http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=105934.0
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/cienciareal/cienciareal20.htm
http://www.vaticanassassins.org/?p=6114
http://www.keepandbeararms.com/information/XcIBViewItem.asp?id=916
http://www.infowars.com/obama-calls-for-global-government-a-new-international-order/
http://truthseeker2473.blogspot.com/search?q=426
http://www.laprogressive.com/economic-equality/schwarzenegger-and-the-republicans-cost-california-7-billion/
http://www.antifascistencyclopedia.com/page/7?s=Tea+Party
http://www.hermes-press.com/counterfeit_progressives.htm
http://www.antifascistencyclopedia.com/page/7?s=Tea+Party
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Monday, May 24, 2010
The Tea Party and the Poor
http://www.cps-news.com/2010/04/19/tea-party-slogan-tax-the-wealthy-less-and-the-poor-more/
http://www.bluenc.com/tea-party-tedesco-takes-poke-poor-children
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-6139186-503544.html
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19299
http://www.rifuture.org/tea-party-fascists.html
http://www.pensitoreview.com/2010/05/11/actually-tea-party-types-love-government-as-long-as-it-benefits-them-and-not-the-poor/
http://www.bluenc.com/tea-party-tedesco-takes-poke-poor-children
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-6139186-503544.html
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19299
http://www.rifuture.org/tea-party-fascists.html
http://www.pensitoreview.com/2010/05/11/actually-tea-party-types-love-government-as-long-as-it-benefits-them-and-not-the-poor/
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Info
A Glossary for Understanding Obamaspeak
Dosamuno - 03/26/2010 - 12:01
1. Entitlements: Money not spent on subsidizing the military-industrial complex, the banking and financial sector, insurance companies, or the pharmaceutical industry.
2. Educational Reform: Replacing neighborhood public schools with private charter schools.
3. Health Reform: Obliging all U.S. citizens to buy insurance policies from parasitic HMOs that profit by denying them medical care.
4. Foreign Policy: Making the world safe for imperial plunder.
-Dosamuno
http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=170622.new
http://blackagendareport.com/?q=content/freedom-rider-health-care-deceit
http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/white-nationalism-march
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=64504
http://godkind.org/pagan-holidays.html (I don't agree with this link on every issue)
Dosamuno - 03/26/2010 - 12:01
1. Entitlements: Money not spent on subsidizing the military-industrial complex, the banking and financial sector, insurance companies, or the pharmaceutical industry.
2. Educational Reform: Replacing neighborhood public schools with private charter schools.
3. Health Reform: Obliging all U.S. citizens to buy insurance policies from parasitic HMOs that profit by denying them medical care.
4. Foreign Policy: Making the world safe for imperial plunder.
-Dosamuno
http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=170622.new
http://blackagendareport.com/?q=content/freedom-rider-health-care-deceit
http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/white-nationalism-march
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=64504
http://godkind.org/pagan-holidays.html (I don't agree with this link on every issue)
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
More on Abraham Lincoln
From http://web.archive.org/web/20060927143242/www.etext.org/Politics/LaRouche/lincoln.2
WHY THE BRITISH HAD TO KILL ABRAHAM LINCOLN Part II
by Rochelle Ascher
During Polk's term, in 1848, there occurred also the hideous
imperialistic war against Mexico. Lincoln, who was one of the
few congressmen with the courage to oppose this very popular
war, was not returned to office, in large part due to his opposition
to the war.
With presidential candidate
Henry Clay defeated for the third time, the Mexican War at its
height, the slavery issue rising, the Sub-Treasury reestablished,
internal improvement bills vetoed, and the Walker Tariff passed,
Whiggery seemed headed for a collapse.
Lincoln's congressional record was clear--support for a protective
tariff, large-scale internal improvements--federally directed
and financed, a Bank of the United States, and free labor against
slave labor. Under Polk, he was unable to implement any of
it.
In the election of 1848, Lincoln again took to the campaign
trail to stump for Zachary Taylor. While a Whig, Taylor was
really a soldier, not a politician. As in the 1840 and 1844
campaigns, the Whigs ran on no policy. Lincoln's platform--his
party had none--was containment of slavery and Whig economics.
With the Whig Party only discussing Taylor's military exploits,
Lincoln alone campaigned for Taylor on the question of the necessary
reestablishment of the National Bank.
Taylor, upon taking office, informed Congress he would favorably
receive their bill designed to protect American manufacturing
and commerce, and all internal improvements bills.
Death of Zachary Taylor
As a result of the annexation of Texas, and the Mexican War,
the United States had taken territory which comprised the present
states of Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, California, part of Colorado
and Wyoming, and most of Arizona. There was widespread anxiety
concerning the disposition of this territory: What states would
be formed out of it? Would they be slave or free?
The secessionists in Mississippi (allied with their counterparts
in South Carolina) were headed up by John
A. Quitman, one of the leading members of the Southern Jurisdiction
of the Scottish Rite Freemasons.
In October 1849, Quitman's Mississippi secessionists convened
a strategy session in Natchez with representatives from throughout
the South, and a call was issued to all southern states to send
delegates to a convention on June 3 of the following year. In
January 1850, Quitman was elected governor of Mississippi. In
that office, as leader of the extremists in the South, Quitman
was openly proposing the breakup of the Union, and President
Taylor was presented with a deepening national crisis. At the
same time, Quitman was arranging and financing the invasion
of Cuba by mercenary troops. The conquest of Cuba was seen as
a necessary step for the expansion of slavery.
Seeking to defuse the crisis, Henry Clay constructed a congressional
compromise over the disposition of the new western territories,
similar to the Missouri Compromise he had arranged in 1820.
President Taylor took a different, complementary approach to
the problem. He sent his own agents into California and New
Mexico and arranged for those territories to request that Congress
admit them to the Union as free states. While Texas leaders
were claiming part of New Mexico, and there were threats of
invasion across the desert from Texas into New Mexico, Taylor
pledged that he would uphold the law and the Constitution at
all costs.
On July 3, John Quitman sent a telegram to Taylor saying that
he would personally be leading an anti-federal army of several
thousand troops from Texas into New Mexico.
As Anton Chaitkin recounts in his book {Treason in America,}
President Taylor that same day announced: ``I told them ...
that if it becomes necessary I will take command of the army
myself to enforce the laws. And I said that if you men are
taken in rebellion against the Union, I will hang you with less
reluctance than I hanged the spies and deserters in Mexico.''
The next day, July 4, 1850, Taylor had on his desk a half-finished
message declaring that he would never permit Texas to seize
any part of New Mexico's territory. The President appeared that
afternoon at an Independence Day rally, at which the audience
was exhorted to rally to the Union.
That evening the President ``fell ill,'' vomiting up a mass
of blackish material. He died July 9. Death was officially attributed
to his having consumed too-cold milk and too many cherries.
With the second death of a Whig President due to ``stomach distress''
and with a weak Vice President, Millard Fillmore, occupying
the White House, the Freemasonic secessionists moved openly
to seize power in the United States.
Whig Collapse
Following Taylor's death, Abraham Lincoln left politics and
spent six years (1849-54) mastering American System economics,
especially studying the works of Henry C. Carey.
In 1852, Henry Clay died, and for all practical purposes the
Whig Party died with him. The Whigs nominated Winfield Scott
for President, but it was a rearguard action. As an elector,
Lincoln did make speeches on behalf of Scott on the tariff and
internal improvements, but he knew that neither victory at the
polls, nor the triumph of Whig economics were possible. Scott
was defeated by a treasonous combination of southern planters
and Cotton Whigs (northern textile manufacturers allied with
them). With the election of Franklin Pierce, followed by James
Buchanan, the counterrevolution against the American System
began in earnest. Pierce's cabinet included Secretary of War
Jefferson Davis, soon to become President of the Confederacy,
and Rothschild agent and head of the Democratic Party August
Belmont.
The Scottish Rite Freemasons set
up headquarters throughout the North. They were joined by another
Freemasonic secret organization established in 1854 in Cincinnati--the
Knights of the Golden Circle. Between 1855 and 1860, the Knights
trained and armed 100,000 men in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi,
Alabama, Virginia, and Maryland, for insurrection against the
government. The Knights of the Golden Circle was the military
organization of what was to become the Confederate States of
America.
The first order of business of the treasonous Pierce administration
was the introduction by Sen. Stephen Douglas in January 1854
of a bill to organize the territories of Kansas and Nebraska.
To get southern support for the bill, Douglas had written a
provision to allow the settlers to decide for themselves whether
to seek admission to the Union as slave states or free.
This provision struck down the Missouri Compromise of 1820.
(The Missouri Compromise had allowed Missouri to enter as a
slave state, thus appeasing the slave powers, while stipulating
that slavery would never be permitted north of 36 degrees 30
minutes North latitude. The Clay Missouri Compromise thereby
preserved the clear intention of the Founding Fathers, as Lincoln
said, ``to set slavery in the course of ultimate extinction.'')
With Douglas's new provision on Kansas and Nebraska, the nation
was plunged into controversy. Slaveholders were determined that
Kansas should enter slave; the majority of the North, free.
``Emigrant Associations'' were organized by both sides to flood
Kansas with settlers in an effort to determine the outcome of
any election. When it became apparent that anti-slavery forces
would win by this means, slave owners organized armed bands
in Missouri, known as Border Ruffians, to sweep into Kansas,
murdering and terrorizing anti-slavery leaders, preventing people
from voting unless they professed support for slavery. A pro-slavery
legislature was elected in the middle of this terror, which
made it a crime, punishable by death, to inform blacks of their
rights.
Pro- and anti-slave agitators poured into what became known
as ``Bloody Kansas.'' One year after the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska
Act, the territory had two legislatures and two governors; one
pro-slavery and one against.
Lincoln Returns
It was the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act that brought Lincoln
back into political action--as it did a whole group committed
to the American System. Lincoln was outraged by Douglas's unleashing
of this evil. He returned from his six-year political retirement
to do battle with Douglas at the Illinois State Fair in October
of 1854. Lincoln thundered that the Kansas-Nebraska bill was
``wrong in its direct effect, letting slavery into Kansas and
Nebraska, and wrong in its prospective principle, allowing it
to spread to every other part of the wide world where men can
be found inclined to take it. This declared indifference, but
as I must think, covert real zeal for the spread of slavery,
I cannot but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice
of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican
example of its just influence in the world; enables the enemies
of free institutions with plausibility to taunt us as hypocrites;
causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity; and
especially because it forces so many men among ourselves into
an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty,
criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that
there is no right principle of action but self-interest.'' [Lincoln,
{Collected Works.}]
That same year, Lincoln decided to seek election to the U.S.
Senate (at that time in Illinois, U.S. Senators were selected
by the state Senate). When it became clear that he would not
win, on the tenth ballot he called on his supporters to support
Lyman Trumbull, a Democrat who opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act,
to prevent pro-slavery Illinois Governor Joel Matteson from
being elected.
As much as he wished to be elected, Lincoln considered it more
important that the cause prevail, so he sacrificed his own ambition
to give the North a Free-Soil, anti-Nebraska Act voice in the
U.S. Senate, where it was most needed.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act, by guaranteeing a massive expansion
of slavery, sparked what can only be described as a mass strike
movement which gave birth to the Republican Party.
The conflict continued to rise. In a letter to Joshua F. Speed
dated August 24, 1855, Lincoln wrote: ``[A]bout the Nebraska
law. I look upon that enactment not as a {law,} but as {violence}
from the beginning. It was conceived in violence, passed in
violence, is maintained in violence, and is being executed in
violence. I say it was {conceived} in violence, because the
destruction of the Missouri Compromise, under the circumstances,
was nothing less than violence. It was {passed} in violence,
because it could not have passed at all but for the votes of
many members, in violent disregard of the known will of their
constituents. It is {maintained} in violence because the elections
since, clearly demand its repeal, and this demand is openly
disregarded. {You} say men ought to be hung for the way they
are executing that law; and {I} say the way it is being executed
is quite as good as any of its antecedents. It is being executed
in the precise way in which it was intended from the first;
else why does no Nebraska man express astonishment or condemnation?
..'' [Lincoln, {Collected Works.}]
By early 1856, Lincoln was ready to break with the Whigs and
join the new party, actually writing most of the first Illinois
Republican platform. The difficult task was to unify the new
party, since while all agreed on stopping the spread of slavery,
many ``Republicans'' had been previously bitter political rivals.
At the first statewide Republican convention in Bloomington
in May of 1856, Lincoln gave a speech which brought the crowd
to their feet. He thundered as he hurled denunciations upon
the slave power. ``Kansas shall be free,'' cried Lincoln, and
the crowd, many already standing on their chairs, began cheering,
stamping, and weeping. Reporters assigned to cover the speech
were swept away by the wave of emotion, and dropped their pencils
as they joined with the audience in wild applause.
Though no newspaper accounts of Lincoln's speech at the Bloomington
convention appeared--it came to be called Lincoln's ``Lost Speech''--word
of the effect it had in uniting the audience in purpose and
resolve, spread rapidly throughout the national organization
of the Republican Party. At the national convention in Philadelphia
three weeks later, Lincoln's name was the second proposed for
vice president, and he received 110 votes on the first ballot.
In 1856, the Republican Party swept the congressional elections--amazingly,
given how recently it had been formed. The Republican presidential
candidate, John C. Fremont, narrowly lost to the Democrat and
Freemasonic British agent James Buchanan.
The new Republican Party, while anti-slavery, was split in two.
One group was anti-slavery, but still rabidly supported British
free trade; this included William Seward and William Cullen
Bryant. The other faction, headed by Lincoln and Henry Carey,
was also anti-slavery--but understood that slavery and free
trade belonged to a single evil system which had to be defeated.
Lincoln and Carey's task was to establish the hegemony of the
American System Whig policy in the new party.
Britain's Southern Strategy
As emphasized at the outset, the state of the nation at the
time made Whig control of the Republican Party a matter of urgency.
The Democratic Party was run by Rothschild agent August Belmont,
and the South, beginning with the administration of President
James Buchanan, was preparing a war of secession through appropriation
of the nation's military arsenals.
Southern policy was the very antithesis of the American System.
As both Lincoln and Carey insisted, slavery not only degraded
the slave, but degraded the productive and mental power of all
American labor.
It was precisely on this point that Lincoln distinguished himself
as a future presidential candidate in his 1858 senatorial contest
with Stephen Douglas, the intellectual author of the Kansas-Nebraska
Act (1854) and the Dred Scott Decision. (The latter, issued
by the Supreme Court in 1857, allowed the southern slaveowner
to cross state lines to reclaim his ``property''--the slave.)
Lincoln's unanimous nomination by the Illinois Republicans was
the first nomination ever made by a {political party} for a
U.S. Senate seat.
Lincoln lost the Senate seat, but his debates with Stephen Douglas
were in large part responsible for his winning the Republican
nomination for President in 1860. To understand the quality
of leadership represented by Abraham Lincoln, I quote from two
of his most powerful speeches:
``These by their representatives in old Independence Hall said
to the whole race of men: `We hold these truths to be self-evident:
that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among them are
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' This was their
majestic interpretation of the economy of the universe. This
was their lofty, and wise, and noble, understanding of the justice
of the Creator to his creatures. Yes, gentleman, to all his
creatures; to the whole great family of men. In their enlightened
belief, nothing stamped with the divine image and likeness was
sent into the world to be trodden on and degraded and imbruted
by its fellows. They grasped not only the whole race of men,
then living, but they reached forward and seized upon the farthest
posterity. They erected a beacon to guide their children, and
their children's children, and the countless myriads who should
inhabit the earth in other ages. Wise statesmen as they were,
they knew the tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants, and so
they established these great self-evident truths, that when,
in the distant future, some man, some faction, some interest,
should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, none but
white men, or none but Anglo-Saxon white men were entitled to
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity
might look up again to the Declaration of Independence and take
courage to renew the battle which their fathers began, so that
truth and justice and mercy and all the humane and Christian
virtues might not be extinguished from the land; so that no
man hereafter would dare to limit and circumscribe the great
principles on which the temple of Liberty was being built.''
And he continues with this: ``Now, my countrymen, if you have
been taught doctrines conflicting with the great landmarks of
the Declaration of Independence; if you have listened to suggestions
which would take away from its grandeur and mutilate the fair
symmetry of its proportions; if you are inclined to believe
that all men are not created equal in those inalienable rights
enumerated by our chartered liberty: let me entreat you to come
back. Return to the fountain whose waters spring close by the
blood of the Revolution.''
And then he ends: ``Think nothing of me; take no
thought of the political fate of any man whomsoever, but come
back to the truths that are in the Declaration of Independence.
You may do anything with me you choose, if you will but heed
these sacred principles. You may not only defeat me for the
Senate, but you may take me and put me to death.... But do not
destroy that immortal emblem of humanity--the Declaration of
American Independence.'' [Lincoln, {Collected Works.}]
A second speech during the 1858 campaign makes clear the universal
republican principle involved in Lincoln's opposition to slavery:
``That is the issue that will continue in this country when
these 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 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 principle
in whatever shape it develops itself. 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, whether from the mouth of
a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation, and
live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as
an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical
principle.'' [Lincoln, {Collected Works.}]
Carey vs. Bryant
Henry Carey perceived that unless the new Republican Party not
only opposed slavery, but adopted the American System, the nation
would be divided into competing sections, all ruled by the British
ideology of free trade. From 1856 until the presidential contest
of 1860, Carey's ``Vespers Circle'' organized industrial associations
in the Midwest, West, and especially the border states, to agitate
for the American System. Much of this agitation was initiated
by the Home Protective Union of Pennsylvania, of which Carey
was president. The Carey circle was determined that William
Seward, a free trader, would not get the Republican presidential
nomination at the 1860 convention. Of primary importance in
the fight which preceded the adoption of a national development
platform at the convention were the open letters from Carey
to the free trade wing of the party and its leader William Cullen
Bryant, entitled {Financial Crises, Their Causes and Effects}.
The policy discussions generated around these open letters,
which were printed in all the protectionist press, shaped the
outcome of the campaign. Newspapers printed the letters to Bryant,
newspapers which reached a million and a half ``protectionist
readers.''
Carey's four years of organizing paid off. Consideration of
the party platform began on the second day of the Republican
convention. Of the 17 planks adopted, eight dealt with the various
facets of the slavery issue. Plank number 8 stated that ``the
normal condition of all the territory of the United States is
that of freedom.'' The remaining planks dealt with political
economy, reflecting the Hamiltonian orientation of the new party.
The 12th plank called for a {protective tariff} ``to encourage
the development of the industrial interests of the whole country.''
The 15th plank called for ``appropriations by Congress for River
and Harbor improvements of a National Character,'' while the
16th demanded that the federal government ``render immediate
and efficient aid to the construction of a railroad to the Pacific
Ocean.''
Lincoln's backers brought 25,000 people to the Chicago convention.
After an incredible fight, and several ballots, Lincoln got
the Republican nomination. After the convention, Carey wrote:
``Happily the Republican, or antislavery party has recently
adopted protection as one of the essential parts of its platform
and has nominated as its candidate for the presidency a man
who has been all his life a protectionist. {He will be elected,
and we shall then have a total change in the policy of the country.
As you shall see}.'' (Emphasis added.)
How Lincoln Financed the War
When Lincoln entered office in March of 1861, civil war was
only weeks away. Five southern states had seceded after the
announcement of his victory; the rest followed in rapid succession.
Seven states had announced the formation of the ``United States
of the Confederacy'' on February 1, 1861. Confederate Vice
President Alexander Stephens stated: ``Our confederacy is founded
upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white
man, that slavery is his natural and normal condition. This,
our new government is the first in the history of the world
based on this great physical and moral truth.''
The United States was bankrupt.
Jackson's dismantling of the National Bank, followed by Polk's
Independent Treasury Act of 1846, and the free trade treason
of Pierce and Buchanan, had destroyed the U.S. economy. Lincoln
had to wage war on two fronts--one against the free traders
of New York and New England, and the other against their surrogates:
the Confederate Army. Both were run out of London.
The fundamental turning point in U.S. history concerning restoration
of the American System and defeating the British plan to balkanize
and forever destroy the United States through its support of
the Confederacy, centered on the issues of how to finance the
government, and the civil war that was facing Lincoln in December
1861. Lincoln's policy was outlined in his December 3 ``Annual
Address to Congress.''
The significance of Lincoln's December 3, 1861 speech to Congress
cannot be overestimated--as the British were well aware. Lincoln
had the opportunity as President to sign into law the economic
policy he had worked for through the better part of his political
life.
Lincoln's plan was presented by Secretary of the Treasury Salmon
Chase and by Lincoln himself. The measures included:
@sb^a nationally regulated private banking system, which would
issue cheap credit to build industry;
@sb^the issuance of government legal tender paper currency (the
greenbacks);
@sb^the sale of long-term, low-interest bonds (``5:20s'') to
the general public and to the nationally chartered banks;
@sb^the increase of tariffs until industry was running at full
tilt (the Morrill Tariff);
@sb^government construction of railroads into the middle South,
promoting industrialism over the southern plantation system--what
Carey called a ``peace-winning program'' to industrialize the
South.
The national banks were intended to serve as both investors
in the future wealth of the U.S.A. through the purchase of the
5:20 bonds (5 percent interest, 20 years); through the issuance
of long-term, low-interest loans to manufacturers, and by acting
as a medium for the circulation of currency.
Henry Carey had proposed such a banking system to Henry Clay
years earlier (this would have been under the jurisdiction of
the Bank of the United States).
Carey also sent letters to Lincoln in the fall of 1861 preceding
his historic December message to Congress with a copy of his
pamphlet urging the construction of a North-South railroad to
facilitate future attempts to industrialize the South. Carey
wrote to Lincoln: ``If Henry Clay's tariff views would have
been carried out sooner there would have been no secession because
the southern mineral region would long since have obtained control
of the planting area. Some means must be found to enable these
people of the hill country to profit of our present tariff....''
And later: ``How much more firm and stable might the union have
been, had there developed then a policy which would have filled
the hill country of the South with free white men engaged in
mining coal and ore, making iron and cloth, and building school
houses and churches....'' [W. Allen Salisbury, {The Civil War
and the American System,} New York: University Editions, 1978.]
The December 3 speech by Lincoln was the emphatic declaration
that the American System would be the guiding principle of his
administration. He urged Congress to consider the proposal by
Carey to begin construction of a railroad system into North
Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee, to enable development of
mining and other industrial interests in these southern states.
Regarding financial policy Lincoln stated: ``The operations
of the Treasury during the period which has elapsed since your
adjournment have been conducted with signal success. The patriotism
of the people has placed at the disposal of the government the
large means demanded by the public exigencies. Much of the national
loan has been taken by citizens of the industrial classes, whose
confidence in their country's faith, and zeal for their country's
deliverance from present peril have induced them to contribute
to the support of the government the whole of their limited
acquisitions. This fact imposes peculiar obligations to economy
in disbursement and energy in action.'' [Lincoln, {Collected
Works.}]
In the most famous section of his December 3, 1861 address to
Congress, Lincoln spelled out his underlying republican philosophy
and attacked the aristocratic British-allied bankers: ``Labor
is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the
fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not
first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves
much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which
are as worthy of protection as any other rights. Nor is it denied
that there is, and probably always will be, a relationship between
capital and labor, producing mutual benefits. The error is in
assuming that the whole labor of community exists within that
relation.... In most of the southern States, a majority of the
whole people of all colors are neither slaves nor masters; while
in the northern a large majority are neither hirers nor hired....
``Many independent men everywhere in these States, a few years
back in their lives, were hired laborers. The prudent, penniless
beginner in the world, labors for wages awhile, saves a surplus
in which to buy tools or land for himself; then labors on his
own account another while, and at length hires another new beginner
to help him. This is the just, and generous, and prosperous
system, which opens the way to all--gives hope to all and consequent
energy, and progress, and improvement of condition to all. No
men living are more worthy to be trusted than those who toil
up from poverty--none less inclined to take, or touch, aught
that they have not honestly earned. Let them beware of surrendering
a political power which they already possess, and which, if
surrendered, will surely be used to close the door of advancement
against such as they, and to fix new disabilities and burdens
upon them till all of liberty shall be lost.
``From the first taking of our national census to the last are
seventy years; and we find our population at the end of the
period eight times as great as it was at the beginning. The
increase of those other things which men deem desirable has
been even greater. We thus have at one view, what the popular
principle applied to government, through the machinery of the
states and the Union, has produced in a given time; and also
what, if firmly maintained, it promises for the future. There
are already among us those, who, if the Union is to be preserved,
will live to see it contain two hundred and fifty millions.
The struggle of today, is not altogether for today--it is for
a vast future also....'' [Lincoln, {Collected Works,}]
The Bankers Revolt
When James Gallatin and the Associated Banks got wind of the
new policy (even before Lincoln and Chase addressed Congress)
they went berserk. They wrote Chase demanding the adoption
of a stringent taxation policy.
On December 28, 1861, the New York Associated Banks suspended
specie payments to the government. They suspended payment of
gold owed to their depositors, and stopped transferring to the
government the gold which they had pledged for the purchase
of government bonds. The banks of other cities immediately followed
suit.
On January 9, 1862, Gallatin headed a delegation of bankers
which came to Washington to meet with Chase and those congressmen
responsible for steering the Hamiltonian legislation through
Congress. Gallatin presented the bankers' ``alternative'':
@sb^the Treasury must deposit its gold in private banks, and
let those banks pay the government's suppliers with checks,
keeping the gold on deposit for the investment use of the bankers;
@sb^the government should sell high-interest bonds to these
same banks, for them to resell to the European banking syndicate--that
is, allowing them to sell an unlimited number of 7:30 bonds
below par on the London market;
@sb^the government should suspend the ``Sub-Treasury'' law by
which the government gained control over the banks;
@sb^the government should immediately cease the issuance of
government legal tender; and of course,
@sb^a great deal of the war should be financed by a tax on basic
industry.
Gallatin was shown the door. One congressman, Samuel Hooper
(R-Mass.), commented that he would adopt no plan which called
for ``government shinning before Wall Street.''
The British, when informed that Congress had dismissed the Gallatin
plan, were furious. William Cullen Bryant, editor of the {New
York Post} and head of the free-trade wing of the Republican
Party, began a series of editorials attacking Lincoln's financial
policy, and {calling for direct taxation of industry to pay
off the war debts.} After Congress passed the legislation, Bryant
met with Lincoln, imploring him to veto the measure. Lincoln
refused. From Britain, August Belmont, then meeting with the
Rothschilds and Thurlow Weed, dispatched protesting messages
to Lincoln.
At a meeting arranged by the Rothschilds with British Prime
Minister Henry Palmerston and Chancellor of the Exchequer William
Gladstone, Belmont was questioned as to the state of the American
nation's defenses and the popular attitude toward Great Britain.
Palmerston had the gall to say, ``We do not like slavery, but
we want cotton and we dislike your Morrill Tariff.''
Belmont wrote to Seward: ``... The English government and people
could not accept the North's justification for fighting the
Confederacy as long as this war is not carried on for the abolition
of slavery in the southern states. Perhaps English sentiment
could use the tonic of a reduction in the objectionable Morrill
tariff? Nothing else could contribute so effectively toward
disproving widespread Southern assertions that the war was merely
a contest between free trade and protection.'' [Salisbury, {The
Civil War and the American System.}]
While Lincoln fought the Eastern bankers over the national banking
system, the Treasury issued several hundreds of millions of
new greenbacks. Philadelphia banker Jay Cooke was employed
by Treasury Secretary Chase to become the sole agent for the
5:20 bonds. Several of Carey's associates, including Stephen
Colwell, William Elder, and Samuel Wilkerson, prepared the prospectus
Cooke utilized to sell the bonds. (Elder and Colwell were later
appointed by Lincoln to posts in the Treasury Department; Elder
as the official Treasury statistician and Colwell as an economist.)
Banker Cooke sold small government bonds to the average citizen:
with 2,500 subagents, Cooke sold over {$1.3 billion worth of
bonds to citizens between 1862 and 1865}. As Lincoln had argued
in his Annual Address of 1861, the U.S. citizenry would finance
the war.
The original bill authorizing the sale of the 5:20 bonds contained
no provision for paying the interest on the bonds in gold. Thus,
if the bill as it was prepared by Thaddeus Stevens's House Ways
and Means Committee had passed the House, it {would have had
the effect of severing the domestic economy of the U.S.A. from
the British early in Lincoln's administration}. The British
pound sterling at the time was the gold-backed world reserve
currency. By controlling the world's gold supply, the British
ruled the world. But before the bill was passed, August Belmont
and James Gallatin worked out a compromise which {allowed the
bonds to be purchased with greenbacks, but their interest was
to be paid in specie}.
This compromise was the first step in pegging the value of the
U.S. greenback to gold, and allowed Belmont and other New York
merchants engaged in the export-import trade to speculate in
gold through the Associated Banks and thus create fluctuations
in the value of greenbacks as measured by the British gold standard.
President Lincoln pushed for his measures of control over the
banking system, using more of his influence over Congress than
on any other issue. The New England and New York bankers instructed
their congressmen to defeat the bill. But Lincoln's prestige
and authority won out--and he signed the National Currency Act
on February 25, 1863 and the National Banking Act on June 3,
1864.
To understand the significance of what Lincoln did, we first
have to look at the state of banking in the U.S. on the eve
of the Civil War.
The national banking system was in a state of anarchy. {There
was no national currency.} Each bank issued its own notes. On
January 1, 1862, there were 1,496 banks in the United Sates,
some 7,000 legitimate notes, and some 5,500 counterfeit notes.
Only 253 banks had notes that had escaped alteration or limitation.
There was specie payment, i.e., payment of gold coin by a bank
in exchange for a bank note, but this was suspended by the Associated
Banks at the outbreak of the war.
Banks had no one in the national government to answer to, only
state banking inspectors, who were frequently bribed. Banks
often had little capitalization or reserves, operating often
solely on the ``connections'' of the bank's chairman. Banks
promoting the most outrageous schemes and responsible to no
one were the order of the day. The large private banking houses,
like the House of Morgan, used large credit lines from Europe
to add to the chaos.
{To be continued.}
--
John Covici
covici@ccs.covici.com
WHY THE BRITISH HAD TO KILL ABRAHAM LINCOLN Part II
by Rochelle Ascher
During Polk's term, in 1848, there occurred also the hideous
imperialistic war against Mexico. Lincoln, who was one of the
few congressmen with the courage to oppose this very popular
war, was not returned to office, in large part due to his opposition
to the war.
With presidential candidate
Henry Clay defeated for the third time, the Mexican War at its
height, the slavery issue rising, the Sub-Treasury reestablished,
internal improvement bills vetoed, and the Walker Tariff passed,
Whiggery seemed headed for a collapse.
Lincoln's congressional record was clear--support for a protective
tariff, large-scale internal improvements--federally directed
and financed, a Bank of the United States, and free labor against
slave labor. Under Polk, he was unable to implement any of
it.
In the election of 1848, Lincoln again took to the campaign
trail to stump for Zachary Taylor. While a Whig, Taylor was
really a soldier, not a politician. As in the 1840 and 1844
campaigns, the Whigs ran on no policy. Lincoln's platform--his
party had none--was containment of slavery and Whig economics.
With the Whig Party only discussing Taylor's military exploits,
Lincoln alone campaigned for Taylor on the question of the necessary
reestablishment of the National Bank.
Taylor, upon taking office, informed Congress he would favorably
receive their bill designed to protect American manufacturing
and commerce, and all internal improvements bills.
Death of Zachary Taylor
As a result of the annexation of Texas, and the Mexican War,
the United States had taken territory which comprised the present
states of Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, California, part of Colorado
and Wyoming, and most of Arizona. There was widespread anxiety
concerning the disposition of this territory: What states would
be formed out of it? Would they be slave or free?
The secessionists in Mississippi (allied with their counterparts
in South Carolina) were headed up by John
A. Quitman, one of the leading members of the Southern Jurisdiction
of the Scottish Rite Freemasons.
In October 1849, Quitman's Mississippi secessionists convened
a strategy session in Natchez with representatives from throughout
the South, and a call was issued to all southern states to send
delegates to a convention on June 3 of the following year. In
January 1850, Quitman was elected governor of Mississippi. In
that office, as leader of the extremists in the South, Quitman
was openly proposing the breakup of the Union, and President
Taylor was presented with a deepening national crisis. At the
same time, Quitman was arranging and financing the invasion
of Cuba by mercenary troops. The conquest of Cuba was seen as
a necessary step for the expansion of slavery.
Seeking to defuse the crisis, Henry Clay constructed a congressional
compromise over the disposition of the new western territories,
similar to the Missouri Compromise he had arranged in 1820.
President Taylor took a different, complementary approach to
the problem. He sent his own agents into California and New
Mexico and arranged for those territories to request that Congress
admit them to the Union as free states. While Texas leaders
were claiming part of New Mexico, and there were threats of
invasion across the desert from Texas into New Mexico, Taylor
pledged that he would uphold the law and the Constitution at
all costs.
On July 3, John Quitman sent a telegram to Taylor saying that
he would personally be leading an anti-federal army of several
thousand troops from Texas into New Mexico.
As Anton Chaitkin recounts in his book {Treason in America,}
President Taylor that same day announced: ``I told them ...
that if it becomes necessary I will take command of the army
myself to enforce the laws. And I said that if you men are
taken in rebellion against the Union, I will hang you with less
reluctance than I hanged the spies and deserters in Mexico.''
The next day, July 4, 1850, Taylor had on his desk a half-finished
message declaring that he would never permit Texas to seize
any part of New Mexico's territory. The President appeared that
afternoon at an Independence Day rally, at which the audience
was exhorted to rally to the Union.
That evening the President ``fell ill,'' vomiting up a mass
of blackish material. He died July 9. Death was officially attributed
to his having consumed too-cold milk and too many cherries.
With the second death of a Whig President due to ``stomach distress''
and with a weak Vice President, Millard Fillmore, occupying
the White House, the Freemasonic secessionists moved openly
to seize power in the United States.
Whig Collapse
Following Taylor's death, Abraham Lincoln left politics and
spent six years (1849-54) mastering American System economics,
especially studying the works of Henry C. Carey.
In 1852, Henry Clay died, and for all practical purposes the
Whig Party died with him. The Whigs nominated Winfield Scott
for President, but it was a rearguard action. As an elector,
Lincoln did make speeches on behalf of Scott on the tariff and
internal improvements, but he knew that neither victory at the
polls, nor the triumph of Whig economics were possible. Scott
was defeated by a treasonous combination of southern planters
and Cotton Whigs (northern textile manufacturers allied with
them). With the election of Franklin Pierce, followed by James
Buchanan, the counterrevolution against the American System
began in earnest. Pierce's cabinet included Secretary of War
Jefferson Davis, soon to become President of the Confederacy,
and Rothschild agent and head of the Democratic Party August
Belmont.
The Scottish Rite Freemasons set
up headquarters throughout the North. They were joined by another
Freemasonic secret organization established in 1854 in Cincinnati--the
Knights of the Golden Circle. Between 1855 and 1860, the Knights
trained and armed 100,000 men in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi,
Alabama, Virginia, and Maryland, for insurrection against the
government. The Knights of the Golden Circle was the military
organization of what was to become the Confederate States of
America.
The first order of business of the treasonous Pierce administration
was the introduction by Sen. Stephen Douglas in January 1854
of a bill to organize the territories of Kansas and Nebraska.
To get southern support for the bill, Douglas had written a
provision to allow the settlers to decide for themselves whether
to seek admission to the Union as slave states or free.
This provision struck down the Missouri Compromise of 1820.
(The Missouri Compromise had allowed Missouri to enter as a
slave state, thus appeasing the slave powers, while stipulating
that slavery would never be permitted north of 36 degrees 30
minutes North latitude. The Clay Missouri Compromise thereby
preserved the clear intention of the Founding Fathers, as Lincoln
said, ``to set slavery in the course of ultimate extinction.'')
With Douglas's new provision on Kansas and Nebraska, the nation
was plunged into controversy. Slaveholders were determined that
Kansas should enter slave; the majority of the North, free.
``Emigrant Associations'' were organized by both sides to flood
Kansas with settlers in an effort to determine the outcome of
any election. When it became apparent that anti-slavery forces
would win by this means, slave owners organized armed bands
in Missouri, known as Border Ruffians, to sweep into Kansas,
murdering and terrorizing anti-slavery leaders, preventing people
from voting unless they professed support for slavery. A pro-slavery
legislature was elected in the middle of this terror, which
made it a crime, punishable by death, to inform blacks of their
rights.
Pro- and anti-slave agitators poured into what became known
as ``Bloody Kansas.'' One year after the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska
Act, the territory had two legislatures and two governors; one
pro-slavery and one against.
Lincoln Returns
It was the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act that brought Lincoln
back into political action--as it did a whole group committed
to the American System. Lincoln was outraged by Douglas's unleashing
of this evil. He returned from his six-year political retirement
to do battle with Douglas at the Illinois State Fair in October
of 1854. Lincoln thundered that the Kansas-Nebraska bill was
``wrong in its direct effect, letting slavery into Kansas and
Nebraska, and wrong in its prospective principle, allowing it
to spread to every other part of the wide world where men can
be found inclined to take it. This declared indifference, but
as I must think, covert real zeal for the spread of slavery,
I cannot but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice
of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican
example of its just influence in the world; enables the enemies
of free institutions with plausibility to taunt us as hypocrites;
causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity; and
especially because it forces so many men among ourselves into
an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty,
criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that
there is no right principle of action but self-interest.'' [Lincoln,
{Collected Works.}]
That same year, Lincoln decided to seek election to the U.S.
Senate (at that time in Illinois, U.S. Senators were selected
by the state Senate). When it became clear that he would not
win, on the tenth ballot he called on his supporters to support
Lyman Trumbull, a Democrat who opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act,
to prevent pro-slavery Illinois Governor Joel Matteson from
being elected.
As much as he wished to be elected, Lincoln considered it more
important that the cause prevail, so he sacrificed his own ambition
to give the North a Free-Soil, anti-Nebraska Act voice in the
U.S. Senate, where it was most needed.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act, by guaranteeing a massive expansion
of slavery, sparked what can only be described as a mass strike
movement which gave birth to the Republican Party.
The conflict continued to rise. In a letter to Joshua F. Speed
dated August 24, 1855, Lincoln wrote: ``[A]bout the Nebraska
law. I look upon that enactment not as a {law,} but as {violence}
from the beginning. It was conceived in violence, passed in
violence, is maintained in violence, and is being executed in
violence. I say it was {conceived} in violence, because the
destruction of the Missouri Compromise, under the circumstances,
was nothing less than violence. It was {passed} in violence,
because it could not have passed at all but for the votes of
many members, in violent disregard of the known will of their
constituents. It is {maintained} in violence because the elections
since, clearly demand its repeal, and this demand is openly
disregarded. {You} say men ought to be hung for the way they
are executing that law; and {I} say the way it is being executed
is quite as good as any of its antecedents. It is being executed
in the precise way in which it was intended from the first;
else why does no Nebraska man express astonishment or condemnation?
..'' [Lincoln, {Collected Works.}]
By early 1856, Lincoln was ready to break with the Whigs and
join the new party, actually writing most of the first Illinois
Republican platform. The difficult task was to unify the new
party, since while all agreed on stopping the spread of slavery,
many ``Republicans'' had been previously bitter political rivals.
At the first statewide Republican convention in Bloomington
in May of 1856, Lincoln gave a speech which brought the crowd
to their feet. He thundered as he hurled denunciations upon
the slave power. ``Kansas shall be free,'' cried Lincoln, and
the crowd, many already standing on their chairs, began cheering,
stamping, and weeping. Reporters assigned to cover the speech
were swept away by the wave of emotion, and dropped their pencils
as they joined with the audience in wild applause.
Though no newspaper accounts of Lincoln's speech at the Bloomington
convention appeared--it came to be called Lincoln's ``Lost Speech''--word
of the effect it had in uniting the audience in purpose and
resolve, spread rapidly throughout the national organization
of the Republican Party. At the national convention in Philadelphia
three weeks later, Lincoln's name was the second proposed for
vice president, and he received 110 votes on the first ballot.
In 1856, the Republican Party swept the congressional elections--amazingly,
given how recently it had been formed. The Republican presidential
candidate, John C. Fremont, narrowly lost to the Democrat and
Freemasonic British agent James Buchanan.
The new Republican Party, while anti-slavery, was split in two.
One group was anti-slavery, but still rabidly supported British
free trade; this included William Seward and William Cullen
Bryant. The other faction, headed by Lincoln and Henry Carey,
was also anti-slavery--but understood that slavery and free
trade belonged to a single evil system which had to be defeated.
Lincoln and Carey's task was to establish the hegemony of the
American System Whig policy in the new party.
Britain's Southern Strategy
As emphasized at the outset, the state of the nation at the
time made Whig control of the Republican Party a matter of urgency.
The Democratic Party was run by Rothschild agent August Belmont,
and the South, beginning with the administration of President
James Buchanan, was preparing a war of secession through appropriation
of the nation's military arsenals.
Southern policy was the very antithesis of the American System.
As both Lincoln and Carey insisted, slavery not only degraded
the slave, but degraded the productive and mental power of all
American labor.
It was precisely on this point that Lincoln distinguished himself
as a future presidential candidate in his 1858 senatorial contest
with Stephen Douglas, the intellectual author of the Kansas-Nebraska
Act (1854) and the Dred Scott Decision. (The latter, issued
by the Supreme Court in 1857, allowed the southern slaveowner
to cross state lines to reclaim his ``property''--the slave.)
Lincoln's unanimous nomination by the Illinois Republicans was
the first nomination ever made by a {political party} for a
U.S. Senate seat.
Lincoln lost the Senate seat, but his debates with Stephen Douglas
were in large part responsible for his winning the Republican
nomination for President in 1860. To understand the quality
of leadership represented by Abraham Lincoln, I quote from two
of his most powerful speeches:
``These by their representatives in old Independence Hall said
to the whole race of men: `We hold these truths to be self-evident:
that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among them are
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' This was their
majestic interpretation of the economy of the universe. This
was their lofty, and wise, and noble, understanding of the justice
of the Creator to his creatures. Yes, gentleman, to all his
creatures; to the whole great family of men. In their enlightened
belief, nothing stamped with the divine image and likeness was
sent into the world to be trodden on and degraded and imbruted
by its fellows. They grasped not only the whole race of men,
then living, but they reached forward and seized upon the farthest
posterity. They erected a beacon to guide their children, and
their children's children, and the countless myriads who should
inhabit the earth in other ages. Wise statesmen as they were,
they knew the tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants, and so
they established these great self-evident truths, that when,
in the distant future, some man, some faction, some interest,
should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, none but
white men, or none but Anglo-Saxon white men were entitled to
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity
might look up again to the Declaration of Independence and take
courage to renew the battle which their fathers began, so that
truth and justice and mercy and all the humane and Christian
virtues might not be extinguished from the land; so that no
man hereafter would dare to limit and circumscribe the great
principles on which the temple of Liberty was being built.''
And he continues with this: ``Now, my countrymen, if you have
been taught doctrines conflicting with the great landmarks of
the Declaration of Independence; if you have listened to suggestions
which would take away from its grandeur and mutilate the fair
symmetry of its proportions; if you are inclined to believe
that all men are not created equal in those inalienable rights
enumerated by our chartered liberty: let me entreat you to come
back. Return to the fountain whose waters spring close by the
blood of the Revolution.''
And then he ends: ``Think nothing of me; take no
thought of the political fate of any man whomsoever, but come
back to the truths that are in the Declaration of Independence.
You may do anything with me you choose, if you will but heed
these sacred principles. You may not only defeat me for the
Senate, but you may take me and put me to death.... But do not
destroy that immortal emblem of humanity--the Declaration of
American Independence.'' [Lincoln, {Collected Works.}]
A second speech during the 1858 campaign makes clear the universal
republican principle involved in Lincoln's opposition to slavery:
``That is the issue that will continue in this country when
these 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 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 principle
in whatever shape it develops itself. 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, whether from the mouth of
a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation, and
live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as
an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical
principle.'' [Lincoln, {Collected Works.}]
Carey vs. Bryant
Henry Carey perceived that unless the new Republican Party not
only opposed slavery, but adopted the American System, the nation
would be divided into competing sections, all ruled by the British
ideology of free trade. From 1856 until the presidential contest
of 1860, Carey's ``Vespers Circle'' organized industrial associations
in the Midwest, West, and especially the border states, to agitate
for the American System. Much of this agitation was initiated
by the Home Protective Union of Pennsylvania, of which Carey
was president. The Carey circle was determined that William
Seward, a free trader, would not get the Republican presidential
nomination at the 1860 convention. Of primary importance in
the fight which preceded the adoption of a national development
platform at the convention were the open letters from Carey
to the free trade wing of the party and its leader William Cullen
Bryant, entitled {Financial Crises, Their Causes and Effects}.
The policy discussions generated around these open letters,
which were printed in all the protectionist press, shaped the
outcome of the campaign. Newspapers printed the letters to Bryant,
newspapers which reached a million and a half ``protectionist
readers.''
Carey's four years of organizing paid off. Consideration of
the party platform began on the second day of the Republican
convention. Of the 17 planks adopted, eight dealt with the various
facets of the slavery issue. Plank number 8 stated that ``the
normal condition of all the territory of the United States is
that of freedom.'' The remaining planks dealt with political
economy, reflecting the Hamiltonian orientation of the new party.
The 12th plank called for a {protective tariff} ``to encourage
the development of the industrial interests of the whole country.''
The 15th plank called for ``appropriations by Congress for River
and Harbor improvements of a National Character,'' while the
16th demanded that the federal government ``render immediate
and efficient aid to the construction of a railroad to the Pacific
Ocean.''
Lincoln's backers brought 25,000 people to the Chicago convention.
After an incredible fight, and several ballots, Lincoln got
the Republican nomination. After the convention, Carey wrote:
``Happily the Republican, or antislavery party has recently
adopted protection as one of the essential parts of its platform
and has nominated as its candidate for the presidency a man
who has been all his life a protectionist. {He will be elected,
and we shall then have a total change in the policy of the country.
As you shall see}.'' (Emphasis added.)
How Lincoln Financed the War
When Lincoln entered office in March of 1861, civil war was
only weeks away. Five southern states had seceded after the
announcement of his victory; the rest followed in rapid succession.
Seven states had announced the formation of the ``United States
of the Confederacy'' on February 1, 1861. Confederate Vice
President Alexander Stephens stated: ``Our confederacy is founded
upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white
man, that slavery is his natural and normal condition. This,
our new government is the first in the history of the world
based on this great physical and moral truth.''
The United States was bankrupt.
Jackson's dismantling of the National Bank, followed by Polk's
Independent Treasury Act of 1846, and the free trade treason
of Pierce and Buchanan, had destroyed the U.S. economy. Lincoln
had to wage war on two fronts--one against the free traders
of New York and New England, and the other against their surrogates:
the Confederate Army. Both were run out of London.
The fundamental turning point in U.S. history concerning restoration
of the American System and defeating the British plan to balkanize
and forever destroy the United States through its support of
the Confederacy, centered on the issues of how to finance the
government, and the civil war that was facing Lincoln in December
1861. Lincoln's policy was outlined in his December 3 ``Annual
Address to Congress.''
The significance of Lincoln's December 3, 1861 speech to Congress
cannot be overestimated--as the British were well aware. Lincoln
had the opportunity as President to sign into law the economic
policy he had worked for through the better part of his political
life.
Lincoln's plan was presented by Secretary of the Treasury Salmon
Chase and by Lincoln himself. The measures included:
@sb^a nationally regulated private banking system, which would
issue cheap credit to build industry;
@sb^the issuance of government legal tender paper currency (the
greenbacks);
@sb^the sale of long-term, low-interest bonds (``5:20s'') to
the general public and to the nationally chartered banks;
@sb^the increase of tariffs until industry was running at full
tilt (the Morrill Tariff);
@sb^government construction of railroads into the middle South,
promoting industrialism over the southern plantation system--what
Carey called a ``peace-winning program'' to industrialize the
South.
The national banks were intended to serve as both investors
in the future wealth of the U.S.A. through the purchase of the
5:20 bonds (5 percent interest, 20 years); through the issuance
of long-term, low-interest loans to manufacturers, and by acting
as a medium for the circulation of currency.
Henry Carey had proposed such a banking system to Henry Clay
years earlier (this would have been under the jurisdiction of
the Bank of the United States).
Carey also sent letters to Lincoln in the fall of 1861 preceding
his historic December message to Congress with a copy of his
pamphlet urging the construction of a North-South railroad to
facilitate future attempts to industrialize the South. Carey
wrote to Lincoln: ``If Henry Clay's tariff views would have
been carried out sooner there would have been no secession because
the southern mineral region would long since have obtained control
of the planting area. Some means must be found to enable these
people of the hill country to profit of our present tariff....''
And later: ``How much more firm and stable might the union have
been, had there developed then a policy which would have filled
the hill country of the South with free white men engaged in
mining coal and ore, making iron and cloth, and building school
houses and churches....'' [W. Allen Salisbury, {The Civil War
and the American System,} New York: University Editions, 1978.]
The December 3 speech by Lincoln was the emphatic declaration
that the American System would be the guiding principle of his
administration. He urged Congress to consider the proposal by
Carey to begin construction of a railroad system into North
Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee, to enable development of
mining and other industrial interests in these southern states.
Regarding financial policy Lincoln stated: ``The operations
of the Treasury during the period which has elapsed since your
adjournment have been conducted with signal success. The patriotism
of the people has placed at the disposal of the government the
large means demanded by the public exigencies. Much of the national
loan has been taken by citizens of the industrial classes, whose
confidence in their country's faith, and zeal for their country's
deliverance from present peril have induced them to contribute
to the support of the government the whole of their limited
acquisitions. This fact imposes peculiar obligations to economy
in disbursement and energy in action.'' [Lincoln, {Collected
Works.}]
In the most famous section of his December 3, 1861 address to
Congress, Lincoln spelled out his underlying republican philosophy
and attacked the aristocratic British-allied bankers: ``Labor
is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the
fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not
first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves
much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which
are as worthy of protection as any other rights. Nor is it denied
that there is, and probably always will be, a relationship between
capital and labor, producing mutual benefits. The error is in
assuming that the whole labor of community exists within that
relation.... In most of the southern States, a majority of the
whole people of all colors are neither slaves nor masters; while
in the northern a large majority are neither hirers nor hired....
``Many independent men everywhere in these States, a few years
back in their lives, were hired laborers. The prudent, penniless
beginner in the world, labors for wages awhile, saves a surplus
in which to buy tools or land for himself; then labors on his
own account another while, and at length hires another new beginner
to help him. This is the just, and generous, and prosperous
system, which opens the way to all--gives hope to all and consequent
energy, and progress, and improvement of condition to all. No
men living are more worthy to be trusted than those who toil
up from poverty--none less inclined to take, or touch, aught
that they have not honestly earned. Let them beware of surrendering
a political power which they already possess, and which, if
surrendered, will surely be used to close the door of advancement
against such as they, and to fix new disabilities and burdens
upon them till all of liberty shall be lost.
``From the first taking of our national census to the last are
seventy years; and we find our population at the end of the
period eight times as great as it was at the beginning. The
increase of those other things which men deem desirable has
been even greater. We thus have at one view, what the popular
principle applied to government, through the machinery of the
states and the Union, has produced in a given time; and also
what, if firmly maintained, it promises for the future. There
are already among us those, who, if the Union is to be preserved,
will live to see it contain two hundred and fifty millions.
The struggle of today, is not altogether for today--it is for
a vast future also....'' [Lincoln, {Collected Works,}]
The Bankers Revolt
When James Gallatin and the Associated Banks got wind of the
new policy (even before Lincoln and Chase addressed Congress)
they went berserk. They wrote Chase demanding the adoption
of a stringent taxation policy.
On December 28, 1861, the New York Associated Banks suspended
specie payments to the government. They suspended payment of
gold owed to their depositors, and stopped transferring to the
government the gold which they had pledged for the purchase
of government bonds. The banks of other cities immediately followed
suit.
On January 9, 1862, Gallatin headed a delegation of bankers
which came to Washington to meet with Chase and those congressmen
responsible for steering the Hamiltonian legislation through
Congress. Gallatin presented the bankers' ``alternative'':
@sb^the Treasury must deposit its gold in private banks, and
let those banks pay the government's suppliers with checks,
keeping the gold on deposit for the investment use of the bankers;
@sb^the government should sell high-interest bonds to these
same banks, for them to resell to the European banking syndicate--that
is, allowing them to sell an unlimited number of 7:30 bonds
below par on the London market;
@sb^the government should suspend the ``Sub-Treasury'' law by
which the government gained control over the banks;
@sb^the government should immediately cease the issuance of
government legal tender; and of course,
@sb^a great deal of the war should be financed by a tax on basic
industry.
Gallatin was shown the door. One congressman, Samuel Hooper
(R-Mass.), commented that he would adopt no plan which called
for ``government shinning before Wall Street.''
The British, when informed that Congress had dismissed the Gallatin
plan, were furious. William Cullen Bryant, editor of the {New
York Post} and head of the free-trade wing of the Republican
Party, began a series of editorials attacking Lincoln's financial
policy, and {calling for direct taxation of industry to pay
off the war debts.} After Congress passed the legislation, Bryant
met with Lincoln, imploring him to veto the measure. Lincoln
refused. From Britain, August Belmont, then meeting with the
Rothschilds and Thurlow Weed, dispatched protesting messages
to Lincoln.
At a meeting arranged by the Rothschilds with British Prime
Minister Henry Palmerston and Chancellor of the Exchequer William
Gladstone, Belmont was questioned as to the state of the American
nation's defenses and the popular attitude toward Great Britain.
Palmerston had the gall to say, ``We do not like slavery, but
we want cotton and we dislike your Morrill Tariff.''
Belmont wrote to Seward: ``... The English government and people
could not accept the North's justification for fighting the
Confederacy as long as this war is not carried on for the abolition
of slavery in the southern states. Perhaps English sentiment
could use the tonic of a reduction in the objectionable Morrill
tariff? Nothing else could contribute so effectively toward
disproving widespread Southern assertions that the war was merely
a contest between free trade and protection.'' [Salisbury, {The
Civil War and the American System.}]
While Lincoln fought the Eastern bankers over the national banking
system, the Treasury issued several hundreds of millions of
new greenbacks. Philadelphia banker Jay Cooke was employed
by Treasury Secretary Chase to become the sole agent for the
5:20 bonds. Several of Carey's associates, including Stephen
Colwell, William Elder, and Samuel Wilkerson, prepared the prospectus
Cooke utilized to sell the bonds. (Elder and Colwell were later
appointed by Lincoln to posts in the Treasury Department; Elder
as the official Treasury statistician and Colwell as an economist.)
Banker Cooke sold small government bonds to the average citizen:
with 2,500 subagents, Cooke sold over {$1.3 billion worth of
bonds to citizens between 1862 and 1865}. As Lincoln had argued
in his Annual Address of 1861, the U.S. citizenry would finance
the war.
The original bill authorizing the sale of the 5:20 bonds contained
no provision for paying the interest on the bonds in gold. Thus,
if the bill as it was prepared by Thaddeus Stevens's House Ways
and Means Committee had passed the House, it {would have had
the effect of severing the domestic economy of the U.S.A. from
the British early in Lincoln's administration}. The British
pound sterling at the time was the gold-backed world reserve
currency. By controlling the world's gold supply, the British
ruled the world. But before the bill was passed, August Belmont
and James Gallatin worked out a compromise which {allowed the
bonds to be purchased with greenbacks, but their interest was
to be paid in specie}.
This compromise was the first step in pegging the value of the
U.S. greenback to gold, and allowed Belmont and other New York
merchants engaged in the export-import trade to speculate in
gold through the Associated Banks and thus create fluctuations
in the value of greenbacks as measured by the British gold standard.
President Lincoln pushed for his measures of control over the
banking system, using more of his influence over Congress than
on any other issue. The New England and New York bankers instructed
their congressmen to defeat the bill. But Lincoln's prestige
and authority won out--and he signed the National Currency Act
on February 25, 1863 and the National Banking Act on June 3,
1864.
To understand the significance of what Lincoln did, we first
have to look at the state of banking in the U.S. on the eve
of the Civil War.
The national banking system was in a state of anarchy. {There
was no national currency.} Each bank issued its own notes. On
January 1, 1862, there were 1,496 banks in the United Sates,
some 7,000 legitimate notes, and some 5,500 counterfeit notes.
Only 253 banks had notes that had escaped alteration or limitation.
There was specie payment, i.e., payment of gold coin by a bank
in exchange for a bank note, but this was suspended by the Associated
Banks at the outbreak of the war.
Banks had no one in the national government to answer to, only
state banking inspectors, who were frequently bribed. Banks
often had little capitalization or reserves, operating often
solely on the ``connections'' of the bank's chairman. Banks
promoting the most outrageous schemes and responsible to no
one were the order of the day. The large private banking houses,
like the House of Morgan, used large credit lines from Europe
to add to the chaos.
{To be continued.}
--
John Covici
covici@ccs.covici.com
Abraham Lincoln
From http://web.archive.org/web/20060927143237/http://www.etext.org/Politics/LaRouche/lincoln.1
WHY THE BRITISH HAD TO KILL ABRAHAM LINCOLN Part I
by Rochelle Ascher
The year was 1860. Abraham Lincoln had just been elected President
of the United States. Of 303 possible electoral votes, Lincoln
had received only 180; of the popular vote, he received 1.8
million votes, while his three opponents together received 2.8
million votes. In 15 states, Lincoln received no electoral votes.
In ten states, he received not a single popular vote, largely
because the southern states refused to put him on the ballot.
In the four months before his inauguration, South Carolina,
Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Louisiana had seceded from the
Union. Other southern states were to secede in rapid order.
By the time Lincoln entered office in March of 1861, the Civil
War was only weeks away.
The Buchanan administration which Lincoln succeeded was entirely
treasonous--in fact indistinguishable from the Supreme Council
of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (which became synonymous
with the Confederacy). By 1860, these anti-Union radicals operated
directly from the White House, led by former Attorney General
Caleb Cushing, a lawyer for the Boston opium cartel. Both Howell
Cobb, secretary of the treasury--and the most powerful member
of the cabinet--and Vice President John C. Breckinridge, were
Sovereign Grand Inspector Generals and active members of the
Scottish Rite.
These Freemasonic traitors had been working actively for months
to disarm the northern federal arsenals and equip the southern
rebel states. Citizens demonstrated throughout northern cities,
as tons of military hardware were stolen and shipped south for
an attack against the United States.
The situation facing Lincoln upon inauguration was the worst
the United States had ever faced. The British had installed
a series of traitorous Presidents who had all but dismantled
the U.S. economy. Jackson, Tyler, Polk, Pierce, and Buchanan
had destroyed the basic institutions of the U.S. economy, moving
control out of the hands of the Whig industrialists and bankers,
and into the hands of British financiers working through the
banking houses of Boston and New York.
This led to a series of bank failures and depressions. In 1857,
the U.S. economy went bust. Business came to a standstill. Hunger
was widespread. The Treasury was bankrupt: Congress had not
been paid. In his {Shall We Have Peace?}, Henry C. Carey, one
of Lincoln's closest collaborators and economic advisers, described
the situation in this way:
``Had it been possible on the 4th of March, 1861, to take a
bird's-eye view of the whole Union, the phenomena presenting
themselves for examination would have been as follows:
``@sb^Millions of men and women would have been seen who were
wholly or partially unemployed, because of the inability to
find persons able and willing to pay for service.
``@sb^Hundreds of thousands of workmen, farmers and shopkeepers
would have been seen holding articles of various kinds for which
no purchasers could be found.
``@sb^Tens of thousands of country traders would have been seen
poring over their books seeking, but vainly seeking, to discover
in what direction they might look for obtaining the means with
which to discharge their city debts.
``@sb^Thousands of city traders would have been seen endeavoring
to discover how they might obtain the means with which to pay
their notes.
``@sb^Thousands of mills, factories, furnaces, and workshops
large and small, would have been seen standing idle while surrounded
by persons who desired to be employed; and
``@sb^Tens of thousands of bank, factory and railroad proprietors
would have been seen despairing of obtaining dividends by means
of which they might be enabled to go to market.
``High above all these would have been seen a National Treasury
wholly empty, and to all appearance little likely ever again
to be filled.''
Thaddeus Stevens, who became one of the strongest proponents
of Reconstruction following the Civil War, also described the
state of the economy in the period right before the war began,
in a speech March 18, 1858 in the U.S. House of Representatives
entitled ``State Governments Republican in Form'':
``It became evident that Mr. Buchanan was to be the last of
Southern Presidents, and his Cabinet being almost wholly devoted
to the interests of slavery, set themselves boldly at work to
weaken the North and strengthen the South. They transferred
most of the best weapons of war from the North, where they were
manufactured, to the South, where they could readily be seized.
They plunged the nation into a heavy debt in time of peace.
When the Treasury was bare of cash they robbed it of millions
of bonds, and whatever else they could lay hands on. They fastened
upon us an incipient free-trade system, which impaired our revenues,
paralyzed our national industry, and compelled the exportation
of our immense production of gold. They have reduce our Navy
to an unserviceable condition, or dispersed it to the farthest
oceans. Our little Army was on the Pacific coast, sequestered
in Utah, or defending the Southern States from their own Indians.''
A major threat of assassination loomed even before Lincoln was
inaugurated. First, an assassination plot in Baltimore was uncovered,
requiring the President to be hidden on a train which secretly
brought him to Washington. Upon his arrival, as he was preparing
to assume office, the armed Knights of the Golden Circle were
preparing to kill the new President and seize the capital. General
Winfield Scott, commander of the U.S. military, had moved the
headquarters of the U.S. Army out of Washington, D.C. when
the traitorous Franklin Pierce had been elected in 1852. Scott
deployed thousands of troops, bomb experts, and special police
to every conceivable vantage point for a likely assassin. Earlier,
Scott had prevented secessionists from disrupting the counting
of the electoral ballots in Washington.
The Republic Threatened
The most telling description of the situation the country faced
following Lincoln's election, is clear from an interchange between
Lincoln himself, and one of his closest friends, Judge Gillespie,
in the days before the inauguration. As late nineteenth-century
muckracker and historian Ida Tarbell reports it, ``He sat with
his head lying upon his arms, which were folded over the back
of his chair, as I have often seen him sit on our travels after
an exciting day in court. Suddenly he roused himself. `Gillespie,'
said he, `I would willingly take out of my life a period in
years equal to the two months which intervene between now and
my inauguration to take the oath of office now.' `Why?' I asked.
`Because every hour adds to the difficulties I am called upon
to meet, and the present administration does nothing to check
the tendency toward dissolution. I, who have been called to
meet this awful responsibility, am compelled to remain here,
doing nothing to avert it or lessen its force when it comes
to me.'
``I said that the condition of which he spoke was such as had
never risen before, and that it might lead to the amendment
of such an obvious defect in the federal Constitution. `It is
not of myself I complain,' he said, with more bitterness than
I ever heard him speak, before, or after. `But every day adds
to the difficulty of the situation, and makes the outlook more
gloomy. Secession is being fostered rather than repressed, and
if the doctrine meets with a general acceptance in the border
States, it will be a great blow to the government.'
``Our talk then turned upon the possibility of avoiding a war.
`It is only possible,' said Mr. Lincoln, `upon the consent of
this government to the erection of a foreign slave government
out of the present slave States. I see the duty devolving upon
me. {I have read, upon my knees, the story of Gethsemane, where
the Son of God prayed in vain that the cup of bitterness might
pass from him. I am in the Garden of Gethsemane now, and my
cup of bitterness is full and overflowing....'}
``I then told him that as Christ's prayer was not answered and
his crucifixion had redeemed the great part of the world from
paganism to Christianity, so the sacrifice demanded of him might
be a great beneficence. Little did I then think how prophetic
were my words to be, or what a great sacrifice he was called
to make.'' [emphasis added]
This was far more than a fight between North and South--between
slave states and free states. As Henry Carey details in his
{The Slave Trade: Foreign and Domestic,} slavery never existed
without free trade, nor free trade without slave labor. What
was literally at stake was the continued existence of the only
nation in the world that had successfully defeated (even if
only partially) the British system of free trade and established
a republic based on natural law and American System economics.
For this, the British crown had never forgiven the Americans,
and became increasingly embittered toward the young republic
from the time of Cornwallis's surrender at Yorktown.
In his book {Treason in America,} Anton Chaitkin details the
30-year plot by the British-backed and inspired Freemasons to
dismantle the American System and replace it with the British
system of slavery and free trade. Suffice it here to say the
conflict represented the crucial turning point in world history
to determine the future possibility of any successful opposition
to the British system anywhere in the world. So when Lincoln
referred to the Garden of Gethsemane, he was most accurate.
Pressure to Compromise
Massive pressure was mounted on Lincoln to compromise with the
secessionists. Not only was the new President faced with bankruptcy,
secession, and British-backed intrigue, upon inauguration he
met unabashed treason from within his own Cabinet. In fact,
Lincoln's orders to respond to the firing upon Fort Sumter were
countermanded by his own secretary of state, William Seward.
Seward's original advice to Lincoln was that he must not reinforce
Sumter, but let the extremist southerners secede--they would
surely come back to the Union in a few years! When Lincoln decided
to send reinforcements to Sumter, Seward began a series of meetings
with agents of the South Carolina secessionists whom he assured,
directly contrary to Lincoln's policy, that their steady preparations
for aggression would not be resisted! When Lincoln arranged
for a squadron of gunships and troop ships to be sent to reinforce
Sumter, Seward secretly arranged for the gunships to be diverted
to Florida. When Lincoln found out, he ordered Seward to reverse
his interference. Seward stalled long enough so that the gunships
were already streaming southward, and the commander, mistakenly
believing that he was going to Florida on Lincoln's orders,
refused to turn back on Seward's mid-course directive.
President Lincoln had been prevented from crushing the insurrection
while secession was still confined to the deep South. Still
advised to compromise by the majority of his cabinet, criticized
for taking the view that the rebellion was the work of a small
minority of conspirators rather than the broad expression of
sectional sentiment, Lincoln acted as he was never expected
to act. He immediately called for 75,000 volunteers to put down
the attempted coup d'etat. For the next four years, Lincoln
invoked the full powers of the presidency. The Civil War created
the emergency conditions for President Lincoln and his Whig
advisers to carry out the most sweeping reorganization of the
economy on the basis of American System principles since the
founding of the country.
The fact is that Lincoln faced treason, insurrection, and bankrputcy
within the first days of taking office, and yet within four
years not only smashed the British-run insurrection, but created
the greatest industrial giant the world had ever seen, is the
clearest testimony to the success of the American System of
Political-Economy. While fighting a war in which he led an army
that had over the course of the war, 3 million men at arms (out
of a total Northern population of 22 million), and in which
more than half a million men died, Lincoln:
@sb^organized a militia on a uniform basis;
@sb^built and equipped the largest army in the world;
@sb^reorganized the judicial system;
@sb^launched the steel industry; @sb^created a continental railroad
system; @sb^institutionalized scientific
agriculture, by methods including the Homestead Act, which provided
free western lands for farmers, the establishment of the Department
of Agriculture, and government promotion of a new era of farm
machinery and cheap tools;
@sb^established a system of free higher education throughout
the U.S.--the Land Grant College System;
@sb^pursued a policy of massive immigration to increase the
population as quickly as possible;
@sb^provided major government
support to all branches of science, through the U.S. Coast Survey
and the National Academy of Sciences;
@sb^organized the Bureau of Mines; @sb^organized governments
in the
Western territories; @sb^and, of course, abolished
slavery, freeing {4 million slaves.} This was accomplished by
the
reinstitution of the American System. The breathtaking economic
development program which Lincoln designed not only saved the
nation and won the war, but remained in effect long enough after
his assassination for the United States to become the world's
greatest industrial power, and remain so for more than a century
to come.
The American System
Lincoln's American System economic program:
@sb^created a national banking system;
@sb^reestablished national control
over banking, with cheap credit directed for productive purposes;
@sb^created a national currency for the first time in nearly
25 years (the greenback--$450 million worth);
@sb^increased government spending by 600 percent (to $300 million
per year);
@sb^implemented the highest protective tariff in U.S. history
(the Morrill Tariff);
@sb^promoted standardized and mass production nationwide; and
@sb^increased labor productivity by 50-70 percent.
In March of 1860, on the eve of the Republican convention which
nominated Lincoln to the presidency, Henry Carey, in his pamphlet
{Financial Crises, their Causes and Effects} (1859), spelled
out clearly the differences between the British and American
systems of economics, and Great Britain's plan to recolonize
the United States:
``The men who made the Revolution did so, because they were
tired of a system the essence of which was found in Lord Chatham's
declaration, that the colonists should not be permitted to make
for themselves `even as much as a single hobnail.' They were
sensible of the exhaustive character of a policy that compelled
them to make all their exchanges in a single market, thereby
enriching their foreign masters while ruining themselves. Against
this system they needed protection, and therefore did they make
the Revolution--seeking political independence as a means of
obtaining industrial and commercial independence. To render
that protection really effective, they formed a more perfect
union, whose first Congress gave us, as its first law, an act
for the protection of manufactures. Washington and his secretaries,
Hamilton and Jefferson, approved this course of action, and
in doing so were followed by all of Washington's successors,
down to General Jackson. For half a century, from 1783 to 1833,
such was the general tendency of our commercial policy, and
therefore was it that, notwithstanding the plunder of our merchants
under British Orders in Council and French Decrees, and notwithstanding
interferences with commerce by embargo and non-intercourse laws,
there occurred in that long period, in time of peace, no single
financial revulsion, involving suspension by our banks, or stoppage
of payment by the government. In all that period, there was,
consequently, a general tendency towards harmony between the
North and the South, in reference to the vexed question of slavery--both
Virginia and Maryland having, in 1832, showed themselves almost
prepared for abolition. Had the existing commercial policy been
maintained, the years that since have passed would have been
marked by daily growth of harmony, and of confidence in the
utility and permanence of our Union.
``Such, unhappily, was not to be the case. Even at that moment
South Carolina was preparing to assume that entire control of
our commercial policy which, with the exception of a single
presidential term [John Quincy Adams], she has since maintained--{thereby
forcing the Union back to that colonial system, emancipation
from which had been the primary object of the men who made the
Revolution....}
``Forgetting all the lessons they [the Founding Fathers] had
taught, we have now so long been following in the direction
indicated by our British free trade `friends' ... that already
are they congratulating themselves upon the approaching dissolution
of the Union--and the entire reestablishment of British influence
over this northern portion of the continent....''
Abraham Lincoln defeated the British and restored the American
System--``the primary object of the men who made the Revolution.''
It was because of this that the British assassinated Abraham
Lincoln.
Lincoln's Early Years
Contrary to most historical accounts, the American System policy
as adopted by Abraham Lincoln did not come out of the blue.
>From 1830, when, at the age of 21, Lincoln made his first election
day speech on ``internal improvements,'' until his assassination
April 14, 1865, Lincoln's entire life was dedicated to the American
System of the Founding Fathers. And contrary to the view of
most historians, he was not an enigma, a loner, someone who
emerged with these ideas out of nowhere; he was a {product of
and a critical part of a faction of American System Whigs totally
committed to reestablishing the American System and destroying
the British System of slavery and free trade.}
A brief look at Lincoln's early years makes this factional fight
quite clear. In 1830, Lincoln made his first election day speech.
While not a candidate himself, he announced his policy to be
that of the American System and his mentor Henry Clay: ``My
politics are short and sweet, like the old woman's dance. I
am in favor of a national bank. I am in favor of the internal
improvements system and a high protective tariff.'' [Lincoln,
{Collected Works.}]
The battle between British free trade and the American System
reached a {punctum saliens} in the 1832 presidential contest
between Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay. This was also the year
that Lincoln made his first bid for public office--to the State
Legislature of Illinois.
In 1832, not only was there the infamous ``Nullification Crisis,''
but in that same year, Jackson vetoed the recharter of the the
Bank of the United States, and the next year withdrew U.S.
government funds from the bank.
The Nullification Crisis occurred when South Carolina threatened
to secede from the Union--not over slavery, but in opposition
to the protective tariff. Henry Carey's father, Mathew Carey,
a leading collaborator of Benjamin Franklin, circulated his
pamphlet titled {The Crisis--Appeal to the Good Sense of the
Nation Against the Spirit of Resistance and Dissolution of the
U.S.}
Congress did drastically lower the tariff--the Compromise Tariff
of 1833 was passed under southern blackmail threatening a civil
war--virtually eliminating all protection for American manufactures.
Lincoln lost his first bid for office; Henry Clay lost the presidential
election. And Andrew Jackson delivered the greatest coup d'etat
to the American System in the nation's history by destroying
the Bank of the United States.
At that time, the Bank held close to one-third of all bank deposits
in the country and made one-fifth of all bank loans. Millions
of dollars of the government's money were on deposit as well.
The bank's charter did not run out until 1836, but Clay, knowing
Jackson's hatred of the bank, successfully pushed Congress to
vote an early recharter in 1832. Jackson vetoed the recharter
and, on his orders, government deposits were withdrawn and placed
in state banks. Stripped of its business with the government,
the Bank of the United States was little more than an empty
shell by the time its charter officially ran out in 1836.
Jackson's withdrawal of funds from the National Bank may well
have been the greatest single act of treason in U.S. history.
The bank's destruction meant that the country had no national
currency. There was no funding for internal improvements, no
dirigist direction of credit. Private banks were completely
unregulated, and began to charge exorbitant interest rates.
Any hope that Clay and the Whigs had for industrializing the
South, as the way to end slavery and avoid civil war, were dashed.
The 89 state banks which received the U.S. government's deposits
(which Lincoln and Clay called Jackson's ``pet banks''), were
{unsound} to say the least. The Bank of the United States could
no longer stop state banks from issuing notes. (Prior to this,
the Bank of the United States could present notes for large
sums to an issuing state bank and demand payment in gold. This
kept the banks from issuing too much unsecured money.)
Wild banks sprang up everywhere, issuing large numbers of notes
with no specie (gold reserve) to back them up. Between 1830
and 1836, the amount lent by state banks rose from $137 million
to $475 million! These loans touched off wild speculation, especially
in land. Government land sales doubled, and then doubled again
in a single year. People paid the U.S. Treasury for land with
the worthless paper money of the wildest banks--who lent it
out over and over again.
Then, in an attempt to stop the wild speculation that he himself
had caused, Jackson pushed through the ``Specie Circular''--which
stipulated that the Treasury would only accept gold as payment
for the public lands. The sale of public lands collapsed.
There were runs on all the banks as people vainly attempted
to turn their bank notes into gold. Dozens of banks went under
overnight. The surviving banks refused to renew old loans or
make new ones. Businesses failed. Thousands were thrown out
of work. Riots by the unemployed swept Philadelphia and New
York. Farm prices collapsed by over 50 percent.
John Jacob Astor had formed the National Bank of New York to
replace the Bank of the United States--and placed James Gallatin
at its head. Gallatin, the son of Albert Gallatin, who as Jefferson
and Madison's treasury secretary almost singlehandedly destroyed
the Hamiltonian system, organized the ``Free Trade Movement''
with British support.
By 1837, the Free Trade Movement had achieved nearly all of
its objectives. The Bank of the United States was permanently
closed, and American industry was left completely unprotected,
both by the reduced tariff and a worldwide credit collapse initiated
by Bank of England credit restrictions. While civil war was
temporarily postponed, the Compromise Tariff and destruction
of the bank assured the Civil War would begin in deadly earnest
in 1861. Carey accused the ``British Secret Service'' of being
behind the nullifiers.
The Fight for Internal Improvements
When Jackson closed the Bank, he also stopped federal support
for road, canal, and railway construction, putting the brakes
on pioneer settlement of the West. But American Whigs fought
to continue the internal improvements construction policy with
the action of state governments to replace the missing federal
support.
Lincoln led this fight from the age of 24 as a state legislator
in Illinois. As the leader of the famous group of Whig legislators
from Sangamon County, the ``Long Nine,'' (so-called because
all were over six feet tall), he sought to turn the mud- and
ice-bound Midwest into the new industrial center of the continent,
beginning with the construction of railways and canals to crisscross
Illinois. The ``Illinois Improvement Program'' or as it came
to be known simply as Lincoln called it, ``The System,'' centered
on two major projects: construction of the Illinois-Michigan
canal, and a 3,000-mile railroad system.
The canal between the Chicago and Illinois River would link
Lake Michigan with the Mississippi River. This would complete
the longtime ``grand design'' of the republican faction for
an unbroken water line of communications between the East Coast
and the Mississippi Basin via the Hudson River and the Great
Lakes: The other man-made link in this system was the recently
completed Erie Canal. Together, they would radically change
the course of American history by opening the Midwest to rapid
settlement and industrialization.
The growth of manufacturing in Illinois, because of the state's
exceptional transportation facilities, was the most rapid and
remarkable in the industrial history of the United States. In
1835, when the town of Chicago was incorporated, there were
150 inhabitants, whose main livelihood was trading with the
Indians. In that year, 70 bushels of wheat were shipped out
of that struggling little town. In 1836, major excavations for
the canal began. By 1850, two years after the canal's completion,
Chicago exploded to nearly 30,000 people, becoming the 18th-largest
city in the United States, and was shipping out 2 million bushels
of wheat a year!
And it was not just Chicago. When Lincoln came into the legislature
in 1834, there were barely 2,000 people living in the entire
northern part of the state, from Peoria to the Wisconsin state
line. By 1855, there were 175,000 people living in dozens of
new towns along the canal.
In 1836, Lincoln made internal improvements the major issue
of his re-election campaign. The destruction of the bank by
Jackson had caused great problems. All had seen the Erie Canal
completed in 1825, and its construction debts paid off 11 years
later. At that time, the mood of the country was in favor of
a commitment to internal improvements--when Michigan entered
the Union in 1837 its constitution {required} internal improvements.
Lincoln moved to the forefront of the state's fight. In 1837,
Illinois passed an Omnibus Bill ($10 million)--for two trunk
railroads, the Illinois Central and the Northern Cross, quartering
the state north to south and east to west, with six spurs connecting
the largest towns, and investments in roads and rivers. This
was in addition to the $8.5 million to complete the Illinois-Michigan
canal. As Whig leader of the House, Lincoln wrote most of the
internal improvement legislation. He supported the establishment
of a state bank, but only because of the destruction of the
National Bank.
The National Bank
Jackson's withdrawal of funds from the National Bank brought
on the worst depression the nation had ever seen. All federal
support for internal improvements collapsed. The canal did limp
along, largely because of Lincoln's efforts to secure private
funding by Nicholas Biddle and others. (Biddle had been head
of the Second Bank of the United States.) But without federal
support, the ``System'' was stalled. By 1839, when the depression
hit full force, there was growing popular opposition to spending
any more money on internal improvements. All work ceased on
the canal in 1842--not to begin again until 1846.
Lincoln attacked Jackson's destruction of the Bank of the United
States as the source of the collapse. In 1837, Lincoln wrote
his first political pamphlet on banking in response to the crisis.
The national Whig leadership was greatly impressed by his defense
of the National Bank, and printed the pamphlet in full for national
circulation. It was reprinted in all of the Whig press, including
the {National Intelligencer,} the most important Whig newspaper
in the country.
During Lincoln's last years in the legislature (he was re-elected
in 1836, but due to his pro-bank stance, came in last in 1840),
his views of American System economics came to be voiced chiefly
on the presidential campaign trail.
In 1839-40, the idea of a national bank was under attack--the
British organized a populist movement against ``big bankers''--and
many blamed the crisis of 1837 not on Jackson's withdrawal of
the funds from the bank, but on greedy bankers. A lot of what
Lincoln had fought for in Illinois was compromised or abandoned,
but he stuck to his views.
In the election of 1840, the Whigs wanted to throw all discussion
of the issues out the window, hoping to win on the basis of
the depression alone. Lincoln refused to go along. Lincoln
supported William Henry Harrison, his party's nominee, but also
decided to {stake a full year's campaigning on the question
of national banking}. His first clashes came in the late fall
of 1839--in debates with free-trade proponent Stephen Douglas
and others.
In his key campaign speech on the National Bank, Lincoln said:
``We do not pretend that the National Bank can establish and
maintain a sound and uniform state of currency in the country
{in spite of} the national government; but we do say, that it
has established and maintained such a currency, and can do so
again, {by the aid} of that government; and we further say,
{that no duty is more imperative on that government than the
duty it owes to the people, of furnishing them a sound and uniform
currency}.''[Lincoln, {Collected Works.}]
Lincoln compared the functioning of a national bank to Van Buren's
proposed ``independent Treasury'' or ``Sub-Treasury.'' Van Buren's
proposal went one step beyond Jackson's destruction of the bank
to propose that the government handle its funds solely through
its own officers as an ``independent Treasury.'' This was considered
so outrageous that Congress voted it down three times.
Lincoln first argued that the existence of a National Bank is
guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution. This was critical,
given Jackson's statement about ``the dangerous power wielded
by the Bank of the United States and its {repugnance} to our
Constitution.'' Lincoln quoted the Founding Fathers: ``... a
majority of the Revolutionary patriarchs, whoever acted officially
upon the question commencing with General Washington and embracing
General Jackson, the larger number of the Signers of the Declaration
and the framers of the Constitution, who were in the Congress
of 1791 have decided upon their oaths that such a bank is constitutional.''
He then argued that the real purpose of the Van Buren ``independent
Treasury'' was to contract the amount of currency in circulation
and force collection of revenue in specie--denying the population
the use of a national currency.
Lincoln then documented that, during the entire period of time
in which the Bank of the U.S. existed, the country prospered:
``If before, or after that period, derangement occurred in the
currency, it proves nothing. The Bank could not be expected
to regulate the currency either {before} it got into successful
operation, or {after} it was crippled and thrown into death
convulsions, by the removal of the deposits from it, and other
hostile measures of the Government against it. We do not pretend
that a National Bank can establish and maintain a sound and
uniform state of currency in the country, in {spite} of the
National Government; but we do say, that it has established
and maintained such a currency, and can do so again, by the
{aid} of that Government; and we further say, that no duty is
more imperative on that Government, than the duty it owes the
people, of furnishing them a sound and uniform currency.''
Lincoln concluded with an attack on Jackson and Van Buren, saying:
``... there is no parallel between the {``errors''} of the
present and the late administrations, and those of former times,
and that Mr. Van Buren is wholly out of the line of all precedents.''
[Lincoln, {Collected Works.}]
The unique quality of political leadership and morality represented
by Lincoln during this campaign is reflected in the following
excerpt from one of his most famous speeches from the campaign
trail: ``Mr. Lamborn refers to the late elections in the States,
and from their results, confidently predicts that every State
in the Union will vote for Mr. Van Buren at the next Presidential
election. Address {that} argument to {cowards} and to {knaves};
with the {free} and the {brave} it will effect nothing. It {may}
be true, if it {must}, let it. Many free countries have lost
their liberty, and {ours may} lose hers; but if she shall, be
it my proudest plume, not that I was the {last} to desert, but
that I {never} deserted her. I know that the great volcano at
Washington, aroused and directed by the evil spirit that reigns
there, is belching forth a lava of political corruption, in
a current broad and deep, which is sweeping with frightful velocity
over the whole length and breadth of the land, bidding fair
to leave unscathed no green spot or living thing, while on its
bosom are riding like demons on the waves of Hell, the imps
of that evil spirit, and fiendishly taunting all those who dare
resist its destroying course, with the hopelessness of their
efforts; and knowing this, I cannot deny that all may be swept
away. Broken by it, I, too, may be; bow to it I never will.
The {probability} that we may fall in the struggle {ought not}
to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just;
it {shall not} deter me. If I ever feel the soul within me elevate
and expand to those dimensions not wholly unworthy of its Almighty
Architect, it is when I contemplate the cause of my country,
deserted by all the world beside, and I, standing up boldly
and alone and hurling defiance at her victorious oppressors.
Here, without contemplating consequences, before High Heaven,
and in the face of the world, I swear eternal fidelity to the
just cause, as I deem it, of the land of my life, my liberty,
and my love. And who, that thinks with me, will not fearlessly
adopt the oath that I take. Let non faulter [sic], who thinks
he is right, and we may succeed. But, if after all, we shall
fail, be it so. We still have the proud consolation of saying
to our consciences, and to the departed shade of our country's
freedom, that the cause approved of our judgment, and adored
of our hearts, in disaster, in chains, in torture, in death,
we NEVER faultered in defending.'' [Lincoln, {Collected Works.}]
Lincoln's arguments made the rounds of the federal papers in
his state, and became the ``Whig textbook'' of Illinois. He
became editor of {The Old Soldier}, the campaign newspaper of
the Illinois Whigs. The paper emphasized economic questions,
particularly the Bank of the United States versus the Sub-Treasury.
In editorial after editorial, Lincoln argued ``that a new movement
for a national bank is absolutely necessary.''
Harrison won the election overwhelmingly--but lost in Illinois,
a staunchly Jacksonian state. Lincoln ran {last} on the losing
electoral slate. Despite the unpopularity of his stand on the
National Bank, Lincoln never wavered. Though it meant a break
with the national party leadership, Lincoln stood his ground.
As reported by G.S. Boritt, 30 years later, his law partner,
in referring back to the 1840 campaign, saw it as a turning
point in Lincoln's life. Said Billy Herndon, ``I think it grew
and bloomed and developed into beauty, etc., in the year 1840
{exactly}. Mr. Lincoln told me that his ideas of something burst
in him in 1840.''
President Harrison appointed as Treasury Secretary Thomas Ewing
of Ohio, stepfather of the future Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman,
and a coleader of the Whigs with Clay. The program was clear:
a new national bank, high tariffs, and internal improvements.
Harrison was elected President in November of 1840 and assumed
office on March 4, 1841. The very healthy Harrison died one
month later, his death first attributed to acute intestinal
distress and then variously to ``bilious pleurisy'' and pneumonia.
No autopsy was performed on the body. While little is known
of the sudden cause of death of President Harrison, the events
that follow make clear {cui bono.} The economic policy of the
nation was forcibly returned to the British system.
Vice President John Tyler of
Virginia immediately took over the presidency; he was the first
to succeed to the office in this manner. Tyler soon made it
clear that he had no intention of carrying out the program of
the Whigs or the dead President. When Congress passed the long-awaited
bill restoring the Bank of the United States, Tyler vetoed it.
A battle soon raged between Henry Clay and Tyler along the lines
of the American System policy. The entire cabinet, save Secretary
of State Daniel Webster, resigned. The British agent Caleb Cushing,
chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, organized
Congress to sustain the President's veto. The Whigs were unable
to muster the two-thirds majority necessary to override.
In the mid-1840s, Lincoln was active in the Illinois Whig party,
hoping to be the party's congressional candidate. In 1843, as
part of the 1844 presidential campaign, a Whig conclave adopted
his declaration of principles and appointed him to write an
address to the people of the state. Again, his declaration centered
on a high protective tariff, internal improvements, and the
need to restore the National Bank. He attacked direct taxation
and budget-cutting, showing how the tariff was more efficient
in increasing revenue.
The 1844 presidential campaign was between Clay, the Whig candidate
who had led the fight for the American System, and James K.
Polk, the Democratic candidate who was one of the worst free-trade
traitors to ever run for the U.S. presidency. For the first
time, Lincoln himself was not a candidate. While Lincoln remained
totally committed to Clay, he felt that Clay had compromised
his strong commitment to the American System in an attempt to
win the election. Lincoln toured the state again, making the
protective tariff, by the spring of 1844, the most important
issue of the campaign.
This campaign was an all-out battle between British free trade
and the American System. Lincoln charged the British with interference
in the election, accusing them of supporting Democrat Polk,
and flooding the country with money and political tracts against
the protective tariff. Their free trade associations spent @bp100,000
on behalf of Polk. The Liberty Party, a so-called ``anti-slavery''
third party, arguing that Clay was not sufficiently abolitionist,
ran their own candidate, James Birney. Between British funding
for the pro-slavery Polk, and British backing for the ``anti-slavery''
Birney, Clay was defeated.
The election of 1844 left Lincoln dissatisfied with the results--both
Clay's conduct, but also, he felt, his own shortcomings. He
decided to study economics more rigorously and totally master
the tariff question, which he did.
In 1846, Lincoln was nominated for the U.S. House of Representatives
from the 7th Congressional District of Illinois. The Democrats
under Polk were attempting to weaken the tariff and reestablish
the independent Sub-Treasury, so Lincoln ran on a protectionist,
anti-Sub-Treasury platform.
As soon as Polk had come into office, Congress passed two internal
improvement bills--and Polk vetoed them both. In response, the
newly elected Congressman Lincoln, before going to Washington,
organized the 1846 Chicago River and Harbor Convention--the
first national convention of its kind devoted to the American
System of protective tariffs and internal improvements.
Lincoln was one of the few delegates selected to address the
20,000 attendees. And of the 1,016 delegates from Illinois,
it was Lincoln who was elected to be a member of the permanent
organization established there.
In his first address to a national gathering on internal improvements,
Lincoln proposed the adoption of a unified national strategy--including
the creation of a federal agency for collecting statistical
information, which would make possible the selection of the
most essential improvement projects. The problem was that no
amount of talking would pass internal improvement bills over
executive vetoes. That would take defeating the Democrats in
the 1848 election.
Polk did not merely veto internal impovements. He systematically
dismantled the country at the behest of his British backers,
adding greatly to the already devastating damage done by Andrew
Jackson's dismantling of the Bank of the United States, and
by Van Buren's treason. Polk and the Democrats in 1846 passed
the Walker Tariff, dramatically lowering the protective tariff,
from approximately 35 percent average duties under the Clay
Tariff of 1842, to 22.5 percent.
In response, Lincoln wrote up all of his research on the need
for the protective tariff in a work called {Tariff Notes}.
Lincoln's 1847 {Tariff Notes} was virtually identical to the
writings of Henry Carey, starting with his earliest work in
support of a protective tariff, {Essay on the Rate of Wages}
(1835). Lincoln's law partner confirmed that Lincoln assiduously
studied all of Carey's writings.
Polk also passed the {Independent Treasury Act}--which completed
the treason Jackson had begun. {This act prevented the U.S.
Government from regulating the affairs of banks--and stipulated
that the government had to be treated like any other depositor!}
{To be continued.}
--
John Covici
covici@ccs.covici.com
WHY THE BRITISH HAD TO KILL ABRAHAM LINCOLN Part I
by Rochelle Ascher
The year was 1860. Abraham Lincoln had just been elected President
of the United States. Of 303 possible electoral votes, Lincoln
had received only 180; of the popular vote, he received 1.8
million votes, while his three opponents together received 2.8
million votes. In 15 states, Lincoln received no electoral votes.
In ten states, he received not a single popular vote, largely
because the southern states refused to put him on the ballot.
In the four months before his inauguration, South Carolina,
Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Louisiana had seceded from the
Union. Other southern states were to secede in rapid order.
By the time Lincoln entered office in March of 1861, the Civil
War was only weeks away.
The Buchanan administration which Lincoln succeeded was entirely
treasonous--in fact indistinguishable from the Supreme Council
of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (which became synonymous
with the Confederacy). By 1860, these anti-Union radicals operated
directly from the White House, led by former Attorney General
Caleb Cushing, a lawyer for the Boston opium cartel. Both Howell
Cobb, secretary of the treasury--and the most powerful member
of the cabinet--and Vice President John C. Breckinridge, were
Sovereign Grand Inspector Generals and active members of the
Scottish Rite.
These Freemasonic traitors had been working actively for months
to disarm the northern federal arsenals and equip the southern
rebel states. Citizens demonstrated throughout northern cities,
as tons of military hardware were stolen and shipped south for
an attack against the United States.
The situation facing Lincoln upon inauguration was the worst
the United States had ever faced. The British had installed
a series of traitorous Presidents who had all but dismantled
the U.S. economy. Jackson, Tyler, Polk, Pierce, and Buchanan
had destroyed the basic institutions of the U.S. economy, moving
control out of the hands of the Whig industrialists and bankers,
and into the hands of British financiers working through the
banking houses of Boston and New York.
This led to a series of bank failures and depressions. In 1857,
the U.S. economy went bust. Business came to a standstill. Hunger
was widespread. The Treasury was bankrupt: Congress had not
been paid. In his {Shall We Have Peace?}, Henry C. Carey, one
of Lincoln's closest collaborators and economic advisers, described
the situation in this way:
``Had it been possible on the 4th of March, 1861, to take a
bird's-eye view of the whole Union, the phenomena presenting
themselves for examination would have been as follows:
``@sb^Millions of men and women would have been seen who were
wholly or partially unemployed, because of the inability to
find persons able and willing to pay for service.
``@sb^Hundreds of thousands of workmen, farmers and shopkeepers
would have been seen holding articles of various kinds for which
no purchasers could be found.
``@sb^Tens of thousands of country traders would have been seen
poring over their books seeking, but vainly seeking, to discover
in what direction they might look for obtaining the means with
which to discharge their city debts.
``@sb^Thousands of city traders would have been seen endeavoring
to discover how they might obtain the means with which to pay
their notes.
``@sb^Thousands of mills, factories, furnaces, and workshops
large and small, would have been seen standing idle while surrounded
by persons who desired to be employed; and
``@sb^Tens of thousands of bank, factory and railroad proprietors
would have been seen despairing of obtaining dividends by means
of which they might be enabled to go to market.
``High above all these would have been seen a National Treasury
wholly empty, and to all appearance little likely ever again
to be filled.''
Thaddeus Stevens, who became one of the strongest proponents
of Reconstruction following the Civil War, also described the
state of the economy in the period right before the war began,
in a speech March 18, 1858 in the U.S. House of Representatives
entitled ``State Governments Republican in Form'':
``It became evident that Mr. Buchanan was to be the last of
Southern Presidents, and his Cabinet being almost wholly devoted
to the interests of slavery, set themselves boldly at work to
weaken the North and strengthen the South. They transferred
most of the best weapons of war from the North, where they were
manufactured, to the South, where they could readily be seized.
They plunged the nation into a heavy debt in time of peace.
When the Treasury was bare of cash they robbed it of millions
of bonds, and whatever else they could lay hands on. They fastened
upon us an incipient free-trade system, which impaired our revenues,
paralyzed our national industry, and compelled the exportation
of our immense production of gold. They have reduce our Navy
to an unserviceable condition, or dispersed it to the farthest
oceans. Our little Army was on the Pacific coast, sequestered
in Utah, or defending the Southern States from their own Indians.''
A major threat of assassination loomed even before Lincoln was
inaugurated. First, an assassination plot in Baltimore was uncovered,
requiring the President to be hidden on a train which secretly
brought him to Washington. Upon his arrival, as he was preparing
to assume office, the armed Knights of the Golden Circle were
preparing to kill the new President and seize the capital. General
Winfield Scott, commander of the U.S. military, had moved the
headquarters of the U.S. Army out of Washington, D.C. when
the traitorous Franklin Pierce had been elected in 1852. Scott
deployed thousands of troops, bomb experts, and special police
to every conceivable vantage point for a likely assassin. Earlier,
Scott had prevented secessionists from disrupting the counting
of the electoral ballots in Washington.
The Republic Threatened
The most telling description of the situation the country faced
following Lincoln's election, is clear from an interchange between
Lincoln himself, and one of his closest friends, Judge Gillespie,
in the days before the inauguration. As late nineteenth-century
muckracker and historian Ida Tarbell reports it, ``He sat with
his head lying upon his arms, which were folded over the back
of his chair, as I have often seen him sit on our travels after
an exciting day in court. Suddenly he roused himself. `Gillespie,'
said he, `I would willingly take out of my life a period in
years equal to the two months which intervene between now and
my inauguration to take the oath of office now.' `Why?' I asked.
`Because every hour adds to the difficulties I am called upon
to meet, and the present administration does nothing to check
the tendency toward dissolution. I, who have been called to
meet this awful responsibility, am compelled to remain here,
doing nothing to avert it or lessen its force when it comes
to me.'
``I said that the condition of which he spoke was such as had
never risen before, and that it might lead to the amendment
of such an obvious defect in the federal Constitution. `It is
not of myself I complain,' he said, with more bitterness than
I ever heard him speak, before, or after. `But every day adds
to the difficulty of the situation, and makes the outlook more
gloomy. Secession is being fostered rather than repressed, and
if the doctrine meets with a general acceptance in the border
States, it will be a great blow to the government.'
``Our talk then turned upon the possibility of avoiding a war.
`It is only possible,' said Mr. Lincoln, `upon the consent of
this government to the erection of a foreign slave government
out of the present slave States. I see the duty devolving upon
me. {I have read, upon my knees, the story of Gethsemane, where
the Son of God prayed in vain that the cup of bitterness might
pass from him. I am in the Garden of Gethsemane now, and my
cup of bitterness is full and overflowing....'}
``I then told him that as Christ's prayer was not answered and
his crucifixion had redeemed the great part of the world from
paganism to Christianity, so the sacrifice demanded of him might
be a great beneficence. Little did I then think how prophetic
were my words to be, or what a great sacrifice he was called
to make.'' [emphasis added]
This was far more than a fight between North and South--between
slave states and free states. As Henry Carey details in his
{The Slave Trade: Foreign and Domestic,} slavery never existed
without free trade, nor free trade without slave labor. What
was literally at stake was the continued existence of the only
nation in the world that had successfully defeated (even if
only partially) the British system of free trade and established
a republic based on natural law and American System economics.
For this, the British crown had never forgiven the Americans,
and became increasingly embittered toward the young republic
from the time of Cornwallis's surrender at Yorktown.
In his book {Treason in America,} Anton Chaitkin details the
30-year plot by the British-backed and inspired Freemasons to
dismantle the American System and replace it with the British
system of slavery and free trade. Suffice it here to say the
conflict represented the crucial turning point in world history
to determine the future possibility of any successful opposition
to the British system anywhere in the world. So when Lincoln
referred to the Garden of Gethsemane, he was most accurate.
Pressure to Compromise
Massive pressure was mounted on Lincoln to compromise with the
secessionists. Not only was the new President faced with bankruptcy,
secession, and British-backed intrigue, upon inauguration he
met unabashed treason from within his own Cabinet. In fact,
Lincoln's orders to respond to the firing upon Fort Sumter were
countermanded by his own secretary of state, William Seward.
Seward's original advice to Lincoln was that he must not reinforce
Sumter, but let the extremist southerners secede--they would
surely come back to the Union in a few years! When Lincoln decided
to send reinforcements to Sumter, Seward began a series of meetings
with agents of the South Carolina secessionists whom he assured,
directly contrary to Lincoln's policy, that their steady preparations
for aggression would not be resisted! When Lincoln arranged
for a squadron of gunships and troop ships to be sent to reinforce
Sumter, Seward secretly arranged for the gunships to be diverted
to Florida. When Lincoln found out, he ordered Seward to reverse
his interference. Seward stalled long enough so that the gunships
were already streaming southward, and the commander, mistakenly
believing that he was going to Florida on Lincoln's orders,
refused to turn back on Seward's mid-course directive.
President Lincoln had been prevented from crushing the insurrection
while secession was still confined to the deep South. Still
advised to compromise by the majority of his cabinet, criticized
for taking the view that the rebellion was the work of a small
minority of conspirators rather than the broad expression of
sectional sentiment, Lincoln acted as he was never expected
to act. He immediately called for 75,000 volunteers to put down
the attempted coup d'etat. For the next four years, Lincoln
invoked the full powers of the presidency. The Civil War created
the emergency conditions for President Lincoln and his Whig
advisers to carry out the most sweeping reorganization of the
economy on the basis of American System principles since the
founding of the country.
The fact is that Lincoln faced treason, insurrection, and bankrputcy
within the first days of taking office, and yet within four
years not only smashed the British-run insurrection, but created
the greatest industrial giant the world had ever seen, is the
clearest testimony to the success of the American System of
Political-Economy. While fighting a war in which he led an army
that had over the course of the war, 3 million men at arms (out
of a total Northern population of 22 million), and in which
more than half a million men died, Lincoln:
@sb^organized a militia on a uniform basis;
@sb^built and equipped the largest army in the world;
@sb^reorganized the judicial system;
@sb^launched the steel industry; @sb^created a continental railroad
system; @sb^institutionalized scientific
agriculture, by methods including the Homestead Act, which provided
free western lands for farmers, the establishment of the Department
of Agriculture, and government promotion of a new era of farm
machinery and cheap tools;
@sb^established a system of free higher education throughout
the U.S.--the Land Grant College System;
@sb^pursued a policy of massive immigration to increase the
population as quickly as possible;
@sb^provided major government
support to all branches of science, through the U.S. Coast Survey
and the National Academy of Sciences;
@sb^organized the Bureau of Mines; @sb^organized governments
in the
Western territories; @sb^and, of course, abolished
slavery, freeing {4 million slaves.} This was accomplished by
the
reinstitution of the American System. The breathtaking economic
development program which Lincoln designed not only saved the
nation and won the war, but remained in effect long enough after
his assassination for the United States to become the world's
greatest industrial power, and remain so for more than a century
to come.
The American System
Lincoln's American System economic program:
@sb^created a national banking system;
@sb^reestablished national control
over banking, with cheap credit directed for productive purposes;
@sb^created a national currency for the first time in nearly
25 years (the greenback--$450 million worth);
@sb^increased government spending by 600 percent (to $300 million
per year);
@sb^implemented the highest protective tariff in U.S. history
(the Morrill Tariff);
@sb^promoted standardized and mass production nationwide; and
@sb^increased labor productivity by 50-70 percent.
In March of 1860, on the eve of the Republican convention which
nominated Lincoln to the presidency, Henry Carey, in his pamphlet
{Financial Crises, their Causes and Effects} (1859), spelled
out clearly the differences between the British and American
systems of economics, and Great Britain's plan to recolonize
the United States:
``The men who made the Revolution did so, because they were
tired of a system the essence of which was found in Lord Chatham's
declaration, that the colonists should not be permitted to make
for themselves `even as much as a single hobnail.' They were
sensible of the exhaustive character of a policy that compelled
them to make all their exchanges in a single market, thereby
enriching their foreign masters while ruining themselves. Against
this system they needed protection, and therefore did they make
the Revolution--seeking political independence as a means of
obtaining industrial and commercial independence. To render
that protection really effective, they formed a more perfect
union, whose first Congress gave us, as its first law, an act
for the protection of manufactures. Washington and his secretaries,
Hamilton and Jefferson, approved this course of action, and
in doing so were followed by all of Washington's successors,
down to General Jackson. For half a century, from 1783 to 1833,
such was the general tendency of our commercial policy, and
therefore was it that, notwithstanding the plunder of our merchants
under British Orders in Council and French Decrees, and notwithstanding
interferences with commerce by embargo and non-intercourse laws,
there occurred in that long period, in time of peace, no single
financial revulsion, involving suspension by our banks, or stoppage
of payment by the government. In all that period, there was,
consequently, a general tendency towards harmony between the
North and the South, in reference to the vexed question of slavery--both
Virginia and Maryland having, in 1832, showed themselves almost
prepared for abolition. Had the existing commercial policy been
maintained, the years that since have passed would have been
marked by daily growth of harmony, and of confidence in the
utility and permanence of our Union.
``Such, unhappily, was not to be the case. Even at that moment
South Carolina was preparing to assume that entire control of
our commercial policy which, with the exception of a single
presidential term [John Quincy Adams], she has since maintained--{thereby
forcing the Union back to that colonial system, emancipation
from which had been the primary object of the men who made the
Revolution....}
``Forgetting all the lessons they [the Founding Fathers] had
taught, we have now so long been following in the direction
indicated by our British free trade `friends' ... that already
are they congratulating themselves upon the approaching dissolution
of the Union--and the entire reestablishment of British influence
over this northern portion of the continent....''
Abraham Lincoln defeated the British and restored the American
System--``the primary object of the men who made the Revolution.''
It was because of this that the British assassinated Abraham
Lincoln.
Lincoln's Early Years
Contrary to most historical accounts, the American System policy
as adopted by Abraham Lincoln did not come out of the blue.
>From 1830, when, at the age of 21, Lincoln made his first election
day speech on ``internal improvements,'' until his assassination
April 14, 1865, Lincoln's entire life was dedicated to the American
System of the Founding Fathers. And contrary to the view of
most historians, he was not an enigma, a loner, someone who
emerged with these ideas out of nowhere; he was a {product of
and a critical part of a faction of American System Whigs totally
committed to reestablishing the American System and destroying
the British System of slavery and free trade.}
A brief look at Lincoln's early years makes this factional fight
quite clear. In 1830, Lincoln made his first election day speech.
While not a candidate himself, he announced his policy to be
that of the American System and his mentor Henry Clay: ``My
politics are short and sweet, like the old woman's dance. I
am in favor of a national bank. I am in favor of the internal
improvements system and a high protective tariff.'' [Lincoln,
{Collected Works.}]
The battle between British free trade and the American System
reached a {punctum saliens} in the 1832 presidential contest
between Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay. This was also the year
that Lincoln made his first bid for public office--to the State
Legislature of Illinois.
In 1832, not only was there the infamous ``Nullification Crisis,''
but in that same year, Jackson vetoed the recharter of the the
Bank of the United States, and the next year withdrew U.S.
government funds from the bank.
The Nullification Crisis occurred when South Carolina threatened
to secede from the Union--not over slavery, but in opposition
to the protective tariff. Henry Carey's father, Mathew Carey,
a leading collaborator of Benjamin Franklin, circulated his
pamphlet titled {The Crisis--Appeal to the Good Sense of the
Nation Against the Spirit of Resistance and Dissolution of the
U.S.}
Congress did drastically lower the tariff--the Compromise Tariff
of 1833 was passed under southern blackmail threatening a civil
war--virtually eliminating all protection for American manufactures.
Lincoln lost his first bid for office; Henry Clay lost the presidential
election. And Andrew Jackson delivered the greatest coup d'etat
to the American System in the nation's history by destroying
the Bank of the United States.
At that time, the Bank held close to one-third of all bank deposits
in the country and made one-fifth of all bank loans. Millions
of dollars of the government's money were on deposit as well.
The bank's charter did not run out until 1836, but Clay, knowing
Jackson's hatred of the bank, successfully pushed Congress to
vote an early recharter in 1832. Jackson vetoed the recharter
and, on his orders, government deposits were withdrawn and placed
in state banks. Stripped of its business with the government,
the Bank of the United States was little more than an empty
shell by the time its charter officially ran out in 1836.
Jackson's withdrawal of funds from the National Bank may well
have been the greatest single act of treason in U.S. history.
The bank's destruction meant that the country had no national
currency. There was no funding for internal improvements, no
dirigist direction of credit. Private banks were completely
unregulated, and began to charge exorbitant interest rates.
Any hope that Clay and the Whigs had for industrializing the
South, as the way to end slavery and avoid civil war, were dashed.
The 89 state banks which received the U.S. government's deposits
(which Lincoln and Clay called Jackson's ``pet banks''), were
{unsound} to say the least. The Bank of the United States could
no longer stop state banks from issuing notes. (Prior to this,
the Bank of the United States could present notes for large
sums to an issuing state bank and demand payment in gold. This
kept the banks from issuing too much unsecured money.)
Wild banks sprang up everywhere, issuing large numbers of notes
with no specie (gold reserve) to back them up. Between 1830
and 1836, the amount lent by state banks rose from $137 million
to $475 million! These loans touched off wild speculation, especially
in land. Government land sales doubled, and then doubled again
in a single year. People paid the U.S. Treasury for land with
the worthless paper money of the wildest banks--who lent it
out over and over again.
Then, in an attempt to stop the wild speculation that he himself
had caused, Jackson pushed through the ``Specie Circular''--which
stipulated that the Treasury would only accept gold as payment
for the public lands. The sale of public lands collapsed.
There were runs on all the banks as people vainly attempted
to turn their bank notes into gold. Dozens of banks went under
overnight. The surviving banks refused to renew old loans or
make new ones. Businesses failed. Thousands were thrown out
of work. Riots by the unemployed swept Philadelphia and New
York. Farm prices collapsed by over 50 percent.
John Jacob Astor had formed the National Bank of New York to
replace the Bank of the United States--and placed James Gallatin
at its head. Gallatin, the son of Albert Gallatin, who as Jefferson
and Madison's treasury secretary almost singlehandedly destroyed
the Hamiltonian system, organized the ``Free Trade Movement''
with British support.
By 1837, the Free Trade Movement had achieved nearly all of
its objectives. The Bank of the United States was permanently
closed, and American industry was left completely unprotected,
both by the reduced tariff and a worldwide credit collapse initiated
by Bank of England credit restrictions. While civil war was
temporarily postponed, the Compromise Tariff and destruction
of the bank assured the Civil War would begin in deadly earnest
in 1861. Carey accused the ``British Secret Service'' of being
behind the nullifiers.
The Fight for Internal Improvements
When Jackson closed the Bank, he also stopped federal support
for road, canal, and railway construction, putting the brakes
on pioneer settlement of the West. But American Whigs fought
to continue the internal improvements construction policy with
the action of state governments to replace the missing federal
support.
Lincoln led this fight from the age of 24 as a state legislator
in Illinois. As the leader of the famous group of Whig legislators
from Sangamon County, the ``Long Nine,'' (so-called because
all were over six feet tall), he sought to turn the mud- and
ice-bound Midwest into the new industrial center of the continent,
beginning with the construction of railways and canals to crisscross
Illinois. The ``Illinois Improvement Program'' or as it came
to be known simply as Lincoln called it, ``The System,'' centered
on two major projects: construction of the Illinois-Michigan
canal, and a 3,000-mile railroad system.
The canal between the Chicago and Illinois River would link
Lake Michigan with the Mississippi River. This would complete
the longtime ``grand design'' of the republican faction for
an unbroken water line of communications between the East Coast
and the Mississippi Basin via the Hudson River and the Great
Lakes: The other man-made link in this system was the recently
completed Erie Canal. Together, they would radically change
the course of American history by opening the Midwest to rapid
settlement and industrialization.
The growth of manufacturing in Illinois, because of the state's
exceptional transportation facilities, was the most rapid and
remarkable in the industrial history of the United States. In
1835, when the town of Chicago was incorporated, there were
150 inhabitants, whose main livelihood was trading with the
Indians. In that year, 70 bushels of wheat were shipped out
of that struggling little town. In 1836, major excavations for
the canal began. By 1850, two years after the canal's completion,
Chicago exploded to nearly 30,000 people, becoming the 18th-largest
city in the United States, and was shipping out 2 million bushels
of wheat a year!
And it was not just Chicago. When Lincoln came into the legislature
in 1834, there were barely 2,000 people living in the entire
northern part of the state, from Peoria to the Wisconsin state
line. By 1855, there were 175,000 people living in dozens of
new towns along the canal.
In 1836, Lincoln made internal improvements the major issue
of his re-election campaign. The destruction of the bank by
Jackson had caused great problems. All had seen the Erie Canal
completed in 1825, and its construction debts paid off 11 years
later. At that time, the mood of the country was in favor of
a commitment to internal improvements--when Michigan entered
the Union in 1837 its constitution {required} internal improvements.
Lincoln moved to the forefront of the state's fight. In 1837,
Illinois passed an Omnibus Bill ($10 million)--for two trunk
railroads, the Illinois Central and the Northern Cross, quartering
the state north to south and east to west, with six spurs connecting
the largest towns, and investments in roads and rivers. This
was in addition to the $8.5 million to complete the Illinois-Michigan
canal. As Whig leader of the House, Lincoln wrote most of the
internal improvement legislation. He supported the establishment
of a state bank, but only because of the destruction of the
National Bank.
The National Bank
Jackson's withdrawal of funds from the National Bank brought
on the worst depression the nation had ever seen. All federal
support for internal improvements collapsed. The canal did limp
along, largely because of Lincoln's efforts to secure private
funding by Nicholas Biddle and others. (Biddle had been head
of the Second Bank of the United States.) But without federal
support, the ``System'' was stalled. By 1839, when the depression
hit full force, there was growing popular opposition to spending
any more money on internal improvements. All work ceased on
the canal in 1842--not to begin again until 1846.
Lincoln attacked Jackson's destruction of the Bank of the United
States as the source of the collapse. In 1837, Lincoln wrote
his first political pamphlet on banking in response to the crisis.
The national Whig leadership was greatly impressed by his defense
of the National Bank, and printed the pamphlet in full for national
circulation. It was reprinted in all of the Whig press, including
the {National Intelligencer,} the most important Whig newspaper
in the country.
During Lincoln's last years in the legislature (he was re-elected
in 1836, but due to his pro-bank stance, came in last in 1840),
his views of American System economics came to be voiced chiefly
on the presidential campaign trail.
In 1839-40, the idea of a national bank was under attack--the
British organized a populist movement against ``big bankers''--and
many blamed the crisis of 1837 not on Jackson's withdrawal of
the funds from the bank, but on greedy bankers. A lot of what
Lincoln had fought for in Illinois was compromised or abandoned,
but he stuck to his views.
In the election of 1840, the Whigs wanted to throw all discussion
of the issues out the window, hoping to win on the basis of
the depression alone. Lincoln refused to go along. Lincoln
supported William Henry Harrison, his party's nominee, but also
decided to {stake a full year's campaigning on the question
of national banking}. His first clashes came in the late fall
of 1839--in debates with free-trade proponent Stephen Douglas
and others.
In his key campaign speech on the National Bank, Lincoln said:
``We do not pretend that the National Bank can establish and
maintain a sound and uniform state of currency in the country
{in spite of} the national government; but we do say, that it
has established and maintained such a currency, and can do so
again, {by the aid} of that government; and we further say,
{that no duty is more imperative on that government than the
duty it owes to the people, of furnishing them a sound and uniform
currency}.''[Lincoln, {Collected Works.}]
Lincoln compared the functioning of a national bank to Van Buren's
proposed ``independent Treasury'' or ``Sub-Treasury.'' Van Buren's
proposal went one step beyond Jackson's destruction of the bank
to propose that the government handle its funds solely through
its own officers as an ``independent Treasury.'' This was considered
so outrageous that Congress voted it down three times.
Lincoln first argued that the existence of a National Bank is
guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution. This was critical,
given Jackson's statement about ``the dangerous power wielded
by the Bank of the United States and its {repugnance} to our
Constitution.'' Lincoln quoted the Founding Fathers: ``... a
majority of the Revolutionary patriarchs, whoever acted officially
upon the question commencing with General Washington and embracing
General Jackson, the larger number of the Signers of the Declaration
and the framers of the Constitution, who were in the Congress
of 1791 have decided upon their oaths that such a bank is constitutional.''
He then argued that the real purpose of the Van Buren ``independent
Treasury'' was to contract the amount of currency in circulation
and force collection of revenue in specie--denying the population
the use of a national currency.
Lincoln then documented that, during the entire period of time
in which the Bank of the U.S. existed, the country prospered:
``If before, or after that period, derangement occurred in the
currency, it proves nothing. The Bank could not be expected
to regulate the currency either {before} it got into successful
operation, or {after} it was crippled and thrown into death
convulsions, by the removal of the deposits from it, and other
hostile measures of the Government against it. We do not pretend
that a National Bank can establish and maintain a sound and
uniform state of currency in the country, in {spite} of the
National Government; but we do say, that it has established
and maintained such a currency, and can do so again, by the
{aid} of that Government; and we further say, that no duty is
more imperative on that Government, than the duty it owes the
people, of furnishing them a sound and uniform currency.''
Lincoln concluded with an attack on Jackson and Van Buren, saying:
``... there is no parallel between the {``errors''} of the
present and the late administrations, and those of former times,
and that Mr. Van Buren is wholly out of the line of all precedents.''
[Lincoln, {Collected Works.}]
The unique quality of political leadership and morality represented
by Lincoln during this campaign is reflected in the following
excerpt from one of his most famous speeches from the campaign
trail: ``Mr. Lamborn refers to the late elections in the States,
and from their results, confidently predicts that every State
in the Union will vote for Mr. Van Buren at the next Presidential
election. Address {that} argument to {cowards} and to {knaves};
with the {free} and the {brave} it will effect nothing. It {may}
be true, if it {must}, let it. Many free countries have lost
their liberty, and {ours may} lose hers; but if she shall, be
it my proudest plume, not that I was the {last} to desert, but
that I {never} deserted her. I know that the great volcano at
Washington, aroused and directed by the evil spirit that reigns
there, is belching forth a lava of political corruption, in
a current broad and deep, which is sweeping with frightful velocity
over the whole length and breadth of the land, bidding fair
to leave unscathed no green spot or living thing, while on its
bosom are riding like demons on the waves of Hell, the imps
of that evil spirit, and fiendishly taunting all those who dare
resist its destroying course, with the hopelessness of their
efforts; and knowing this, I cannot deny that all may be swept
away. Broken by it, I, too, may be; bow to it I never will.
The {probability} that we may fall in the struggle {ought not}
to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just;
it {shall not} deter me. If I ever feel the soul within me elevate
and expand to those dimensions not wholly unworthy of its Almighty
Architect, it is when I contemplate the cause of my country,
deserted by all the world beside, and I, standing up boldly
and alone and hurling defiance at her victorious oppressors.
Here, without contemplating consequences, before High Heaven,
and in the face of the world, I swear eternal fidelity to the
just cause, as I deem it, of the land of my life, my liberty,
and my love. And who, that thinks with me, will not fearlessly
adopt the oath that I take. Let non faulter [sic], who thinks
he is right, and we may succeed. But, if after all, we shall
fail, be it so. We still have the proud consolation of saying
to our consciences, and to the departed shade of our country's
freedom, that the cause approved of our judgment, and adored
of our hearts, in disaster, in chains, in torture, in death,
we NEVER faultered in defending.'' [Lincoln, {Collected Works.}]
Lincoln's arguments made the rounds of the federal papers in
his state, and became the ``Whig textbook'' of Illinois. He
became editor of {The Old Soldier}, the campaign newspaper of
the Illinois Whigs. The paper emphasized economic questions,
particularly the Bank of the United States versus the Sub-Treasury.
In editorial after editorial, Lincoln argued ``that a new movement
for a national bank is absolutely necessary.''
Harrison won the election overwhelmingly--but lost in Illinois,
a staunchly Jacksonian state. Lincoln ran {last} on the losing
electoral slate. Despite the unpopularity of his stand on the
National Bank, Lincoln never wavered. Though it meant a break
with the national party leadership, Lincoln stood his ground.
As reported by G.S. Boritt, 30 years later, his law partner,
in referring back to the 1840 campaign, saw it as a turning
point in Lincoln's life. Said Billy Herndon, ``I think it grew
and bloomed and developed into beauty, etc., in the year 1840
{exactly}. Mr. Lincoln told me that his ideas of something burst
in him in 1840.''
President Harrison appointed as Treasury Secretary Thomas Ewing
of Ohio, stepfather of the future Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman,
and a coleader of the Whigs with Clay. The program was clear:
a new national bank, high tariffs, and internal improvements.
Harrison was elected President in November of 1840 and assumed
office on March 4, 1841. The very healthy Harrison died one
month later, his death first attributed to acute intestinal
distress and then variously to ``bilious pleurisy'' and pneumonia.
No autopsy was performed on the body. While little is known
of the sudden cause of death of President Harrison, the events
that follow make clear {cui bono.} The economic policy of the
nation was forcibly returned to the British system.
Vice President John Tyler of
Virginia immediately took over the presidency; he was the first
to succeed to the office in this manner. Tyler soon made it
clear that he had no intention of carrying out the program of
the Whigs or the dead President. When Congress passed the long-awaited
bill restoring the Bank of the United States, Tyler vetoed it.
A battle soon raged between Henry Clay and Tyler along the lines
of the American System policy. The entire cabinet, save Secretary
of State Daniel Webster, resigned. The British agent Caleb Cushing,
chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, organized
Congress to sustain the President's veto. The Whigs were unable
to muster the two-thirds majority necessary to override.
In the mid-1840s, Lincoln was active in the Illinois Whig party,
hoping to be the party's congressional candidate. In 1843, as
part of the 1844 presidential campaign, a Whig conclave adopted
his declaration of principles and appointed him to write an
address to the people of the state. Again, his declaration centered
on a high protective tariff, internal improvements, and the
need to restore the National Bank. He attacked direct taxation
and budget-cutting, showing how the tariff was more efficient
in increasing revenue.
The 1844 presidential campaign was between Clay, the Whig candidate
who had led the fight for the American System, and James K.
Polk, the Democratic candidate who was one of the worst free-trade
traitors to ever run for the U.S. presidency. For the first
time, Lincoln himself was not a candidate. While Lincoln remained
totally committed to Clay, he felt that Clay had compromised
his strong commitment to the American System in an attempt to
win the election. Lincoln toured the state again, making the
protective tariff, by the spring of 1844, the most important
issue of the campaign.
This campaign was an all-out battle between British free trade
and the American System. Lincoln charged the British with interference
in the election, accusing them of supporting Democrat Polk,
and flooding the country with money and political tracts against
the protective tariff. Their free trade associations spent @bp100,000
on behalf of Polk. The Liberty Party, a so-called ``anti-slavery''
third party, arguing that Clay was not sufficiently abolitionist,
ran their own candidate, James Birney. Between British funding
for the pro-slavery Polk, and British backing for the ``anti-slavery''
Birney, Clay was defeated.
The election of 1844 left Lincoln dissatisfied with the results--both
Clay's conduct, but also, he felt, his own shortcomings. He
decided to study economics more rigorously and totally master
the tariff question, which he did.
In 1846, Lincoln was nominated for the U.S. House of Representatives
from the 7th Congressional District of Illinois. The Democrats
under Polk were attempting to weaken the tariff and reestablish
the independent Sub-Treasury, so Lincoln ran on a protectionist,
anti-Sub-Treasury platform.
As soon as Polk had come into office, Congress passed two internal
improvement bills--and Polk vetoed them both. In response, the
newly elected Congressman Lincoln, before going to Washington,
organized the 1846 Chicago River and Harbor Convention--the
first national convention of its kind devoted to the American
System of protective tariffs and internal improvements.
Lincoln was one of the few delegates selected to address the
20,000 attendees. And of the 1,016 delegates from Illinois,
it was Lincoln who was elected to be a member of the permanent
organization established there.
In his first address to a national gathering on internal improvements,
Lincoln proposed the adoption of a unified national strategy--including
the creation of a federal agency for collecting statistical
information, which would make possible the selection of the
most essential improvement projects. The problem was that no
amount of talking would pass internal improvement bills over
executive vetoes. That would take defeating the Democrats in
the 1848 election.
Polk did not merely veto internal impovements. He systematically
dismantled the country at the behest of his British backers,
adding greatly to the already devastating damage done by Andrew
Jackson's dismantling of the Bank of the United States, and
by Van Buren's treason. Polk and the Democrats in 1846 passed
the Walker Tariff, dramatically lowering the protective tariff,
from approximately 35 percent average duties under the Clay
Tariff of 1842, to 22.5 percent.
In response, Lincoln wrote up all of his research on the need
for the protective tariff in a work called {Tariff Notes}.
Lincoln's 1847 {Tariff Notes} was virtually identical to the
writings of Henry Carey, starting with his earliest work in
support of a protective tariff, {Essay on the Rate of Wages}
(1835). Lincoln's law partner confirmed that Lincoln assiduously
studied all of Carey's writings.
Polk also passed the {Independent Treasury Act}--which completed
the treason Jackson had begun. {This act prevented the U.S.
Government from regulating the affairs of banks--and stipulated
that the government had to be treated like any other depositor!}
{To be continued.}
--
John Covici
covici@ccs.covici.com
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Other Information
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aqNcheX2Zc
libertits Opposites meet very often, in fact I never saw two ends becoming one as what totalitarian communist regimes were and what a an anarcho capitalist/libertarian state is. The biggest predator rules in the jungle at the end and he just keeps becoming bigger. At the end, power to any human being leads to the same effect. Libertarian fundamentalists have a religious faith in the system and refuse to see the difference of the beauty it sounds in theory and what actually happens in reality. 2 months ago
FoxMulderXFOxx (uploader) @CLeofreedom?! HA!THAT's what you call what you're "speaking out" for?so if you use blatant racism (or threaten forceful resistance) because you dont want the chronically ill, disabled or Working Class (especially Black people/ethnic minorities) to get access to same affordable quality care you get, it's extreme to call you a Hate-monger against the sick/disabled as "lazy weakling welfare parasites" (Nazis said same of sick/disabled & killed them) or wrong to call you racist or terrorist? 3 weeks ago
Annazayla
3 months ago
The industry is harsh on women, it is bias, cut throat and involves alot of pressure. That is why Bey said she didn't want her children or her sister to get involved in the biz because, she knows how it is works in the biz--it's not all that it is cracked up to be. I am certain there are times Bey is sad beyond belief which is why it's good that she always has her family to fall back on for support. One day she will not have all this fame, but she will have her family.
Annazayla
3 months ago
What does breaking barriers have to do with anything? Breaking barriers doesn't mean equality. For instance, Sidney P. was the first African American to win an oscar for Best Actor. Talk about "breaking barriers" right? Well, it would be another 30 years before another black male actor would be honored in that manner- Denzel Washington for "Training Day." The strange part it it was that there were plenty of great perf. by other black male actors but they were overlooked due to racism.
Annazayla
3 months ago
If all it takes is hard work to succeed in this society, my goodness, success would be everywhere, but you and I both know that isn't true. People like you only say that because, you are either naive, or you refuse to face the reality of things.
Annazayla 3 months ago
Annazayla
3 months ago
Wrong....you are so naive...I fell sorry for you because, when you finally do wake up to the truth it will be too late. I can imagine you probably aren't African American, and if you are, it's even sadder that you think this way. Everything isn't about money...Barbra Streisand was one of the biggest stars during the 70's and rich, but when she went to purchase a property in New York, they refused to sell it to her. Why? Because she was Jewish. Go figures.
Annazayla
3 months ago
Here is another example, Michael Jordan wanted to buy a sports team and was willing to pay millions of dollars for it, but the owner not only refused to sell it to him, but he didn't want him owning a percentage of it. Now we all know that Michael Jordan made the Bulls corps. lots of money and was the most successful basket player that ever lived, yet all his millions couldn't get him the sports team. Race matter and money can't buy you everything.
Annazayla
3 months ago
It's ok for black men to be rappers and sports player, but it wouldn't be ok for them to be the CEO of one of the major 500 companies in the world. Do you know that there has only been 14 black CEO's of any major 500 company? Do you know that according to a recent poll that Whites, Asians and Hispanics are less likely to hire an African American? So please save your "competition" speech for dumb and naive because, I am neither. I know first hand and that accounts for something.
libertits Opposites meet very often, in fact I never saw two ends becoming one as what totalitarian communist regimes were and what a an anarcho capitalist/libertarian state is. The biggest predator rules in the jungle at the end and he just keeps becoming bigger. At the end, power to any human being leads to the same effect. Libertarian fundamentalists have a religious faith in the system and refuse to see the difference of the beauty it sounds in theory and what actually happens in reality. 2 months ago
FoxMulderXFOxx (uploader) @CLeofreedom?! HA!THAT's what you call what you're "speaking out" for?so if you use blatant racism (or threaten forceful resistance) because you dont want the chronically ill, disabled or Working Class (especially Black people/ethnic minorities) to get access to same affordable quality care you get, it's extreme to call you a Hate-monger against the sick/disabled as "lazy weakling welfare parasites" (Nazis said same of sick/disabled & killed them) or wrong to call you racist or terrorist? 3 weeks ago
Annazayla
3 months ago
The industry is harsh on women, it is bias, cut throat and involves alot of pressure. That is why Bey said she didn't want her children or her sister to get involved in the biz because, she knows how it is works in the biz--it's not all that it is cracked up to be. I am certain there are times Bey is sad beyond belief which is why it's good that she always has her family to fall back on for support. One day she will not have all this fame, but she will have her family.
Annazayla
3 months ago
What does breaking barriers have to do with anything? Breaking barriers doesn't mean equality. For instance, Sidney P. was the first African American to win an oscar for Best Actor. Talk about "breaking barriers" right? Well, it would be another 30 years before another black male actor would be honored in that manner- Denzel Washington for "Training Day." The strange part it it was that there were plenty of great perf. by other black male actors but they were overlooked due to racism.
Annazayla
3 months ago
If all it takes is hard work to succeed in this society, my goodness, success would be everywhere, but you and I both know that isn't true. People like you only say that because, you are either naive, or you refuse to face the reality of things.
Annazayla 3 months ago
Annazayla
3 months ago
Wrong....you are so naive...I fell sorry for you because, when you finally do wake up to the truth it will be too late. I can imagine you probably aren't African American, and if you are, it's even sadder that you think this way. Everything isn't about money...Barbra Streisand was one of the biggest stars during the 70's and rich, but when she went to purchase a property in New York, they refused to sell it to her. Why? Because she was Jewish. Go figures.
Annazayla
3 months ago
Here is another example, Michael Jordan wanted to buy a sports team and was willing to pay millions of dollars for it, but the owner not only refused to sell it to him, but he didn't want him owning a percentage of it. Now we all know that Michael Jordan made the Bulls corps. lots of money and was the most successful basket player that ever lived, yet all his millions couldn't get him the sports team. Race matter and money can't buy you everything.
Annazayla
3 months ago
It's ok for black men to be rappers and sports player, but it wouldn't be ok for them to be the CEO of one of the major 500 companies in the world. Do you know that there has only been 14 black CEO's of any major 500 company? Do you know that according to a recent poll that Whites, Asians and Hispanics are less likely to hire an African American? So please save your "competition" speech for dumb and naive because, I am neither. I know first hand and that accounts for something.
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