However, Roosevelt also ran into occasional snags with the society. He went into the place where the idea of our government was realized as far as it is humanly possible for mankind to realize a lofty idea." When Brother George Washington went into a lodge of the fraternity, he went into the one place in the United States where he stood below or above his fellows according to their official position in the lodge. "One of the things that attracted me so greatly to Masonry, that I hailed the chance of becoming a mason, was that it really did act up to what we, as a government and as a people, are pledged to - of treating each man on his merits as a man. In his speech, he reflected on some of his own reasons for joining the Freemasons: President Roosevelt addressed the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania in 1902 on the anniversary of Washington's initiation. The Theodore Roosevelt Center has digitized many of the 26th president's letters - some of which reference his Masonic activities. Secret society: Freemasons, Concatenated Order of Hoo-Hoo However, the name lived on with William and Mary's student newspaper and the secret society itself re-surged in 1972, under the name the Flat Hat Club. The group pretty much died out when the Revolutionary War interrupted classes. Members identified themselves with a secret handshake, along with a silver badge inscribed with the words "stabilitas et fides" (stability and faith, which is now the motto of William and Mary's campus newspaper). The initials FHC stood for "Fraternitas, Humanitas, et Cognitio" - Latin for "brotherhood, humanity, and knowledge." However the group became known as the Flat Hat Club, probably a reference to the mortarboards students wore at the time. In one 1819 letter, the third US president reflected on his experience in the secret society: "There existed a society called the FHC society, confined to the number of six students only, of which I was a member, but it had no useful object. Society at the College of William and Mary, but that doesn't mean he was impressed by the group. Thomas Jefferson may have been a member of the FHC.
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