Chapter 6
Lincoln Takes Up the Burden
Certainly, no
president of this Republic was ever beset with so many staggering problems
as President Lincoln. The more we study those perilous years, the more we
wonder at his great wisdom, firmness and boundless patience and charity.
The Ultra-Pro-Slavery
leaders had sworn to prevent the seating of Abraham Lincoln in the
Presidential chair. So certain were they of the success of their plans
that just as Buchanan was leaving the White House, before the arrival of
Mr. Lincoln, he turned and said: "As George Washington was the first
President, so James Buchanan will be the last President of the United
States."
Mr. Lincoln had no
idea of the rottenness and treason, which were there to face him in
Washington. Almost every department in Washington was headed by a traitor
to the Government, for the arch-plotters had been placing their trusted
tools preparatory to the final blow.
The first months of
his administration were spent in investigating these national assassins,
and replacing them with men who were true. This, in itself, was a task
that only the judgment of Lincoln could have accomplished.
Mr. Lincoln had no
idea of the dimensions of the Secession Plot. He was later to find that
his first call for 75,000 volunteers was inadequate and was amazed when
the Governors of three Southern States refused to send their quota.
Another
disillusionment came when he noted that as he increased his calls for
troops, Jefferson Davis did not send out any call. From that on Lincoln
began to realize something of the seriousness of the situation and his
last call was for three years or during the war. Southern leaders
also realized the fact that they were up against the real thing.
When President
Lincoln reached Philadelphia for his first inauguration, there was a plot
discovered and disclosed to General John Hancock at Washington to
assassinate Mr. Lincoln at Baltimore, where he was to have stopped to
address the citizens on his way to the Capitol. The full details had been
planned. An Italian barber well known in Baltimore, a Romanist, was to
have stabbed him while seated in his carriage, when he started from the
depot.
The son of Wm. H.
Seward, who was at that time Senator and afterwards Lincoln's Secretary of
State, was sent post-haste to Philadelphia to warn Mr. Lincoln of his
danger. It was a difficult matter at first to convince him of the
seriousness of it. He flatly refused to go to Washington immediately, as
was suggested by his friends, but promised that after he had raised the
flag on Independence Hall in Philadelphia, and delivered an address to the
members of the Legislature at Harrisburg, he would take an earlier train
to Washington, which he did, accompanied by only one friend, Wade C.
Lammon, one of his law partners, and Wm. H. Pinkerton, head of the
Detective Agency of that name in Chicago. The party took the six o'clock
train out of Philadelphia, quietly without attracting any publicity, and
as Mr. Lincoln was soundly sleeping, the train whizzed through Baltimore,
and got him to Washington early in the morning, where he was taken in
charge by the largest military and Secret Service escort a president ever
had been surrounded with. Thus was the first of Rome's assassination plot
thwarted.
The awakening of the
President and the North came on the morning of April 12, 1861 with the
firing on Fort Sumpter. This opening shot of the rebellion was sent by
General Beauregard, Jesuit leader of the military operations. Beauregard
was a professed Romanist and sprung from a distinguished family of
Jesuits.
The North was wholly
unprepared for war. They seemed not to have been able to realize that
there could ever be a conflict between the citizens of the United States.
This delusion was shot to pieces on April 12th and amidst the greatest
consternation and excitement preparations began in earnest.
That President
Lincoln fully realized it was not a Protestant South with which he was
contending, is clearly evident from his own words on this subject in his
conversation with the Rev. Charles Chiniquy, ex-Catholic priest of
Kankakee, Ill., who called once each year during his administration at the
White House to warn the President of his danger of assassination by these
enemies of Popular Government and their agents, the Jesuits, through their
Leopoldines.
"THE COMMON PEOPLE
HEAR AND SEE THE BIG NOISY WHEELS OF THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY CARS, AND
THEY CALL HIM JEFF DAVIS, LEE, THOMPSON, BEAUREGARD, SEMMES, OR OTHERS.
THEY HONESTLY THINK THAT THEY ARE THE MOTIVE POWER, THE FIRST CAUSE OF OUR
TROUBLES. BUT IT IS A MISTAKE, THE TRUE MOTIVE POWER IS SECRETED BEHIND
THE THICK WALLS OF THE VATICAN—THE COLLEGES AND SCHOOLS OF THE JESUITS;
THE CONVENTS OF THE NUNS, THE CONFESSIONAL BOXES OF ROME.
"THERE IS A FACT
WHICH IS TOO MUCH IGNORED BY THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AND WITH WHICH I AM
ACQUAINTED ONLY SINCE I BECAME PRESIDENT. IT IS, THAT THE BEST AND LEADING
FAMILIES OF THE SOUTH HAVE RECEIVED THEIR EDUCATION IN GREAT PART, IF NOT
ALL, FROM THE JESUITS AND THE NUNS—HENCE THE DEGRADING PRINCIPLE OF
SLAVERY, PRIDE AND CRUELTY, WHICH ARE AS SECOND NATURE AMONG MANY OF THE
PEOPLE."
And continuing Mr.
Lincoln analyzed the Roman psychology, which played its part in his own
murder, when he said:
"HENCE THAT STRANGE
WANT OF FAIR PLAY FOR HUMANITY; THAT IMPLACABLE HATRED AGAINST IDEALS OF
QUALITY AND LIBERTY, AS WE FIND THEM IN THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST—IT IS TRUE
THAT WE BOUGHT FLORIDA, LOUISIANA, SOUTH CAROLINA, NEW MEXICO AND MISSOURI
FROM SPAIN, BUT ROME HAD PUT HER VIEWS OF HER ANTI-SOCIAL AND
ANTI-CHRISTIAN MAXIMS INTO THE VEINS OF THE PEOPLE, BEFORE THEY BECAME
AMERICANS."
Surely, no clearer
conception of the masked enemy with which that great man was contending
was ever glimpsed. While other men studied books, Lincoln STUDIED MEN, and
the above interpretation of the terrible conflict in which he was the
Commander-in-Chief is startling in its accuracy. It is very simple now for
those of us who have the knowledge of an array of facts before us, to see
what Lincoln then saw, but we must remember when he spoke those words, he
was the very storm-center and chief actor in the social upheaval without
the advantage of retrospect. Mr. Lincoln had a prophetic sense almost
uncanny, which alone made him superior to any of his contemporaries. More
than once he told his close friends that he had a strong premonition that
he would not outlast the Rebellion, that his work would be finished with
it.
ROMAN CHURCH ALWAYS
HAS ADVOCATED CHATTEL SLAVERY
Disruption has always
been the first motive of the Jesuits, and black slavery was the rock upon
which they planned to rend this government. There was no other principle,
no ethics involved, never is, so far as Jesuitism goes, except the
fundamental principles of the divine right rule of the popes of Rome.
From the earliest
times the Roman Church advocated human slavery. In the Middle Ages, when
feudal slavery flourished, the church fattened on the exploitation of the
serfs who were bought and sold with the land. These serfs were supposed to
have no souls, and were in precisely the same category as cattle. The
great monasteries and nunneries were among the largest owners of serfs.
For instance, had Joan D' Arc lived four hundred years before her time,
she and her family would have been among the serfs attached to the
monastery of San Ramey. In short, serfdom was the basis of the wealth of
the papacy.
It is true that in
rare cases the church lifted out of serfdom, a boy in whom it recognized
some peculiar native talent or personal trait which might be cultivated
and turned to its own advantage, but the act was simply the removal from
the thralldom of serfdom to that of ecclesiastical slavery for further and
more useful exploitation by more exacting task masters, for the Roman
church has always enslaved the minds of its victims. The Jesuit Oath
exacts the obedience of cadavers. In the Doctrine of the Jesuits
by Gury, translated into the French by that brilliant educator and
statesman, Paul Bert in 1879, we find the position of the church and the
Jesuits on black slavery quoted as follows:
"Slavery does not
constitute a crime before any law, divine or human. What reasons can we
have for undermining the foundations of slavery with the same zeal that
ought always to animate us in overcoming evil? When one thinks of the
state of degradation in which the hordes of Africa live, the slave trade
may be considered as a providential act, and we almost repudiate the
philanthropy which sees in a man but one thing—material liberty."
The above is the
papal virus to which Lincoln referred and with which the youths of the
best families of the Southern Confederacy were inoculated, and which made
the leaders of the ultra-pro-slavery forces an easy prey to the Roman
hierarchy and its priesthood in the great conspiracy or destruction which
Lincoln visioned.
It was the virus
which was let into the veins of Mary E. Surratt and was passed on by her
to her son, the arch-conspirator, John H. Surratt; it was the opiate which
silenced the voice of conscience and kindness of heart of John Wilkes
Booth, and nerved his hand to send the bullet into the great brain of
Abraham Lincoln; it was the deadly drug which made Lewis Payne, the
unfortunate, the happy-go-lucky "Davy" Herold, the shiftless Edward
Spangler, and the rest of the non-Catholic tools, wax, in the hands of the
arch-Leopoldines in this wicked conspiracy to wreck this popular
government.
This Jesuit virus
that Slavery does not constitute a crime before any law, divine or
human, was the deadly drug that set the BLOOD OF THE SLAVE OWNERS ON
FIRE, JUSTIFIED THEIR "CAUSE" distorted their vision, controlled their
ethics and appealed so strongly to their economic interests, and it was
the big urge underlying the whole progress of the treason of secession.
In the A Memoir
of Jefferson Davis, the leader of the Southern Confederacy, published by
his wife after his demise, we find on page 445, this remark: "Mr. Davis's
early education had always inclined in the Roman Catholics, friends who
could not be alienated from the oppressed." In chapter 2nd, that gentleman
is quoted as follows:
"The Kentucky
Catholic school called St. Thomas College, when I was there was connected
with the church. The priests were Dominicans. They held large property;
productive fields, slaves, flour mills, flocks and herds. As an
association they were rich. Individually, they were vowed to poverty and
self-abnegation. They were diligent, in the care, both spiritual and
material, of their parishioners' wants. When I entered the school, a large
majority of the boys belonged to the Roman Catholic church. After a short
time I was the only Protestant boy remaining, and also the smallest boy in
the school. From whatever reason, the priests were particularly kind to
me. Father Wallace, afterwards bishop of Nashville, treated me with the
fondness of a near relative."
It is very obvious
from the above that the kindness shown to Jefferson Davis as a
child clung to him and influenced his whole life. It bore fruit, and his
friendliness to the Catholic church was well repaid by that institution
which always, under such circumstances, rewards its tools.
When Mr. Davis had
been arrested after the close of the Civil War and was to be tried for
treason, it was the distinguished Catholic attorney, Charles O'Connor, of
New York City, who offered his services, which were accepted in Mr.
Davis's defense.
On Sept. 25th, 1863,
Davis addressed the following letter to Pius IXth:
"Richmond, Va.,
Sept. 25, 1863
"Very Venerable
Sovereign Pontiff:
"The letters which
you have written to the clergy of New Orleans and New York have been
committed to me, and I have read with emotion the deep grief therein
expressed for the ruin and devastation caused by the war, which is now
being waged against the States and the people who have selected me as
their president, and your orders to your clergy to exhort the people to
peace and charity. I am deeply sensible of the Christian charity which has
impelled you to this reiterated appeal to the clergy. It is for this
reason I feel it my duty to express personally and in the name of the
Confederate States our gratitude for such sentiments of Christian good
feeling and love, and to assure Your Holiness, that the people threatened
even on their own hearts, with the most cruel oppression and terrible
carnage is desirous as it always has been, to see the end of this impious
war; that we have ever addressed prayers to heaven for that issue which
Your Holiness now desires; that we desire none of our enemies'
possessions, that we merely fight to resist the devastation of our country
and the shedding of our best blood, and to force them to let us live in
peace under the protection of our own institutions and under our laws,
which not only insure to everyone the enjoyment of his temporal rights but
also the free exercise of his religion.
"I pray your Holiness
to accept on the part of myself and the people of the Confederate States
our sincere thanks for the efforts in favor of peace.
"May the Lord
preserve the days of Your Holiness and keep you under His divine
protections.
(Signed) Jefferson
Davis."
It occurs to me that
after perusing the above bit of concentrated treason, any apologist for
this leader of the Rebellion would be out of order.
Here is the Pope's
reply:
"Illustrious and
honorable President,
"Salutation.
"We have just
received with all suitable welcome the persons sent by you to place in our
hands your letter dated the 25th of Sept. last. Not slight was the
pleasure we experienced when we learned from those persons and the letter,
with what feelings of joy and gratitude, illustrious and honorable
President, as soon as you were informed of our letters to our venerable
brother, John, Archbishop of New York and John, Archbishop of New Orleans,
dated the 18th of October of last year, and in which we have with all our
strength exerted and exhorted those venerable brothers that in their
Episcopal piety and solicitude they should endeavor with the most ardent
zeal and in our name, to bring about the end of that fatal Civil War which
has broken out in those countries in order that the American people may
obtain peace and concord and dwell charitably together.
"It is particularly
agreeable to us to see that you, illustrious and honorable President, and
your people, were animated with the same desires of peace and tranquility
which we have in our letters inculcated upon our venerable brothers. May
it please God at the same time to make other people of America and their
rulers reflecting seriously how terrible is civil war and what calamities
it engenders, listen to the inspirations of a calmer spirit and adopt
resolutely the part of peace.
"As for us, we shall
not cease to offer up the most fervent prayers to God Almighty that He may
pour out upon all its people of America the spirit of peace and charity,
and that He will stop the great evils which afflict them. We at the same
time beseech the God of Pity to shed abroad upon you, the light of His
Grace and attach you to us by a perfect friendship.
"Given at Rome, at
St. Peters the 3rd day of December, 1863 of our Pontificate Eighteen.
(Signed) Pius IXth."
The reader will note
the recognition by the Pope of a divided country and also his recognition
of Davis as the President. It was on the publication of this letter that
the large desertions of Roman Catholics from the ranks of the North began.
Mrs. Davis tells us:
"During Mr. Davis'
imprisonment, the Holy father sent a likeness of himself and wrote
underneath it, with his own hand, attested by the seal of the Cardinal
Antonelli, 'Come unto me all ye who are weary and heavy laden. and I will
give you rest."'
The lady further
opines that:
"The dignity and the
man both illustrated the meek and lowly Lord of us all, whose vice-regent
he was."
This remark leaves no
doubt as to precisely where she stood on the question. The writer was
amused to learn that Jeff Davis was a Wet which is also in keeping
with his early education in the Roman Church, and that his explanation
upon an occasion when he was pressed for his attitude upon the subject is
almost identical with that of the late J. Card. Gibbons. He says in part
in his defense of the liquor traffic:
"To destroy
individual liberty, and moral responsibility, (Get that, dear reader)
would be to eradicate one evil by the substitution of another, which it is
submitted would be more fatal than that for which it was offered as a
remedy. The abuse and not the use of stimulants, it must be confessed, is
the evil to be remedied."
Upon the whole,
surely no one can deny that Rome's fatal virus worked in the veins of this
Ultra-Pro-Slavery leader in the late Rebellion, and that Lincoln was right
when he recognized the anti-social and anti-Christian views of the
foe with which he struggled. The fact that Jefferson Davis was not a
professed Roman Catholic did not in the slightest curtail his usefulness
as a Leopoldine.
A sense of justice
and gratitude should compel every loyal American to remember the decisive
and correct attitude of the English government at the psychological moment
in our Civil War. It stands in sharp contrast with the meddlesome,
treacherous letter of the Pope, above quoted to the Honorable and
Illustrious President of the Seceding States. On page 476 the
Memoirs by Mrs. Davis, quotes in full the ultimatum of England which
was received by Davis at Richmond through the British Consul which says in
part:
"After consulting
with the law officers of the Crown, Her Majesty's government have come to
the decision that the agents of the authorities of the so-called
Confederate States have been engaged in building vessels which would be at
least partially equipped for war purposes on leaving the ports of this
country; that these war vessels would undoubtedly be used against the
United States, a country with which this government is at peace: that this
would be a violation of the neutrality laws of the realm; and that the
Government of the United States would have just grounds for serious
complaint against her Majesty's Government, should they permit such an
infraction of the friendly relations subsisting between the two countries.
No matter what might be the difficulty of proving in a court of law that
the parties procuring the building of these vessels are agents of the
so-called Confederate States, it is universally understood throughout the
world that they are so, and Her Majesty's Government are satisfied that
Mr. Davis would not deny that they are so. Under these circumstances, Her
Majesty's Government protests and remonstrates against any further efforts
being made on the part of the so-called Confederate States, or the
authorities or agents thereof to build or to cause to be built, to
purchase or to cause to be purchased, any such vessels as those styled as
Rams, or any other vessels to be used for war purposes against the
United States, or against any country with which the United Kingdom is at
peace or on terms of amity; and Her Majesty's Government further protests
against all acts of violation of the neutrality laws of the realms.
"I have the honor to
be your Lordship's obedient servant,
(Signed) Russell"
Those are the words
with the bark on. No recognition of Your Illustrious and
Honorable President. Only recognition of a UNITED STATES—preservation
of the Union—for which Abraham Lincoln was contending and gave his
precious life.
The wobbly attitude
of the past administrations in Washington on the dangerous interference of
the Sinn Fein element in this country during the present unpleasant
attempt at disruption in the British Empire on the so-called Irish
Question which is not Irish at all, but a Roman question, makes one
ashamed and humiliated at the hemming and hawing of the politicians in
high office at Washington.
On July 26, 1862 in a
letter to Reverdy Johnson, who by the way was the attorney who afterwards
gave his distinguished services to Mrs. Mary E. Surratt, Mr. Lincoln said:
"I am a patient man,
always willing to forgive on the Christian terms of repentance, and also
to give ample time for repentance. Still, I must save the government if
possible. What I cannot do, of course I will not do; but it may as well be
understood, once for all, that I shall not surrender this game leaving any
available card unplayed."
This was the same
expression of sentiment which had caused the death of William Henry
Harrison, the ninth President and Zachary Taylor, the twelfth President,
the preservation of the UNION and the fact that Lincoln did it, was the
grounds for his physical death, by these wreckers.
Nor did the great
Lincoln stop pouring out his patriotic soul all during these trying four
years. On August 15, 1863, he gave his opinion upon the Draft as follows:
"Shall we shrink from
the necessary means to maintain our free government, which our
grandfathers employed to establish, and our own fathers have already
employed once to maintain it? Are we degenerate? Has the manhood of our
race run out?" (Complete Works, Nicolay & Hay. Vol. 11, P. 391.)
The President spent
the first months of his administration feeling his way, so to speak.
Delving into the conditions in the various departments, finding traitors
and carefully replacing them by those whom he knew to be true. The lesson
he was learning would have staggered a man of less courage than
Lincoln—the steadfast, unyielding patriot, when any principle of right was
in the balance.
It was the sifting
time with Lincoln. In his letter to Corning, June 1863 he writes:
"The man who stands
by and says nothing when the peril of his country's government is
discussed, cannot be misunderstood. If not hindered, he is sure to help
the enemy; much more, if he talks ambiguously—talks for his country 'with
buts and ifs and ands."' (Barrett, p. 632.)
In addressing the
members of the general assembly Presbyterian Church, President Lincoln
said:
"As a pilot, I have
used my best exertions to keep afloat our ship of state; and shall be glad
to resign my trust at the appointed time to another pilot more skillful
and successful than I may prove. In every case and at all hazards the
government must be perpetuated." (Complete Works, Vol. 2. Page
342.)
Thus almost daily was
Lincoln telling of his American creed, adding fuel to the fires of hatred
which were burning in the wicked hearts of his country's deadly enemies.
Spurred on like a lot of demons, they rounded up their hell hounds in and
about Washington for the final perfidious act.
It finally became
manifest to President Lincoln that the presence of the foreign troops in
Mexico was a menace to the safety of this country, and through our
American Consul at Paris, this government served notice on Napoleon, that
Jesuit tool of the Pope, that his troops must be removed from Mexico
within the time indicated by this country.
That there could be
no misunderstanding concerning the attitude of the Lincoln administration
toward the Republic of Mexico, was made plainly evident by the note
sent through Secretary of State Seward to our Consul at Paris to be
delivered to Napoleon IIIrd which reads:
"The United States
government does not desire to suppress the fact that their sympathies are
with Mexico, that is to say with the Republic of Mexico nor does United
States government, in any sense, for any purpose, disapprove of the
Republican government, now in force in Mexico, or distrust the
administration. Neither was there any disposition apparently to deny the
Liberals of Mexico financial assistance."
When President
Lincoln submitted to the Senate a Treaty granting a loan of $11,000,000 to
the Republic of Mexico, although he made no recommendation upon the
subject, it was a sufficient hint which expressed his sympathy.
The demand that the
French troops be removed from Mexico was complied with to the letter,
owing to complications in the situation in which France at the time was
involved in Europe she feared war with the United States.
As can be imagined,
this was a terrible blow to the CONSPIRATORS in Europe, Canada and Mexico,
not to speak of their tools in this country. It served to practically
break the morale of the Confederate army, and hastened the end of the war
with a Victory for the right.
In the meantime
events were shaping up in Mexico in favor of the new Republic.
The Empress Carlotte,
within a few months after their arrival in Mexico City, was sent to Rome
by Maximillian to explain in person that the strength of Popular
Government there had been underestimated; that it was impossible to
restore the church property and the rights of the clergy. The important
part of her mission, however, was to ask for more troops.
Her reception at the
Vatican was simply withering; the Pope was so chagrined and angry
at the failure of his designs and so severe in his reproach that the
sensitive princess was carried out bodily in an unconscious state, upon
which she recovered a mental wreck. She was incarcerated in the Castle of
Bouchet near Brussels, Belgium, where she was placed under constant
surveillance, and was unaware that on June 19th, 1867, Maximillian, her
husband, was shot at sunrise at Queretaro, Mexico, by the Revolutionists.
This is the tragic termination of what has always been alluded to as one
of the greatest love matches of the royalty of Europe.
A victory for the
North was not indicated until the very last days of the War. The
Leopoldines left no stone untumed to defeat Lincoln's renomination. They
fully realized that if they did not, it meant their doom. When the news of
his re-election was flashed over the wires, they did not give up—far from
it. They redoubled their efforts. They saw more clearly than ever before
that Abraham Lincoln was their Nemesis. They knew only too well that he
would be the stumbling block to their future plans, for they felt that in
Lincoln they would always encounter a powerful champion for the
preservation of the Union and all its institutions. They feared with a
deadly fear the influence of his able pen and voice. They knew that to
permit this calm, thorough, clear-visioned man who had such a complete
estimate of their perfidious designs to serve at the helm during the
RECONSTRUCTION PERIOD would mean their ultimate rout in our political
affairs.
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