Jekyll_text

394 THE CREATURE FROM JEKYLL ISLAND GREENBACKS AND OTHER CRIMES 395
secret records of the Knights of the Golden Circle which had been
SUMMARY
carefully wrapped and placed in a government vault many decades
It is time now to leave this tragic
ago and designated as classified documents by
episode
Secretary Stanton.
and move along. So let
us summarize. America's bloodiest
Since the assassination of Lincoln, no one had ever been allowed
and most
to
devastating war was
fought, not over the issue of
examine that package. Because of her lineage to Booth and because
freedom versus slavery, but because of
clashing economic
of her credentials as a professional writer, she was interests.
eventually
At the heart of this conflict were
questions of legalized
permitted to become the first person in all those years to examine
plunder, banking monopolies, and even
European territorial
its contents. Forrester recounts the experience:
expansion into Latin America. The boot print
of the Rothschild formula is unmistakable across the
It was five years before I was able to examine the contents of graves
the
of
American soldiers on both sides.
mysterious old package hidden away in the safe of the room which
In the North,
contained the relics and exhibits used in the Conspiracy
neither
Trial.... ]
greenbacks, taxes, nor war bonds were
would never have seen them, had I not knelt on the floor of the
enough to
cell five
finance the war. So a national banking system was
years ago and seen into the back of the old safe where the package lay.
created to convert government bonds into fiat money, and the
It is all part of the odd mystery thrown about the case by the officials
people lost over half of their monetary assets to the hidden tax of
of the war period—the concealment of these documents and articles,
inflation. In the South, printing presses accomplished
and the hiding away of the two flakes of bone with the bullet and
the same
effect, and the monetary loss
pistol. What mind
was total.
ever grouped together such apparently
The issuance of the
incongruous and macabre
Emancipation
exhibits?...
Proclamation by Lincoln and
the
Here at last was a link with my grandfather. I knew that he had
naval assistance offered by Tsar Alexander, II, were largely
been a member of the secret order founded by Bickley, the Knights of
responsible for keeping England and France from intervening in
the Golden Circle. I have an old photograph of him taken in a group of
the war on the side of the Confederacy. Lincoln was assassinated
the brotherhood, in full uniform, one that Harry's daughter had by a member of the Knights of the Golden Circle, a secret society
discovered for me in our grandmother's Bible. I knew that the
with rumored ties to American politicians
newspapers, directly following the assassination, had denounced and
the
British financiers.
Tsar Alexander
order as having instigated the killing of Lincoln, and had proclaimed
was assassinated a few years later by a member of
Booth to have been its member and tool. And I was reminded again
the
of
People's Will, a Nihilist secret society in Russia with rumored
those words I had heard from my grandmother's lips, that her
ties to financiers in New York City, specifically, Jacob Schiff and the
husband had been "the tool of other men."
firm of Kuhn, Loeb & Company.
An interesting comment. One is compelled to wonder: The tool
As for the Creature of central banking, there had been some
of what other men? Was Forrester's grandmother referring to the
victories and some defeats. The greenbacks had for a while
leaders of the Knights of the Golden Circle? To agents of European deprived the bankers of their override on a small portion of
financiers? Or was it to conspirators within Lincoln's own Party? government debt, but the National Banking Act quickly put a stop
We shall probably never know with certainty the extent to which
to that. Furthermore, by using government bonds as backing for
any of these groups may have been involved in Lincoln's assassination,
but we do know that there were powerful forces within the foundation was firmly in place, but the ultimate structure still
the money supply, it locked the nation into perpetual debt. The
federal government, centered around Secretary of War Stanton, needed to be erected. The monetary system was yet to be concentrated
into one central-bank mechanism, and the control was yet to
which actively concealed evidence and hastily terminated the
investigation. Someone was protected.
be taken away from the politicians and placed into the hands of the
ankers themselves.
1. Lzola Forrester, This One Mad Act (Boston: Hale, Cushman & Flint, 1937), p. 359- It was time for the Creature to visit Congress.