses of the different bodies, with exact dates and the signatures
of the officers. If Folger is correct in his quotations from the records, then