The Suppressed Truth about the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
Chapter 5
When The Pope Was King
That Pope Pius IXth conspired with Napoleon IIIrd to take advantage of the conflict between the North and the South in this country and with one blow to destroy both Popular Governments of Mexico and the United States, is beyond question.
During the years from 1864 to '65 the activity of these Jesuits in Europe was redoubled. There is no doubt that they were not in close touch with every step and phase of the Rebellion in this country. In 1856 Prince Maximillian of Austria, was called to Rome where a marriage had been arranged through ecclesiastical and royal intrigue between himself and the Princess Carlotta, daughter of King Leopold IInd of Belgium, thus uniting two of the strongest Catholic powers in Europe.
The next step was the marriage of this royal couple in the Cathedral at Vienna. In April, 1864, by the orders of the pope, they were crowned Emperor and Empress of Mexico at Pontifical High mass and amidst great rejoicing. On April 14, 1864, just one year to the day, previous to Lincoln's assassination, this royal couple set sail in an Austrian ship of war for Mexico. They put in at Cevita Vecchia, the port in the Papal States, and were received at the Vatican by the most elaborate ceremonies, which had ever been extended by a pope to royalty. After several days of these honors and being loaded down with the papal blessings they again assumed their journey across the Atlantic.
Maximillian had been during a previous visit to Napoleon IIIrd and his Empress Eugenie, assured of the assistance of thirty thousand French and Belgian troops for his invasion into Mexico, the specific object of which was the destruction of the young Republic already established under Juarez. These troops were poured in and were being supported by the Mexican People. It had been impressed upon Maxmillian at the Vatican that his first official act must be complete restoration of all the church property and ecclesiastical rights of the clergy which had been confiscated by the Liberal government.
After the conquest of Mexico the plan was for this imperialistic commander Emperor Maximillian, to join Jefferson Davis and Confederate troops at Richmond where they would sweep north and capture Washington.
Davis had made a strong appeal in 1863 in a letter to the Pope, and after the reply, which he promptly received from His Holiness, a wholesale desertion of the Irish Catholic troops of the North to the Confederacy followed. In fact, the Government figures are that out of 144,000 Irish Romanists, but 44,000 remained loyal.
We have seen and heard how the Roman priesthood the world over, is bending every effort to restore the pope to the position which he occupied during the Dark Ages. This is perhaps an opportune time for the reader to take a survey of conditions which existed in the Papal States prior to and during the Civil War where the popes of Rome had been in supreme command for over fourteen hundred years. Certainly, fourteen hundred years ought to be sufficient for a thorough test of the merits of a system. Pius IXth was elected in 1846. There had been three popes in the interim between him and Pius VIIth who had restored the Jesuits and called the congress of Vienna in 1814. There was no change in policy however, nor any laxness in regard to the attitude of the church towards its obligations to the high contracting parties of the Holy Alliance and their Secret Treaty at Verona.
Of all of his predecessors Pius IXth was one of the most reactionary, and in his notorious Syllabus which was proclaimed to a startled world in December, 1864, he anathematized every fundamental principle upon which this Republic is based. The historians are inclined to place all the blame of his mistakes, and they were many, upon his Secretary of State, Cardinal Antonelli, who was beyond doubt the power behind the throne—the agent for the Black pope. Antonelli is far more interesting as a character study than the White pope, inasmuch as he was so deeply interested in the affairs of this country during the war. I am taking the liberty of reproducing some graphic pen pictures by the distinguished French joumalist, M. About, who made a personal visit to the Papal States to learn, firsthand, if the astounding reports from the Italian Revolutionists which had been pouring into the European press for several years were correct. M. About's book, The Roman Question is intensely interesting and written in the peculiarly piquant style of the brilliant Frenchman. It is long since out of print and difficult to secure as the Leopoldines have bought up every copy, which comes under their WATCHFUL EYE. It is a terrific arraignment, especially so, as the author himself was a Roman Catholic.
His visit to the Papal States was made in 1859, the same year you will remember that Abraham Lincoln was making his telling political campaigns for the presidency, and immortalizing himself by his debate with Judge Douglas, on the Dred Scott Decision of Judge Roger E. Taney.
The great Italian poet and patriot, Mazzini, was an exile, living in a London attic, pouring out his soul's most noble appeals to the Liberals of Europe. His large property holdings in Italy had been confiscated by the Pope's government. The Carlysles had visited him in his attic and through their friendship he was brought from the miserable surroundings and ensconced in comfortable quarters, where the most distinguished literati of London and Paris visited him and were captivated by his remarkable talents and his sincere patriotism and completely won over by his irresistible arguments for a FREE AND UNITED ITALY.
The exile Garibaldi, with his Redshirted Legion, had answered the call of his country after a sojourn in the United States where he had also lived in an attic in New York City, following the humble profession of a candlemaker, saving up his money.
One day he suddenly closed his attic door and disappeared as mysteriously as he had come. The great soldier patriot returned to Italy by the way of London and one of his most brilliant conquests was the capture of the hearts of the people of London. The red-blooded staunch Protestants not only of the city itself, but from all over England, came to welcome the man who had returned to offer his sword against the papal yoke. They went wild with delight. Garibaldi with his yellow flowing hair under his big slouch hat was lifted to the shoulders of the crowd, mad with joy, which surged about him, and carried as though his great form was but a feather's weight.
This was an insult, aye, it was the unforgivable sin in the eyes of the black-robed Jesuits, and the Vatican, which aroused the deadly hatred for the English Protestant nation, a hatred which has not abated itself up to today.
One might presume under the circumstances that the Pope would have been too occupied with his own affairs to meddle with the politics in the United States, at such a time.
The clever Frenchman, M. Dupin, had said: "Le Jesuitism est un epee don't la poingee est a Rome, et la point partout."—Jesuitism is a sword whose hilt is in Rome and it points everywhere.
Gladstone had visited the Papal States in 1850 and on his return to England, had reported to his government and the London press that the Papal government was The negation of God.
In the preface of this book, M. About says:
"It was in the Papal States that I studied the Roman Question. I traveled over every part of the country; I conversed with men of all opinions, examined things very closely, and collected my information on the spot.
"The pressing condition of Italy has obliged me to write more rapidly than I could have wished; and this enforced haste has given me a certain air of warmth, perhaps of intemperance, even to the most carefully matured reflections . . . . I fight fairly, and in good faith. I do not pretend to have judged the foes of Italy without passion; but I have calumniated none of them.
"If," he continues. "I have sought a publisher in Brussels, while I had an excellent one in Paris, it is not because I feel any alarm on the score of the regulations of our press, or the severity of our tribunals. But as the Pope has a long arm that might reach me in France, I have gone a little out of the way to tell him the plain truths contained in these pages."
And now for the plain truths about his Secretary of State, the Cardinal Deacon, Antonelli.
"He was born among thieves. His native place Sonino, is more celebrated in the history of crime, than all Arcadia in the annals of virtue. This nest of vultures was hidden in the southern mountains, toward the Neapolitan frontier. Roads, impractical to mounted dragoons, winding through brakes and thickets; forests impenetrable to the stranger; deep ravines and gloomy caverns—all combine to form a most desirable landscape for the convenience of crime.
"The houses of Sonino, old, ill built, flung pell-mell, one upon another, and almost uninhabitable by human beings, were, in point of fact, little else than depots of pillage and magazines of rapine. The population, alert and vigorous, had for many centuries practiced armed robberies, and depredation had gained its livelihood at the point of the carbine.
"Newborn infants inhaled a contempt of the law with the mountain air and drew in the love of others goods, with their mother's milk. Almost as soon as they could walk, they assumed cioccie, or moccasins of untanned leather, with which they learned to run fearlessly along the ledge of the giddiest mountain precipices. When they had acquired the art of pursuing and escaping, of taking without being taken, the knowledge of the value of different coins, the arithmetic of the distribution of booty, and the principles of the rights of nations, as they are practiced among the Apaches or the Comanches, their education was deemed complete . . . .
"In the year of grace 1806, this sensual, brutal, impious, superstitious, ignorant and cunning race, endowed Italy with a little mountaineer, known as Giacomo Antonelli. Hawks do not hatch doves. This is an axiom in natural history, which has no need of demonstration. Had Giacomo Antonelli been gifted with simple virtues of an Arcadian shepherd, his village would have instantly disowned him. But the influence of certain events modified his conduct, although they failed to modify his nature.
"If he received his first lessons from successful brigandage, his next teachers were the gendarmerie. When he was hardly four years old, the discharge of a high moral lesson shook his ears, it was the French troops who were shooting brigands in the outskirts of Sonino.
"After the return of Pius VIIth, he witnessed the decapitation of a few neighboring relatives who had dandled him on their knees. Under Leo XIIth., it was still worse. The wholesome correctives of the wooden horse were permanently established in village square . . . . St. Peter's Gate, which adjoins the house of the Antonelli, was ornamented with a garland of human heads, which . . . grinned dogmatically enough in their iron cages . . . . Young Giacomo was enabled to reflect upon the inconveniences of brigandage, even before he had tasted its sweets . . . . He hesitated for some time as to the choice of a calling. His natural vocation was that of the inhabitants of Sonino . . . to live in plenty, to enjoy every sort of pleasure, to rule others, to frighten them if necessary, but above all to violate laws with immunity.
"With the view of obtaining so lofty an end, without endangering his life, for which he had ever a most particular regard, he entered the great seminary of Rome."
That's a beautiful picture of the next highest prelate to the Pope. is it not?
So much for the early years of Antonelli.
But permit me to quote again from the pen of the author of The Roman Question, who, as we know, was an eye witness:
"No country in Europe is more richly gifted, or possess greater advantages, whether for agriculture, manufacture or commerce . . .
"Traversed by the Apennines, which divide it about equally, the Papal dominions incline gently, on one side the Adriatic, on the other the Mediterranean. In each of the seas they possess an excellent port: to the east, Ancona; to the west, Civita Vecchia . . . . If Panurge had had these ports in his kingdom, he would have infallibly built himself a navy . . . . The Phoenicians and Carthaginians were not so well off.
"A river tolerably well known under the name of the Tiber, waters nearly the whole country to the west. In former days it ministered to the wants of internal commerce. Roman historians describe it as navigable up to Perugia. At the present time it is hardly so far as Rome; but if its bed were cleared out, and the filth not allowed to be thrown in, it would render greater service and would not overflow so often.
"In 1847, the country lands subject to the Pope were valued at about 34,800,000 pounds sterling . . . the Minister of Public Works and Commerce admitted that the property was not estimated at above a third of its real value. If capital returned its proper interest, if activity and industry caused trade and manufactures to increase, the national income, as ought to be the case, it would be the Rothschilds who would borrow money from the Pope at six percent interest."
As a matter of fact the Papacy was heavily indebted to the Rothschilds upon which About throws a high light further on.
"But, stay," he continues, "I have not yet completed the catalogue of possessions. To the munificence of nature, must be added the inheritance of the past. The poor Pagans of great Rome left all their property to the Pope who damns them."
"They left him gigantic aqueducts, prodigious sewers and roads which we find still in use, after twenty centuries of traffic. They left him the Coliseum, for his Capuchins to preach in. They left him an example of an administration without equal in history. But the heritage was accepted without the responsibilities.
"I will conceal from you no longer that this magnificent territory appeared to me in the first place most unworthily cultivated. From Civita Vecchia to Rome, a distance of sixteen leagues, cultivation struck me in the light of very rare accident . . . . Some pasture fields, some land in fallow, plenty of brambles, and, at long intervals, a field with oxen at the plow; that is what the traveler will see in April. He will not meet with the occasional forest, which he finds in the desert regions of Turkey. It seems as if man had swept across the land to destroy everything, and the soil had been taken possession of by flocks and herds . . . I used to walk in even direction, and sometimes long distances . . . . However, in proportion as I receded from the City of Rome, I found the land better cultivated. One would suppose that from a certain distance from St. Peter's, the peasants worked with greater relish . . . .
"I sometimes fancied that these honest laborers worked as if they were afraid to make a noise, lest by smiting the soil too hard, too deeply, too boldly, they should wake up the dead of the past ages.
"St. Peter's is a noble church, but, in its way, a well cultivated field is a beautiful sight . . . . It seemed to me, that the activity and prosperity of the subjects of the Pope were in exact proportion to the square of the distance which separated them from Rome . . . in other words, that the shade of the monuments of the eternal city, was noxious to the cultivation of the country. Rabelais says. 'the shade of monasteries is fruitful' but he speaks in another sense.
"I submitted my doubts to an old ecclesiastic, who hastened to undeceive me. 'The country is not uncultivated,' he said, 'or if it be so, the fault is with the subjects of the Pope. This people is indolent by nature, though 21,415 monks are always preaching activity and industry to them!'"
That is a birds eye view, dear reader, of the Papal States in the early eighteenth century when we were having our blind struggle with the Papacy for our national existence in this country.
In his chapter on PLEBEIANS, M. About has this to say:
"The subjects of the Holy Father are divided by birth and fortune into three very distinct classes—nobility, citizens, and people, or plebeians.
"The Gospel has omitted to consecrate the inequality of men, but the law of the state—that is to say, the will of the Popes—carefully maintains it. Benedict XIV declared it honorable and salutary in his Bull of January 4, 1746, and Pius IX expressed himself in the same terms at the beginning of his Chirografo of May 2nd, 1853."
Ponder these words well, dear reader, and add to them the following quotation which I lifted from The New World, the Official Organ of the Roman Catholic Church in the Archdiocese of Chicago, Ill., which was a comment on the Federation of Catholic Societies held at New Orleans the previous November, 1910:
"Human society has its origin from God and is constituted of two classes of people, rich and poor, which respectively represents Capital and Labor.
"Hence it follows that according to the ordinance of God, human society is composed of two classes, superiors and subjects, masters and servants, learned and unlettered, rich and poor, nobles and plebeians." (The New World, Chicago, Ill., Dec. 20, 1910.)
It is astounding to know that Diomede Falconio, the Pope's Legate to this country, who uttered the above divine right treason on that occasion was at the time a naturalized citizen of the United States!!!
That is what the oath of a Jesuit amounts to.
Falconio, who has since died, was instructing the subjects of the Pope in this country and there were thousands of Catholics present at the New Orleans Convention, that a government based as our POPULAR Government is, is not worthy "Favor or support." (See Leo XIIIth's Great Encyclicals, page 126).
In a nutshell, The Roman Church in this country has always taught and is still teaching its subjects a separate citizenship inimical to our American citizenship that the sole authority to rule must come from the consent of the ruled.
This is the same divine right IDEA that rent this country from stem to stern in 1860, which gashed its fair face with the Mason Dixon line!
This is the same identical teaching, which swept Abraham Lincoln from us at the most critical moment in our country's history.
This is the concentrated treason which is today being inculcated in the minds of one million seven hundred thousand boys and girls who attend the Catholic parochial schools which we have wickedly permitted her to erect in direct opposition to the Public Schools where the fundamentals of POPULAR GOVERNMENT are instilled.
This is the ROMAN QUESTION, the irrepressible conflict, the same old question which the great Lincoln understood and defined so thoroughly in his campaign with Douglas—Douglas with the Roman Catholic wife—Douglas, the Leopoldine, the defender of slavery, who was chosen whether consciously or unconsciously, I cannot say, but chosen just the same to champion the doctrine of class distinction in this country with which they thought to destroy it.
"That is the issue that will continue in this country when the poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent.
"It is the eternal struggle between these two principles—right and wrong—throughout the world.
"They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time, and will ever continue to struggle.
"The one is the common right of humanity and the other, the divine right of kings . . . it is the same spirit that says: 'You work and toil and earn bread and I'll eat it.' no matter in what shape it comes . . . it is the same tyrannical principle." (Lincoln's Speech at Alton, Ill., October 15, 1858.)
Abraham Lincoln was the living embodiment of the common right of humanity. In his life the perfection of the NEW IDEA had been materialized, had become a living, breathing FACT, which was unconquerable, yes, unassailable.
Lincoln knew the struggle would go on, after "these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent."
I believe that the prophetic, inimitable words that Charles Chiniquy attributes to him in his Fifty Years In The Church of Rome were said by him. They have the peculiar literary style of Lincoln and could never be confused with the effusive, emotional manner of expression of the Frenchman that Chiniquy had, than night with day.
The opening words:
"I do not pretend to be a prophet," ring with the modesty which distinguishes many of Mr. Lincoln's greatest sayings. Listen:
"I do not pretend to be a prophet. But though not a prophet, I see a very dark cloud on our horizon. That dark cloud is coming from Rome. It will be filled with tears of blood. It will rise and increase, till its flanks will be torn by a flash of lightning, followed by a fearful peal of thunder. Then a cyclone such as the world has never seen will pass over this country, spreading ruin and desolation from north to south. After it is over, there will be long days of peace and prosperity; for popery with its Jesuitism and merciless Inquisition, will have been forever swept away from our country. Neither you, nor I, but our children will live to see these things. "—(Page 715, Fifty Years In The Church of Rome, by Rev. Charles Chiniquy.)
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