Lincoln and his (dear colonel) Dick invented greenbacks -- like Colonel Saunders invented fried chicken
---a few facts to show that all those conspiracists who sell books and other products on the mythological Lincoln and 'his' Greenbacks are liars
My dear Colonel Dick:
I have long determined to make public the origin of the greenback and tell the world that it was Dick Taylor's creation. You had always been friendly to me, and when troublous times fell on us, and my shoulders, though broad and willing, were weak, and myself surrounded by such circumstances and such people that I knew not whom to trust, then I said in my extremity, 'I will send for Colonel Taylor -- he will know what to do.' I think it was in January 1862, on or about the 16th, that I did so. Said you: 'Why, issue treasury notes bearing no interest, printed on the best banking paper. Issue enough to pay off the army expenses and declare it legal tender.' Chase thought it a hazardous thing, but we finally accomplished it, and gave the people of this Republic the greatest blessing they ever had -- their own paper to pay their debts. It is due to you, the father of the present greenback, that the people should know it and I take great pleasure in making it known. How many times have I laughed at you telling me, plainly, that I was too lazy to be anything but a lawyer.Yours Truly.
A. Lincoln
According to the fabricator of above letter, in January 1862 Lincoln was so demented that he did not remember that short 6 months earlier he had signed two acts which authorized the issue of Treasury notes.
On December 30, 1861, Mr. Spaulding introduced in the House a bill to authorize the issue of legal-tender Treasury notes (House Bill, No. 182) --this was several weeks before Lincoln consulted his Dick.....
On December 31, 1861, Mr. Spaulding published in the New York Tribune his concept of issuing legal tender Treasury notes ---but we can't expect fabricators to be familiar with newspapers;
The greenback bill (H.R. 240) was reported in the House on January 7th ---how could the fabricator have known that ?
Unfortunately for the fabricator --and all those who swallowed this bag of hot air and ran with it the past 150 years-- Lincoln's Dick spilled the beans about the secret knowledge of paper money to the bankers, too, and they sent their man to Washington to demand legal tender Treasury Notes.
" the cashier of the Bank of Commerce, (Mr. Vail) the largest bank corporation in the United States, and one that has done much to sustain the Government, appeared before the Finance Committee, and stated explicitly, that the Bank of Commerce, as well as other banks of New York, could no further aid the Government, unless your proposed currency was stamped by, and invested with the attributes of lawful money, which they could pay to others as well as receive themselves." --Senator Sherman, February 13th, 1862, in the Senate, out-loud
Was it Lincoln's idea to issue Treasury notes ? --no
Was it Lincoln's idea to give Treasury notes legal tender power ? --no
Was legal tender status necessary ? --hardly; the Treasury notes of July and August of 1861 performed perfectly well, and maintained par with silver
Who asked for legal tender status ? -- the soldiers did not; the workers did not; the suppliers did not; the bankers DID
My oh, my; the owners of the largest bank corporation in the United States were greenbackers !!! The bankers were the true fathers of greenback !??
At best --if the conspiracist wishful fantacy about Lincoln were true-- Lincoln was a monkey on the rope, put into office by the international money power to destroy the United States, which assignment he faithfully carried out.
So much for the "great leader" Sarah Emery invented in her wet dream; expecting to come in shining armour to rescue the village idiots from the big-bad bankers.
About 15 years after his death, started the Lincoln-myth making -- and also the style of conspiracist book-sellers indiscriminately and uncritically plagiarizing and regurgitating other people's work, but mainly of each others' since there wasn't and isn't much actual work around, to steal from. In the 20th century this tale-telling and gas-passing multiplied exponentially: people who never seen the inside of the library, never did any research on the subject, put together books (because there is money in them books) and displayed their ignorance and impressed the village people while making some dough and perpetuating the lie.
Sarah Emery -- who learned much of what she knew about the bankers' conspiracy from B.S. Heath, the grand-daddy of above mentioned book-compiling style -- opened the line and popularized the wishful fantasy perhaps more than anyone else:--
"But the great leader, Lincoln, was not to be baffled; he loved the people better than Shylock, and justice better than oppression. From the constitution he read, 'Congress shall have power to declare war.' Again he read, 'Congress shall have power to coin money.' Then to the world he declared that Congress would coin money, and that the government, at whose head stood the fearless Lincoln, would not submit to the infamous demands of Shylock." --'Seven Financial Conspiracies that Enslaved the Amerikano People'
Painting the picture of the "fearless" champion of the people that he discovered some hidden or forgotten knowledge about printing and spending into circulation Treasury notes; and also that the "great leader" was an opponent of banks and banking (fractional reserve, note-issuing banking). As for Lincoln's reading the Constitution:-- it seems he only heard about it, or paid attention to it when weeks after he, on his own, declared war on the South, Congress reminded him that he had no right. With "a labored and lawyerly vindication of his own course of policy" Lincoln expected that Congress "become but a mere office wherein to register the decrees of the Executive" --and Congress approved.
Reality check:--
1) Issuing treasury notes was no secret or forgotten
2) Lincoln was no friend of the people
3) Lincoln was NOT an enemy of Banks
4) Lincoln would have signed the Federal Reserve Act
If only, those who painted this picture of Lincoln and Chase sitting around in the gloom room --"what to do ? what to do ? we have a war to conduct and have no money ! and the (big-bad) bankers want high interest rates and refuse to give coin ?!" "Ah!, to the rescue!, sent by some providence!, a Dick!, or a tailor!, or some Still well, or whoever, to en-licht-en us about this hidden-secret, knowledge of al-Chemy of printing Treasury notes by the millions and circulating them as currency; U! Reeka !!"-- have bothered to read something other than just what was plastered on the inside of the out-house door ....
On December 26, 1839, young Representative Lincoln spoke ("with the forked tongue and crooked counsel of the New York politician") against the Sub-Treasury:--
"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."
And on March 1, 1843---
a national bank, properly restricted, is highly necessary and proper to the establishment and maintenance of a sound currency, and for the cheap and safe collection, keeping, and disbursing of the public revenue
And on December 1, 1862, Lincoln adjusts his view on the form of central bank--
I know of none which promises so certain results as the organization of banking associations. To such associations the Government might furnish circulating notes, on the security of United States bonds deposited in the Treasury.
Lincoln on January 17, 1863--
"currency can be furnished by banking associations, organized under a general act of Congress, as suggested in my message at the beginning of the present session. The securing of this circulation, by the pledge of United States bonds, as therein suggested, would still further facilitate loans, by increasing the present and causing a future demand for such bonds."
Mr. corporate lawyer Lincoln was FOR a privately owned --because when he uses the term "National Bank" he means a Biddle bank-like, private institution--, nation-wide, currency-issuing bank, using the credit and indebtedness (bonds) of the Federal government as the foundation of its operations. Mr. Lincoln was all FOR a 3rd Bank o' the U.S., but President Tyler vetoed the idea, twice! Had Lincoln been around and president, he would have approved the Fed Res Act. In 1863 Pres. Lincoln signed the National Currency Bank "Act to provide a National Currency, secured by a Pledge of United States Stocks," which produced a banking system and currency, based on national indebtedness, and "secured all the benefits of the old United States Bank ... as if the Bank of the United States had been divided into many parts, and each part endowed with the life, motion, and similitude of the whole, revolving in its own orbit, managed by its own board of directors, attending to the business interests of its own locality; and yet to the bills of each will be given as wide a circulation and as fixed a value as were ever given to those of the Bank of the United States in its palmiest days. ... These institutions all originate among the people in their own localities, and are not created by the Government. The Government simply authorizes the investment of capital in the loans, and the use of the bonds representing the loans as the basis of a sound circulation."
Abraham Lincoln was part and parcel of the Whig group which, after a bloody nose from Andrew Jackson, and a kick in the balls from John Tyler, carried on the struggle to turn the United States (from common defence and mutual benefit, for which Thomas Jefferson composed the Declaration of Independence) into a feudal empire, controlled by a financial elite. "For three decades a union of the South and West prevented a restoration of the centralized banking system. Not until the planting statesmen withdrew from Congress, and the storm of the Civil War swept minor gusts before it, were the ravages wrought by Jackson repaired by the directors of affairs in Washington."
what really happened:--
In his 1869 book on the history of the legal-tender U.S. notes, Gerry Elbridge Spaulding (one of the fathers of greenbacks) frankly told anyone who cared to read his book that in 1861 a plan was formulated to establish a national currency bank system, make the notes of these banks legal-tender, have these banks issue $300million of their notes, and finance the war using these notes.
By the end of 1861 it became clear to the fathers of this plan (Gerry Spaulding, Portland Chase, Samuel Hooper, John Sherman) that this package cannot be passed in Congress in time to finance the war; so a two-stage plan was adopted: first they issued legal-tender U.S. notes and a year later passed the National currency Bank Act, then re-placed US notes with national bank notes.
In December 1861, Secretary Chase requested Gerry Spaulding to prepare a national currency bank bill as soon as possible. The texts of the bills that became the legal-tender act and the national bank act, were composed by Elbridge Spaulding and Portland Chase; the bills were guided throught the House of Representatives by Samuel Hooper, and through the Senate by John Sherman:
"while preparing the national currency bank bill, upon mature reflection [Spaulding] came to the conclusion, that it could not be passed and made available quick enough to meet the crisis then pressing upon the Government for money to sustain the Army and Navy. He therefore drafted a legal tender Treasury note section to be added to the bank bill, hoping, at first, that it might be made available by issuing legal tender notes direct from the Treasury, while the bank bill was put in operation throughout the country. In order to bring the subject of issuing legal tender fundable notes before the country, the section thus prepared by Mr. Spaulding was furnished to the New York Tribune, and published in the issue of the 31st December, 1861."
"Upon more mature consideration and further examination, Mr. Spaulding came to the conclusion that the bank bill, containing sixty sections, could not be passed through both Houses of Congress for several months, and that so long a delay would be fatal to the Union cause. Mr. Spaulding, therefore, changed the legal-tender section, intended originally to accompany the bank bill, into a separate bill, with alterations and additions, and on his own motion introduced it into the House by unanimous consent on the 30th of December, 1861. It was read twice, and referred to the Committee of Ways and Means, and ordered printed (House Bill 182)."
"On the 2d February, 1863, the National Currency Bank bill, (Senate bill 486, to provide a national currency, secured by a pledge of United States stocks, and to provide for the circulation and redemption thereof) as prepared by Mr. Spaulding, in December, 1861, after being altered and amended in several important particulars, was reported from the Finance Committee to the Senate by John Sherman of Ohio."
To show the attitude and nature of Lincoln and company---
July 4th, 1861.
House of Representatives
Speaker of the House, Galusha Grow, speaking:
"No flag alien to the sources of the Mississippi river will ever float over its mouths till its waters are crimsoned with human gore; and not one foot of American soil can ever be wrenched from the jurisdiction of the Constitution of the United States until it is baptized in fire and blood." (vociferous applause upon the floor and in the galleries, which lasted for many minutes.)
food for real conspiracy theorizing:--
Who were these bankers in whose behalf Lincoln killed 600,000 people, burned down cities and food stores and put women and children out on the snow in the middle of Winter without food and shelter ?
Well, they were the Frankfurt circle of friends:
Lazard Speyer-Ellissen & Co. ---- Speyer & Co.
Seligmann & Stettheimer ---- J.&W. Seligmann
Deutsche Bank ---- Speyer & Co.
Disconto Gesellschaft ---- Kuhn Loeb & Co.
Darmstaedter Bank ---- Hallgarten & Co.
Bleichroeder ---- Landeburg, Thalmann & Co.
add to this the Dresdner Bank ---- J.P. Morgan & Co.
Who were Abraham Lincoln's and Portland Chase's fiscal advisers during the war years ? Oh dear; August Belmont and Joseph Seligman.
Joseph Seligman was one of the vice-presidents of the Union Square mass-meeting called in aid of the Union on April 20, 1861, during the Civil war, and his firm, J&W Seligman & Co., rendered the government signal service in maintaining its credit and floating its bonds, and for a time Seligmann & Stettheimer, in Frankfurt, were the official bankers to the United States
Seligman sold more than $100million US bonds in Frankfurt
Contrary to the figment of imagination sold you by the regurgitators, the House of Rothschild did NOT want to split the United States into two units; NO; what they wanted was to keep it as one unit, re-constructed under the absolute power of the central government in Washington. While book-peddlers have to resort to quote fabrication, invention of death-bed confessions 50 years after the fact, to prop up their house cards, we have Mr. Belmont's handwritten statement and recorded actions, to demonstrate that the House of Rothschild was on the side of Abraham Lincoln, and Abraham Lincoln on the side of the Frankfurt circle of friends.
Another hero in the conspiracist mythology is Thaddeus Stevens, the Grand Old Commoner.
Mr. Thaddeus Stevens, Chairman of the Ways and Means, certainly did not think anyone should have consulted Lincoln's Dick, he turned to the Bank of England for an example of legal tender paper money:--
"I flatter myself that I have demonstrated, both from reason and undoubted authority, that such notes, made a legal tender and not issued in excess of the demand, will remain at par and pass in all transactions, great and small, at the full value of their face; that we shall have one currency for all sections of the country and for every class of people, the poor as well as the rich.
"Some gentlemen are as much frightened as if this were an unwonted apparition, for the first time prowling forth to swallow the rich creditor and nurse the poor debtor. No nation, it is said, has ever tried anything like it.
"Let us look at the greatest and wisest commercial nation in the world. In 1797 England was struggling for existence against armed Europe. She needed money, as we do now. She found it impossible to borrow. Gold was likely to leave the country. She passed a law prohibiting the Bank of England from paying coin for her notes until six months after the final ratification of peace. That law remained in force till 1823. It is said she did not make those notes a legal tender. She provided that whoever refused to take them for a debt should have no remedy for its collection; and that a plea of such tender should be a bar to the action. This, I think, is the most stringent legal tender; yet those notes never depreciated to any great extent." ---In the House of Representatives, February 6th 1862.
But who was Thaddeus before he became 'grand' and 'old'? how did he occupy himself prior to 1861 ? what did he do for or against the money power before Lincoln's War ?
From 1833, Thaddeus Stevens was the able leader of the Pennsylvania Legislature where he organized Whigs and Anti-Masons to vote together; in 1835 these two parties elected Joseph Ritner as Governor of the State.
The years between 1832 and 1836 were the years of Andrew Jackson's war against the Bank of the United States. Followed by 4 years of agitation against banks and for an Independent Treasury......
On March 4, 1836, the Charter of the Bank of the United States expired. What did Mr. Biddle, the president of that bank do ? In January 1836, in the Legislature of Pennsylvania, a bill "to continue the improvement of the State by railroads and canals" was introduced, and in short order, passed both houses. This bill included a section for "other purposes," which "contained the entire draught of a charter for the Bank of the United States, adopting it as a Pennsylvania State bank." The whole entire membership of the Pennsylvania Legislature --under the able leadership of Thaddeus Stevens-- managed NOT to notice this more then one page long charter of the Bank of the United States of Pennsylvania !?! and Governor Ritner signed the act into law.
Some years later the Whigs and Anti-Masons were voted out of the Pennsylvania Legislature, and in January 1842 a committee opened an investigation into the affairs of this bank, relating to the charge of bribery. This committee ascertained that $479,000 was advanced as bribes by the Biddle bank to obtain the State charter in 1836..... Very good reason and explanation why those Whigs and Anti-Masons, and the future 'grand old commoner' himself, managed NOT to notice that bank charter in a canal bill.
So in 1863 Thaddeus wasn't ignorant of what he was doing when he not only voted for, but didn't even object to the National Currency Bank bill which established a national banking system and national bank currency; Thaddeus Stevens knew what he was doing, he had already done it once before; and the concept of sneaking bills through the Legislature was not alien or objectionable to him...... on February 6, 1862, he used a similar procedure to pass a version of the greenback bill which no one has seen..... Even if (big if) he did not take any money, he had to have known what was going on and what was in that canal bill......
---Oh dear, it is a good thing poor Sarah did not read history
On Tuesday, January 28, 1862, about an hour after House bill 240 was read in the House, "doleful sound came up" from the Thaddeus:
"While I am up, I will follow an example which has been set me, and give notice of an amendment which I shall offer to the bill. It is to make the semi-annual interest payable in coin."
And on December 19, 1862, he made this statement:
"I procured to be inserted a provision making the duties on imports payable in gold."
---poor Sarah spent a whole chapter on the "Exception Clause," blaming every shylock and banker for it, when all the while it was Thaddeus --and he explained why he did it; but Sarah did not read the Record.
To put cake on the icing, on June 23rd 1862, during the debates of the second issue of greenbacks, Thaddeus introduced an amendment to the bill which would have abrogated the right of the holder of greenbacks to convert them into 5/20 bonds at their face value.....
When it was pointed out to Thaddeus that it is convertibility that kept greenbacks at par, this came up from him: "I do not care what is the cause of their keeping at par"......
After he realized the majority of the House is opposed to his idea, Thaddeus retreated: "I will withdraw my amendment, although it is in accordance with the wishes of the Secretary of the Treasury" ---the right to convert was not taken away until July 1, 1863.
"Of all the villainous schemes of robbery ever practiced upon any people, our national banking system stands pre-eminent." ---wrote Sarah in chapter 3, and she was right.
So why has Thaddeus Stevens --grand old commoner and radical re-constructionist-- voted for the National Currency Bank bill ? who twisted his arms ? What was he thinking? that bank notes will peacefully co-exits with U.S. notes ?
Perhaps he understood and went along with the plan outlined by Samuel Hooper (father of greenbacks), that greenbacks were a temporary measure, preceding a more permanent one:
"In order more fully to understand and more easily to meet any objections which may be urged against the first of these measures (greenbacks), being the one now occupying the attention of the House, it will be desirable to notice the other two (taxation and national banks), which are designed to be more permanent in their character, and upon the expected results of which the present measure is in some degree based."
Who opposed and voted against the National Currency Bank bill ? Gold-ites! Vallandigham, Pendleton, Roscoe, Collamer.
My oh, my; Greenbackers were FOR National Currency Banks, gold-ites opposed them. ---poor Sarah, she must be spinning in her grave ever since
Representatives who voted for the National Currency Bank bill:--
Messrs. Aldrich, Alley, Ashley, Babbitt, Beaman, Bingham, Jacob B. Blair, Blake, Buffinton, Calvert, Campbell, Casey, Chamberlain, Clements, Colfax, Conway, Covode, Cutler, Davis, Delano, Dunn, Edgerton, Eliot, Ely, Fenton, Samuel C. Fessenden, Thomas A.D. Fessenden, Fisher, Frank, Goodwin, Granger, Hahn, Haight, Hickman, Hooper, Hutchins, Julian, Pig Iron Kelley, Francis W. Kellogg, William Kellogg, Lansing, Leary, Lovejoy, Law, McIndoe, McKean, McPherson, Marston, Maynard, Moorhead, Anson P. Morrill, Noell, Olin, Patton, Timothy G. Phelps, Potter, Alexander H. Rice, John H. Rice, Sargent, Sedgwick, Segar, Shanks, Shellabarger, Sherman, Sloan, Spaulding, Thaddeus Stevens, Trimble, Trowbridge, Van Horn, Van Wyck, Verree, Wall, Wallace, Washburne, Albert S. White, Windom and Worcester
---Yes, the Record is a cruel thing; it can ruin the best day-dreams.....
In 1862 greenbacker John Sherman spoke for an hour in favour of the legal-tender clause; a year later, he spoke for an hour in favour of National Currency Banks. Sarah did not want to know that, either.