Creature From Jekyll Island by G. Edward

Izola Forrester was the granddaughter of John Wilkes Booth. In her book entitled This One Mad Act, she tells of discovering the 1. Roscoe, p. vii.

394

THE CREATURE FROM JEKYLL ISLAND

secret records of the Knights of the Golden Circle which had been carefully wrapped and placed in a government vault many decades ago and designated as classified documents by Secretary Stanton.

Since the assassination of Lincoln, no one had ever been allowed to examine that package. Because of her lineage to Booth and because of her credentials as a professional writer, she was eventually permitted to become the first person in all those years to examine its contents. Forrester recounts the experience:

It was five years before I was able to examine the contents of the mysterious old package hidden away in the safe of the room which contained the relics and exhibits used in the Conspiracy Trial.... ]

would never have seen them, had I not knelt on the floor of the cell five years ago and seen into the back of the old safe where the package lay.

It is all part of the odd mystery thrown about the case by the officials of the war period—the concealment of these documents and articles, and the hiding away of the two flakes of bone with the bullet and pistol. W h a t mind ever grouped together such apparently incongruous and macabre exhibits?...

Here at last was a link with my grandfather. I knew that he had been a member of the secret order founded by Bickley, the Knights of the Golden Circle. I have an old photograph of him taken in a group of the brotherhood, in full uniform, one that Harry's daughter had discovered for me in our grandmother's Bible. I knew that the newspapers, directly following the assassination, had denounced the order as having instigated the killing of Lincoln, and had proclaimed Booth to have been its member and tool. And I was reminded again of those words I had heard from my grandmother's lips, that her husband had been 'the tool of other men.'1

An interesting comment. One is compelled to wonder: The tool of what other men? Was Forrester's grandmother referring to the leaders of the Knights of the Golden Circle? To agents of European financiers? Or was it to conspirators within Lincoln's own Party?

We shall probably never know with certainty the extent to which any of these groups may have been involved in Lincoln's assassination, but we do know that there were powerful forces within the federal government, centered around Secretary of War Stanton, which actively concealed evidence and hastily terminated the investigation. Someone was protected.

1. Izola Forrester, This One Mad Act (Boston: Hale, Cushman & Flint, 1937), p. 355

I

GREENBACKS AND OTHER CRIMES

SUMMARY

It is time now to leave this tragic episode and move along. So let us summarize. America's bloodiest and most devastating war was fought, not over the issue of freedom versus slavery, but because of clashing economic interests. At the heart of this conflict were questions of legalized plunder, banking monopolies, and even European territorial expansion into Latin America. The boot print of the Rothschild formula is unmistakable across the graves of American soldiers on both sides.

In the North, neither greenbacks, taxes, nor war bonds were enough to finance the war. So a national banking system was created to convert government bonds into fiat money, and the people lost over half of their monetary assets to the hidden tax of inflation. In the South, printing presses accomplished the same effect, and the monetary loss was total.

The issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation by Lincoln and the naval assistance offered by Tsar Alexander, II, were largely responsible for keeping England and France from intervening in the war on the side of the Confederacy. Lincoln was assassinated by a member of the Knights of the Golden Circle, a secret society with rumored ties to American politicians and British financiers.

Tsar Alexander was assassinated a few years later by a member of the People's Will, a Nihilist secret society in Russia with rumored ties to financiers in New York City, specifically, Jacob Schiff and the firm of Kuhn, Loeb & Company.

As for the Creature of central banking, there had been some victories and some defeats. The greenbacks had for a while deprived the bankers of their override on a small portion of government debt, but the National Banking Act quickly put a stop to that. Furthermore, by using government bonds as backing for the money supply, it locked the nation into perpetual debt. The foundation was firmly in place, but the ultimate structure still needed to be erected. The monetary system was yet to be concentrated into one central-bank mechanism, and the control was yet to be taken away from the politicians and placed into the hands of the bankers themselves.

It was time for the Creature to visit Congress.

President Andrew Jackson put

his political career on the line in

1832 by vetoing renewal of the

charter for the Second Bank of

the United States. He called