President Abraham Lincoln and the bankers

The bankers went to work to start the Civil War. Otto von Bismark, the Chancellor of Germany, who united the German states had this to say:

"The division of the United States into federations of equal force was decided long before the Civil War by the high financial powers of Europe. These bankers were afraid that the United States if they remained as one block would attain economic and financial independence which would upset their financial domination over the world."

When Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865, questions were raised as to who was really responsible for his assassination. In other words was Booth simply a tool in a much larger conspiracy?

Why was Abraham Lincoln assassinated?

There have been many theories. British bankers were against his protectionist policies. Some people in Britain believed that British Free Trade, Industrial Monopoly and human slavery travelled together. Lincoln's policies after the Civil War would have destroyed Jewish commodity speculations.

After the war Lincoln planned a mild reconstruction policy which would enable a resumption of agricultural production. The bankers however were betting the other way on high prices plus a tough reconstruction policy towards the south.

Lincoln was seen as a threat to the established order of things.

Undoubtedly his greatest trangression stemmed from his reaction to the need for money to pay for the war in 186l. When he approached the Secretary of the Treasury, Solomon P. Chase, he was offered loans at 24 to 36 per cent interest, which Lincoln refused. He called on his friend, Colonel Dick Taylor, to help him figure out how to finance the war. Dick replied: "Get Congress to pass a Bill authorising the printing of full legal tender Treasury Notes. Pay your soldiers with them and go ahead and win your war."

In 1862 and 1863 he printed 400,000,000 dollars in interest free "Greenbacks". An editorial in the London Times revealed the bankers' attitude:

"If this mischievous financial policy which had its origin in North America shall become a fixture that government would furnish its own money without cost. It would pay off debts and be without debt, it would have all the money necessary to carry on its commerce. It would become prosperous without precedent in the history of the world. That country must be destroyed or it will destroy."

Shortly before he was assassinated, Lincoln made the following statement :

"The Money Power preys upon the nation in times of peace and conspires against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy."

On Lincoln's death Otto von Bismark commented:

"The death of Lincoln was a disaster for Christendom. There was no man in the United States great enough to wear his boots. I fear that foreign bankers with their craftiness and tortuous tricks will entirely control the exuberant riches of America and use it systematically to corrupt modern civilisation. They will not hesitate to plunge the whole of Christendom into wars and chaos in order that the earth should become their inheritance."

After Lincoln's assassination Congress revoked the "Greenback" law and enacted in its place the National Banking Act. The national banks were to be privately owned and the national bank notes they issued were to be interest bearing. The act also provided that the "Greenbacks" should be retired from circulation as soon as they came back to the Treasury in payment of taxes.

In 1972 the United States Treasury Department was asked to compute the amount of interest that would have been paid if that $400,000,000 had been borrowed at interest instead of being issued by Abraham Lincoln. Their calculations showed that the figure of 4 billion dollars in interest was saved by the government because Lincoln had created his own money.

There were changes in the money and banking laws over the next fifty years and with the passing of the Federal Reserve Act the bankers had achieved their ultimate goal for now the United States operated under a central bank which was privately owned. They now had the power to run the country by controlling the creation of the money and were free to charge the interest they so desired.