A Foundation of Greed, Globalism and Banking
“Government has been the indispensable handmaiden of private wealth since the origin of society.”[175]
In 1780, people considered William Bingham (1752–1804), a Federalist, as the richest man in America.
He made a veritable fortune in trading, shipping, corrupt currency exchanges and war profiteering. Robert
Morris used Bingham’s ships as privateers in the Caribbean during the American Revolution. After the
revolution, he and Alexander Hamilton amassed all the worthless Continental currency they could and
redeemed it at par. He acquired two million acres of land in New York and Maine from William Duer and
General Henry Knox, Washington’s first War Secretary, a Freemason and the first secretary of the Society
of the Cincinnati. People referred to it as “Bingham’s Million Acres.” He willed it to his five daughters.
[176]
In 1781, Bingham helped found the Bank of North America, the nation’s first private commercial bank. Morris, an associate of Hamilton, persuaded Congress to charter Bingham’s bank. The bank, located in Pennsylvania, operated from January 7, 1782 until 1785 when its charter expired. After that, it functioned under other names. To fund this private bank, Morris had borrowed about $30 million in gold, silver and bills of exchange from the Netherlands and France.
Bingham became a U.S. Senator (1795-1801). On August 23, 1798, his daughter, Anne Louisa, married
English financier Alexander Baring. Bingham’s investments of gold bars helped finance Thomas Jefferson’s 1802 Louisiana Purchase from Napoleon, under the direction of Baring Brothers of London. Significantly, England was then at war with France. Baring Brothers set up U.S. offices and became correspondents of the Bank of the United States. A correspondent bank performs services for another financial institution located elsewhere. The Bank of the United States handled all treasury and government business.
[177]The value of imports into New York City in 1790 was about $1.4 million. By 1807, they had increased to $7.6 million, almost double the imports through Philadelphia. During the same period, the value of exports increased from $2.5 million to $26 million. By the 1820s, the customs duties collected in New York funded the entire federal government except for the interest on the national debt. One third of the country’s exports and half of its imports went through the Port of New York.[178]
Despite seceding from England, political differences and tariffs, the U.S. and Britain maintained mutually beneficial financial connections. The U.S. was one of Britain’s principal customers – 16% of Britain’s domestic produce and manufactured goods between 1820 and 1830 arrived at U.S. ports. This merchandise comprised 43% of the total imports into America. Thirty-six per cent of America’s domestic exports went to England between 1820 and 1830. The southern states supplied 80% of the cotton used in Lancashire.[179]
Rothschild Agents
Anglo-American merchant banks financed many U.S. enterprises. Private merchant bankers, as opposed to commercial banks, played a key role in the U.S. economy for decades. Merchant banks serve large companies, governments and very wealthy clients. Commercial banks are normally accessible to anyone needing basic banking needs. States did not charter merchant banks; they used their own capital and were not required to reveal their financial status.[180] The larger banking houses, like Baring and Rothschild had U.S. agents in strategic areas to represent their interests.
The J.L. & S. Joseph and Company and the R. & I. Phillips, both established as Rothschild bankers working in the U.S., struggled during the economic crisis of 1837, which contributed to the orchestrated financial collapse of other firms. Rothschild sacrificed their agent J.L. & S. Joseph and Company and allowed them to go bankrupt. Rothschild then financed August Schönberg and their secret partner, George Peabody of London.[181] Peabody went to England in 1837, during the panic, and co-founded a banking and brokerage house with fellow American, Junius S. Morgan, father of John Pierpont Morgan. The firm was called George Peabody and Co. J. P. Morgan was their New York agent.[182] When Junius died in 1890, his son assumed control of the company and moved its headquarters to New York.[183]
August Schönberg, Alias August Belmont
August Schönberg was born on December 8, 1813 in the village of Alzey, Rhenish Palatinate region of Germany. His father, Simon, was a community leader and the local synagogue’s president. August’s mother died when he was seven. Less than a year later, he went to Frankfurt, 40 miles north to attend the Jewish school during which time he lived with his grandmother, Gertrude and her husband, Hajun Hanau, who had business and family links to the Rothschilds. In 1828, August left school as his father had fallen
behind in the tuition. His relatives persuaded the Rothschilds to allow August to become an apprentice at their Frankfurt branch where he learned the banking business from the ground up – dusting, sweeping and running errands. He had a private tutor who instructed him in French, English, composition and arithmetic. By 1834, he was a clerk and a courier.[184]
In the midst of the Panic of 1837, the Rothschilds sent Schönberg to Havana to investigate the affairs of the Spanish Government and check their Cuban investments, sugar production and distribution. He arrived in New York City and remained to salvage and increase their investments in New York City, the dominant metropolitan center on the continent since 1800. Schönberg changed his name to Belmont, a French variation, due to growing anti-Semitism.[185]
The Rothschilds lost money with the Panic of 1837 because the government could not completely pay its debts, which did not endear the country to the bankers. The Rothschilds, the French and English branches, had invested funds in numerous businesses, banks and municipal bond issues in the U.S. and had lost money when those businesses failed.[186] Numerous states experienced an economic crisis when Jackson did not re-charter the Second Bank of the United States in 1836. Delaware Senator Clayton had warned that economic ruin would follow the Bank’s demise. States had depended on the Bank for their bond issues. Eight states, unable to pay the interest on their loans, defaulted: Arkansas, Indiana, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, and Pennsylvania and the Florida Territory. People’s distrust of foreign financiers, like the Rothschilds, contributed to the states resistance to paying interest.[187]
Rothschild protégé, August Schönberg arrived in America in 1837 and ultimately opened August Belmont and Company on Wall Street, a private unchartered bank, which remained a subsidiary of N. M. Rothschild of London until 1925. He became active in New York society and later became the de facto head of the Democratic Party (1860-1884). He was instrumental in preventing Europe’s recognition and funding of the Confederacy during Lincoln’s War.[188] He began an aggressive competition with Baring Brothers for additional U.S. business.[189] He created a foundation on which to establish a Rothschild dynasty.[190] Within a short time, Belmont, because of his access to massive financial resources, attracted the White House’s attention and he began advising the President on financial concerns. The Rothschild’s agent now had influence where it really mattered.[191]
Belmont was the fiscal agent for the U.S. government during the Mexican War (1846-1848) from which Rothschild made profits. On November 7, 1849, Belmont married Caroline Slidell Perry, the daughter of Commodore Matthew Perry, a Freemason. Aaron H. Palmer, another Rothschild agent operating in the U.S. suggested that Japan should be open to U.S. interests. Accordingly, Commodore Perry arrived in Japan on July 8, 1853 and demanded permission to present President Fillmore’s letter, drafted by Secretary of State Edward Everett.[192] If the Japanese resisted, Perry was prepared to use military force. He would return to Japan to sign the Convention of Kanagawa, dated March 31, 1854, which opened the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to U.S. trade, ending Japan’s 200-year policy of preferred seclusion.
Belmont’s ready access to Rothschild, along with his family connections led to his heavy involvement into politics. In 1851, John Slidell, his wife’s uncle, tried to secure the upcoming Democratic presidential nomination for Secretary of State James Buchanan of Pennsylvania. To win the nomination, Buchanan needed to win New York State. At Slidell’s urging, Belmont agreed to head Buchanan’s New York campaign. Despite his hard work, he lost the 1852 nomination to Franklin Pierce.”[193] He had also financed Pierce. Either way, Belmont, by financing opposing campaigns, would position a Rothschild minion in the White House.
Franklin Pierce won the election and appointed Belmont as U.S. Minister to the Netherlands (1853-1857) during which time he negotiated trade and extradition treaties and opened the Dutch East Indies to U.S. trade. He also helped draft the 1854 Ostend Manifesto, a plan to seize Cuba from Spain for U.S.
annexation.
On March 4, 1857, Benjamin Disraeli, Lionel de Rothschild and James Mayer de Rothschild and other relatives attended the London wedding of Lionel’s daughter, Leonora de Rothschild to Mayer Alphonse de Rothschild, son of Betty and James Mayer de Rothschild, head of the Paris branch. At a lavish banquet, following the ceremony, Disraeli gave a lengthy toast honoring the parents wherein he included the statement, “Under this roof are the heads of the name and family of Rothschild a name famous in every capital of Europe and every division of the globe a family not more regarded for its riches than esteemed for its honor, integrity and public spirit.”[194] Evelina de Rothschild, another daughter of Lionel and Charlotte de Rothschild, married on June 7, 1865 and died the following year during childbirth. Following the festivities, the family and their close cronies possibly discussed the last minute details of the imminent warfare in the U.S.
While the family and their associates may have discussed America and her coming tragedy, agitators, educators, self-righteous northern religionists and hate-spewing novelist propagandists – all agents or useful idiots for the bankers, had laid the tactics and foundation for the disruption of the country decades before. They strategically positioned them long before 1857. Belmont’s personal records substantiate the London meeting of 1857. He did his part as a kingmaker, without regard for political party. His notes admit, “The goal of the conspiracy was to split the United States into several warring parts.” He prepared to provide the financial needs of both sides, at exorbitant interest rates.[195]
No one could have persuaded the isolationist U.S. to engage in a foreign war so they would never be in a position to approach the Rothschilds or their associates for a massive loan. There remained another alternative – an internal battle. The biggest challenge was to provoke dissension.[196] It might take generations to develop such internal animosity. They strategically positioned agent provocateurs like Thomas Cooper who became the president of South Carolina College in 1821 where he influenced future state politicians. Officials with Freemason connections promoted legislation designed to create division and hostility between the two distinctly different sections of the country. Caleb Cushing, a Freemason, from Boston, was the chair of the Democratic National Convention beginning in Charleston, South Carolina on April 23, 1860.[197]
Aaron H. Palmer, Rothschild Agent
Lawyer Aaron H. Palmer, director of the American and Foreign Agency for Claims, had a Wall Street office during the first half of the nineteenth century. In 1825, the Central American Republic, comprised of several Central American countries, had asked the U.S. government for assistance in the construction of a canal through Nicaragua. Henry Clay, then Secretary of State, favored the proposal. In early 1826, the Federation contracted with Palmer for the construction of the canal but he was personally unable to acquire adequate financing.[198]
On June 14, 1826, he continued his negotiations with the Nicaraguan government over the construction of the canal. Without personal resources, Palmer had no way of financing a canal. Therefore, he contacted DeWitt Clinton, the individual who promoted and ultimately facilitated the building of the Erie Canal. He also approached other New York capitalists in an attempt to get financial backing. However, he failed to acquire the funding and had to allow the concession to lapse. At that time, most people strongly opposed infrastructure development funded by the government so he could not get financial aid from the government.[199] Clinton had proposed the Erie Canal. The Van Buren administration built it using state bonds after Congress quickly passed it with the influence of Clinton’s Tammany Hall cronies. Clinton was a Grand Master in the Morning Star Masonic Lodge No. 290, which Freemason officials warranted on June 5, 1817; Clinton signed the warrant.[200]
Individuals first proposed the construction of a canal in 1807. Entrepreneur Jesse Hawley, a flour merchant, went bankrupt attempting to ship grain from western New York to the eastern seaboard. He had strong support from Joseph Ellicott, an agent for the Holland Land Company in Batavia. This company had purchased two-thirds of the western New York land tract, called the Phelps and Gorham Purchase, also known as The Holland Purchase. The Holland Land Company, an unincorporated syndicate, consisted of thirteen Dutch investors living in Amsterdam. Being foreigners, they placed funds in the hands of certain trustees in the U.S. to invest in land in central and western New York and western Pennsylvania. The syndicate intended to sell the land quickly and profitably. Instead, they had to make costly improvements such as building roads and canals to make it more appealing to settlers. Ellicott recognized that a canal would increase the land value. Hawley approached New York Governor DeWitt Clinton and sold him on the idea. Clinton, despite great opposition, appropriated $7 million for the canal’s construction, accomplished by recent immigrants from Ireland. The canal was under construction (1817-1825) and officially opened on October 26, 1825. Ellicott became the first canal commissioner.
New York Governor DeWitt Clinton encouraged Palmer who then went to Europe (1826-1827) as an
agent of the American Atlantic and Pacific Canal Company (associated with the Panama Canal). He
catered to individuals interested in trade with Europe by managing all of the paperwork involved with
transnational business. He purchased newspaper advertisements claiming that he had global commerce
experience and contacts with European bankers.[201] In 1832, he advertised in the Guayaquil newspaper El
Colombiano, offering his commercial services in developing business between New York and Guayaquil. [202]
By February 1837, when the credit market tightened, Palmer had already developed a relationship with N. M. Rothschild & Sons. He supplied them with an account of all the financial failures, as many as 280, in the months just before the final crash. He was in the collections business. With all the bankruptcies, insolvencies, and failures, his business was booming. He offered his services, as needed, to the Rothschilds. He was very optimistic about commercial growth.[203] Presumably, people with funds picked up property using pennies on the dollar. The Rothschilds dumped their New York agents, J.L. & S. Josephs and replaced them with Palmer. The financial crisis thrust U.S. markets and England into a panic. Palmer functioned as a Rothschild correspondent until they sent Schönberg. Then they used him in another capacity.[204]
In 1838 and 1839, Palmer traveled throughout Europe with letters of introduction and credit from N M Rothschild and Sons, in an effort to gather data about trade, particularly about the Asian nations. He submitted his findings to the Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs in the House of Representatives. In the 1840s, he circulated commercial, social, cultural and governmental information about numerous Asian locations and developed a reputation as an expert in commercial expansion in the East. He expanded his own associations and correspondent network. He sent samples of U.S. cottonseed to Manila and encouraged Chinese emigration after the California gold discovery in 1848.[205]
Palmer, a Whig and an early globalist, recommended a plan to the Rothschilds for a national bank in the United States, a non-partisan institution that deliberately avoided the official designation of a central bank, like the Bank of the United States (BUS), which Jackson and the Democrats had thoroughly vilified. His plan for U.S. business, similar to the Rothschild’s plan, transcended national and political borders. His dispatches warned the Rothschilds about the pending problems between Mexico and the U.S. regarding Texas, a huge issue that might hinder trade.[206]
Palmer, the proverbial publicist, had developed some trade relations in China. By 1842, his New York commission house distributed promotional material about U.S. manufacturers throughout Asia. He sent U.S. newspapers and book catalogues with the assistance of some Dutch traders. In 1845, he persuaded a
congressional representative to introduce a House resolution petitioning for commercial treaties with Japan and Korea. He inundated President Polk, Congress and the public with pleas and promises urging additional contacts with Asia, Russia, and India. He proclaimed the virtues of Japanese commerce and culture, along with their natural resources. He promoted a ship canal across Central America.[207] According to the New York Times of June 9, 1852, he managed to acquire the position of Consul-General of the Republic of Ecuador for the U.S.[208]
Palmer, the chief publicist for new trade, understood the reward of expansionism, advocated commercial trade, and offered his services to others who had like-minded objectives. He helped shape U.S. perceptions of distant places. He became America’s leading expert on Asian trade and a big proponent of Commodore Perry’s Japanese mission.[209] Between 1846 and 1851, he communicated with members of the House and three Presidents and Secretaries of State, providing them with “valuable public documents” about “several of the comparatively unknown maritime nations of the East. His efforts proved to be of great interest to our government in extending commercial relations in several eastern countries.[210]
Palmer suggested the expediency of establishing a U. S. Naval Station in the Indian Archipelago. This occurred over 100 years later when the U.S. seized and depopulated Diego Garcia.[211] On January 10, 1848, he promoted, to President Polk, the commercial potentials of Siberia, Manchuria, and the Asiatic Islands of the Northern Pacific Ocean. He elaborated on the Siberian gold mines and the silkworm products of Manchuria. He was also impressed with the Island of Saghalien, the Japanese settlements on Aniva Bay, Langles bay, Estaing bay, Jonquiere Bay, Patience bay, and Nadeshda Bay.[212]
Americans exploited Asia but Asians did not exploit, colonize or conquer the U.S. Asia was a good marketplace for U.S. businessmen. Asia had a ready supply of cheap labor for America’s developing west. In 1848, Palmer, now a counselor to the U.S. Supreme Court, envisioned the nation’s destiny in the Southwest. He saw the potential of San Francisco as a great Pacific Ocean harbor, the most obvious departure point for Asia. He encouraged the importation of Chinese laborers to clear the land, build a railroad and engage in agriculture in California. Therefore, the Chinese and Japanese joined the Africans, Indians and others on the plantations, and in the fields and mines of the elite.[213]
Palmer’s letter of April 4, 1849 to John M. Clayton recommending a U.S. envoy to Japan, included charts of the U.S. coast survey and maps from the Topographical Bureau and numerous other public documents and newspaper reports.[214] On September 17, 1849, he submitted a revised “Plan for opening Japan” to U.S. Secretary of State John M. Clayton (1849-1850). Clayton approved of the plan and the government adopted it as policy, which Commodore Matthew C. Perry accomplished in 1853.[215] Yale-educated Clayton, an attorney, a member of the Whig Party, was an ardent advocate of commercial expansion. He negotiated the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty on April 19, 1850 with British minister, Sir Henry Bulwer-Lytton. It was a guarantee of neutrality and support of British travel across the isthmus at Panama. This document was the basis for the U.S. construction of the Panama Canal.[216]
On February 12, 1857, Palmer presented invoices to William H. Seward, of the Committee on Commerce for public relations work with foreign countries. The late Secretary Clayton in a letter to the Senate dated January 18, 1855 substantiated his invoices. He also enclosed his plan directed to President Fillmore, dated September 17, 1849, for “opening” Japan. In 1853, Palmer recommended to Navy Secretary John P. Kennedy the exploration of the “Behring’s Strait” under Commander Cadwallader Ringgold. He wrote to Palmer on February 26, 1857 to attest to his preparation for that expedition.[217] The Congressional Globe, February 13, 1857, reported that Palmer’s invoices were paid. Clayton was especially appreciative of Palmer’s efforts in organizing the Japan Expedition. He wrote, “He has thrown more light on it, and given more information on the subject, to the State Department, and to the Congress of the United States, than anyone else.”[218]
The Bank of the United States
The Bank of the United States, First and Second
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