Albert Pike

Albert Pike (1809–1891) was an American lawyer, soldier, poet and the most influential Freemason of his century. Born in Boston, he taught school, wandered west to Santa Fe and Arkansas, and became a prominent lawyer and newspaper editor in Little Rock, publishing poems and translations and arguing cases before the Supreme Court. He fought in the Mexican War and served the Confederacy as a brigadier general commanding Indian troops, resigning amid controversy. From 1859 until his death he was Sovereign Grand Commander of the Scottish Rite's Southern Jurisdiction, rewriting its rituals and publishing Morals and Dogma, the compendium of Masonic philosophy for which he is chiefly remembered.