Rothbard on Lincoln’s War

Rothbard on Lincoln’s War

Thomas Allen

In “Just War,” which is based on a talk given in May 1994 and posted in March 2012 (https://www.lewrockwell.com/1970/01/murray-n-rothbard/whats-a-just-war/), Murray Rothbard explains that the War for Southern Independence (Lincoln’s War) was a just war on the part of the South and an unjust war on the part of the North. (Rothbard [1926-1995] was a libertarian economist of the Austrian School, economic historian, and political theorist. He was a proponent of anarcho-capitalism and part of the post-World War II Old Right.)

Rothbard states that “a just war exists when a people tries to ward off the threat of coercive domination by another people, or to overthrow an already-existing domination. A war is unjust, on the other hand, when a people try to impose domination on another people, or try to retain an already existing coercive rule over them.” He identifies two just wars that Americans fought: the American Revolution and the War for Southern Independence.

The South was trying to free itself from the North’s oppressive domination — therefore, a just war on the part of the South. On the other hand, the North was trying to maintain its dominance over the South — therefore, an unjust war on the part of the North.

Before Lincoln’s War, a chief principle of war was not to target civilians. Sherman, Sheridan, and other Northern generals targeted civilians. The Union army often looted and deliberately destroyed civilian property that had no military value. When Lee’s army invaded the North, he ordered his troops not to molest civilians.

Like Americans during the American Revolution, Southerners believed that sovereignty resided in the people. They delegated certain sovereign powers to the governing authority, and their delegation was voluntary and contractual. As such, they could withdraw that sovereignty anytime that the governing authority had violated its trust. Thus, government was a contractual arrangement — “consent of the governed.” Some divine hand from above did not impose it. When the 13 States, whose governments had been created by the people thereof, ratified the Constitution of 1789, they did not bind themselves perpetually to it or the Union formed under it. Being sovereign republics, they reserved the right to withdraw from the Union if they found that the government created by the Constitution continuously violated it.

After years of the federal government threatening and assaulting Southern institutions, the Southern States “exercise their natural, contractual, and constitutional right to withdraw, to ‘secede’ from that Union.” Then, as sovereign republics, they contracted with other Southern States to form the Confederate States of America. Thus, just as the American Revolution was just, so was the War for Southern Independence. For the same reasons that the American colonies seceded from the British Empire, so did the Southern States secede from the Union formed under the Constitution of 1789.

Just as the American colonies rebelled against “the taxing power: the systematic plunder of their property by the British government,” so did the Southern States rebel against the systematic plunder of their property by the federal government. A principal grievance of the South was the protective tariffs that the North had imposed. These tariffs were used to protect inefficient Northern industries. Consequently, they forced Southerners to pay higher prices for manufactured goods. Also, these tariffs threaten to reduce Southern exports. Moreover, the South paid most of the tariffs, and the North received most of the appropriations and monopolistic Northern industries.

Not only did most Northerners want to continue plundering the South via tariffs, but others, the Yankees, also wanted to purge the South and remake it in the Yankee image. Yankees had a Puritan mentality and were driven by postmillennialism. (Before Christ returns, “man must set up a thousand-year Kingdom of God on Earth.”) Consequently, Yankees must cleanse society of sin and create a perfect society. “Moreover, if you didn’t try your darndest to stamp out sin by force you yourself would not be saved.” Further, the coercive power of government was an essential tool in cleansing the world of sin. For these Yankees, sin was anything “which might interfere with a person’s free will to embrace salvation.” They were abolitionists and prohibitionists and opposed Catholicism. Governments must stamp out the evils of slavery, alcohol and tobacco, gambling, most entertainment, and Catholicism.[1] Thus, they promoted paternalistic government at the federal, State, and local levels.

Like most Northerners, Yankees promoted governmental paternalism in economic affairs. They supported “the Whig program of statism and big government: protective tariffs, subsidies to big business, strong central government, large-scale public works, and cheap credit spurred by government.”

Also, Yankees opposed personal liberties, States’ rights, minimal government, free markets, and free trade — the basic principles of the Democratic Party at that time. Consequently, they supported the Republican Party, which was the “party of great moral ideas,” i.e., the stamping-out of sin.

To the delight of the Yankees, “The Northern war against slavery partook of fanatical millennialist fervor, of a cheerful willingness to uproot institutions, to commit mayhem and mass murder, to plunder and loot and destroy, all in the name of high moral principle and the birth of a perfect world.” Thus, the North fought “to maintain their coercive and unwanted rule over” the South.

Then, Rothbard compares the British during the American Revolution to the North during Lincoln’s War. “The British, at least, were fighting on behalf of a cause which, even if wrong and unjust, was coherent and intelligible: that is, the sovereignty of a hereditary monarch.” What was the North’s excuse? It had no allegiance to a real, actual person like a king. Its allegiance was “to a nonexistent, mystical, quasi-divine alleged entity, ‘the Union.’” Unlike a king, one cannot evaluate a Union’s deeds, and the Union is accountable to no one. Thus, Northerners replaced the Union formed under the Constitution of 1789, which was “a contractual institution that can either be cleaved to or scrapped,” with “a divinized entity, which must be worshipped, and which must be permanent, unquestioned, all-powerful.”

Using the cause of “human rights,” modern-day supporters of Lincoln’s War support and glorify his war. Lincoln “goes forth and rights the wrong of slavery, doing so through mass murder, the destruction of institutions and property, and the wreaking of havoc which has still not disappeared.” Yet, all other countries ended slavery without war.

Endnote

1. Most of the sins on which Yankees focused were vices. (Vice sins are sins that injure the sinner and his family but do not generally injure others.) For the most part, they not only ignored but also often supported sins that injured others, such as homicide (offensive wars), looting the public treasury (subsidies), and forcing the common people to pay higher prices (tariffs), often for lower quality goods. Many frequently supported business dealings where merchants took advantage of ignorant customers. Most did not object to debtors cheating creditors with depreciating fiat money — then the two largest debtors were banks and governments. As for slavery, they objected to the ownership of slaves. However, they had little issue with transporting and selling slaves, as many Yankees became rich trafficking slaves. Moreover, when the Northern States emancipated slaves, most Yankees sold their slaves instead of freeing them.

Copyright © 2025 by Thomas Coley Allen.

More Southern issues articles.

Libertarianism on Ethics and Order

Libertarianism on Ethics and Order

Thomas Allen

The following discusses libertarian ethics and the libertarian view of order verse liberty.

Libertarian Ethics
The following is an example of ethics in a libertarian society. It is also the ethics of the Puritan Yankee.

A city government decides to pursue the libertarian goal of abolishing itself. As part of this program, it privatizes its water and sewer system and its streets. Thus, it sells its waters and sewer system to A Company. Also, A Company buys the city streets. Finally, the city government abolishes itself.

Moreover, the city was built over a geological formation that requires wells to be drilled thousands of feet deep to produce water.

Now, having a monopoly over water and transportation, A Company raises water rates a hundredfold, which is the price just below the cost of drilling a well. (Some libertarians argue that monopolies are impossible.) If any customer fails to pay his water bill, the company immediately cuts off his water. Next, the company prevents any water from being transported over its streets. It also charges the residents an exorbitant fee for using its streets.

Without water, the residents are forced to sell at a great loss — if they can find any buyers, which is doubtful. Magnanimously, the company offers to buy their property at 0.01 percent of its last tax evaluation. If this offer is rejected, the resident has to either abandon his property or let the company take it for nonpayment of his water bill and street usage.

After the residents have been forced to abandon their property or sell it to A Company at a tremendous loss, A Company owns the city. Now, it can do with the city whatever it pleases to do.

Puritan Yankees would compliment the managers of A Company as shrewd businessmen. Because these shenanigans were by a private company, libertarians would defend the company’s actions. They would argue that the residents should have bought insurance to protect themselves from such an event. However, what insurance company would insure such an unknown, unpredictable event — at least at an affordable price? Libertarians would argue that the residents should have sold before A company established its monopoly, although some libertarians deny the possibility of monopolies. In short, the typical libertarian would blame the residents for their predicament and not the company.

As an alternative to insurance, the residents could hire a private security firm to protect their interest and to obtain water for their use and access to the streets. In retaliation, A Company hires a security firm to maintain its monopoly. Soon, the two security firms are warring, and the might of arms solves the disagreement.

Such are the ethics of the typical libertarian. They are almost indistinguishable from the ethics of the Puritan Yankee. A major difference between the two is that the Puritan Yankee does not hesitate to use the government to gain an advantage, while the libertarian loathes using the government.

Order and Liberty
Libertarianism, especially the anarcho-capitalist wing, is built on the false foundation of the notion that liberty and order are antagonistic principles. That is, liberty and order limit each other. As one increases, the other decreases. Locke, Blackstone, Hobbes, and Rousseau, among many others, espouse this notion. This notion led to the French Revolution.

Opposing this notion that liberty and order are antagonistic principles is the notion of the divine sanction of government. Under this notion, an increase in order leads to an increase in liberty. True liberty can only exist within the bounds of divine law. A just government maintains these bounds. (Despotic governments cause disorder and, by that, reduce liberty. Moreover, order may require a government, but it abhors a state because a state leads to disorder.) This is the notion that lead to the American Revolution.

Adherents of the antagonistic principle believe that natural liberty is a state of perfect freedom where a person acts as he thinks fit, without any restraint or control, i.e., the power to act as each man wills and pleases. Thus, public order reduces private liberty.

On the other hand, adherents of the divine sanction notion believe that natural liberty is a state where a person acts as he thinks fit within the bounds of divine law, i.e., the power to act as God wills. Thus, public order is necessary for private liberty.

Under the antagonistic principle, civil society arises from a surrender of individual rights; therefore, the right, power, or authority of society is derived from a transfer of individual rights. The law and government restrain the liberty of human will.

Under the divine sanction notion, civil society arises from a right originally possessed by all, i.e., from a solemn duty originally imposed upon all by God; therefore, the right, power, or authority of society is not derived from a transfer of individual rights; thus, neither the right to life nor liberty is transferred to society. The law and government restrain the tyranny of human will.

According to the antagonistic principle, freedom can be extracted and exist apart from the social whole. According to the divine sanction notion, freedom is inseparable from the social whole: Freedom cannot be separated from right reasoning.

Advocates of the antagonistic principle believe, or at least act as though they believe, that man is innately good, which is contrary to all history. Advocates of the divine sanction notion believe that man is naturally sinful, which history and personal experience easily support.

Thus, libertarianism rests on the false premise that humans are naturally good. Unbridled capitalism, as long as governmental collaboration is avoided, can sufficiently regulate, control, and suppress any sinful tendencies — so, libertarians believe. For the most part, a free-market economy may adequately regulate economic order and liberty. However, it fails as a regulator of political and social order and liberty.

Copyright © 2020 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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The Continental

The Continental

Thomas Allen

[Editor’s note: Footnotes in the original are omitted.]

The American Revolutionary War began on May 10, 1775, with the scrimmages at Lexington and Concord. In 1776, the colonies formally declared their independence from Great Britain. The following year the delegates of the several states in Congress proposed the Articles of Confederation. These Articles were ratified and became effective in 1781. The war concluded with the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown in October 1781 and the Treaty of Paris in 1783.

Before the colonies had formally declared independence, the Continental Congress began issuing paper money, bills of credit called Continental notes or Continentals. It first issued paper money in 1775. This issue was quickly followed by a second issue. Benjamin Franklin, who had earlier been a strong proponent of government-issued paper money, urged that the bills on the first issue bear interest. For the second issue, he urged Congress to borrow on interest the bills already issued. Congress rejected both recommendations. However, the third issue did bear interest.[1]

The first issue was for $2 million, i.e., two million Spanish milled dollars, one Continental dollar being equal to one Spanish milled dollar. These bills were to be paid in four successive years beginning in 1779 and ending in 1782. Money to pay these bills was to come from taxes levied on the States in proportion to their populations.[2]

If any State failed to pay its share, the other States would pay it. (Congress pledged redemption of these bills of credit because they would not otherwise circulate.) The pledged redemption was not to redeem the bills in specie. It was to accept them in payment of taxes and then retire them. Thus, these bills became a tax “superimposed upon the previous ‘tax’ burden imposed by paper inflation.”[3] However, because of opposition to taxes, most states did not levy taxes until 1780.

As Congress lacked the power to declare its bills legal tender, they were not legal tender when issued. However, in 1777, it asked the States to make its bills legal tender, and they did.

In 1775, Congress authorized a second issue of bills for $1 million before the bills of the first authorization had been issued. This was quickly followed by a third authorization for $3 million before the end of the year.[4] Thus, $6 million were issued in 1775.

Another issue of $9 million was made in early 1776. Before the colonies had formally declared their independence, Congress had issued 15 million Continental dollars.[5]

The Continental Congress had intended to coin gold and silver and eventually to make its bills of credit redeemable in silver or gold. In 1777, it considered establishing a mint to coin gold and silver. After the war, Congress defined the monetary unit, the “dollar,” as the weight of 375.64 grains of fine silver. This was the amount of silver in a new Spanish dollar.[6]

At the beginning of the war, the total money supply of the United States has been estimated to be about $12 million.[7] Thus, Congress more than doubled the money supply within a year.

By 1779, Congress had issued 242 million Continental dollars. In 1781 the Continental had become worthless. Thus, the Continental died about the same time as independence was won.

Table 1 from Dewey[8] summarizes the issuance of Continentals. (Rothbard differs slightly from Dewey. He gives $135 million being issued in 1779 and a total of $235 million.[9] Carson gives $90 million in 1779.[10] Otherwise, the three agree.)

Besides the Continentals that Congress issued, the States also issued paper money. They issued $209,524,776. With its issuance of $128,441,000, Virginia issued more than half this amount. It was followed by North Carolina with $33,325,000 and South Carolina with $33,458,926.[11] Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island had approved issuing state bills of credit before Congress approved its first issue. By the end of the war, State-issued bills had been withdrawn from circulation — being redeemed at a depreciated rate in payment of taxes.

The Continental had begun depreciating against the standard Spanish milled dollar before the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Table 2 shows the depreciation of the Continental dollar (the old currency after 1780) as compared to the Spanish milled silver dollar.[12]

Because of its depreciation, people began refusing Continentals or only accepting it at a discount. Most communities made distinguishing between Continentals and silver money illegal. Anyone found guilty of selling at a premium for paper money or a discount for silver was punished. Refusal to accept payment in Continentals for goods and services was outlawed. Typically, the offender forfeited part of his goods and was declared an enemy of the country. Tarring and feathering and banishment were not uncommon. Most States made the refusal to accept Continentals in payment of debt result in the extinguishing of that debt.

As speculation is commonly blamed for rising prices, some communities prohibited merchants from speculating. The effect of these laws was to prevent merchants from bringing needed supplies into the community. Some States prohibited anyone from buying more goods than the government judged necessary.

As prices rose, States and communities began fixing prices and wages. Some States made withholding goods required by the army or navy illegal. Some made withholding goods needed by the community illegal and allowed breaking open such stores and selling the goods at statutory prices. As these laws quickly created severe shortages, they were soon repealed.

In June 1778, Congress recommended the repeal of all price fixing laws, and the four States that still had such codes soon repealed them. However, some communities in the North continued to enforce their own price codes.

Inflation always harms wage-earners more than any other class, other than those on fixed income, as wages lag behind prices. When price controls are imposed, wage earners suffer even more. Price controls force businesses to reduce their workforce.

About the deleterious effects of price controls, John Eliot of Boston wrote in 1777, “We are all starving here, since this plaguy addition to the regulating bill. People will not bring in provisions, and we cannot procure the common necessities of life. What we shall do I know not.”[13]

About the effects of inflation, George Washington noted that “a wagon load of money will scarcely purchase a wagon load of provisions.”[14]

About currency depreciation, John Adams remarked that “every man who had money due him at the commencement of this war, has been already taxed three-fourths part of that money [that is, has lost it by way of the depreciation of the currency]. . . . And every man who owed money at the beginning of the war has put three-fourth parts of it in his pockets as gain. The war, therefore, is immoderately gainful to some, and ruinous to others.”[15]

Most people at the time seemed to have little understanding of the cause of rising prices and conversely of depreciating currency. White reports the following account about George Washington to illustrate this point:

December 12, 1778, Washington wrote to Reed, the President of Pennsylvania, commending his zeal “in bringing those murderers of our cause, the monopolizers, forestallers and engrossers, to condign punishment. It is much to be lamented.” he continued, “that each State, long ere this, has not hunted them down as pests to society and the greatest enemies we have to the happiness of America. I would to God that some one of the more atrocious in each State was hung in gibbits upon a gallows five times as high as the one prepared by Haman.” Yet he had written, more than a year earlier (September 28, 1777), to John Parke Custis, directing him to see that the rent of certain land and slaves should be so arranged that the payments should have a relative value to the currency. “I do not mean by this,” he says, “that I am unwilling to receive the paper money. On the contrary I shall with cheerfulness receive payment in anything that has currency at the time of payment, but of equal value then to the intrinsic worth at the time of fixing the rent.” Again (October 10, 1778), only two months before he wrote to Reed about hanging monopolizers, forestallers and engrossers, he wrote to Custis advising him not to accept money for a piece of land he was about to sell, but to take other land in exchange for it, because the money might lose its value.[16]

Was Washington ignorant or hypocritical? He wanted to punish merchants harshly for doing what he had instructed Custis to do. As Washington was trying to hedge himself against depreciating currency, so were these merchants whom he wanted to punish.

White continues, “Washington was an honest man. It never occurred to him that he was doing with his land and slaves exactly what the others were doing with their provisions and store goods.”[17]

Washington finally did realize the destructiveness of forcing depreciating money on people. In 1779, he wrote Lund Washington, his agent, that:

[H]e would no longer accept continental money on contracts made before the war, unless other people did the same. “The law,” he says, “undoubtedly was well designed. It was intended to stamp a value upon, and to give a free circulation to the paper bills of credit, but it never was nor could have been intended to make a man take a shilling or sixpence in the pound for a just debt, which the debtor is well able to pay, and thereby involve himself in ruin. . . . If sacrificing my whole estate would effect any valuable purpose I would not hesitate one moment in doing it. But my submitting in matters of this kind unless the same is done by others is no more than a drop in the bucket. In fact, it is not serving the public but enriching individuals and countenancing dishonesty, for I am sure no honest man would attempt to pay twenty shillings with one or perhaps half of one. In a word I would rather make a present of the bonds than receive payment for them in so shameful a way.”[18]

Currency depreciation led to hostility between people living in town and those living in the country. Country folks accused the townspeople of extortion because of high prices. They threatened to storm the town and take what they wanted. Town folks accused country people of withholding their produce and proceeded to enact laws against withholding.

A major victim of price fixing and currency depreciation was the Continental Army. Farmers refused to accept the double penalty of selling their crops below market price to the Army and for rapidly depreciating currency. They either sold elsewhere or only raised enough for their families.

As the Continental depreciated, the real wages of the soldiers fell. They dropped from $7 per month to 33¢ in purchasing power in spite of raises in pay. This depreciation led to mutinies. Before Washington could march to Yorktown, Robert Morris had to borrow hard money from Rochambeau to pay his soldiers.[19]

By the time Washington marched on Yorktown, the Continental had collapsed. Impressment supplied his army. The quartermaster and commissary departments took what they needed and paid for the supplies with paper “certificates.” These certificates quickly became almost worthless.

In March 1780, Congress sought to replace the Continental with a new currency. It declared 40 old units of money to be worth one new unit.[20] That is, Congress would accept payment in paper in place of silver at the rate of $40 in paper to $1 in silver. However, the natural depreciated value was 60 to 1.[21]

To retire the old bills, Congress levied a tax on the States to be paid in old bills. The old bills were to be destroyed and replaced by new bills. The new bills were not to exceed one-twentieth of the face value of the old bills. “The new bills were to be redeemable in specie in five years, to bear interest at 5 per cent., and to be receivable for taxes.”[22]

At this time, $200 million were estimated outstanding. Thus, Congress canceled 195 million Continentals.[23] Instead of having a debt worth $200 million in species, Congress now had a debt of $5 million in specie.

This action temporarily halted the depreciation of the Continental. It even rose in value. However, when the States failed to levy the necessary taxes to complete the conversion, depreciation began again.

A major problem that States had in raising the necessary taxes in Continentals was that the people insisted on paying their taxes with impressment certificates. Both the States and the Continental Army had obtained supplies by impressment and paid for them with these certificates. The certificates were worth even less than the Continental. Thus, States could not collect enough Continentals to send to Congress for retirement.

All Continentals were supposed to be retired by June 1781. However, “only 30 million had been taxed and delivered by the states, and only $600,000 of new bills had been issued and even these had already depreciated to 5 to 1 in species.”[24]

The new currency quickly dropped to 6 to 1 while the old currency fell to 500 to 1.[25] It soon reached par with the old money.[26] By May both had ceased circulating in the North. They lingered on for several more months in the remote areas of the South. The Continental finally dropped to 1000 to 1 before ceasing to circulate at all.[27]

As often happens with paper money, counterfeiting was a problem. Both the British and Americans counterfeited bills. Because of counterfeiting, Congress called in entire issues of certain dates and declared them uncurrent after a fixed period.[28] The called issues quickly depreciated against other issues.

When the irredeemable Continental paper money ceased circulating, hard money flooded the markets. It came from family savings and from British and French soldiers and sailors. “It was so plentiful that foreign exchange fell to a discount.”[29]

Apparently, enough gold and silver were in the colonies to fight the war without having to resort to irredeemable paper money. It could have been obtained through borrowing or taxing.

However, not being a constituted government until the war was almost over, Congress had no taxing authority. Besides borrowing and issuing bills of credit, it relied on the States to raise revenue via taxation. The States were reluctant to tax their citizens to support the war — especially when Congress failed to ask for taxation at the beginning of the war when enthusiasm was at its height.

So, instead of relying on taxation and voluntary loans to fund the war, Congress relied mostly on forced loans, bills of credit in the form of Continentals. These forced loans accounted for almost 60 percent of Congress’ revenue.

As Dewey notes, because of the politics of the situation, Congress may have had little choice but to resort to funding the war with bills of credit.[30] The New England colonies had returned to their old habit of issuing paper money. In the beginning, the popular (and ignorant) belief was that no one would suffer from the issuance of paper money. However, the more astute debtors saw paper money as a way to reduce their debts by paying them in depreciated money.

In May 1781, Congress asked the States to repeal their legal tender laws. Those that had not already repealed them quickly did. The States adopted “scales of deprecation” for the settlement of debt. These scales were notoriously incorrect. The payment of debt often resulted in injustices to the lender or borrower or both. About this injustice, W.G. Sumner wrote:

The courts could not do justice because depreciation introduced a fraud into the very essence of the case, and the agent of the fraud was almost always innocent, so far as his intention was concerned. If, therefore, the court undertook to release the victim of the fraud from all effect of the fraud, the injury was simply thrown back on the perpetrator, who being innocent, suffered as much wrong as the victim would have suffered if nothing had been done.[31]

Both Congress and the States rejected the notion that they had to pay their bills at par in species and jettisoned their worthless paper money. E. James Ferguson explained:

Currency and certificates were the “common debt”of the Revolution, most of which at war’s end had been sunk at its depreciated value. Public opinion did not view government contracts as sacred and tended to grade claims against the government according to their real validity. Paper money had the least status; the mode of its redemption was fixed by long usage. . . . In any case, the holder had no exemption from the general misfortune, and he was expected to abide by the ordinary process by which money was redeemed.[32]

Every holder of Continentals suffered some loss depending on when and how long he held them. However, the last person holding the paper money suffered a total loss since he had no one to whom to pass the bills that he held. The last holders of paper money are mostly the poor, old, widows, and the least sophisticated in monetary matters, i.e., those who can least afford the loss.

Congress did, however, decide to pay its loan certificates at a discounted rate. The North held most of this debt.

In 1790, Congress offered to buy back outstanding Continentals at the rate of $100 in Continentals for $1 in specie. Of the estimated $78 million outstanding, only $6 million according to Dewey[33] ($7 million according to White[34]) were turned in.

Some outstanding bills were used as wallpaper. Others were used to make clothes in jest. Much of the remainder was probably lost or destroyed.

About the Continental, Pelatiah Webster, who was a merchant in Philadelphia during this time, wrote, “We have suffered more from this than from every other cause of calamity; it has killed more men, pervaded and corrupted the choicest interests of our country more, and done more injustice than even the arms and artifices of our enemies.”[35]

Webster also wrote:

The fatal error that the credit and currency of the continental money could be kept up and supported by acts of compulsion entered so deep into the mind Congress and all departments of administration through States that no considerations of justice, religion, or policy, or even experience of its utter inefficiency could eradicate it. It seemed to be a kind of obstinate delirium, totally deaf to every argument drawn from justice and right, from its natural tendency and mischief, from common sense and even common safety. This ruinous principle was continued in practice for five successive years, and appeared in all shapes and forms, i.e., in tender acts, in limitations of prices, in awful and threatening declarations, in penal laws with dreadful and ruinous punishments, and in every other way that could be devised, and all executed with a relentless severity, by the highest authorities then in being, viz., by Congress, by assemblies and conventions of the states, by committees of inspection (whose powers in those days were nearly sovereign), and even by military force; and though men of all descriptions stood trembling before this monster of force, without daring to lift a hand against it, during all this period, yet its unrestrained energy ever proved ineffectual to its purposes, but in every instance increased the evils it was designed to remedy, and destroyed the benefits it was intended to promote; at best, its utmost effect was like that of water sprinkled on a blacksmith’s forge, which indeed deadens the flame for a moment, but never fails to increase the heat and force of the internal fire. Many thousand families of full and easy fortune were ruined by these fatal measures, and lie in ruins to this day, without the least benefit to the country, or to the great and noble cause in which we were then engaged.[36]

Furthermore, Webster declared about the Continental, “It ceased to pass as currency, but was afterwards bought and sold as an article of speculation, at very uncertain and desultory prices, from five hundred to one thousand to one.”[37]

Thomas Jefferson wrote this about the Continental:

It will be asked how will the two masses of continental & of State money have cost the people of the U.S. 72 millions of dollars, when they are to be redeemed now with about six millions? I answer that the difference, being 66 millions has been lost on the paper bills separately by the successive holders of them. Every one, through whose hands a bill passed, lost on that bill what it lost in value, during the time it was in his hands. This was a real tax on him; & in this way the people of the United States actually contributed those 66 millions of dollars during the war, and by a mode of taxation the most oppressive of all because the most unequal of all.[38]

Commenting on the sacrifice of the people, Dewey writes:

As to the actual sacrifice by the people measured in the commodities which they gave for the national paper currency which was issued, no exact statement is possible, but various estimates have been made of the specie value of the total issues: Jefferson placed it at $36,367,000, Hildreth at $70,000,000, Bronson at $53,000,000, and Bullock more recently makes an independent calculation and arrives at estimates varying from $37,800,000 to $41,000,000.[39]

White writes:

When the final catastrophe came, some of the wise men of the period exclaimed that the continental money was simply a form of taxation, and that it had been paid and cancelled. Franklin consoled himself with this idea, saying that the bills clothed and fed the army and that they operated as a tax, bearing most heavily on the rich, as was proper, since the rich had the most money. Strange that so great a man could have been so deceived. If the continental money was a tax it did not bear heaviest upon those who had the most, but upon those who kept it longest. Those who had money due them at fixed times and could not hasten the payment were taxed not in proportion to their wealth but in proportion to the time the debts had to run. All who depended upon regular interest payments — and most of the charitable and educational institutions of the day were in this category — were taxed at various rates up to 97½ per cent of their entire income. It is a complete subversion of ideas to call this a tax.[40]

White also remarks:

One of the striking phenomena of the Revolution was the great display of luxury. Franklin wrote in 1779: “The extravagant luxury of our country in the midst of all its distresses is to me amazing.” Another writer says: “Every form of wastefulness and extravagance prevailed in town and country, nowhere more than in Philadelphia under the very eyes of Congress, — luxury of dress, luxury of equipage, luxury of the table.”

This is not hard to understand. If a man owed $1,000 gold value and was enabled to pay it with $100, he had $900 disposable for other purposes. As this money had not come by hard knocks he would naturally be somewhat free in spending it. He would give good dinners, drive fast horses and buy fine clothes and jewelry for his family. It was the transfer of property from frugal persons to spendthrifts. While it continued it gave a deceitful appearance of prosperity.[41]

Rothbard summaries some of the support of the Continental:

The archconservative Gouverneur Morris originated the idea of using government paper to finance the Revolution; and, far from being ashamed of his creation, he trumpeted to the complaining Washington that paper money was a great engine that would mobilize the nation’s resources for the war. He recognized that the paper would depreciate, but he looked forward to this as a tax; the obvious inequity of the tax’s falling hardest on the lowest-paid and the most exploited group in the country, the soldiery, caused him only fleeting regret. These men would simply have to sacrifice their pay as well as their lives to the national effort. As might be expected from the old paper-money enthusiast, Benjamin Franklin hailed paper as a “wonderful machine” that would “pay itself off by depreciation,” which he persuaded himself would fall equitably on the members of society.[42]

The experience of the Continental made such an impression on the people of that era that when the Constitution was written, it forbade both the U.S. government and the States from issuing bills of credit. At least the writers of the Constitution were convinced that they had denied the U.S. government the power to issue paper money when they removed that authorization from the draft constitution. Both those who favored granting the government the power to issue paper money and those who opposed such power were convinced that they had denied the U.S. government the power to issue bills of credit with the adoption of the Constitution.

The U.S. government did not issue paper money until President Lincoln declared war on the Constitution and financed his war with unconstitutional U.S. notes, commonly called greenbacks. Later the U.S. Supreme Court twisted the Constitution to give Congress the authority to issue fiat paper money. In making this ruling, the Court ignored the clear intent of the writers of the Constitution that Congress had no such power. Thus, the U.S. Supreme Court proved that it has a bias in expanding the power of the U.S. government as that increases the power and prestige of the Court.

Later Congress would circumvent this prohibition against issuing bills of credit by creating a semi-independent “privately-owned” central bank, which is a quasi-governmental agency. It empowered the central bank, the Federal Reserve, to issue bank notes. Congress ended the gold standard and declared federal reserve notes legal tender. Thus, federal reserve notes, which are obligations of the U.S. government and which are secured mostly by U.S. securities, became effectively governmental bills of credit. (Moreover, all earnings of the Federal Reserve above its operating cost go to the U.S. Treasury.) The country is now in the process of learning what the founding fathers learned from the Continental.

[Editor’s note: The appendix showing the income of the Continental treasury from 1775 to 1783 is omitted.]

Endnotes
1. Hoarce White, Money and Banking (Boston, Mass.: Ginn & Co., 1896), p. 134.

2. Davis Rich Dewey, Financial History of the United States (1922, Rpt. Elibron Classic Replica Edition, 2005), pp. 36, 38; Murray N. Rothbard, A History of Money and Banking in the United States (Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2002, 2005), p. 59. White, p. 134.

3. Murray N. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty, vol. IV, The Revolutionary War, 1775-1784 (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House Publishers, 1979), p. 55.

4. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty, p. 55. White, p. 135.

5. White, p. 135.

6. Edwin Vieira, Jr., “The Forgotten Role of the Constitution in Monetary Law,” Texas Review of Law & Politics 2:1, pp. 94-97. Edwin Vieira, Jr., “What Is a ‘Dollar’? An Historical Analysis of the Fundamental Question in Monetary Policy (1994), pp. 14-18. Edwin Vieira, Jr., “‘To Regulate the Value of Money’ An Analysis of the Power of Government to Create and Set a Value on Money,” 1993, http://www.fame.org/HTM/Vieira_To_Regulate_the_ Value_of_Money_EV-006.H..., May 19, 2008.

7. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty, p. 55. Rothbard, History, p. 59.

8. Dewey, p. 36.

9. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty, p. 374.

10. Clarence B. Carson, Basic Economics (Wadley, Ala.: American Textbook Committee, 1988, p. 99.

11. Dewey, p. 36.

12. Dewey, p. 39, 41. Rothbard, History, pp.59-60. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty, pp. 374, 380.

13. Carson, p. 100.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid., p. 101.

16. White, p. 138.

17. Ibid., pp. 138-139.

18. Ibid., p. 139.

19. Ibid., p. 141.

20. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty, p. 380. White, p. 141.

21. Ibid.

22. Dewey, p. 40.

23. White, p. 141.

24. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty, p. 381.

25. White, p. 141.

26. Carson, p. 101.

27. Dewey, p. 41. White, p. 141.

28. White, p. 142.

29. Ibid.

30. Dewey, pp. 42-43.

31. White, pp. 144-145.

32. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty, p. 382.

33. Dewey, p. 41.

34. White, p. 145.

35. Ibid., p. 135.

36. Ibid., pp. 139-140.

37. Dewey, p. 41.

38. Howard S. Katz, The Warmongers (New York, N.Y.: Books in Focus, Inc., 1979), pp. 46-47.

39. Dewey, p. 40.

40. White, p. 145.

41. Ibid., p. 147.

42. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty, p. 379.

Copyright © 2010 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Secret Societies and Conspiracies in the Founding of America

Secret Societies and Conspiracies in the Founding of America

Thomas Allen

[Editor’s note: Footnotes in original are omitted.]

Secret societies and conspiracies were highly involved in the founding of American. Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry were heavily involved. Two of the most important conspiracies were the Arnold conspiracy and Randolph conspiracy.

Rosicrucians
In 1693, a movement began in Europe to establish a colony of European Rosicrucian leaders. The objective of these colonists was to establish Rosicrucianism, arts, and trade in the New World. They sought to bring about a New World Order outlined by Sir Francis Bacon in The New Atlantis. This book reveals Bacon’s ideal commonwealth in the political world that the Illuminists have sought through the ages. It describes a utopian society across the ocean from Europe; this society was built upon the principles of Atlantis. This utopia was a world without national boundaries and without racial distinction under a world government.[1]

Under the leadership of Grand Master Johannes Kelpius, a German Pietist theologian, the colonists landed in 1694 in Philadelphia. The colonists brought with them books on alchemy, astrology, and magic; the Cabala; and the writings of the German mystic Jakob Boehme. By 1801 the Rosicrucian Order had become inactive or moved completely underground in America.[2]

Arrival of Freemasonry
After Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry was perhaps the next non-Indian secret society brought to the British colonies. It arrived in 1730 when Daniel Coxe was appointed Provincial Grand Master of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.[3] In 1733, Henry Price became Provincial Grand Master of New England; he is considered the father of regular Freemasonry in the United States. Benjamin Franklin, who was a Rosicrucian,[4] became provincial Grand Master of Pennsylvania in 1734.[5]

The red Freemasonry of France was introduced in 1761 into the Colonies. Behind red Freemasonry were Frederick the Great, Philip Egalite, Swiss bankers, and British intelligence. The Grand Consistory of Sublime Princes of the Royal Secrets of Paris, which Frederick the Great controlled, sent Stephen Morin, a Jew, to establish the Rite of Perfection, i.e., the Scottish Rite. Philip Egalite, Duke of Clermont and later Duke of Orleans, signed his papers. Louis, Count of Clermont, granted Morin the authority to establish Scottish Rite Freemasonry.[6] His deputy inspector was Henry Francken. Francken appointed Moses M. Hayes, a Jew, of Boston as inspector general of North American Freemasonry. Hayes introduced the Scottish Rite in 1780 into the United States at the New Port Lodge.[7] Hayes also appointed Isaac da Costa, a Jew, as deputy inspector general of South Carolina, Solomon Bush as deputy inspector for Pennsylvania, and B.M. Spitser as deputy inspector for Georgia.[8] In 1801, the first Supreme Council of Scottish Rite Freemasonry was established in Charleston, South Carolina.[9]

Before the appearance of the Sottish Rite, Franklin had been the primary organizer of Freemasonry in the Colonies. The lodges that he organized were connected with the Grand Lodge of London.

American Revolution
Freemasonry was at the center of the American Revolution. At the forefront was the St. Andrew Lodge, which was a Grand Lodge of the Scottish Rite. Joseph Warren, a close friend of Franklin, headed this Lodge. Paul Revere was also a leader of this Lodge. This Lodge was probably behind the Boston Tea Party.[10]

In 1778, the Americans re-occupied Philadelphia after the British evacuation. To celebrate this great occasion, General George Washington, dressed in full Masonic attire, solemnly led 300 Freemasons through Philadelphia to Christ Church. Here a Masonic divine service was held.

Besides Washington and Franklin, many other American revolutionists were Freemasons. They included the following generals: Nathaniel Greene, Henry Knox, Henry Lee (Light-Horse Harry), Richard Montgomery, Israel Putnam, Rufus Putnam, Baron von Steuben, and John Sullivan. (Of Washington’s generals, 33 were Freemasons.) Ethan Allen, leader of the Green Mountain Boys of Vermont, and John Paul Jones were also Freemasons. Alexander Hamilton, John Hancock, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and John Marshall were Freemasons.[11] John Hancock and eight other Freemasons singed the Declaration of Independence.[12] (Manley Hall, a Masonic writer, asserts that all but one signer were Freemasons.) Fifty of the 59 members of the Constitutional Convention were Freemasons.[13] Of the 39 signers of the Constitution, at lest 13 were master Freemasons.[14] The Continental Army had approximately 14,000 officers of whom 2018 were Freemasons.[15]

Freemasons in England championed the colonists in their struggled for independence. They included William Pitt, Edmund Burke, and the Duke of Manchester (Grand Master of English Freemasonry).

During the American Revolution, Masonic agents freely moved between British controlled areas and American controlled areas.

Freemasons in France were also instrumental in providing the American revolutionists the aid that they needed to secede from England successfully. Through Freemasonry, Franklin made his contacts with the appropriate officials in the French government and outside the government. The most ardent support for the American Revolution came from the French nobles who were Freemasons. (Franklin berated the French nobility and campaigned against it in spite of its zealous support of Freemasonry and the American Revolution.)

The Arnold Conspiracy
William Petty, Earl of Shelburne, head of British intelligence, managed to place his agents in many critical positions among the American revolutionists. Benedict Arnold, a Freemason, is perhaps the best known of these agents.[16]

The Mallet-Prevost family put in place Lord Shelburne’s spy and espionage network. This family was the leader of Swiss espionage. One of the family leaders, General Augustine Prevost became Grand Stewart of the Lodge of Perfection. (This lodge had been established in Albany, New York in 1768.) He was also Prince of Royal Secrets and commander of the British southern forces during the American Revolution. His second in command was James Mark Prevost, his brother. Arnold was one of his agents.[17]

Margaret “Peggy” Shippen Arnold, wife of Benedict Arnold and stepsister of Aaron Burr, was a conduit for communications between Mark Prevost and Benedict Arnold. Mark Prevost often communicated with Peggy Arnold through his wife, Theodosia, who later married Aaron Burr. Through this channel, the arrangement to surrender West Point to the English was initiated. For aiding the English in its failed attempt to capture West Point, Arnold was charged with treason.[18] After conspiring to surrender West Point, Arnold was given his promised command in the British army and fought against the Americans in the South.

The Randolph Conspiracy
In 1774, Edmund Randolph at age 21 joined the Ancient Order of York Masons. After becoming a Freemason, his career began its climb upwards. He soon became an aide de camp to General George Washington. In 1785, he became Deputy Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Virginia. The next year he was named Grand Master. At the time of his election to Grand Master, Randolph was Attorney General of Virginia. (Since then Freemasons have controlled the legal system of Virginia.)[19]

The Grand Lodge of Virginia was established in 1768 at Williamsburg, which was then the capital of Virginia. John Blair, who was then acting governor of Virginia and later a Virginian delegate to the Constitutional Convention, was its first Grand Master.[20]

Peyton Randolph, Edmund Randolph’s uncle and adoptive father, became the first President of the First Continental Congress. Peyton Randolph was also Grand Master of the Masonic Order.

President Washington appointed Edmund Randolph the first Attorney General of the United States and then the second Secretary of State after Jefferson resigned.

In 1787, Congress called a convention to amend the Articles of Confederation. (This convention became known as the Federal Constitutional Convention of 1787.) At this time, Randolph was Governor of Virginia. He persuaded the Virginia delegation to support scraping the Articles of Confederation and write a new constitution that would incorporate the states into a federation. (“Thus it was the Grand Master of Virginia, Edmund Randolph, in league with Aaron Burr and British intelligence, who foisted on the nation the concept of a federal government which could rule over and above the sovereignties of the states.”[21]) Randolph was also a delegate to the convention.

Result of American Revolution
In spite of the Illuminists involvement in the American Revolution and the Federal Constitutional Convention of 1789, the essence of English freedoms and institutions survived. What saved the new United States from Illuminism and from becoming its communistic, democratic egalitarian new Atlantis, the New World Order, ruled by Illuminists, was that 65 to 99 percent of the Aryan population was Christian. Now the Illuminists began the work of destroying them.

Most of the leaders of the American Revolution who were Freemasons believed that they were fighting to free the American colonies from the tyrannical British rule. They were ignorant of the ultimate objective of the Revolution, which was to establish an illuministic New World Order. The Illuminists who controlled Freemasonry had deceived them, as they deceive most Freemasons today. They had deceived them into believing that Freemasonry was the savior of Christianity and the bearer of liberty and happiness. Only the highest degree Illuminists knew the real objective—the establishment of Lucifer’s New World Order.

Fortunately for Americans, the ideals of the Reformation and the English Revolution guided the American Revolution much more than the ideals of the Renaissance and the French Revolution. In spite many leaders of the American Revolution being Illuminists, Christianity had a much greater influence over the American Revolution than did Illuminism. (Revolutions based primarily on Illuminism, such as the French Revolution and the Bolshevik Revolution lead to despair and anarchy, which is followed by dictatorship. Revolutions based primarily on Christianity, such as the English Revolution and the American Revolution, lead to hope and freedom.)

Endnotes
1. Dennis L. Cuddy, Now Is the Dawning of the New Age New World Order (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: Hearthstone Publishing, 2000), p. 15. H. Spencer Lewis, Rosicrucian Questions and Answers with Complete History of the Rosicrucian Order (Second Edition. San Jose, California: Rosicrucian Press, 1932), pp. 135-136, 138. William T. Still, New World Order: The Ancient Plan of Secret Societies (Lafayette, Louisiana: Huntington House Publishers, 1990), pp. 46ff.

2. Cuddy, Now Is the Dawning, p. 15. Lewis, pp. 135-136, 138.

3. Bernard Fay, Revolution and Freemasonry 1680-1800 (Boston, Massachusetts: Little, Brown, and Company, 1935), pp. 230-231. Clarence Kelly, Conspiracy Against God and Man: A Study of the Beginnings and Early History of the Great Conspiracy (Belmont, Massachusetts: Western Islands, 1974), p. 55. J. S. M. Ward, Freemasonry and the Ancient Gods (London, England: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co. Ltd., 1921), pp. 230-231.

4. Lewis, p. 137.

5. Kelly, p. 55.

6. The Cause of World Unrest (New York, New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1920), pp. 48-49. Lady Queenborough (Edith Starr Miller), Occult Theocracy (Two Volumes. Hawthorne, California: The Christian Book Club of America, 1933), pp. 189, 336. Nesta H. Webster, Secret Societies and Subversive Movements (Palmdale, California: Omni Publication, 1924), p. 149.

7. Kelly, pp. 55-56. Eustace Mullins, The Curse of Canaan: A Demonology of History (Staunton, Virginia: Revelation Book, 1987), p. 132. Queenborough, p. 190.

8. Cause of World Unrest, p. 49. Kelly, pp. 55-56. Queenborough, p. 190. Webster, p. 149.

9. Gary H. Kah, En Route to Global Occupation (Lafayette, Louisiana: Huntington House Publishers, 1992), p. 110.

10. Fay, pp. 239-240. Still, p. 61.

11. Fay, p. 250. Kelly, p. 55. Jim Marrs, Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids (New York, New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2000), pp. 231-232.

12. Cuddy, Now Is the Dawning, p. 23.

13. Still, p. 61.

14. Cuddy, Now Is the Dawning, p. 23.

15. Marrs, p. 232.

16. Mullin, pp. 132-133.

17. Anton Chaitkin, Treason in America From Aaron Burr to Averell Harriman (New York, New York: New Benjamin Franklin House, 1984), p. 148. Mullin, p. 133.

18. Chaitkin, pp. 15-18.

19. Mullin, pp. 181-182.

20. Mullin, p. 181.

21. Mullins, p. 183.

[Editor’s note: List of references in original are omitted.]

Copyright © 2010 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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