41 Facts About Albert Pike

Albert Pike was an American author, poet, orator, editor, lawyer, jurist and Confederate States Army general who served as an associate justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court in exile from 1864 to 1865.

Albert Pike had previously served as a senior officer of the Confederate States Army, commanding the District of Indian Territory in the Trans-Mississippi Theater.

Albert Pike was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on December 29,1809, the son of Benjamin and Sarah Pike, and spent his childhood in Byfield and Newburyport, Massachusetts.

Albert Pike attended school in Newburyport and Framingham until he was 15.

Albert Pike began a program of self-education, later becoming a schoolteacher in Gloucester, North Bedford, Fairhaven and Newburyport.

Albert Pike was an imposing figure; 6 feet tall and 300 pounds with hair that reached his shoulders and a long beard.

En route his horse broke and ran, forcing Albert Pike to walk the remaining 500 miles to Taos.

Albert Pike was the first reporter for the Arkansas Supreme Court.

Albert Pike wrote a book, titled The Arkansas Form Book, which was a guidebook for lawyers.

Albert Pike began to study law and was admitted to the bar in 1837, selling the Advocate the same year.

Albert Pike made several contacts among the Native American tribes in the area.

Albert Pike specialized in claims on behalf of Native Americans against the federal government.

Albert Pike began a campaign of newspaper essays urging support for the construction of a transcontinental railroad extending from New Orleans to the Pacific coast, moving to New Orleans in 1853 and preparing to pass the state bar in furtherance of his campaign, and was ultimately able to secure a charter from the Louisiana State Legislature for a project, following which he returned to Little Rock in 1857.

Albert Pike joined the anti-Catholic Know Nothing Party at its founding, and, in the summer of 1854, helped introduce the party in Arkansas.

Albert Pike attended the national convention in 1856, but walked out when it failed to adopt a pro-slavery platform.

Albert Pike continued writing poetry, a hobby he had begun in his youth in Massachusetts.

Albert Pike's poems were highly regarded in his day, but are now mostly forgotten.

Albert Pike later gathered many of his poems and republished them in Hymns to the Gods and Other Poems.

Albert Pike was suggested as author because about the time of its publication, when it was going the rounds of the press, probably without any credit, a doggerel called "The Old Canoe" was composed about Pike by one of his political foes.

Albert Pike first joined the fraternal Independent Order of Odd Fellows in 1840.

Albert Pike next joined a Masonic Lodge, where he became extremely active in the affairs of the organization.

Albert Pike remained Sovereign Grand Commander for the rest of his life, devoting a large amount of his time to developing the rituals of the order.

Albert Pike published a book called Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry in 1871, the first of several editions.

Albert Pike researched and wrote the seminal treatise Indo-Aryan Deities and Worship as Contained in the Rig-Veda.

Albert Pike wrote another book, Maxims of the Roman Law and Some of the Ancient French Law, as Expounded and Applied in Doctrine and Jurisprudence.

Albert Pike returned to Arkansas in 1857, gaining some amount of prominence in the legal field.

Albert Pike was commissioned as a brigadier general in the Confederate States Army on November 22,1861, and given a command in the Indian Territory.

Ben McCulloch, Albert Pike trained three Confederate regiments of Indian cavalry, most of whom belonged to the "civilized tribes", whose loyalty to the Confederacy was variable.

Thomas C Hindman charged Pike with mishandling of money and material, ordering his arrest.

The incident arose when Hindman, who had declared martial law in Arkansas, ordered Albert Pike to turn over weapons and Native American Indian treaty funds.

On June 24,1865, Albert Pike applied to President Andrew Johnson for a pardon, disowning his earlier interpretation of the US Constitution.

Albert Pike said he now planned "to pursue the arts of peace, to practice my profession, to live among my books, and to labour to benefit my fellows and my race by other than political courses".

Albert Pike died on April 2,1891, in at the Scottish Rite Temple of the Supreme Council in Washington DC, at the age of 81, and was buried at Oak Hill Cemetery, despite the fact that he had left instructions for his body to be cremated.

The House of the Temple contains numerous memorials and artifacts related to Albert Pike, including his personal library.

Albert Pike was the only former Confederate military officer with an outdoor statue in Washington, DC, and in 2019 Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton called for its removal.

The Albert Pike Memorial Temple is an historic Masonic lodge in Little Rock, Arkansas; the structure is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Albert Pike Highway was an auto trail that extended more than 900 miles from Hot Springs, Arkansas, to Colorado Springs, Colorado, crossing the Ozark Mountains and passing through Fort Smith, Muskogee, Tulsa, Dodge City, La Junta and Pueblo.

Albert Pike first wrote about the Klan in an April 16,1868 editorial in the Memphis Daily Appeal, indicating that his main problems lay not with its aims, but with its methods and leadership.

Southern Agrarian poet John Gould Fletcher, who grew up in Little Rock in a house that Albert Pike built, believed Albert Pike was the poem's author.

However, the office of Grand Dragon, which Davis claims Albert Pike once held, is explicitly mentioned in the 1867 Klan constitution.

Walter Lee Brown in his 1997 biography of Albert Pike, likewise asserts that that Albert Pike was not a member of the Klan.