Anglosubversion and the Garfield Assassination, pt. 1: the Frelinghuysen-Belmont connection
[insert schizo-witty word salad subheading]
If you thought “bipartisanship” was the solution to America’s problems, then you’ve been brainwashed. American civil rights in Reconstruction were not secured by a bipartisan consensus—a minority of Northern Democrats voted in favor of abolition, and none supported federal civil rights protections. Bipartisanship is the unity of both wings (left and right) of reactionary elitism in a common agenda, and such endeavors carry murderous consequences. The two great Jameses of the 1880s—Garfield and Blaine—probably knew all too well.
The Republican Party was founded upon the insurgent, radically pro-liberty spirit of Thomas Jefferson,1 but decidedly adhered from the start to Hamiltonian economics—high tariffs, internal improvements, Anglophobic nationalism, and industrialist modernization. But much as the “spirit of antichrist” consumed apostolic Christianity in times of antiquity and turned the church into a powerhouse of totalitarian apostasy, so too did a pernicious power—Wall Street financiers—gradually corrupt the Grand Old Party from within and transform a citadel of human dignity into a vehicle for totalitarian, reactionist, hideous despotism. Or, to put it alternatively, it is almost akin to the Book of Revelation’s description of the second beast in ch. 13—a power with lamb-like principles winding up speaking “as a dragon.”2
The financial interests of Wall Street have always been “reactionary” in that they constituted the Anglophile reaction against the independent spirit of American economic nationalism as laid out by Alexander Hamilton. James A. Garfield and James G. Blaine represented the old Lincolnian wing of the Republican Party in 1880-81, favoring a pro-industry, semi-populist/semi-capitalist, protectionist agenda alongside a robust foreign policy emphasizing ties with Latin America and Russia in mutual opposition to the Anglo-European empire. Blaine pushed a multinational cooperation of Latin American countries with the United States in the proposed “Pan-American Conference,” understanding that the lack of U.S. involvement would result in ever-increasing British influence over South America.3
When Garfield was conveniently liquidated in suspicious circumstances, the Pan-American Conference was prepared for demise. Blaine did not have sufficient time remaining to convene the Conference himself (as the new administration was to be transitioned in), and hoped that Arthur would finish the crucial project; however, he underestimated the immense opposition from not only the other party, but within the GOP, as “Blaine’s Republican rivals hated him almost as much as the Democrats.”4 After Blaine resigned from Secretary of State, the insurgent—and highly distrusted—president, Chester A. “Chet” Arthur, installed in his place Frederick T. Frelinghuysen, who promptly cancelled Blaine’s scheduled invitations to Latin America states for a conference,5 on the basis of averting “European jealousy and ill will”;6 Pres. Arthur himself exacerbated the embarrassment by voicing the very same excuse.7
And when Frelinghuysen was “cleaning things up,” he supposedly dug up dirt on Blaine, which was used as a pretext by Arthur to oppose Pan-America, a flip-flop from his original support of Blaine’s multilateral initiative.8 The rapidity of Frelinghuysen’s reversions, furthermore, were to the point that Blaine felt he’d “entered upon a course of action which was so suddenly abandoned as to leave it without fair trial.”9
The elder F. T. Frelinghuysen’s son George G. Frelinghuysen was an intimate of the Belmont family, forming in May 1879 a firm with Arthur D. Vinton and Perry Belmont (a son of Confederate-aligned10 Anglo-Rothschild stooge11 and KGC12 financier13 August Belmont) named “Vinton, Belmont, and Frelinghuysen.”14 Concurrent with Perry Belmont’s (as a New York Democratic congressman) vicious character assassination against James G. Blaine (approved wholeheartedly by senatorial Blaine opponent George F. Edmunds, a hard-reformist New England Republican who ironically was eventually denounced by left-wing colleague Richard F. Pettigrew as a corrupt bribe-taker15), the new Secretary of State F. T. Frelinghuysen worked to revert Blaine’s State Department influence.16 Of course, Frelinghuysen also supported the Belmont investigation’s conclusions of Blaine as discredited, corrupt.17
The New York Times reported in late January of 1885 of animosity between the Blaine and Frelinghuysen families, the senior Blaine’s son Walker shunned by a woman of the Frelinghuysens at an elite club meeting.18
What does all this have to do with the Garfield Assassination? Remember, Blaine was well-associated with James Garfield and selected by the 20th president to become Secretary of State. Blaine’s Pan-American agenda was at the behest of Garfield, and when Garfield was suddenly liquidated, the Pan-American Conference—in a domino chain—was cancelled. Cui bono? The Anglo-European powers, obviously. A multinational coalition of industrialized Latin American democracies in the mold of a Hamiltonian-nationalist United States would become an unquenchable nightmare for the imperialist-reactionary aims of the British Empire. As Blaine’s wife remarked:19
“A policy which European countries applaud, could not be very American.”
—Harriet Stanwood Blaine to her daughter
The very name “Republican Party” was reused from the “Jeffersonian Republicans”—modern scholars refer to Jefferson’s Anti-Administration party as the “Democratic-Republicans” merely to denote its lineage to the subsequent Democratic Party.
Detailed biblical prophecy discussions, of course, are for another time and probably another place. For now, enjoy a U.S. history analysis.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Zachary Karabell (June 21, 2004), “Chester Alan Arthur: The American Presidents Series: The 21st President, 1881-1885,” p. 119.
Sean A. Mirski (2023), “We May Dominate the World: Ambition, Anxiety, and the Rise of the American Colossus,” ch. 2.
Caitlin E. Schindler (Aug. 2, 2017), “The Origins of Public Diplomacy in US Statecraft: Uncovering a Forgotten Tradition,” p. 125.
Anton Chaitkin (Jan. 2, 2015), “The 1870s Showdown: America’s Former Greatness And the World’s Future,” pp. 59-60.
Thomas Leonard, Jurgen Buchenau, Kyle Longley, Graeme Mount (2012), “Encyclopedia of U.S.-Latin American Relations,” p. 367.
Charles F. Faber, Richard B. Faber (2000), “The American Presidents Ranked by Performance, 1789-2012,” ed. II, p. 135.
Alva Curtis Wilgus (1921), “James G. Blaine and the Pan-American Movement,” p. 40.
Thomas Nast (Sep. 5, 1868), “This is a White Man’s Government,” Harper’s Weekly.
Anton Chaitkin (May 28, 1993), “Simon Wolfs role in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln,” Executive Intelligence Review, vol. 20, no. 21, p. 57.
Knights of the Golden Circle. They were the precursors to the Ku Klux Klan, operating as a clandestine, Masonic, and militant pro-slavery organization.
Anton Chaitkin (Apr. 15, 1994), “America’s ‘Young America’ movement: slaveholders and the B’nai B’rith,” Executive Intelligence Review, vol. 21, no. 16, p. 29.
1887, “Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography,” VI, p. 302; 1893, “The Tammany Times,” vol. 18-19, p. 2.
Richard F. Pettigrew (1921), “Triumphant Plutocracy: The Story of American Public Life from 1870 to 1920,” p. 215.
David Healy (2001), “James G. Blaine and Latin America,” pp. 108-9.
José Martí (1975), “Inside the Monster: Writings on the United States and American Imperialism,” p. 346.
Jan. 30, 1885. “The Frelinghuysen-Blaine War,” The New York Times.
1918, “The Hispanic American Historical Review,” vol. 5, p. 683.