Counter-Currents
Was the Confederacy a Tool of International Finance? Part 1
Kerry Bolton2,237 words
Part 1 of 3
Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, Stone Mountain, Georgia
“The Secession-War arose on the issue of whether the Southern states, comprising a unit based on an aristocratic-traditional life-feeling, with an economic basis of muscle-energy, could secede from the union, which had been captured by the Yankee element. The Yankee territory was organized on a financial-industrial basis, with an economic basis of machine-energy . . .
“. . . The anti-financial heroic attitude of the South gave it an immense advantage in the field overt the Yankee armies, who were inoculated with a war propaganda of jealousy of the superior life in the South. The war was a contest — not last in Western history — between quality and quantity. . . .
“This war had many lessons for Europe. . . . It showed the enormous military potentiality in America, it showed the Yankee character, which was thenceforth to be the American spirit, it showed the enormous will-to-power of the New York plutocracy — it showed, in short, that a base for a world-power had been laid here.” — Francis Parker Yockey, Imperium.[1]
There is a dichotomy within the Right, and particularly the American Right, regarding the Confederate Sates of America (CSA). When much of the Right was defined by the Ku Klux Klan, segregation, and states’ rights there was a natural tendency to defend the Southern heritage in the name of white supremacy or race purity. There is, of course, still a significant element of opinion within the Right that glorifies the Confederacy, and even outside America there are many who honor the “Stars and Bars” as a flag of “white rebellion” worldwide.
There are however other significant factions within the Right who see the Confederacy as a tool of international finance, and in particular of the Rothschilds, and consider Lincoln as the heroic fighter against plutocracy.
This essay reconsiders the Confederacy with a focus on the CSA’s methods of finance, and contends that the CSA was not only not in the thrall of international finance, but that its banking system was designed to break free of plutocracy in the process of seeking to defend its unique and European traditional way of life.
Rothschild Conspiracy?
An alleged quote from Otto von Bismarck is often cited by conspiracy theorists in regard to the American Civil War having been instigated by Rothschild interests, which supposedly controlled the CSA. In this regard, Dr. Henry Makow[2], for example, refers to passages from a book published in 1926[3] by Czarist émigré Count Cherep-Spiridovitch:
Cherep-Spiridovitch cites an interview with the German chancellor Otto von Bismarck in 1876. Bismarck explained that the Rothschilds who controlled Europe were afraid the United States would become independent of them if it remained one nation.
“They foresaw tremendous booty if they could substitute two feeble democracies indebted to the Jewish financiers for the vigorous republic confident and self providing. Therefore they started their emissaries in order to exploit the question of slavery and thus to dig an abyss between the two parts of the republic.”
Dr. Makow continues:
The Illuminati used the Masonic “Knights of the Golden Circle” formed in 1854 by George W. L. Bickley, to spread racial tension by making slavery an issue. Members included Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth, Confederate President Jefferson Davis, and his adviser Judah P. Benjamin, the Confederate Secretary of War, a Rothschild agent.
The plan was to divide the United Sates between England, controlled by Lionel Rothschild, and France, controlled by James Rothschild. France was to take over the whole South while Canada annexed the defeated North. In 1863 France and Spain invaded Mexico with 30,000 troops. The embattled Confederate States actually offered Louisiana and Texas to France in exchange for assistance.
Britain and France were ready to snuff out the young republic but were deterred by Russia, the only European power not in the Rothschild’s thrall. Czar Alexander II sent his fleets to New York and San Francisco and declared that an attack on Lincoln would be an attack on Russia.
Meanwhile Lincoln created “greenback” dollars to finance the war and escape indebtedness to the foreign financiers. “They understood at once that the United States would escape their grip,” Bismarck said. “The death of Lincoln was resolved upon. Nothing is easier than to find a fanatic to strike.”
This passage from Dr Makow succinctly describes the position of many conspiracy theorists and others on the Right in regard to the Confederacy and the American War of Secession. These references to Bismarck should be considered questionable, like the “Hazard Circular,” which is cited just as often by conspiracy theorists but never seems to have a specific reference beyond the statement that it was carried in the London Times in 1865.[4]
Judah P. Benjamin, 1811–1884
Judah P. Benjamin, the Anti-Semites’ Bugbear
The CSA’s alleged subservience to Rothschild interests centers around Judah P. Benjamin, the Confederate Secretary of State who is generally termed by friend and foe alike as the “brains of the Confederacy.”[5] That he was Jewish places him beyond the pale of redemption, or at least makes him highly suspect, for many Rightists. However, such knee-jerk anti-Semitism is not helpful in arriving at an objective, accurate opinion about the true position of the South in relation to international finance.
There seems little reason to doubt Benjamin’s loyalty to the Confederacy, which should not be read as loyalty to a Rothschild-controlled South.
Benjamin became a Senator in 1853 and was noted for his eloquent and sharp-witted defense of Southern interests, becoming a friend of Jefferson Davis that year. Benjamin resigned his Senate seat in 1861 when Louisiana seceded. That year he was appointed by Davis to be the first Attorney General of the Confederacy because of his noted abilities as a lawyer and an orator, and soon after he became Secretary of War and then Secretary of State of the CSA in 1862. With the defeat of the Confederacy, Benjamin fled to Britain but continued to provide generous financial help to friends in the South, particularly the Davis family, during the brutal Reconstruction era.
Often Benjamin is called not only a “Rothschild agent,” but also a “Rothschild relative.” These claims are made as stand-alone allegations and are not accompanied by documentation. Benjamin’s association with Rothschild agencies is said to have started early in his career. The Lyndon LaRouche sponsored “Modern History Project,” for example, states:
Judah P Benjamin (1811–84) of the law firm of Slidell, Benjamin and Conrad in Louisiana was a Rothschild agent who became Secretary of State for the Confederacy in 1862. His law partner John Slidell (August Belmont’s[6] wife’s uncle) was the Confederate envoy to France. Slidell’s daughter was married to Baron Frederick d’Erlanger in Frankfurt who was related to the Rothschilds and acted on their behalf. Slidell was the representative of the South who borrowed money from the d’Erlangers to finance the Confederacy.[7]
The conspiracy theorist Commander William Guy Carr, although quite an interesting writer in general, nonetheless writes without evidence or references that, “Judah P. Benjamin, a Rothschild relative, was appointed as their professional strategist in America.”[8] There does not appear to be any evidence of, or reason for believing, that Benjamin was a “relative of the Rothschilds.”
Benjamin was raised in an Orthodox family, but his parents rebelled against Orthodoxy and were early members of the Reform movement of Judaism.[9] His mother Rebecca received the ire of Orthodox Jews for her trading on Saturday.[10] Into adulthood Judah attended synagogue on few occasions, although he remained a firm believer in immortality and a personal Divinity.[11] According to his first biographer, Pierce Butler, Benjamin “ceased to hold any active communion with Judaism.”[12] He married a Catholic.[13] Naturally, many would object that like the marranos in Spain, he was attempting to beguile the Southerners. However, Benjamin made no efforts to conceal his Jewish identity, such as by changing his obviously Jewish name — as was the case with the Rothschilds’ Northern agent August Belmont.[14].
What is of particular interest is that in 1863, upon being asked for ideas on a national Seal for the CSA, Benjamin suggested “a cavalier” based on the equestrian statue of Washington in Capitol Square at Richmond. He stated:
It would do just honor to our people. The cavalier or knight is typical of chivalry, bravery, generosity, humanity, and other knightly virtues. Cavalier is synonymous with gentleman in nearly all of the modern languages . . . the word is eminently suggestive of the origin of Southern society as used in contradistinction to Puritan. The Southerners remain what their ancestors were, gentlemen.[15]
It is notable that Benjamin emphasized a dichotomy between the North which he identified with Puritanism, and the South, which he identified with the Cavalier — an allusion to the English Civil War where Cromwell’s Puritan victory meant the defeat of the traditional European moral and cultural order of England and the epochal victory of Money. Benjamin hence saw the conflict as one of opposing ethics and cultures and fought as an enemy of those values which are generally regarded as being of “Jewish” inspiration.[16]
What can be summarized in regard to Judah P. Benjamin is that:
1. He was not an especially ethnocentric Jew. In fact, both he and his parents were in rebellion against Orthodox Judaism, and he lived before the rise of political Zionism.
2. There is no reason to be he was a “Rothschild relative.” He was born in humble circumstances in the West Indies.
3. There is no evidence to believe he was a “Rothschild agent.”
4. The only personal links between Benjamin and banking interests were tenuously connected through law partner and future Confederate representative Slidell, whose mission in London for the Confederacy failed.
5. Of particular significance, Benjamin recognized the dichotomy between the Puritan ethos and the chivalric-cavalier, identifying the South with the ethos of Old Europe before the Puritan revolts that resulted in the ascendancy of Money.
Failed Diplomacy
If the British policy of the period was Rothschild policy, then Rothschild policy was not pro-Confederacy. Despite Benjamin’s efforts, diplomatic recognition by Britain was never obtained, and as early as 1863 Benjamin closed the CSA mission to England and evicted the remaining British consular agents from the South.[17] This latter expulsion was at the direct instigation of Benjamin, who called a Cabinet meeting while Davis was en route to Tennessee, an action which nonetheless brought prompt agreement from Davis.[18]
Efforts to secure French recognition were also unsuccessful, again in contradiction to the oft-repeated claim that France and England, under the thrall of the Rothschild dynasty, were only deterred from military intervention in favor of the Confederacy because of a threat from the Czar to enter the conflict in support of Lincoln, one primary conspiratorial theory being that the Czar and Lincoln stood together in defiance of the Rothschilds and their Confederate underlings.[19]
Indeed, in a breach of supposed British neutrality, by 1863 around 75,000 Irishmen had volunteered to fight with the North, as did Germans and other foreign recruits.[20] Hence, if it is generally concurred that the Rothschild banking dynasty had a decisive influence over Britain and other European states, what is to be made of the willingness of the rulers of those states to allow their citizens to volunteer for the Union army and for Benjamin having personally instigated an end to attempts to foster diplomatic relations with Britain?
In summary, with regard to the Confederate relationship with the Money-dominated European powers:
1. Neither Britain nor Continental Europe extended diplomatic recognition to the CSA, despite the vigorous efforts of Confederate emissaries.
2. Both Britain and the German states allowed their nationals to volunteer for the Union army, in breach of neutrality.
3. The Confederacy, at the direct instigation of Benjamin, broke off diplomatic efforts with Britain as early as 1863.
Notes
1. Francis Parker Yockey, Imperium (California: Noontide Press, 1962), 460–61.
2. Dr. Henry Makow, “Why the Bankers love the Left,” December 30, 2007. http://www.rense.com/general79/amake.htm
3. Maj. Gen. Count Cherep-Spiridovitch, The Secret World Government (New York: the Anti-Bolshevist Publishing Association, 1926), 180.
4. The “Hazard Circular” is said to have been a document issued in 1862 among bankers and their political dupes in regard to the situation in America. That it has been referenced by reliable researchers such as Gertrude Coogan (Money Creators [Chicago, 1935], 212) makes it no more reliable on that account, but is yet another example of how a myth can take on a life of its own. If however any reader can provide the exact date and page number of the Times in which the Hazard Circular is said to have been published, it would be a valuable document.
5. “The Brains of the Confederacy,” Jewish-American History Foundation, http://www.jewish-history.com/civilwar/judahpb.html
6. August Belmont was Rothschild emissary for the Northern states.
7. The Modern History Project, Chapter 2.1 “The Bank of the US.” http://www.modernhistoryproject.org/mhp/ArticleDisplay.php?Article=FinalWarn02-1
The claim that Slidell arranged the Erlanger loan is incorrect and will be dealt with below.
8. William Guy Carr, Pawns in the Game (California: Angriff Press, n.d.), 53.
9. Robert Douthat Meade and William C. Davis, Judah P. Benjamin: Confederate Statesman (Louisiana State University Press, 2001), 17.
10. Meade and Davis, 18.
11. Meade and Davis, 285.
12. Robert N. Rosen, The Jewish Confederates (South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 2000), 59.
13. Ibid., 13.
14. August Belmont was born August Shoenberg in Rhenish Prussia. He joined the Rothschild bank at Frankfurt am Main at the age of 14, and opened an office in Wall Street, New York in 1837. “August Belmont,” Britannica Online Encyclopaedia, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/60004/August-Belmont
15. Meade and Davis, 270.
16. See: Werner Sombart, The Jews and Modern Capitalism (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1982). Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (London, Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1930). http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/WEBER/toc.html
17. Rosen, 294.
18. Ibid.
19. Cherep-Spiridovich, 171–72.
20. Meade and Davis, 296.
7 comments
Interesting article but wasn’t the Confederacy ruled by simply another plutocracy or oligarchy whose interests were divorced from the majority white population of their states? After all in whose interests was it to import a few million blacks? What would the outcome have been for White southerners if the Confederacy had actually won? It seems likely to me that it would have ended up looking a lot like Haiti or South Africa does today as the black numbers surged and the White European immigration to America would have been exclusively to the North. The northern states may actually have remained white for a lot longer than presently, but the Whites of the South would have been in deep trouble.
The really vital lesson for Whites is not avoiding attractive loan offers from the Rothschilds, however wise that might be, but looking out for our own people and solving our own problems relying only on ourselves to do so.
Chubby- Interesting article but wasn’t the Confederacy ruled by simply another plutocracy or oligarchy whose interests were divorced from the majority white population of their states?
No, the lower Whites were very much interested in eventually owning slaves, because that was the requirement for obtaining more land. A free White man can only work so much land, so the labor factor was his primary limitation.
Also, free low Whites and the rich high Whites had a common interest and bond: neither could afford to have free blacks roaming around and unguarded, uncontrolled, unrestrained.
Both low and high Whites now have the problems that slavery tried to prevent: negrodation of White communities and institutions.
Every time a White daughter of a yankee is raped, either voluntarily or involuntarily, by a black in the north, down here in Dixie we say, “Well, you sowed the wind, now you are reaping the whirlwind. Shame how that worked out for you.” Then we see the huge yankee monuments on Southern battlefields and wonder if those yank soldiers would have fought so hard against us if they knew the fate of their mongrelized bloodlines.
Kerry Bolton,
Are you familiar with John Remington Graham’s Blood Money: The Civil War and the Federal Reserve (Gretna, La.: Pelican Publishing, 2006)? This slim book, which I have not read myself, presents the view that the Civil War was brought about by international banking houses and Northern capitalists. The reference to the “Federal Reserve” in the subtitle may sound bizarre–the Federal Reserve would not be established until 1913–but efforts to establish a centralized banking system in the U.S. had apparently been made long before then.
Graham’s premises happen to accord with my own, as will be seen from the further two parts of my article. He states that the issue of slavery was a facade for the purposes of agitation. My view is that the contrived issues of Apartheid and The Holocaust — like Slavery in regard to the War of Secession — are used to obfuscate financial and economic factors. Who knows for e.g. about Germany’s banking system amidst the deluge of material on the Holocaust; or about how the Afrikaners were historically in opposition to the banking interests? Both situations are analogous to the subject of the War of Secession.
Up until a few months ago, I assumed the usual conspiratorial theory about the Confederacy being a tool of the Rothschilds. Scholarship must be based upon the ability to rectify one’s opinions when new evidence disproves them (‘perpetual revisionism’).
In regard to a re-evaulation of the South, I suggest (albeit from the distance of New Zealand) that the Southern ethos — and there seems more to it than slavery and ‘nigras’ — could provide one of the primary foundations for the creation of an American folk culture, in contradistinction to whatever it is that the USA is crapping over the world at the moment.
Greetings,
I must say that your essay is a remarkable good and concise effort to point people toward good information and solid facts. As a Southern, I at one time suspected the honourable J. P. Benjamin because of his Jewish connections. But after many years of study I no longer doubt his loyalty to the South and her institutions. Thank you for your outstanding as well as important effort here.
Regards,
Louis Beam
See also these two essays for your enjoyment:
http://louisbeam.com/lasttrench.htm
http://louisbeam.com/samdavis.htm
Henry Makow is hardly on the “right” if right is anti-NWO, he is, as his “Defence of Lincoln” shows, very much on the left, he –like many others– just doesn’t like the kind of big government and world government he got.
Additional information/source to your article:—
The “Hazard Circular” is very well researched and documented here (published in 1894)
http://www.yamaguchy.com/library/clark/shylock_12.html
Mr. Clark, very much un-like greenbackers and conspiracists, looked into the thing
What is not sourced by anyone, ever is that alleged London Times editorial –“If this mischievous financial policy”–
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As for the British conspiracy against the United States:
There is no need to rely on some alleged “quote” from Bismarck 40 years after his death. In any case, Mr. Bismarck did what he could for the money power when he de-monetized silver in Germany
General John Alexander “Black Jack” Logan (1826-1886)
The Great Conspiracy,
Published in 1886
Chapter 3, footnote:–
“ In the London Index, a journal established there by Jefferson Davis’s agents to support the cause of the rebellious States, a communication appeared during the early part of the war, Dec. 4, 1861, supposed to have been written by Mr. Mason, of Virginia, in which he said: “To tell the Norths, the Butes, the Wedderburns of the present day, that previous to the year 1839 the sovereign States of the South had unalterably resolved on the specific ground of the violation of the Federal Constitution by the tariff of spoliation which the New England States had imposed upon them—to secede from the Union; to tell them that in that year the leader of the South, Calhoun, urged an English gentleman, to whom he had fully explained the position of the South, and the intolerable tyranny which the North inflicted upon it, to be the bearer of credentials from the chief persons of the South, in order to invite the attention of the British Government to the coming event; that on his death-bed (Washington, March 31, 1850), he called around him his political friends—one of whom is now in England—warned them that in no event could the Union survive the Presidential election of 1860, though it might possibly break up before that urged them to be prepared; leaving with his dying words the sacred cause of Southern secession a solemn legacy in their hands—to have told this to the Norths and Dartmouths of the present day, with more and even stronger evidence of the coming events of November, 1860, would have been like speaking to the stones of the street. In November, 1860, they were thoroughly ignorant of all the momentous antecedents of secession—of their nature, their character, their bearing, import, and consequences.”
In the same correspondence the distinguished Rebel emissary substantially let out the fact that Calhoun was indirectly, through himself (Mason), in secret communication with the British Government as far back as 1841, with a view to securing its powerful aid in his aforesaid unalterable resolve to Secede from the Union; and then Mr. Mason pleads—but pleads in vain—for the armed intervention of England at this later day. Said he:
“In the year 1841 the late Sir William Napier sent in two plans for subduing the Union, to the War Office, in the first of which the South was to be treated as an enemy, in the second as a friend and ally. I was much consulted by him as to the second plan and was referred to by name in it, as he showed by the acknowledgment of this in Lord Fitzroy Somerset’s letter of reply. This plan fully provided for the contingency of an invasion of Canada, and its application would, in eighteen or twenty months, have reduced the North to a much more impotent condition than it exhibits at present. At this very moment the most difficult portion of that plan has been perfectly accomplished by the South itself; and the North, in accordance with Sir William Napier’s expectations, now lies helpless before England, and at our absolute mercy. Nor is there any doubt of this, and if Lord Palmerston is not aware of it Mr. Seward certainly is. We have nothing remaining to do but to stretch out our arm in the way Sir William Napier proposed, and the Northern power—power as we ignorantly call it—must come to an end. Sir William knew and well estimated the elements of which that quasi power consisted; and he knew how to apply the substantive power of England to dissolve it. In the best interest of humanity, I venture to say that it is the duty of England to apply this power without further delay—its duty to itself, to its starving operatives, to France, to Europe, and to humanity. And in the discharge of this great duty to the world at large there will not even be the dignity of sacrifice or danger.”
________________
As for Lincoln’s being a fearless opponent of bankers, he was no such thing, not even close. Please read:–
http://www.yamaguchy.com/forum/index.php?topic=2.0
http://www.yamaguchy.com/forum/index.php?topic=5.0
The American Civil War seems like the perfect example of what Evola termed the Demetrian-lunar and Olympic-solar races. Many in the South were keen to point out that the Yankees were largely descended from Puritans (who were marked by a religious passivity, and an utter fanaticism for equality, both of which are characteristics of the Lunar race) while consciously identifying themselves with the Cavalier.
Unfortunately, Evola never wrote on the Confederacy, so we can’t know what his thoughts on the war were. It would have been interesting to read them.
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