The Pledge of Obedience
Catastrophic circumstances in America, such as Lincoln’s War, World War I and II or most recently, the horrific events of September 11, 2001, function as transitory events. Members of Congress and the powers behind the scenes quickly pass legislation that the traumatized citizens would never accept under ordinary circumstances. In an environment of insecurity, chaos and uncertainty, citizens invariably look to government officials for solutions to the calamity that has befallen them. This is incongruous given that many of these politicians are verifiably corrupt. Yet, many citizens repeatedly place unwarranted trust in
these same unscrupulous characters. The newly enacted legislation consistently imposes restrictions on the citizens, obviously the target of the events of that day while it increases governmental power coupled with more stringent law enforcement.
Almost exactly 150 years ago, as I write this, the calculated chaos that emerged because of Lincoln’s War predictably fractured America. Officials opportunistically used that cultural rupture to compel citizens, literally at gunpoint, to accept the centralization of government power in Washington at the expense of states’ rights. If the South surrendered and abolished slavery, that region of the country could only return totheUnionifacertainpercentageofthesoutherncitizenssworealoyaltyoath.[1643] OnDecember8,1863, a year and a half before the end of the war, Lincoln confidently issued the Proclamation of Amnesty. People referred to it as the Ten Percent Plan of Reconstruction. It read, “A rebellion now exists whereby the loyal state governments of several states have for a long time been subverted, and many persons have committed, and are now guilty of, treason against the United States.” Southerners, designated as “treasonous,” were subject to the confiscation of their private property. Lincoln said if just 10% of the people who voted in 1860 within each state would take a loyalty oath to the federal government then that state could “reestablish a state government which shall be republican, and in nowise contravening said oath.”[1644]
When the elite allowed the poor to cast a vote, they restricted them to local issues only, and not significant national issues. Who actually comprised the 10% of the voters who decided the fate of the entire southern population? Could it have been the same elite group who provoked the war, managed to survive and eat well while the poor and the middle class lost their land, their rights and starved through the war? Could it have been that same elite crowd who paid a substitute to fight in their behalf while the poor left their families to fight and die in a war not of their choice and making? Author David Williams points out that while federal officials promised freedom and equality, the assurance of emancipation; they were forcing blacks into “labor contracts” and whites into “debt slavery” at the point of a bayonet. Such actions obliterated any pretense of freedom. It was still slavery, camouflaged under a softer name.[1645]
The Radical Republicans in Congress felt that the demands placed upon the South were too lenient and favored an even stronger more ironclad oath. Lincoln said that those who participated in the “existing rebellion” were “guilty of treason.” The government would restore their property, except their slaves, only by swearing an allegiance oath to the Union. Various individuals proposed suitable oaths, some more severe than the one they finally chose.[1646] The federal government compelled the vanquished Southerners to swear allegiance to an escalating powerful centralized government. Officials used additional clever mechanisms to secure strict loyalty and emotionally unite the remainder of an inherently diverse population of independent farmers, people who had left or lost their land and were now urban factory workers and recent immigrants. The government wanted every citizen to unite under a common purpose. Gradually, the government suppressed individuality, a natural and acceptable consequence of one’s lifestyle, experiences and opportunities. Certain Individuals with questionable motives used the concept of exceptionalism, that idea of being the chosen people, only to garner support for a more powerful centralized government. Persuasive individuals used deceptive devices such as emotion-packed words and phrases, personified flags, powerful symbols, soul-stirring anthems, and even religious-oriented hymns.
Michael A. Hoffman II maintains that flattery is the first principle of mind control. He wrote, “This is the first secret of mass mind control and can be observed as the foundation stone of virtually every false religion, party, cult, philosophy, system and training.” The American masses believe that they are “free” and “highly-educated” when in fact we are debt slaves to the demonic, greedy money powers.[1647] It was true following Lincoln’s War and it is even more applicable now. People ingrain American
exceptionalism, a stepsister of arrogance and self-righteousness, through symbolism and songs that promote our self-importance. Radio host, Michael Medved, a pro-war propagandist, in an example of this exclusivity, reminds his listeners on a daily basis that the U.S. is “the greatest nation on God’s green earth.”
Early songs that promoted patriotism, the last refuge of a scoundrel, include John Brown’s Body, a famous Union Army marching song that had nothing whatsoever to do with the abolitionist but was a tune someone adapted from the American camp meeting movement of the 1800s. Julia Ward Howe, a fervent abolitionist, wrote lyrics for the tune in November 1861 that editors close to her family published and popularized in The Atlantic Monthly on February 1, 1862 as The Battle Hymn of the Republic. Abolitionists Harriet Beecher Stowe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., John Greenleaf Whittier and James Russell Lowell co-founded the Boston-based magazine in 1857. With the exception of Stowe and Whittier, they either attended or taught at Harvard University.
Howe’s lyrics subtly associate Christianity with killing and warfare. This song promotes the idea that war is a Christian’s effort to rid the world of evildoers. Christians are supposed to eliminate the evil within, not kill evildoers targeted by ethically challenged political leaders. Author John Remington Graham wrote that after the Union soldiers had torched Atlanta on November 11, 1864, per their scorched earth policy during William Tecumseh Sherman’s murderous March to the Sea, a band played The Battle Hymn of the Republic as defenseless women and children, now homeless, fled into the countryside.[1648] Sherman writes in his memoirs, “Never before or since have I heard the chorus of Glory, glory, hallelujah! done with more spirit, or in better harmony of time and place.”[1649]
In 1865, Cambridge-educated Sabine Baring-Gould wrote Onward Christian Soldiers, another song that links Christianity and mass killing. The music was from a famous Freemason marching hymn.[1650] Sir Arthur S. Sullivan, an English composer who studied at the Leipzig Conservatory composed the music. He was a Freemason and the Grand Organist in the Grand Lodge of England.[1651] Nearly eighty years later, on August 14, 1941, warmongers, Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt, both Freemasons, met on the battleship HMS Prince of Wales to formalize the Atlantic Charter, a blueprint for shaping the world after yet another cataclysmic war. Afterwards, Prime Minister Churchill chose Onward, Christian Soldiers, a very subtle musical selection to connect Christianity to warfare.
Soul-stirring lyrics set to inspiring music constitute a very powerful medium, which composers use to introduce and ingrain desired emotions. Music can inspire, instruct and indoctrinate in a very indirect, unobtrusive way and has long been used to impact individuals in both positive and negative ways. Music kindles predictable emotions and effectively stimulates or alters one’s disposition. A movie without background music does not arouse the desired emotions sought by filmmakers; think about it! Considering music’s impact, it is important to evaluate how and why producers and directors use music the way they do in particular circumstances. Is the song or music appropriate to the occasion? What motivates a questionable musical choice and who made that choice?
Francis Scott Key, a Freemason and brother-in-law to Roger B. Taney, then Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, wrote the poem that became even more compelling and influential after someone set it to music, The Star Spangled Banner, with its rockets’ red glare and bombs bursting in air, reminiscent of the shock and awe explosions of the world wars and in Baghdad in March 2003. John Stafford Smith, some years earlier, wrote the music that Key used for his poem. Smith, an English Freemason, belonged to the Inverness Lodge #4 in London. The music was adapted from To Anacreon in Heaven, a popular drinking song in the local pubs.[1652]
At one time, the Irish Masonic Orphans’ Home used the music as their song. The Navy adopted the song
for official use in 1889. President Wilson ordered the song to be played on military occasions. Congress decreed it as our national anthem on March 3, 1931, signed into law by President Herbert Hoover, a longtime Rothschild asset. Since World War II and more especially since 1980, individuals perform the anthem prior to sports events, especially before the beginning of most MLS, NBA, NFL, MLB and NHL games. It is also part of the pre-race ceremony in every NASCAR race. A huge enthusiastic audience, a bigger convergence of people than in most other settings, is the perfect environment to generate patriotic fervor through the emotionalism of the national anthem. It becomes a collective experience, which psychologically binds the masses to the will of the government.
There is similarity and interchangeability between sports and military rhetoric. Author Jaap Kooijman points out that coaches often use military metaphors to plan strategies. Military officials, politicians and journalists often refer to sports when discussing military operations. Kooijman wrote, “a national identify can be reinforced through the patriotic sentiments of war and sports events can bring national communities together in patriotism and nationalism.” People have established a verbal connection between militarism and sports. Thus, “without any resistance or commentary,” individuals, not inadvertently, inextricably merged sports and military supremacy.[1653]
The U.S. Flag Code states that during the presentation of the national anthem, when the flag is displayed, all, except those in uniform, should stand at attention facing the flag with the right hand over the heart, a renewal of one’s allegiance. This is sinisterly similar to the sign of the hidden hand of the men of Jahbulon, a symbolic or ceremonial name, used as a password by Royal Arch Masons, which men execute by placing the right hand inside his jacket, indicative of his oath of allegiance.[1654] Many, some of whom are/were Freemasons including Karl Marx, Napoleon, Lenin, Salomon Rothschild, Theodore Roosevelt, Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, William Tecumseh Sherman and hundreds of others, have exhibited the Jahbulon gesture.
Religious-like devotion to one’s nation is not spontaneous but politicians, social scientists, theologians, financiers, and an expanding jingoistic press methodically manage it. Author Guido Giacomo Preparata argues that American patriotism during World War II and “gung-ho love for one’s country” was “not love at all but the readied call to hurt the enemy whoever he was, wherever he lurked, anyhow, any time” in a “wave of this induced collective dementia” and a “new idolatry of the red, white, and blue, American Pride, and the Star Spangled Banner.”[1655]
People relinquish individualism in favor of comfortable conformity and herd-instinct consensus, seduced by waving flags, images of soaring eagles, marching bands, parades of faceless uniformed people, vows and pledges, and salutes to supposed superiors. Experts, behind-the-scenes, carefully manage group thinking. Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud, was the intuitive, manipulative father of the public relations or professional propaganda industry. He always harnessed the private interests of his elite clients to public interests – getting people to buy or act in a certain way that financially benefitted his patrons. The best way to alter society is to finance and control trusted institutions like the churches, the schools, and persuasive and influential theologians and educators.
The Socialist Bellamy Cousins
In 1880, Francis Bellamy, a Freemason, graduated from the Rochester Theological Seminary and became a minister. In November 1899, John D. Rockefeller gave $150,000 dollars to this seminary, headed by a Rockefeller crony, Augustus Hopkins Strong. This was just one of numerous donations that Rockefeller made to this institution.[1656] He gave $90,000 dollars on January 2, 1901.[1657] Bellamy, a Northern Baptist, was an ardent Christian Socialist who preached socialism, rejected the bible, and denied the deity of Jesus.[1658] He visited the South for a brief period, observed that residents were closely tied to traditional
Christianity, and showed little hope of adopting progressive ideas like evolution.[1659] The South’s connection to Christianity was one of its biggest distinguishing factors as opposed to the North’s materialistic, socialistic mentality. Perhaps that mentality helped to make the region a target for the bankers.
Edward Bellamy, Francis’ cousin, studied Prussian Socialism and language in Dresden in 1868-1869 and visited Germany again in 1887. He wrote Looking Backward, 2000-1887, published in January 1888. Editors translated his book into over twenty languages, including German. It sold millions of copies in America, second only to Marx’s Das Kapital (1867). People viewed his book as the most influential book published in the previous fifty years. He promoted a gilded-age, government-imposed utopian alternative to the money powers and corporatism.[1660] In 1890-1891, devotees formed at least 165 “Bellamy Clubs” throughout America. Members wanted to create a classless society and crusaded for a government takeover of the economy as Bellamy envisioned.[1661] Interestingly, George H. W. Bush, with similar goals, wrote a book exactly 100 years later entitled Looking Forward.
Columbia University-educated Daniel De Leon, newspaper editor, Marxist theoretician, and leading figure in the U.S. Socialist Labor Party applauded Bellamy’s efforts. Julius A. Wayland of Kansas, the editor of the party’s leading national newspaper, Appeal to Reason wrote, “Bellamy was one of the few men who had not lived in vain, since Looking Backward popularized socialism, made it interesting, and started millions to thinking along lines entirely new to them.” Eugene V. Debs praised his “wonderful work because he brought to the limited intelligence of ...the average practical man, a picture of the practical working of socialism.” In 1898, the Social Democratic Party passed a resolution affirming that Bellamy’s work was the most effective undertaking that anyone had ever accomplished for socialism in the U.S. The French socialist, Jean Jaurès considered Looking Backward “an American masterpiece” that did “wonders toward dissipating hostile ignorance against our ideas.”[1662]
Bellamy’s novel is the story of Julian West, a young Bostonian who awakes in 2000, from a hypnotically induced sleep, which began in 1887. The novel describes America’s future as a regimented worker’s paradise where everyone has equal incomes and are appropriately educated in patriotic government-run schools and then, following universal military service, are drafted into the country’s “industrial army” at the age of twenty-one where they serve in state-assigned jobs, out of a possible “two or three hundred diversetradesandavocations.”[1663] Westperceived,onwaking,thatthenation’swealth,theproductionand distribution of resources was now in the possession and control of a few people. The state, in the beginning of the twentieth century, without violence or bloodshed, had seized jurisdiction over all industrial enterprises and had combined them into one gigantic trust, which the government managed for the benefit of all citizens.[1664]
Edward Bellamy founded Boston’s first Nationalist Club. In January 1889, the club members adopted their Declaration of Principles, which incorporated Helena Blavatsky’s mystical Theosophist doctrines and Sidney Webb’s Fabian Socialist economic theories.[1665] In April 1891, Francis Bellamy, Vice President of the Christian Society of Socialists, an auxiliary of Bellamy’s Nationalist movement, worked for Daniel Ford’s Boston-based Youth’s Companion magazine. He worked with Ford’s nephew, James Bailey Upham, a Knights Templar, the equivalent to a 33rd Degree Scottish Rite Mason.[1666] Upham was a member of the Converse Lodge in Malden, Massachusetts.[1667] They increased the magazine’s circulation by selling inexpensive U.S. flags to public schools, institutions already influenced by socialist John Dewey. In support of the schoolhouse flag movement, they intended to place a flag above every school. In conjunction with this flag distribution program, Bellamy chaired the National Public School Celebration for Columbus Day under the direction of the National Education Association (NEA), later under the control of the Rockefeller Foundation. Officials initially designed the flag to display at federal
installations. Because of the contemporary Department of Education, officials consider all public schools as authorized federal institutions.
To augment the schoolhouse flag movement and incorporate socialism, as viewed by Edward Bellamy, his illustrious cousin Francis wrote a pledge in which each student pledged his/her total devotion to the state. He published his creation in the magazine on September 8, 1892. It read, “I Pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and Justice for all.” While pondering on this oath, he related to friends, “... with the meaning of the War Between the States; with the aspiration of the people...It is the concise political word for the Nation – the One Nation which the War Between the States was fought to prove. To make that One Nation idea clear, we must specify that it is indivisible...”[1668] The Bellamys enthusiastically admired Lincoln for his aggressive warfare against the rebellious South.
Karl Marx suggested that the very first objective in setting up a communist nation was in demanding and establishing “a single and indivisible republic.”[1669] Marx’s use of the word “republic,” actually means a socialistic democracy. The “indivisible republic” was the overriding principle of the Illuminated French Jacobinism – the “nation une et undivisible.” Essentially, advocates for a strong central government forcefully seized power from local government entities and transferred it to federal tyrants, in an undeviating and permanent – indivisible entity, a power, they would never again relinquish to the individual sovereign states and their citizenry.
In 1892, after the media popularization of Bellamy’s Looking Backward, the enlightened cousins discussed Universal Brotherhood, an Illuminati objective. That prompted Francis to embody the ideals of equality and fraternity into the pledge, ideas that people carried to America from the French Revolution. He incorporated the phrase “with liberty and justice for all.”[1670] Upham and Bellamy particularly wanted to emphasize the word allegiance – they wanted the pledge to be a heartfelt vow, not just a salute. The Bellamy cousins venerated Lincoln and his violent revolution so the word “allegiance” was significant and essential. Southerners negatively associated the pledge with the “oath of allegiance,” a vow they were compelled to swear to the invaders who destroyed their culture and their very existence. Others, including church leaders, also had misgivings about swearing an oath. The Catholic Church had serious qualms about swearing an oath, one of the issues they also had with Freemasonry.[1671]
Francis Bellamy devised a ritualistic straight-arm salute, with the authority figure, the school principle directing the whole ritual. The pupils stand, lift their right arms towards the flag, palm downward, and then recite the pledge. After the recitation, administrators instructed the students to say, “One Country, One Language, One Flag!” The government abandoned the straight-arm salute, per congressional edict, in December 1942 after the Nazis adopted it. School administrators used the pledge and salute as part of the National Public School Celebration on Columbus Day, October 12, 1892. The Rockefeller-financed NEA promoted the national adoption of the pledge and the placement of an American flag in every government- run classroom. Parochial schools did not adopt the program.
Advocates urged Senators, Congressmen, and other politicians to promote the proposed celebration for Columbus Day. Theodore Roosevelt, a member of the U.S. Civil Service Commission, remarked, “The Common School and Flag stand together as the arch-typical of American civilization.”[1672] Grover Cleveland, in the process of campaigning for the presidency, asked U.S. Representative Henry Cabot Lodge to arrange for President Harrison and Congress to support the approaching celebration. The government sought to finance mandatory public schools, an idea generally opposed as the majority of the populace viewed government schools as socialistic.[1673] Harrison issued a statement requesting the population to honor the 400th anniversary of Columbus with festivities at their schools or other public places.[1674]
Francis Bellamy attended a flag-raising ceremony in New Jersey on April 25, 1893, the first event at which adults recited the Pledge of Allegiance. James Upham and Francis Bellamy led the recitation, saying, “The times demand a patriotic citizenship, patriotic schools, a patriotic pulpit, a patriotic press.”[1675] Bellamy, in favor of government-run schools wrote in the Youth’s Companion, “Our fathers in their wisdom knew that the foundations of liberty, fraternity and equality must be universal education controlled by the government.”[1676]
There was a great patriotic fervor leading up to the Spanish-American War. Government officials required people to stand when the flag passed by. On April 22, 1898, the day after the U.S. declared war on Spain, a New York State Senate Bill #556 required all children in government schools to salute the flag. The state created the Manual of Patriotism offering five possible patriotic pledges. In 1939, the U.S. Flag Association acknowledged Bellamy as the author of the original pledge.[1677] On August 20, 1953, the Supreme Council of the Knights of Columbus adopted a resolution urging the addition of the phrase “under God” and submitted it to the President, the Vice President, and the speaker of the House of Representatives and to each member of Congress. President Eisenhower signed the edict for the addition of the phrase on June 14, 1954.[1678]
The Jehovah Witnesses, the Amish, and others who take the Bible seriously do not believe in earthly allegiances, participate in secular government, vote or hold office. They argue, as do specific scriptures that saluting the flag and particularly reciting oaths of any kind are a form of idolatry. The group filed suit in a federal court in the late 1930s. School authorities frequently expelled or punished the children of Jehovah Witnesses when these children refused to comply. In 1940, the Supreme Court agreed with a Pennsylvania law that required the recitation of the pledge in all public schools, possibly one could view this as dogma in the gradual establishment of secularism. The court, quite illegally, declared that Jehovah Witnesses would have to comply. The court allowed no exemptions. The Witnesses had lost the case, yet their actions outraged millions of Americans causing outbreaks of violence against Jehovah Witnesses.[1679]
In Richwood, Virginia, the police chief gathered a group of Witnesses together, required them to drink castor oil and then marched them through the streets before running them out of town. A local veterans group in Jackson, Mississippi drove Jehovah Witnesses from their homes. An angry mob in Nebraska castrated a Jehovah Witness. In Rockville, Maryland, the police assisted locals in burning down a church. The same thing occurred in Kennebunk, Maine where citizens burned a local Kingdom Hall to the ground. School officials increased their persecution of Jehovah Witnesses including threatening the children with imprisonment. The Justice Department received hundreds of complaints.[1680]
In the early 1940s, the U.S. was on the verge of entering another war and it was especially important to goad the populace into a patriotic frenzy so that young men would offer themselves as cannon fodder and the general population would support them in those militaristic efforts. Many states, therefore, imposed laws that required schoolchildren to daily recite the pledge and salute the flag. However, in 1943, because of the persecution and violence against citizens, due to religious beliefs, the court reversed its decision on grounds of free exercise. Numerous states attempted to pass legislation requiring the recitation of the pledge shortly after September 11, 2001. Minnesota’s governor at the time, Jesse Ventura, vetoed the bill as unconstitutional. The obedience-trained citizens of Minnesota criticized him for his decision.[1681]
The required recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, whether it be implied or legally sanctioned, is problematic on several levels, not the least of which is constitutional. The Constitution, ratified by the people, took divine right away from kings and despots and made the people sovereign. For the first time in history, this turned the reins of power on its head and made the government responsible to the people – not the other way around. The flag represents the government that we hired to carry out its responsibilities
as defined by the Constitution together with the restrictions in its scope that the founders provided with the Bill of Rights. This form of government was a true gift to we the people, albeit one which we have yet to fully embrace and enact. Part of this is due to subtle but deliberate and persistent manipulations of the public psyche. In truth, the people do not “owe” automatic, unthinking allegiance and obedience to the government, so much as the government owes to the people accountability for its actions. The schools and other entities have indoctrinated the populace so that we almost mindlessly parrot the words of the Pledge and go through the motions implied by our understanding of it without even thinking about the potential consequences of our unquestioning compliance.
Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy, when writing to a friend said, “The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its citizens ... Henceforth, I shall never serve any government anywhere.”
The Assassination Conspiracy
According to their own dogma and practices, Freemasons and their fellow travelers consistently cover the crimes of their fellow Masons. “You must conceal all the crimes of your brother Mason....and should you be summoned as a witness against a brother Mason be always sure to shield him. It may be perjury to do this, it is true, but you’re keeping your obligations.”[1682]
The socialist revolution was a huge success, the Union had destroyed the South physically and emotionally and slaughtered thousands of people in the process. On April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee surrendered at the home of Wilmer and Virginia McLean at the town of Appomattox Court House, Virginia, now a historical national park. To celebrate, the Lincolns invited General Ulysses S. Grant and his wife, Julia, to attend Ford’s Theater to see Our American Cousin on Friday, April 14, 1865, as announced in the media. Although General Grant, who fought in the Mexican-American War under Generals Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott, accepted the invitation, they did not attend the performance as the Grants left town abruptly, ostensibly to visit their children. It was very discourteous and rather distasteful conduct on their part, especially in the absence of a family emergency. It would have been questionable etiquette to decline the invitation but to accept and then renege was in very poor taste. Typically, people in the military respond to such an invitation with obedience, particularly when the commander-in-chief extended that invitation.[1683]
On Good Friday, April 14, 1865, Lincoln and his other guests, Henry Rathbone and Clara Harris, arrived at the theater at 8:30 PM where Lincoln had a state box overlooking the stage. John Wilkes Booth, a member of the Knights of the Golden Circle, arrived at about 9:30 PM. He left his horse with Joseph Burroughs in the rear alley. John F. Parker, a previously very irresponsible and unreliable member of the Washington Metropolitan Police Force, organized on August 6, 1861, was supposed to protect the president that evening rather than his usual bodyguard, Ward Hill Lamon. Parker was supposed to sit just outside of the president’s compartment. However, Parker explained that he could not hear the actor’s voices and moved to another area. During intermission, Parker, along with two other members of Lincoln’s staff, his footman, Charles Forbes and his coachman, Francis P. Burke, went to a neighboring saloon for drinks.[1684]
On May 1, 1865, police officials charged Parker, who had been three hours late arriving at his assignment on April 14, with neglect of duty. The citation read, “Parker was detailed to attend and protect the President Mr. Lincoln, that while the President was at Ford’s Theatre on the night of the 14 of April last, Said Parker allowed a man to enter the President’s private Box and Shoot the President.” They tried Parker on May 3, 1865, but somehow failed to retain any transcripts of the event. Reporters from the Washington newspapers apparently opted not to even report on the trial or any of the circumstances
surrounding Parker’s activities or trial. They dismissed the complaint against Parker on June 2, 1865.[1685] Obviously, some very influential people were involved in the situation and the resulting cover-up in the media and in the Washington Metropolitan Police Force.
Presumably, John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln at 10:15 PM and the president died the next morning at 7:22 AM in William A. Peterson’s Boarding House, across the street from Ford’s Theater.[1686] Several doctors, including Dr. Charles Augustus Leale, an Army physician, attempted to save the mortally wounded Lincoln. Within a few years of the assassination, Petersen, a German-born tailor, a witness to the events subsequent to the shooting, died of an overdose of laudanum (alcohol-based mixture containing opium). People discovered his body on the property of the Masonic Smithsonian Institution. Four months later, his wife unexpectedly died.
To prevent John Wilkes Booth’s escape, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton put up roadblocks, the route leading from the Baltimore to the Hampton Roads, covering the entire Atlantic coast. However, Booth’s most likely escape route was the road that went straight south from Washington towards Port Tobacco, the direct thoroughfare to the Confederacy.[1687] Interestingly, the War Department failed to blockade the only plausible road that Booth would have taken and they took no precautions to guard access to it. Thus, the only road that Stanton opted not to protect is the very road that Booth used to escape from Washington.[1688] Instead, Stanton directed military blockades to be set up on all of the other roads leading out of the city.[1689]
On the evening of April 14, 1865, individuals disseminated rumors about a conspiracy to destroy the federal government. Consequently, within a week, Union Army Officers organized what they called the Union Loyal Legion, an organization to prevent future threats to the national government. Dr. Charles Augustus Leale, the first doctor to administer to Lincoln in the presidential box at Ford’s Theatre on April 14, 1865, became an active member of the Union Loyal Legion.[1690] He attended Lincoln for the next nine hours, until Lincoln expired at 7:22 A.M. the next morning. He ultimately presented an account of Lincoln’s death on the hundredth anniversary of Lincoln’s birth in 1909.[1691]
On April 20, 1865, military officers convened a meeting of Philadelphia veterans where individuals renewed their allegiance to the Union. They also planned Lincoln’s funeral arrangements where these same officers functioned as part of the President’s honor guard during the funeral. They convened after the funeral to establish a society of officers and former officers, modeled after the Society of Cincinnati. They named their “secret organization” the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States; they referred to it as the Union Loyal League. They held another meeting on May 31, 1865 at Independence Hall. They later decided to make it a hereditary society, from father to son.[1692]
Membership in this association numbered almost 12,000 Union officers. They included Generals Ulysses S. Grant, William T. Sherman; Lt. Generals Philip H. Sheridan, Nelson A. Miles and John M. Schofield; Major General Winfield Scott Hancock, George B. McClellan, Rutherford B. Hayes, George Armstrong Custer, David McMurtrie Gregg, and Grenville M. Dodge, Admiral David G. Farragut and Rear Admirals Bancroft Gherardi and George W. Melville.[1693]
Officials arrested and tried eight people for the assassination and they found four people guilty as charged and quickly hung them. Plans were allegedly also in the works for the assassination of Andrew Johnson, Lincoln’s Vice President, and Secretary of State William H. Seward. These attempts, if there were any, failed. Had they had been successful, Secretary of War Stanton would have been the greatest political benefactor. When the lone gunman shot Lincoln, Stanton had immediately seized control of Washington, presumably to capture the suspected killer, Booth who allegedly had connections to several secret societies including the Carbonari, an Illuminati group headquartered in Italy also referred to as the Alta Vendita.[1694]
There are many theories about who planned the assassination along with stories about Booth escaping and conspirators capturing and killing another man, Captain William Boyd, in Garrett’s barn and thereafter, identifying him Booth.
Stanton purportedly arranged for the capture and killing of the look-alike, Boyd, by the federal troops under Stanton’s command. Ostensibly, he identified the murdered man as Booth, which then allowed Booth to escape. Apparently, Booth maintained a diary in which eighteen pages were missing when people discovered it years later. Stanton testified before Congress that when he received the diary in April 1865, that there appeared to be pages missing. Supposedly, when people found those missing pages, in a Stanton descendant’s attic, they contained the names of seventy government officials and key businessmen, both Northerners and Southerners who wanted to eliminate Lincoln. Individuals allegedly discovered a coded message in Booth’s diary and someone purportedly discovered the corresponding code in Judah P. Benjamin’s possession. Benjamin was reportedly the war’s key strategist for the House of Rothschild.[1695]
Benjamin apparently sent gold to England during the war for safekeeping or maybe for seizure.[1696] The last battle of the war ended on May 13, 1865. On the morning of May 24, 1865, Confederate Secretary of State Benjamin directed his workers to transfer the South’s gold from two rail cars onto five wagons. Drivers then drove those wagons as far as the Chennault Plantation in Lincoln County, Georgia where armed raiders suddenly attacked them. The significant question is – who hired the raiders. Gold has an interesting way of disappearing in one area of the world and reappearing in the City of London. John C. Breckinridge, a 33rd Degree Freemason, a crony of Albert Pike and Caleb Cushing, U.S. Attorney General Attorney (1853-1857) and a veteran of the Mexican-American War participated in the removal of the gold. Breckenridge was the U.S. Vice President under President James Buchanan. He was a member of the Knights of the Golden Circle and arrived in England at about the same time as Judah P. Benjamin.
Prior to the war, New Orleans was one of America’s wealthiest cities. It was home to many cotton and sugar plantations, had a thriving port to accommodate a flourishing trade. Certain people in New Orleans enjoyed close connections to the commercial centers of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, London and Paris. The story is that certain high-level bankers in Britain sent Judah P. Benjamin to help initiate the war, fund the confederacy, and head the Confederacy’s intelligence operation. He was initially the Attorney-General, then Secretary for War, and finally Secretary of State. Before he fled from Richmond with other Confederate leaders, he burned all of Confederacy secret service records, including the agency’s association with the Knights of the Golden Circle.
Albert Pike, along with Jacob Thompson, escaped to Canada. Benjamin, Robert Toombs and James Bulloch fled to England.[1697] Benjamin escaped to England by September 1865, began a successful law practice catering to the British merchant class and became the Queen’s Counsel by November 2, 1872. Reportedly,hewasaRothschildagent.[1698] SolomondeRothschildreferredtohimas“perhapsthegreatest mind on this continent.”[1699] John Slidell left the country and made his permanent home in France. Confederate secret service agent John Surratt fled to Italy while the authorities convicted and executed his mother for the alleged complicity with Booth in Lincoln’s death. When John Surratt later returned to the country, officials arrested, tried and acquitted him. Reportedly, he later admitted that he had plotted with Booth to kidnap Lincoln.[1700]
Congress created the Assassination Committee to ascertain if Andrew Johnson had participated in some manner. He functioned in Lincoln’s second administration as Vice President from March 4, 1865 to April 15, 1865. Reportedly, Booth had met with Johnson in 1864 and earlier and then again just hours before the shooting. These earlier meetings occurred when Johnson was the Military Governor of Tennessee from March 12, 1862 to March 4, 1865. Mary Todd Lincoln, in a letter to a friend, implicated Johnson in her
husband’s death.[1701] In 1875, Robert Todd Lincoln had his mother committed to an asylum and assumed control of her finances. She engineered her release through friends and the court but remained estranged from her son. The Lincoln’s favorite son, eleven-year old William Wallace “Willie” Lincoln, had died of “bilious fever” on February 20, 1862. Mary Lincoln was inconsolable and believed that Willie’s death was divine punishment because, as she said, they had been “so wrapped up in the world, so devoted to our own political advancement.”[1702]
Lincoln had conspired to assassinate the Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his entire cabinet. Lincoln assigned Colonel Ulric Dahlgren to lead the attack in Richmond. However, a Confederate soldier shot and killed Dahlgren during the operation on March 2, 1864. Later that evening, thirteen-year-old William Littlepage found Dahlgren’s body, went through his pockets and discovered some papers, one of which had the following noted, “The men must keep together and well in hand, and once in the city it must be destroyed and Jeff. Davis and Cabinet killed.” Other papers implicated Lincoln who Booth supposedly killed in retaliation, as devised by Davis and Benjamin.[1703] The Union confiscated the papers from the collection of Confederate papers when Robert E. Lee surrendered. They took the papers to Washington and turned them over to the War Department. War Secretary Stanton directed Franz Lieber to extract the Dahlgren Papers from the Confederate documents and bring them to him. Thereafter, no one ever saw them again.[1704]
When the war ended, reconstruction began. Anti-slavery congressmen were determined to destroy whatever power remained in the South. The Ku Klux Klan, together with the Freemasons, working for the slave owners, countered that activity with terrorism, as if they could block the Reconstruction efforts. Benjamin, from England, wrote that he could never visit his old home, New Orleans, as it would break his heart to witness Negroes and carpetbaggers running things. He found the idea of elevating the populace absolutely abhorrent. On July 15, 1865, Albert Pike, still in Canada, told the Supreme Council to resume Masonic operations of the Scottish rite, Southern Jurisdiction. Within six weeks, President Johnson allowed Pike to return to the U.S. In April 1866, his Supreme Council convened, in full regalia in the White House where President Johnson granted him a full pardon.[1705]
Robert Todd Lincoln, the president’s son declined the invitation to Ford’s Theater that fateful night on April 14, 1865. He later allegedly discovered documents implicating individuals who escaped culpability for his father’s assassination and destroyed them.[1706] Former President and Chief Justice William Howard Taft authorized the Lincoln Memorial Bill on February 11, 1911. On February 12, 1914, groundbreaking ceremonies for the Lincoln Memorial took place. They laid the cornerstone one year later. Robert T. Lincoln and other members of the hereditary Union Loyal Legion participated in every stage of the planning of the Lincoln Memorial, including its dedication. The Society has directed a yearly memorial service ever since on February, the anniversary of Lincoln’s birth.[1707]
Lincoln’s last public appearance was on May 30, 1922 when William Howard Taft dedicated the Lincoln Memorial. Freemason Henry Bacon had designed the structure wherein a large 19-foot sculpture of Abraham Lincoln sits on a throne with his hands clutching the arms of the throne decorated with the fasces, an ancient symbol of authority or statism. Significantly, the emblem of the Society of Cincinnati was the fasces, the symbol of ancient Roman officialdom. The charter members of the Union Loyal League patterned their group after the Society of Cincinnati. Daniel Chester French, a neighbor and friend of Illuminist Ralph Waldo Emerson designed the statue. Behind Lincoln’s statue, a huge plaque reads, “In this temple as in the hearts of the people for whom he saved the union the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever.”
While Robert Todd Lincoln was not present when Booth shot his father, he was present on July 2, 1881, when Charles J. Guiteau shot President James A. Garfield and on September 6, 1901, when Leon Frank Czolgosz shot President William McKinley. Allegedly, Lincoln had collaborated with some of the individuals implicated in his father’s death. Later he discovered documents implicating individuals who escaped culpability for the assassination and destroyed them.[1708]
Robert T. Lincoln attended the very elite Phillips Exeter Academy and then Harvard University. After his father’s death, he attended what is now the University of Chicago and officials admitted him to the bar on February 25, 1867. He joined the Union Army as a captain the end of the war on General Grant’s staff, a relatively safe position. Lincoln was President James Garfield’s Secretary of War (1881-1885). He was the U.S. ambassador to Britain (1889-1893) under President Benjamin Harrison.
Lincoln was general counsel to George Pullman of the Pullman Company and became president of the company when Pullman died on October 19, 1897. He was president of the Pullman Company (1897- 1911), located in Chicago then became its chairman until his death on July 26, 1926. Researcher Charles Savoie claims that Pullman Company investors included charter members of the Pilgrims Society, Marshall Field, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Mellon, and the Vanderbilts.[1709] Presumably, Robert Lincoln was also a member, given his government position in Britain followed by his interesting business associations.
Like-minded politicians and their banker friends, always ready to honor their corrupt cohorts, enacted legislation to build the Lincoln Memorial, the reflecting pond and to declare a national holiday. Treasury officials have minted Lincoln’s face on the penny and printed it on the five-dollar bill. Additionally, they memorialized Lincoln, along with others, on Mount Rushmore. Hundreds of textbooks praise the divisive man who coordinated a deadly fratricidal total war. The memorialization of this man legitimizes his egregious abusive policies – control of the press in times of emergency, confiscation of private property, the income tax, a certain path to the Federal Reserve and numerous other Marxist practices to this day. Evidently, if the man was so remarkable, as an abundance of government-friendly, establishment writers’ claims, then all of his otherwise questionable actions were also necessary, courageous and meritorious. He set a pattern of tyranny for every subsequent U.S. president. His death, with its high emotional impact, alleviated his responsibility to account for the misery and death that he deliberately brought upon his country. Significant time, massive educational and media indoctrination proves the certain effectiveness of repetitive falsehoods – the moral masses, yes Christians, will accept whatever their elite class managers disseminate. Combined with martyrdom, all of these factors have made a hero out of one of history’s worst tyrants.
Ethnic Cleansing in America Biological Warfare against the Indians
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