Solving Lincoln’s Assassination

by Steven Hager

http://stevenhager420.wordpress.com/2014/09/11/solving-lincolns-assassination/

I tinkered around conducting my own deep political research for years, but it wasn’t until I began the study of secret societies that I made any real headway. My big breakthrough was exploring connections between the Sicilian men-of-honor society and the Central Intelligence Agency, two secret societies that plotted to assassinate Fidel Castro. But after JFK called off that murder, the same team assembled to kill Castro ended up killing Kennedy. If Congress ever holds a real investigation, this is the reality that will emerge, although I suppose the instigators will be long dead by then.

I could write about 9/11 today, after all it is the anniversary, but my musing on that subject don’t attract much attention and offend those who prefer to keep their heads in the sand. I’m sure Facebook downgrades 9/11 posts anyway, unless they support the official story. There’s so much mud in the water and games being played regarding 9/11 that it’ll probably take another 13 years for enough real evidence to emerge to start pointing fingers at the true culprits, though I am certain 9/11 was staged to jump-start two wars that killed over two million people and made billions for the military-industrial complex, while suspending most of our Constitutional rights, because that’s the way deep politics works.

You can’t understand the Lincoln assassination without understanding the Knights of the Golden Circle, one of the more powerful secret societies in America at the time of the assassination. Funny how almost nothing has been written about the Knights, although their existence was well-established before the Civil War. Apparently, the organization grew out of Southern Rights clubs in the South who wished to open up more territory to slavery. These secret clubs financed slave ships that continued to illegally abduct Africans after the slave trade was officially abolished in 1808. In 1844, the War with Mexico was championed by these clubs because they desired to invade Mexico so it could be carved-up into slave states to insure the balance of power in Congress remained with the South.

In 1855, a resident of Cincinnati, Ohio, named George Bickley organized the Southern Rights movement into the highly secretive Knights of the Golden Circle (K.G.C.), a volunteer militia initially formed for a new invasion of Mexico. Eventually, tens of thousands joined the society, and many came from Northern states. A secret history of the society was written in 1861 and appeared a few years ago online here:https://archive.org/stream/authenticexposit00perri#page/n3/mode/2up

But only three years after the Civil War commenced, the K.G.C. was exposed. Some were leading pro-slave “peace movements” while others were acting as spies and dirty tricks operatives for the Confederacy. The Army spent months investigating the K.G.C. and the Judge Advocate General eventually produced an exhaustive report titled: “The Order of American Knights”, alias “The Sons of Liberty:” A Western Conspiracy in Aid of the Southern Rebellion, published by the Union Congressional Committee, Washington D.C., 1864. Among other things, the report identified most of the state leaders in the North and claimed Clement Vallindigham, leader of the Copperhead Democrats in Ohio, was the society’s Supreme Commander. Vallindigham had been a member of Congress, but after he lost his seat, President Lincoln had him deported to South Carolina as an enemy alien.

You can read the Congressional report here: https://archive.org/details/reportontheorder02unit

Isn’t it odd that none of Lincoln biographies or recent films mention K.G.C.?

In the 1930s an amateur historian and chemistry professor in Chicago put forth the theory that Secretary of War Edwin Stanton was involved in the Lincoln assassination and played the crucial role in covering up the true origins of the plot.

After Lincoln’s death, Stanton seized all power in Washington D.C. and took charge of the investigation and ran a military court that swiftly hung some minor players. What nobody seems to mention, however, is that Stanton and Vallindigham were very close personal friends, and that Vallindigham funded Stanton’s rise in politics. Booth’s induction into the K.G.C. is well documented and Booth may have been following instructions from Vallindigham, who had one of the biggest axes to grind against Lincoln.

The transcripts of the trial are available online, or you can watch Robert Redford’s excellent film The Conspirator, which focuses on Mary Surratt, who was targeted as chief patsy and swiftly hung. Her son John was studying to be a Catholic priest but instead joined the K.G.C. He became one of the primary couriers for the Confederacy during the war, and was involved in the K.G.C. plot to kidnap Lincoln so he could be traded for Confederate prisoners of war. But when the kidnap plan shifted to murder, Surratt fled to Canada, where he remained in hiding while his mother was tried and hung as chief patsy.

Check out Surratt (left) wearing his Papal Zouave uniform. Surratt was such a devoted Catholic he volunteered to defend the Papal States during the final years of their existence. Eighteen months after his mother was hung, however, he was spotted in Egypt and escorted back to America to stand trial still wearing his Papal Zouave uniform. Fortunately for Surratt, a law had just been passed forbidding military courts from trying civilians so the government was unable to secure his conviction, although Surratt freely admitted associations with Booth, he claimed no part of the murder and most of the jury believed him.

Later on, Surratt would publish his diary and the most astonishing thing was his frequent mentions of the K.G.C. on almost every other page. You can read the diary here:https://archive.org/stream/privatejournali00surr#page/n5/mode/2up

Since Stanton was head of the investigation and running the country under martial law at the time, one wonders why the K.G.C. was never mentioned in the trial, why Booth was executed instead of being brought in for interrogation, and why 15 pages of Booth’s diary disappeared immediately after Stanton got control of the manuscript.

If I had to make a guess, I’d say the Civil War was fomented by British interests that also led the abolitionist movement from their headquarters in Boston. After the war, certain business interests wanted to pillage the South for exploitation, something Lincoln was strongly opposed to. Killing Lincoln was not in the best interests of the South, but was in the interest of certain business alliances. After Lincoln’s death, Stanton engaged in a vicious power struggle with President Andrew Johnson, someone who’d also been slated for assassination but survived.

There’s another thread to this saga that involves Freemasonry. Albert Pike, the most powerful Mason in America, was from Boston, but moved to Arkansas during the war, where he became a general for the Confederacy and organized Native Americans to conduct terror raids on Northern civilians. Just as British and American officers met frequently during the Revolutionary War in Masonic lodges (and sometimes on the eve of a battle), it’s safe to assume Masons on both sides of the Civil War held discussions in their temples throughout the war. Freemasonry has always been a refuge for spies. Immediately after Lincoln’s death, Pike went from hiding out in Canada, to being awarded full masonic honors inside the White House by the deeply masonic President Andrew Johnson, who pardoned Pike for his war crimes and may have helped erect a statue to him in Washington.

Consider that Stanton was a devoted Freemason. Also consider the one man brought in to testify against Mary Surratt was a clerk who worked for Stanton at the Department of War. Consider Stanton placed John Frederick Parker as the sole bodyguard for Lincoln that fateful night even though Lincoln had been having nightmares about being assassinated for three nights running and expressed these fears to Stanton and requested additional protection. Since Parker had a reputation for visiting brothels, sleeping on duty and drinking heavily, he seems like an odd choice. Parker abandoned his post and went across the street for drink in a tavern where Booth was also imbibing before Booth strolled across the street to execute the undefended President. Consider that Stanton closed every bridge out of Washington immediately after the assassination, save one, which turned out to be the bridge used by Booth and his confederates. Consider the public telegraph lines in Washington went dead for two hours immediately after the assassination, leaving Stanton in control of the only working telegraph line in and out of the city.

Although all the films show Booth jumping to the stage and yelling “sic semper Tyrannis,” in his final diary entries Booth claimed to have shouted those words immediately before firing the shot.

Knights of the Golden Circle ceremony

Final note: When conducting operations on a national/international levels, secret societies can manifest dialectical systems. By founding terror groups, they capture centers of gravity and place gatekeepers at key strategic positions in the coming conflict. Just as the abolitionist movement had deep pockets plus the insane John Brown on their side, a complimentary and similarly violent pro-slavery movement may have been manifested so the coming clash of cultures could be more effectively mined for profit. William Quantrill would be the insane terrorist on the flip side. I sense this may be the way secret societies have played their games for centuries.

President Lincoln assassinated by The Knights of the Golden Circle

by Steven Hager

http://stevenhager420.wordpress.com/2014/09/09/president-lincoln-assassinated-by-the-knights-of-the-golden-circle/

The Knights of the Golden Circle is a notorious secret society you probably never heard of it. In 1861, a history of the K.G.C. was published (left) stating the society began in 1834 but Wikipedia claims a start date 20 years later, in 1854, so that’s when the “official” history begins, leaving me wondering about those early formative years.

If you’re looking for something truly enlightening for 9/11 anniversary week, I suggest watching The Conspirator, a film produced by Robert Redford a few years ago. I much prefer this film to Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln. It used to be free to stream on Netflix and Amazon Prime, but now you have to pay.

Redford spent years researching the Lincoln assassination, and the film focuses on Secretary of War Edwin McMasters Stanton, who effectively took charge of the country after the assassination. After submitting to Stanton’s will for a brief time, President Andrew Johnson attempted to twice sack Stanton, something that sparked Johnson’s impeachment hearings. At one point, Stanton barricaded himself in his office, refusing to give up his post or government titles until Johnson’s impeachment trial was concluded.

Obviously, Lincoln’s assassination was a huge conspiracy, and since John Wilkes Booth was a member of the K.G.C., it might have been useful to reveal that organization during the subsequent trial, something that strangely never happened. Instead, some innocents, including Mary Surratt, were railroaded into a military courtroom and quickly hung, something that never could have transpired had they been afforded a normal trial. It was a typical “move along, nothing to see here” hoodwink like ones employed so often in cases of secret-society-sponsored terrorism. You have to wonder why Stanton was so eager to close the case and was he being paid off by someone? And, of course, Stanton was such a devote Freemason, so his connections ran wide and deep and probably extended across the pond.

The film doesn’t really go into Stanton’s motivations, although it does demonstrate his manipulations and rush to judgment against an innocent woman falsely painted as the mastermind of the assassination. Stanton would go on to play a role in reversing Lincoln’s plans for Southern appeasement and national healing, opening up the South to ruthless exploitation by carpetbaggers. Afterwards he supported General Grant for President and was rewarded with a seat on the Supreme Court he never lived to sit on.

Stanton got his job as Secretary of War in 1862, one year after the war’s start because the previous secretary had just been sacked for massive corruption. (Secretary of War was long considered a key strategic position for orchestrating war for profit, Id imagine, so it should come as no surprise that during WWII, this position was held by a member of another secret society, Yale’s Skull & Bones.)

I find it fascinating Stanton got his start with a $500 loan from Clement Vallandigham (left), who would go on to become leader of the pro-slavery “Copperhead” Democrats, so named by Republicans to sheep-dip them as venomous snakes in the minds of the public. However, before the Civil War got started, the K.G.C. were already collecting funds for an invasion of Mexico (similar to the plans of British spook Aaron Burr, who’d been arrested and tried for treason for fomenting a plot to turn Mexico into a slave nation). Vallandigham served two terms in Congress, where he voted against every proposed military bill, but after he lost his seat, Lincoln had him deported to the South as an enemy alien, the ultimate insult. I do believe Vallandigham may have gotten the last laugh.

Interesting John Brown was the terrorist who helped spark the Civil War and after Brown’s Harper’s Ferry raid, Vallandigham was one of a handful of Congressmen allowed to interrogate Brown concerning the raid. I suspect the abolitionist movement was funded by economic forces planning to make a killing on war profiteering.

Redford’s film doesn’t mention this detail, but it’s pretty certain Vallandigham was involved with Booth in the K.G.C., and I say this because the K.G.C. went through an interesting evolution, morphing first into the Order of the American Knights and finally becoming The Order of the Sons of Liberty, at which point Vallandigham emerges as the Supreme Commander of the society, indicating he may have been an active member all along.

In hindsight, this looks like a possible revenge plot.

There are many lessons in this story, but the most important thing is that whenever a military tribunal is called for what should be a public criminal trial, you should immediately suspect a hidden agenda at work.

And that’s why the creation of the Guantanamo Bay Prison and the torturing of people for decades, some of whom have been found to be completely innocent, is such a suspicious detail in the history of 9/11. Why after 13 years hasn’t a trial been concluded?

But then, trials are are made more difficult when the chief suspect is assassinated in his bedroom in front of his family and then his corpse dumped in the ocean before any independent forensic identification can be made.