Chapter 6
Lincoln Takes Up the Burden
Certainly, no president of this Republic was ever beset
with so many staggering problems as President Lincoln. The more we
study those perilous years, the more we wonder at his great wisdom,
firmness and boundless patience and charity.
The Ultra-Pro-Slavery leaders had sworn to prevent the seating of
Abraham Lincoln in the Presidential chair. So certain were they of the
success of their plans that just as Buchanan was leaving the White
House, before the arrival of Mr. Lincoln, he turned and said: "As
George Washington was the first President, so James Buchanan will be
the last President of the United States."
Mr. Lincoln had no idea of the rottenness and treason, which were there
to face him in Washington. Almost every department in Washington was
headed by a traitor to the Government, for the arch-plotters had been
placing their trusted tools preparatory to the final blow.
The first months of his administration were spent in investigating
these national assassins, and replacing them with men who were true.
This, in itself, was a task that only the judgment of Lincoln could
have accomplished.
Mr. Lincoln had no idea of the dimensions of the Secession Plot. He was
later to find that his first call for 75,000 volunteers was inadequate
and was amazed when the Governors of three Southern States refused to
send their quota.
Another disillusionment came when he noted that as he increased his
calls for troops, Jefferson Davis did not send out any call. From that
on Lincoln began to realize something of the seriousness of the
situation and his last call was for three years or during the war. Southern leaders also realized the fact that they were up against the real thing.
When President Lincoln reached Philadelphia for his first inauguration,
there was a plot discovered and disclosed to General John Hancock at
Washington to assassinate Mr. Lincoln at Baltimore, where he was to
have stopped to address the citizens on his way to the Capitol. The
full details had been planned. An Italian barber well known in
Baltimore, a Romanist, was to have stabbed him while seated in his
carriage, when he started from the depot.
The son of Wm. H. Seward, who was at that time Senator and afterwards
Lincoln's Secretary of State, was sent post-haste to Philadelphia to
warn Mr. Lincoln of his danger. It was a difficult matter at first to
convince him of the seriousness of it. He flatly refused to go to
Washington immediately, as was suggested by his friends, but promised
that after he had raised the flag on Independence Hall in Philadelphia,
and delivered an address to the members of the Legislature at
Harrisburg, he would take an earlier train to Washington, which he did,
accompanied by only one friend, Wade C. Lammon, one of his law
partners, and Wm. H. Pinkerton, head of the Detective Agency of that
name in Chicago. The party took the six o'clock train out of
Philadelphia, quietly without attracting any publicity, and as Mr.
Lincoln was soundly sleeping, the train whizzed through Baltimore, and
got him to Washington early in the morning, where he was taken in
charge by the largest military and Secret Service escort a president
ever had been surrounded with. Thus was the first of Rome's
assassination plot thwarted.
The awakening of the President and the North came on the morning of
April 12, 1861 with the firing on Fort Sumpter. This opening shot of
the rebellion was sent by General Beauregard, Jesuit leader of the
military operations. Beauregard was a professed Romanist and sprung
from a distinguished family of Jesuits.
The North was wholly unprepared for war. They seemed not to have been
able to realize that there could ever be a conflict between the
citizens of the United States. This delusion was shot to pieces on
April 12th and amidst the greatest consternation and excitement
preparations began in earnest.
That President Lincoln fully realized it was not a Protestant South
with which he was contending, is clearly evident from his own words on
this subject in his conversation with the Rev. Charles Chiniquy,
ex-Catholic priest of Kankakee, Ill., who called once each year during
his administration at the White House to warn the President of his
danger of assassination by these enemies of Popular Government and
their agents, the Jesuits, through their Leopoldines.
"THE COMMON PEOPLE HEAR AND SEE THE BIG NOISY WHEELS OF THE SOUTHERN
CONFEDERACY CARS, AND THEY CALL HIM JEFF DAVIS, LEE, THOMPSON,
BEAUREGARD, SEMMES, OR OTHERS. THEY HONESTLY THINK THAT THEY ARE THE
MOTIVE POWER, THE FIRST CAUSE OF OUR TROUBLES. BUT IT IS A MISTAKE, THE
TRUE MOTIVE POWER IS SECRETED BEHIND THE THICK WALLS OF THE VATICAN—THE
COLLEGES AND SCHOOLS OF THE JESUITS; THE CONVENTS OF THE NUNS, THE
CONFESSIONAL BOXES OF ROME.
"THERE IS A FACT WHICH IS TOO MUCH IGNORED BY THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AND
WITH WHICH I AM ACQUAINTED ONLY SINCE I BECAME PRESIDENT. IT IS, THAT
THE BEST AND LEADING FAMILIES OF THE SOUTH HAVE RECEIVED THEIR
EDUCATION IN GREAT PART, IF NOT ALL, FROM THE JESUITS AND THE
NUNS—HENCE THE DEGRADING PRINCIPLE OF SLAVERY, PRIDE AND CRUELTY, WHICH
ARE AS SECOND NATURE AMONG MANY OF THE PEOPLE."
And continuing Mr. Lincoln analyzed the Roman psychology, which played its part in his own murder, when he said:
"HENCE THAT STRANGE WANT OF FAIR PLAY FOR HUMANITY; THAT IMPLACABLE
HATRED AGAINST IDEALS OF QUALITY AND LIBERTY, AS WE FIND THEM IN THE
GOSPEL OF CHRIST—IT IS TRUE THAT WE BOUGHT FLORIDA, LOUISIANA, SOUTH
CAROLINA, NEW MEXICO AND MISSOURI FROM SPAIN, BUT ROME HAD PUT HER
VIEWS OF HER ANTI-SOCIAL AND ANTI-CHRISTIAN MAXIMS INTO THE VEINS OF
THE PEOPLE, BEFORE THEY BECAME AMERICANS."
Surely, no clearer conception of the masked enemy with which that great
man was contending was ever glimpsed. While other men studied books,
Lincoln STUDIED MEN, and the above interpretation of the terrible
conflict in which he was the Commander-in-Chief is startling in its
accuracy. It is very simple now for those of us who have the knowledge
of an array of facts before us, to see what Lincoln then saw, but we
must remember when he spoke those words, he was the very storm-center
and chief actor in the social upheaval without the advantage of
retrospect. Mr. Lincoln had a prophetic sense almost uncanny, which
alone made him superior to any of his contemporaries. More than once he
told his close friends that he had a strong premonition that he would
not outlast the Rebellion, that his work would be finished with it.
ROMAN CHURCH ALWAYS HAS ADVOCATED
CHATTEL SLAVERY
Disruption has always been the first motive of the Jesuits, and black
slavery was the rock upon which they planned to rend this government.
There was no other principle, no ethics involved, never is, so far as
Jesuitism goes, except the fundamental principles of the divine right
rule of the popes of Rome.
From the earliest times the Roman Church advocated human slavery. In
the Middle Ages, when feudal slavery flourished, the church fattened on
the exploitation of the serfs who were bought and sold with the land.
These serfs were supposed to have no souls, and were in precisely the
same category as cattle. The great monasteries and nunneries were among
the largest owners of serfs. For instance, had Joan D' Arc lived four
hundred years before her time, she and her family would have been among
the serfs attached to the monastery of San Ramey. In short, serfdom was
the basis of the wealth of the papacy.
It is true that in rare cases the church lifted out of serfdom, a boy
in whom it recognized some peculiar native talent or personal trait
which might be cultivated and turned to its own advantage, but the act
was simply the removal from the thralldom of serfdom to that of
ecclesiastical slavery for further and more useful exploitation by more
exacting task masters, for the Roman church has always enslaved the
minds of its victims. The Jesuit Oath exacts the obedience of cadavers.
In the Doctrine of the Jesuits
by Gury, translated into the French by that brilliant educator and
statesman, Paul Bert in 1879, we find the position of the church and
the Jesuits on black slavery quoted as follows:
"Slavery does not constitute a crime before any law, divine or human.
What reasons can we have for undermining the foundations of slavery
with the same zeal that ought always to animate us in overcoming evil?
When one thinks of the state of degradation in which the hordes of
Africa live, the slave trade may be considered as a providential act,
and we almost repudiate the philanthropy which sees in a man but one
thing—material liberty."
The above is the papal virus to which Lincoln referred and with which
the youths of the best families of the Southern Confederacy were
inoculated, and which made the leaders of the ultra-pro-slavery forces
an easy prey to the Roman hierarchy and its priesthood in the great
conspiracy or destruction which Lincoln visioned.
It was the virus which was let into the veins of Mary E. Surratt and
was passed on by her to her son, the arch-conspirator, John H. Surratt;
it was the opiate which silenced the voice of conscience and kindness
of heart of John Wilkes Booth, and nerved his hand to send the bullet
into the great brain of Abraham Lincoln; it was the deadly drug which
made Lewis Payne, the unfortunate, the happy-go-lucky "Davy" Herold,
the shiftless Edward Spangler, and the rest of the non-Catholic tools,
wax, in the hands of the arch-Leopoldines in this wicked conspiracy to
wreck this popular government.
This Jesuit virus that Slavery does not constitute a crime before any law, divine or human,
was the deadly drug that set the BLOOD OF THE SLAVE OWNERS ON FIRE,
JUSTIFIED THEIR "CAUSE" distorted their vision, controlled their ethics
and appealed so strongly to their economic interests, and it was the
big urge underlying the whole progress of the treason of secession.
In the A Memoir of Jefferson Davis, the leader
of the Southern Confederacy, published by his wife after his demise, we
find on page 445, this remark: "Mr. Davis's early education had always
inclined in the Roman Catholics, friends who could not be alienated
from the oppressed." In chapter 2nd, that gentleman is quoted as
follows:
"The Kentucky Catholic school called St. Thomas College, when I was
there was connected with the church. The priests were Dominicans. They
held large property; productive fields, slaves, flour mills, flocks and
herds. As an association they were rich. Individually, they were vowed
to poverty and self-abnegation. They were diligent, in the care, both
spiritual and material, of their parishioners' wants. When I entered
the school, a large majority of the boys belonged to the Roman Catholic
church. After a short time I was the only Protestant boy remaining, and
also the smallest boy in the school. From whatever reason, the priests
were particularly kind to me. Father Wallace, afterwards bishop of
Nashville, treated me with the fondness of a near relative."
It is very obvious from the above that the kindness
shown to Jefferson Davis as a child clung to him and influenced his
whole life. It bore fruit, and his friendliness to the Catholic church
was well repaid by that institution which always, under such
circumstances, rewards its tools.
When Mr. Davis had been arrested after the close of the Civil War and
was to be tried for treason, it was the distinguished Catholic
attorney, Charles O'Connor, of New York City, who offered his services,
which were accepted in Mr. Davis's defense.
On Sept. 25th, 1863, Davis addressed the following letter to Pius IXth:
"Richmond, Va., Sept. 25, 1863
"Very Venerable Sovereign Pontiff:
"The letters which you have written to the clergy of New Orleans and
New York have been committed to me, and I have read with emotion the
deep grief therein expressed for the ruin and devastation caused by the
war, which is now being waged against the States and the people who
have selected me as their president, and your orders to your clergy to
exhort the people to peace and charity. I am deeply sensible of the
Christian charity which has impelled you to this reiterated appeal to
the clergy. It is for this reason I feel it my duty to express
personally and in the name of the Confederate States our gratitude for
such sentiments of Christian good feeling and love, and to assure Your
Holiness, that the people threatened even on their own hearts, with the
most cruel oppression and terrible carnage is desirous as it always has
been, to see the end of this impious war; that we have ever addressed
prayers to heaven for that issue which Your Holiness now desires; that
we desire none of our enemies' possessions, that we merely fight to
resist the devastation of our country and the shedding of our best
blood, and to force them to let us live in peace under the protection
of our own institutions and under our laws, which not only insure to
everyone the enjoyment of his temporal rights but also the free
exercise of his religion.
"I pray your Holiness to accept on the part of myself and the people of
the Confederate States our sincere thanks for the efforts in favor of
peace.
"May the Lord preserve the days of Your Holiness and keep you under His divine protections.
(Signed) Jefferson Davis."
It occurs to me that after perusing the above bit of concentrated
treason, any apologist for this leader of the Rebellion would be out of
order.
Here is the Pope's reply:
"Illustrious and honorable President,
"Salutation.
"We have just received with all suitable welcome the persons sent by
you to place in our hands your letter dated the 25th of Sept. last. Not
slight was the pleasure we experienced when we learned from those
persons and the letter, with what feelings of joy and gratitude,
illustrious and honorable President, as soon as you were informed of
our letters to our venerable brother, John, Archbishop of New York and
John, Archbishop of New Orleans, dated the 18th of October of last
year, and in which we have with all our strength exerted and exhorted
those venerable brothers that in their Episcopal piety and solicitude
they should endeavor with the most ardent zeal and in our name, to
bring about the end of that fatal Civil War which has broken out in
those countries in order that the American people may obtain peace and
concord and dwell charitably together.
"It is particularly agreeable to us to see that you, illustrious and
honorable President, and your people, were animated with the same
desires of peace and tranquility which we have in our letters
inculcated upon our venerable brothers. May it please God at the same
time to make other people of America and their rulers reflecting
seriously how terrible is civil war and what calamities it engenders,
listen to the inspirations of a calmer spirit and adopt resolutely the
part of peace.
"As for us, we shall not cease to offer up the most fervent prayers to
God Almighty that He may pour out upon all its people of America the
spirit of peace and charity, and that He will stop the great evils
which afflict them. We at the same time beseech the God of Pity to shed
abroad upon you, the light of His Grace and attach you to us by a
perfect friendship.
"Given at Rome, at St. Peters the 3rd day of December, 1863 of our Pontificate Eighteen.
(Signed) Pius IXth."
The reader will note the recognition by the Pope of a divided country
and also his recognition of Davis as the President. It was on the
publication of this letter that the large desertions of Roman Catholics
from the ranks of the North began.
Mrs. Davis tells us:
"During Mr. Davis' imprisonment, the Holy father sent a likeness of
himself and wrote underneath it, with his own hand, attested by the
seal of the Cardinal Antonelli, 'Come unto me all ye who are weary and
heavy laden. and I will give you rest."'
The lady further opines that:
"The dignity and the man both illustrated the meek and lowly Lord of us all, whose vice-regent he was."
This remark leaves no doubt as to precisely where she stood on the
question. The writer was amused to learn that Jeff Davis was a Wet
which is also in keeping with his early education in the Roman Church,
and that his explanation upon an occasion when he was pressed for his
attitude upon the subject is almost identical with that of the late J.
Card. Gibbons. He says in part in his defense of the liquor traffic:
"To destroy individual liberty, and moral responsibility, (Get that,
dear reader) would be to eradicate one evil by the substitution of
another, which it is submitted would be more fatal than that for which
it was offered as a remedy. The abuse and not the use of stimulants, it
must be confessed, is the evil to be remedied."
Upon the whole, surely no one can deny that Rome's fatal virus worked
in the veins of this Ultra-Pro-Slavery leader in the late Rebellion,
and that Lincoln was right when he recognized the anti-social and anti-Christian views
of the foe with which he struggled. The fact that Jefferson Davis was
not a professed Roman Catholic did not in the slightest curtail his
usefulness as a Leopoldine.
A sense of justice and gratitude should compel every loyal American to
remember the decisive and correct attitude of the English government at
the psychological moment in our Civil War. It stands in sharp contrast
with the meddlesome, treacherous letter of the Pope, above quoted to
the Honorable and Illustrious President of the Seceding States. On page 476 the Memoirs
by Mrs. Davis, quotes in full the ultimatum of England which was
received by Davis at Richmond through the British Consul which says in
part:
"After consulting with the law officers of the Crown, Her Majesty's
government have come to the decision that the agents of the authorities
of the so-called Confederate States have been engaged in building
vessels which would be at least partially equipped for war purposes on
leaving the ports of this country; that these war vessels would
undoubtedly be used against the United States, a country with which
this government is at peace: that this would be a violation of the
neutrality laws of the realm; and that the Government of the United
States would have just grounds for serious complaint against her
Majesty's Government, should they permit such an infraction of the
friendly relations subsisting between the two countries. No matter what
might be the difficulty of proving in a court of law that the parties
procuring the building of these vessels are agents of the so-called
Confederate States, it is universally understood throughout the world
that they are so, and Her Majesty's Government are satisfied that Mr.
Davis would not deny that they are so. Under these circumstances, Her
Majesty's Government protests and remonstrates against any further
efforts being made on the part of the so-called Confederate States, or
the authorities or agents thereof to build or to cause to be built, to
purchase or to cause to be purchased, any such vessels as those styled
as Rams,
or any other vessels to be used for war purposes against the United
States, or against any country with which the United Kingdom is at
peace or on terms of amity; and Her Majesty's Government further
protests against all acts of violation of the neutrality laws of the
realms.
"I have the honor to be your Lordship's obedient servant,
(Signed) Russell"
Those are the words with the bark on. No recognition of Your Illustrious and Honorable President.
Only recognition of a UNITED STATES—preservation of the Union—for which
Abraham Lincoln was contending and gave his precious life.
The wobbly attitude of the past administrations in Washington on the
dangerous interference of the Sinn Fein element in this country during
the present unpleasant attempt at disruption in the British Empire on
the so-called Irish Question
which is not Irish at all, but a Roman question, makes one ashamed and
humiliated at the hemming and hawing of the politicians in high office
at Washington.
On July 26, 1862 in a letter to Reverdy Johnson, who by the way was the
attorney who afterwards gave his distinguished services to Mrs. Mary E.
Surratt, Mr. Lincoln said:
"I am a patient man, always willing to forgive on the Christian terms
of repentance, and also to give ample time for repentance. Still, I
must save the government if possible. What I cannot do, of course I
will not do; but it may as well be understood, once for all, that I
shall not surrender this game leaving any available card unplayed."
This was the same expression of sentiment which had caused the death of
William Henry Harrison, the ninth President and Zachary Taylor, the
twelfth President, the preservation of the UNION and the fact that
Lincoln did it, was the grounds for his physical death, by these
wreckers.
Nor did the great Lincoln stop pouring out his patriotic soul all
during these trying four years. On August 15, 1863, he gave his opinion
upon the Draft as follows:
"Shall we shrink from the necessary means to maintain our free
government, which our grandfathers employed to establish, and our own
fathers have already employed once to maintain it? Are we degenerate?
Has the manhood of our race run out?" (Complete Works, Nicolay & Hay. Vol. 11, P. 391.)
The President spent the first months of his administration feeling his
way, so to speak. Delving into the conditions in the various
departments, finding traitors and carefully replacing them by those
whom he knew to be true. The lesson he was learning would have
staggered a man of less courage than Lincoln—the steadfast, unyielding
patriot, when any principle of right was in the balance.
It was the sifting time with Lincoln. In his letter to Corning, June 1863 he writes:
"The man who stands by and says nothing when the peril of his country's
government is discussed, cannot be misunderstood. If not hindered, he
is sure to help the enemy; much more, if he talks ambiguously—talks for
his country 'with buts and ifs and ands."' (Barrett, p. 632.)
In addressing the members of the general assembly Presbyterian Church, President Lincoln said:
"As a pilot, I have used my best exertions to keep afloat our ship of
state; and shall be glad to resign my trust at the appointed time to
another pilot more skillful and successful than I may prove. In every
case and at all hazards the government must be perpetuated." (Complete Works, Vol. 2. Page 342.)
Thus almost daily was Lincoln telling of his American creed, adding
fuel to the fires of hatred which were burning in the wicked hearts of
his country's deadly enemies. Spurred on like a lot of demons, they
rounded up their hell hounds in and about Washington for the final
perfidious act.
It finally became manifest to President Lincoln that the presence of
the foreign troops in Mexico was a menace to the safety of this
country, and through our American Consul at Paris, this government
served notice on Napoleon, that Jesuit tool of the Pope, that his
troops must be removed from Mexico within the time indicated by this
country.
That there could be no misunderstanding concerning the attitude of the
Lincoln administration toward the Republic of Mexico, was made plainly
evident by the note sent through Secretary of State Seward to our Consul at Paris to be delivered to Napoleon IIIrd which reads:
"The United States government does not desire to suppress the fact that
their sympathies are with Mexico, that is to say with the Republic of
Mexico nor does United States government, in any sense, for any
purpose, disapprove of the Republican government, now in force in
Mexico, or distrust the administration. Neither was there any
disposition apparently to deny the Liberals of Mexico financial
assistance."
When President Lincoln submitted to the Senate a Treaty granting a loan
of $11,000,000 to the Republic of Mexico, although he made no
recommendation upon the subject, it was a sufficient hint which
expressed his sympathy.
The demand that the French troops be removed from Mexico was complied
with to the letter, owing to complications in the situation in which
France at the time was involved in Europe she feared war with the
United States.
As can be imagined, this was a terrible blow to the CONSPIRATORS in
Europe, Canada and Mexico, not to speak of their tools in this country.
It served to practically break the morale of the Confederate army, and
hastened the end of the war with a Victory for the right.
In the meantime events were shaping up in Mexico in favor of the new Republic.
The Empress Carlotte, within a few months after their arrival in Mexico
City, was sent to Rome by Maximillian to explain in person that the
strength of Popular Government there had been underestimated; that it
was impossible to restore the church property and the rights of the
clergy. The important part of her mission, however, was to ask for more
troops.
Her reception at the Vatican was simply withering;
the Pope was so chagrined and angry at the failure of his designs and
so severe in his reproach that the sensitive princess was carried out
bodily in an unconscious state, upon which she recovered a mental
wreck. She was incarcerated in the Castle of Bouchet near Brussels,
Belgium, where she was placed under constant surveillance, and was
unaware that on June 19th, 1867, Maximillian, her husband, was shot at
sunrise at Queretaro, Mexico, by the Revolutionists. This is the tragic
termination of what has always been alluded to as one of the greatest
love matches of the royalty of Europe.
A victory for the North was not indicated until the very last days of
the War. The Leopoldines left no stone untumed to defeat Lincoln's
renomination. They fully realized that if they did not, it meant their
doom. When the news of his re-election was flashed over the wires, they
did not give up—far from it. They redoubled their efforts. They saw
more clearly than ever before that Abraham Lincoln was their Nemesis.
They knew only too well that he would be the stumbling block to their
future plans, for they felt that in Lincoln they would always encounter
a powerful champion for the preservation of the Union and all its
institutions. They feared with a deadly fear the influence of his able
pen and voice. They knew that to permit this calm, thorough,
clear-visioned man who had such a complete estimate of their perfidious
designs to serve at the helm during the RECONSTRUCTION PERIOD would
mean their ultimate rout in our political affairs.
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