Chapter 14: The Ruling Elite: Society of Cincinnati, a More Perfect Union

 

Chapter 14: The Ruling Elite: Society of Cincinnati, a More Perfect Union

 

Society of Cincinnati, a More Perfect Union

The Second Continental Congress met on May 10, 1775 in Philadelphia after the beginning of the Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775). This Congress established the Continental Army on June 14, 1775 to coordinate the war effort. Members of this Congress, during June and July of 1776, drafted a Declaration of Independence that the thirteen colonies ratified on July 4, 1776. The Congress appointed a committee to

draft the Articles of Confederation in June 1776, which officially established the union of states. The states completed the ratification process by March 1, 1781. This document formerly federated the sovereign and independent states, which were already cooperating and executing the war through the Continental Congress. It created a new federation, “The United States of America.” The states, according to the Articles, retained sovereignty and controlled all governmental activities not exclusively relinquished to the central government.

On the date that the colonies ratified the Articles of Confederation, the Continental Congress became the Congress of the Confederation and could declare war, negotiate diplomatic agreements, and solve questions concerning the western territories. Article XIII stipulated “their provisions shall be inviolably observed by every state” and “the Union shall be perpetual.” These articles united the citizens in their efforts to secure the “freedom, sovereignty, and independence of the United States.” The Congress of the Confederation functioned from March 1, 1781, to March 4, 1789 when the United States Congress replaced it.

American soldiers soundly vanquished the British during the Battle of Yorktown (September 28 - October 19, 1781). America’s early military aristocracy plotted a future conquest of America by creating a secret alliance of army officers whose membership was hereditary, from father to son, like the European nobility. This alliance, the Society of Cincinnati derived its name from Cincinnatus, the ancient Roman dictator. Their emblem was the fasces, the symbol of ancient Roman officialdom. They intended to control federal and state politics and overthrow the newly won First Republic, a result of the war, and establish an oligarchy headed by General George Washington. Alexander Hamilton, one of Washington’s aides was a Society member.[484] Officers created the society during May 10-13, 1783 at Mount Gulian on the east bank of the Hudson River. After resigning as general, Washington became the society’s first president with Major General Henry Knox, a Freemason, as secretary.[485]

According to the historian, Herbert Aptheker, this sinister force intended to replace the civilian- dominated Republican form of government with either a military dictatorship or an absolute monarchy. Whichever option they chose, Washington, a hugely popular war hero, was their choice as the supreme leader. His contemporaries compared him to Moses and even Christ, so great were his achievements as Commander-in-Chief over the

British.[486]

Hamilton chaired the elite Society’s first meeting. Members of the Society of Cincinnati, an elite fellowship, served as board members for the American Philosophical Society. Past members of the Philosophical Society include George Washington, John Adams, Owen Biddle, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Paine, David Rittenhouse, Benjamin Rush, James Madison, Michael Hillegas, and John Marshall. International members include Alexander von Humboldt, the Marquis de Lafayette, Baron von Steuben, Tadeusz Kościuszko, and Yekaterina Romanovna Vorontsova-Dashkova. Later members include Charles Darwin, Robert Frost, Louis Pasteur, Elizabeth Cabot Agassiz, John James Audubon, Linus Pauling, Margaret Mead, Maria Mitchell, and Thomas Edison.

The American Philosophical Society laid the foundation for countless other societies, which have designed and shaped society’s perceptions. Benjamin Franklin founded the Society in Philadelphia through a circular letter, dated May 13, 1743, entitled “A Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge among the British Plantations in America.” The word “philosophical,” at the time, meant the systematic study of every field of investigation and education. They focused on what constituted the customary college curricula of the times.The organization did not flourish until 1767. On January 2, 1769, the American Society Held at Philadelphia for Promoting Useful Knowledge merged with the American Philosophical Society and Benjamin Franklin became its first president.[487]

Members of the Philosophical Society had foreign associations. Franklin knew Freemasons in Britain,

France, the Netherlands and America. He also knew the members of the hedonistic Hellfire Club located

in Britain.[488] Franklin and Voltaire were both members of France’s most prestigious Masonic group, the

Lodge of the Nine Sisters, which met at Saint-Sulpice.[489] Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau were

leading proponents of this “natural” religion, Deism.[490] In 1789, there were over six hundred Masonic

lodges just in Paris. Rousseau and Voltaire inspired Illuminism and the Masonic philosophies. The French

Revolution transformed the country into death and massive destruction. Whatever ventures the elite

Freemasons engaged in, from the slave trade to Asian opium smuggling, they prospered while the peons

took all the risks and did all the dying. An “end justifies the means” mentality still pervades society today.

[491]

The Abbé Corréa da Serra arrived in America with letters of introduction to President James Madison and Thomas Jefferson and other leading members of the Philosophical Society from some of the leaders of the European Enlightenment including André Thouin and Sir Joseph Banks, Pierre Samuel du Pont (1739-1817), Alexander von Humboldt and Joel Barlow, American Minister in Paris.[492] Pierre Samuel du Pont, a French nobleman, was the father of Eleuthère Irénée du Pont, the founder of E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company in the United States. They founded their chemical company in July 1802 as a gunpowder mill. DuPont is currently the world’s second largest chemical company behind BASF and fourth behind BASF, Dow Chemical and Ineos in revenue.

John Marshall, a Federalist, functioned as Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court longer than anyone else in history did, for over three decades. He played a major role in the construction and development of America’s legal system. In particular, he empowered the concept that federal courts have the authority to exercise judicial review, including the power to determine which laws violate the Constitution. The Marbury v. Madison (1803) case provided the foundation for the exercise of judicial review. This case was the first time that the Supreme Court proclaimed that something was “unconstitutional.” Consequently, Marshall almost single-handedly reinforced the importance of the U.S. judiciary as an independent and formidable branch of the government. Additionally, the Marshall Court (1801-1835) made numerous critical decisions regarding federalism, which affected the balance of power between the states and the federal government. He continually confirmed the superiority of federal over state law. He advocated an enhanced interpretation of the enumerated powers of the Constitution. In this way, the elite facilitated the incremental change from a National Republican State to a socialistic democracy, then to a fully functioning corporate state with resource ownership and power in the hands of an elite minority.

The Federalists, ensconced in many elite organizations and government positions, were determined to alter the government’s structure, an objective they often initiated through warfare, a time of chaos, tribulation and distracted citizenry. The Federalists claimed that the Articles of Confederation, although constructed by British agents, were inadequate in creating an effective government and clamored for a more powerful federation to replace the Congress of the Confederation. Their principle criticism was that its Congress did not have the power to levy taxes. Instead, it had to request money from the states. They wanted a government that could impose tariffs, dispense land grants, and be responsible for unpaid state war debts, the dangling carrot. The anti-federalists, who opposed a new constitution and a strong, centralized government, thought that limitations on government power were essential. The Federalists triumphed and replaced the Articles with the U.S. Constitution on June 21, 1788.

The Articles of Confederation did not contain provisions on governing a territory, especially the vast size of the Northwest Territory. Jefferson persuaded Virginia officials to relinquish its claims to the area and suggested that Congress divide the Northwest Territory into ten states that would be self-governing with a modicum of supervision from Congress. Jefferson’s plan also called for the emancipation of all slaves by 1800. However, the Society of Cincinnati opposed the plan as its leader, George Washington, insisted that the land was still part of his personal estate. He did not favor democracy in the area. He maneuvered

Congress, through its many Cincinnati supporters, to get Jefferson appointed as Ambassador to France to get him and his democratic ideas out of the country. People soon forgot about Jefferson’s suggestions for a democratic form of government for the Northwest Territory.[493]

Per the Articles of Confederation, the Continental Congress was responsible for coining and regulating currency. Each year, a Congressional committee convened to devise a plan for the nation’s currency. They had been unable to resolve the currency issue until Jefferson, a member of the committee, suggested a feasible plan in 1785. He recommended the use of silver as the money standard with a secondary gold currency for sizeable amounts. He also formulated a system with reasonable denominations. Now, the Cincinnati sympathizers in Congress were even more anxious to send Jefferson off to France. Congress permanently disregarded his currency plans as well as his proposal for democratic government in the Northwest Territory. The Cincinnati Society conspiracy to overthrow the First Republic would have a greater chance for success if Congress were unable to stabilize a legitimate U.S. currency.[494]

Almost a century later, William Jennings Bryan, who favored the use of silver, said, “Those who are opposed to this proposition tell us that the issue of paper money is a function of the bank, and that the government ought to go out of the banking business. I stand with Jefferson rather than with them, and tell them, as he did that the issue of money is a function of government, and that the banks ought to go out of the governing business.”[495] John Maynard Keynes wrote, “Lenin was right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning an existing economic system of a society than to debauch (corrupt) its currency with a bank-money substitute, reconditely injected into circulation by means of checks channeled through private check clearing houses. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of creeping socio-economic destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”[496]

Commoners wanted to counter the influence of the Society of Cincinnati. One such person wrote, “I am now fully persuaded that it (the Cincinnati) originated with Hamilton with a view to secure the influence of the military officers to seport (sic) an aristocratical faction of which he is the head in order to the Enterduction (sic) of Monarchy which I am much against.”[497]

Congress sent Jefferson, the key opponent of Washington’s scheme, to France in 1785. The South did not have a counterpart to cope against the power of the secret and invisible Society of Cincinnati. New York, a city filled with monarchist sentiments, viewed the Cincinnati as their best opportunity of avoiding “the threat of democracy.” Hamilton aggressively defended the monarchist interests in New York City. However, the Cincinnati Society had intentions unknown by many of their non-member supporters because they deceptively presented their plans to outsiders, not the plans for a highly centralized oligarchy, but instead a plan, which they ambiguously called a “more perfect union.”[498]

The Philolexian Society

Adolph Franz Friedrich Ludwig Knigge (1752-1796), a German writer and Freemason who studied law in Göttingen (1769-1772), worked closely with Johann Adam Weishaupt (1748-1830), the founder of the Order of Illuminati, a secret society in Bavaria. Knigge facilitated the dissemination of Illuminism throughout Germany. The Eichstadt lodge, in Oberhavel, Brandenburg, Germany, under Mahomed (the Baron Schroeckenstein) illuminated Baireuth, in northern Bavaria, Germany, and other Imperial towns. Illuminism spread to Berlin under the influence of Baron Ben Leuchtsenring and Christoph Friedrich Nicolai, a bookseller residing in Berlin, who then illuminated the many of the elite in the provinces of Brandenburg and Pomerania. Practitioners in Frankfurt took Illuminism to Hanover. Weishaupt controlled all of the branches and directed the twelve individuals, known as adepts, who had attained a certain level of knowledge. Weishaupt, head of the whole conspiracy, lived in Munich.[499]

The Bavarian government officially destroyed the Order in 1785 after their officers discovered secret documents on the body of an Illuminati courier that lightning had evidently struck. The dispatch rider was carrying mail from Vienna to Paris – mail that contained plans to foment the French Rebellion (1789). However, despite this discovery, the Illuminati had already infiltrated numerous Masonic lodges whose members were intent on restructuring the state and destroying the church. A chapter, undoubtedly just one of many, later emerged in America as the secretive Brotherhood of Death, also known as the Order of Skull and Bones.[500] Members of the Order, per Weishaupt’s directions, infiltrated into established organizations, usually viewed as acceptable groups one could join for fellowship purposes. Weishaupt intended to penetrate or develop other societies, religions or movements, all seemingly benign, from which to operate. Most people wholly underestimate the ability of the Illuminati to organize front groups, even political parties or philosophies.

Author Terry Melanson wrote, “Contrary to popular belief, most Masonic lodges outside of Bavaria were not completely purged of their Illuminism; and the Order – at the very least, its members – merely went underground, only to resurface later under the guise of reading societies and Jacobin clubs.”[501] Between 1760 and 1800, individuals established approximately 430 reading societies in Germanic-speaking parts of Europe.[502] Students created one of the first literary societies in America, associated with a college, in the 1770s at Columbia University, which people knew as King’s College. Alexander Hamilton (Class of 1778) and his roommate Robert Troup were key members. The society was defunct by 1795. However, another society, the Philolexian, known as Philo by the members, was established on May 17, 1802, the college’s first permanent literary society for undergraduates.[503] Some of the earliest members of the Philolexian Society were Nathaniel Fish Moore, Columbia’s eighth president, and James Alexander Hamilton, the son of Alexander Hamilton, the Treasury Secretary and the power behind the Federalists.

The Philolexian Society members spent “many nights with literary activities and political scheming.”[504] The Society provided opportunities for students to hone their dialectical debating skills for future political maneuvering. One could compare the political machinations associated with the Society’s elections to the shenanigans at Tammany. The Philolexian Society was one of the College’s two literary societies; the other was the Peithologian Society.[505] Members, through their extracurricular experience, were often able to secure high government positions where they could influence the masses.

Philolexian Society members have exerted significant influence as they include eight U.S. Representatives, eight college presidents, five U.S. ambassadors, four governors, two U.S. Senators, and two New York City mayors. Member and journalist John L. O’Sullivan coined the phrase “manifest destiny” and promoted U.S. superiority and domination. The notable military theorist, Alfred Thayer Mahan, influenced Theodore Roosevelt and advocated U.S. militarism and imperialist expansion, was a Philolexian member. He was twice president of the U.S. Naval War College. Philolexian members have founded or co-founded numerous influential organizations such as Harcourt Brace, The New York Review of Books, Library of America, and the Writers Guild of America. Members have served as president of the New-York Historical Society, the New York Chamber of Commerce, National Academy of Sciences, Doubleday, Authors’ League of America, American Physical Society, American Mathematical Society, American Historical Association, American Society of Civil Engineers and the American Academy of Arts and Letters among other organizations.

Researcher and author, Nesta Webster pointed out that the Illuminati, working under different identities, like the Fabian Society, literary societies, and other associations has succeeded in “gaining control over ordinary circulating libraries and bookshops, by placing at their head men or women who are definitely working for the propagation of revolutionary doctrines.” Journalists and authors, under the guise of the so- called free press, manage to serve the cause with lengthy discourses on Socialism and demoralizing

modern fiction.[506]

Weishaupt said, “The great strength of our Order lies in its concealment; let it never appear in any place in its own name, but always covered by another name, and another occupation. None is fitter than the three lower degrees of Free Masonry; the public is accustomed to it, expects little from it, and therefore takes little notice of it. Next to this, the form of a learned or literary society is best suited to our purpose, and had Free Masonry not existed, this cover would have been employed; and it may be much more than a cover, it may be a powerful engine in our hands. By establishing reading societies, and subscription libraries, and taking these under our direction, and supplying them through our labours, wemayturnthepublicmindwhichwaywewill.”[507] [508]

Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller financially collaborated on a strategy with the ultimate objective of indoctrinating the American and international population.[509] In conjunction with this objective, between 1900 and 1917, Andrew Carnegie’s foundation influenced and financed the construction of almost 1,700 libraries in the United States, from the east to the west coast.[510] However, the Carnegie Foundation insisted that local communities guarantee tax support before the construction of each library. These libraries served as social centers while they also functioned as a place where booksellers and publishers could sell their publications and realize profits. Alternatively, the libraries lent books for a small fee or one could purchase a subscription on a yearly, quarterly or monthly basis. The upper middle and elite class viewed these libraries negatively because they had full access to an education and reading materials.

Paul Marie Ghislain Otlet was the son of Édouard Otlet, a Belgian international financier and executive with substantial experience in building railroads in Europe and the United States. Paul Otlet was an author, lawyer and peace activist and people have viewed him as the father of information science, and a field he called “documentation.” He created the Universal Decimal Classification system. He wrote two books on how to collect and organize the world’s knowledge - the Traité de Documentation, (1934) and Monde: Essai d’universalisme (1935). Otlet advocated internationalist political ideas as represented in the League of Nations and its International Institute for Intellectual Cooperation. He collaborated with Henri La Fontaine, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1913, to achieve their ideas of a new world community that they envisioned arising from the global diffusion of information and the creation of new kinds of international organizations.

One does not have to belong to the Illuminati to adopt their policies and disseminate their devilish dogma. Illuminati-influenced individuals frequently engage in the publication of reading materials that introduce the “ideals” they hope to impose on those they deem to be the lower classes. They first launch their socialistic beliefs among the most vulnerable members of society. They encourage the productivity of those writers who advocate their party line. As described in the Protocols, a rather prophetic, interesting document, “We must take care our writers be well puffed and that the reviewers do not depreciate them; therefore we must endeavour by every means to gain over the reviewers and journalists; and we must also try to gain the booksellers, who in time will see that it is their interest to side with us.”[511] Weishaupt wrote, “In like manner we must try to obtain an influence in the military academies (this may be of mighty consequence) the printing-houses, booksellers shops, chapters, and in short in all offices which have any effect, either in forming, or in managing, or even in directing the mind of man: painting and engraving are highly worth our care.”[512]

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