War Between the States

exercise their power through intermediaries such, as Belmont, the Rockefellers, Morgans, and others. And there is now abundant evidence that the hankers of Europe were already conspiring to destroy the economically strong, but politically fragile, American union.

Author Epperson reported that an authorized biography of the Rothschilds mentioned a London meeting where the "International Banking Syndicate" decided to pit the American North against the South in a "divide and conquer" strategy. Such a plan would provide the solvent U.S. federal government with an enemy that would require massive war expenditures and subsequent debt.

And in the event of Southern independence, "each state could withdraw from the confederation, re-establish its sovereign nature and set up its own central bank. The Southern states could then have a series of European-controlled banks, the Bank of Georgia, the Bank of South Carolina, etc., and then any two could have a series of wars, such as in Europe for centuries, in the perpetual game of Balance of Power politics. It would be a successful method of insuring that large profits could be made on the loaning of money to the states involved," Epperson explained.

Criffin quoted German chancellor Otto von Bismarck as stating, "The division of rhe United States into federations of equal force was decided long before the Civil War by the high financial powers of Europe. These bankers were afraid that the United States, if they remained in one block and as one nation, would attain economic and financial independence, which would upset their financial domination over the world. The voice of the Rothschilds prevailed. . .. Therefore they sent their emissaries into the field to exploit the question of slavery and to open an abyss between the two sections of the Union."

It is historical fact that for some years the Rothschilds had financed major projects in the United States on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line. Nathan Rothschild, who owned a large Manchester textile plant, bought his cotton from Southern interests and financed the importation of Southern cotton prior to the war. At rhe same time, wrote Rothschild biographer Wilson, "He had made loans to various states of the Union,

had been, for a time, the official European banker tor the U.S. government and was a pledged supporter of the Bank of the United States." "Europe's aristocracies had never been happy about the prodigious success of the Yankee democracy. If the nation now broke into halves, proving that democracy did not contain the stuff of survival, the rulers of Europe would be well pleased," noted historian Bruce Catton. Lending support to the idea of European manipulation of the American situation, another Rothschild biographer, Niall Ferguson, noted there is a "substantial and unexplained gap" in private Rothschild correspondence between 1854 and 1860 and that nearly all copies of outgoing letters from the London Rothschilds "were destroyed at the orders of successive senior partners."

If this indeed was the gambit, presidential aspirant Abraham Lincoln saw it clearly. He often tried to explain that bis goal was to save the American union, not emancipate the slaves. During his famous debates with Stephen Douglas in 1858, Lincoln made his personal position on race quite clear: "I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, ill favor of bringing about in any way, the social and political equality of the white and black races. ... I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having rhe superior position assigned to the while race."

But equally clear was Lincoln's determination to preserve the federal union. In late 1862 he proclaimed, "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the union. ... If I could save the union without freeing any slaves, I would do it; if 1 could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that."

Lincoln understood that the true reason for sectional friction in the United States was not slavery, but economics. The South desired to buy cheaper imported European products, but the powerful Northern manufacturers imposed stiff import tariffs. These tariffs were quickly increased after Southern congressmen left Washington in 1861. The industrial North, filling rapidly with immigrants willing to work for a pittance, had no need for slaves, while the major planters of the agrarian South were totally dependent on human labor. Although Southern leaders had continually demonstrated a willingness to compromise on the slavery issue, they felt they could not suddenly abandon their "peculiar institution."

Antislavery advocates in both North and South realized that technological advances meant the demise of slavery was only a matter of time.