by Pick W. Hargreave (No. 48324)
It’s no secret that throughout our sacred fellowship’s long history, we’ve had a number of notable members among our ranks. Popes, dictators, CEOs, even one of the stars of TV’s Night Court have taken The Oath. But perhaps no man has had a larger influence on promoting the beliefs of The Order of the Grand Lock than the first Shadow President of the United States: Samuel Cotesworth Spaight.

For the newer initiates, the concept of a Shadow President might be a new one, but it’s actually very simple. Imagine a large room with 44 chairs with each of the 45 presidents sitting in them (remembering, of course, that Grover Cleveland served two nonconsecutive terms). Now imagine that same room and chairs, but now there are 44 goats sitting in them.

Both of these imaginary rooms have had the same level of influence on American history.

As long as the United States has existed, there has been a Shadow President behind the scenes who is actually running the country, placed into power by the Order of the Grand Lock. Spaight was the nation’s first and arguably greatest.

What makes Spaight so great? Perhaps his finest accomplishment was his victory during the Canadian-American War. It was Spaight who negotiated the country away from intense bloodshed at the hands of America’s most apologetic neighbors by giving them the exclusive rights to putting gravy on french fries. Spaight’s accomplishments were so many and varied that, despite the secrecy associated with the position, a large number of them eventually became public and were attributed to other Founding Fathers. In fact, at least three of the songs in the Hamilton musical are actually about things Spaight did.

The Order of the Grand Lock’s many meeting temples, which are sprinkled throughout America, are a direct result of Spaight’s influence. It is he who inserted the secret area into the plans for America’s Capitol building, located within the dome (but not the one you’re thinking of) and directed the nation’s affiliated city planners to follow suit. Additionally, the reason so many of our Grand Lock potluck dinners have what some have called “too many potato dishes” is said to be due to Spaight declaring that one meeting’s mashed potatoes were “not bad.”

It is the role of the Shadow President to run the country and die an unknown, and it is the role of the regular President to soak up the glory, while harboring a resentment of the puppet master who is pulling his strings. (William Henry Harrison is the only exception to this rule, but that’s because he spent all of his presidency either dying or being dead.) Washington, as America’s first president, proudly blazed this trail of pettiness. Washington, a fellow Grand Lock member, rarely spoke of Spraight, and records indicate only one kind statement ever said by the General regarding his Shadow President.Washington stated to a fellow Barron, “Though Spraight does not possess any enviable traits of character that I can find, I do wish him a long life, free of burdens.” It should be said that at this time, a long life would be making it to about 45 and Spraight was within a few years of this marker, making this the bare minimum for a nice thing to say.

Spaight successfully navigated America out of its rocky beginnings and was the first to integrate many of The Order of the Grand Lock’s tenants into the nation’s foundation. Without Washington, there’d be a different, probably less weird-looking man on the dollar bill, but without Spaight, who knows if we’d even still have a secret worldwide Order to exclude our inferiors from. Shadow President Spaight is truly one of the most important figures in the history of The Order, and if nothing else, he freed Americans from being forced to pour gravy over their fries.

From Volume 871 Issue 8 – Subscribe here, members, to be the first to get the next newsletter!