Little Known History - Part 2

FOUR FAMILIES THAT DESTROYED THE SOUTH

Copied from the sermon notes of Pastor Don Elmore

November 17, 2024

Scripture Reading: Ezra 10:2a

“And Shechaniah the son of Jehiel, one of the sons of Elam, answered and said unto Ezra, We have trespassed against our God, and have taken strange[foreign] wives of the people of the land:…”

Were things good in the “good old days”? Or were they hidden as it is today? Let’s see:

AARON SCHONBERG

Aaron Schonberg was born on December 13, 1813 [the date (but not the year) of Randa and my wedding anniversary]. Both of his parents were Jewish. There are even strong rumors that his real father was Carl Rothschild, but that could be either true or false. Nevertheless, Aaron was Jewish.

Aaron’s mother, Frederika Elsass Schonberg, died when he was seven years old. Aaron was born in Alzey, Prussia. 

Aaron’s father, Simon Schonberg, was a leading citizen of Alzey, serving as president of the local synagogue for many years. His paternal ancestors were Spanish (Sephardic) Jews who fled the Iberian Peninsula during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella(1492). At a young age, his parents began calling him August instead of Aaron, which he used for the rest of his life.

After August’s mother’s death, he lived with his uncle and grandmother in Frankfurt, where he attended the Philanthropin, a school founded by Mayer Aschel Rothschild (Bauer). When he was fifteen, he was forced to withdraw from the special school after his father failed to pay tuition. His relatives prevailed upon the Rothschild family, who were relatives by his grandmother to train him for business. While training as an apprentice, he was tutored in French, English, composition, and arithmetic. In 1832, his training was rewarded with an appointment as confidential clerk.  Two years later, he became secretary and traveling companion to one of the firm’s partners, which led to his first trip outside Germany to Paris, France, Naples, and the Vatican City which are in Italy.

 Upon emigrating to the United States in 1837, August Schonberg (which is German for “beautiful mountain”) changed his name to August Belmont (which is French for “beautiful mountain”).  August Belmont became a successful American politician and horse breeder, which led to the naming of Belmont Park in New York in his honor. The Belmont Stakes, the third leg of the Triple Crown horse races is the most popular, following the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness.  

Belmont was assigned to Havana, Cuba from Europe to manage the Rothschild’s branches. However, before travelling to Havana, Belmont first went to New York. He arrived during the Panic of 1837 and remained in New York instead of continuing to Havana to supervise the jeopardized Rothschild interests.

August Belmont came to the United States in the diplomatic service, became a representative of the Rothschilds (European bankers), and founded the banking house, August Belmont & Co. He made a vast fortune and kept a racing stable. His son, August Belmont, Jr., bred 129 American Stakes winners, including his most famous foal, Man o’ War.

The Belmont Stakes debuted at Jerome Park Racetrack, owned by Belmont’s friend, Leonard Jerome who was the maternal grandfather of Winston Churchill. Belmont owned the Nursery Stud (a horse-breeding farm near Babylon, New York, on Long Island), which in 1885 was replaced by a stud farm of the same name near Lexington, Kentucky .It is very close to Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, Kentucky.

The sign at Kentucky Horse Park says the following about Man o’ War:

“Greatest race horse and leading money winner of his day. Winner of twenty of twenty-one starts with lifetime earnings of $249,465. Foaled March 29, 1917, at August Belmont’s Nursery Stud a few miles away. Sold at auction for $5,000 to Samuel D. Riddle, his owner, throughout his racing career and later retirement. “Big Red” sired 62 stakes winners: his net earning over $3.5 million. War Admiral, Triple Crown winner, was most famous of his offspring. Man o’ War died Nov. 1, 1947: lies buried beneath this statue by noted sculptor Herbert Haseltine.”

As a young Jewish foreigner in New York, Belmont had few initial avenues for social advancement. The existing elite, composed of older English-Dutch Protestants, disapproved of his extravagant lifestyle and tastes, while the established Jewish community in the city was largely Sephardic, and Belmont himself disfavored associations with the small, lower-class Ashkenazi community. His social companions were largely young rebellious men from well-to-do families. With these connections, he gradually began to introduce European cosmopolitan society to the United States. 

Belmont’s early romantic and social life in the United States also drew controversy. In 1840, he unsuccessfully courted ballerina Fanny Elssler during her sensational tour of the United States; Elssler’s known reputation for promiscuity and her illegitimate child drew disapproval. In 1841, he was publicly accused of an affair with a married woman and responded by challenging the accuser to a duel, in which Belmont was shot in the hip.

August eventually became the Democratic Party chairman. Belmont also used his influence with European business and political leaders to support the Union cause in the Civil War. He tried to dissuade the Rothschilds and other French bankers from lending funds or credit for military purchases to the Confederacy and meeting personally in London with the British prime minister, Lord Palmerston, and members of Emperor Napoleon III’s French Imperial Government in Paris.

On November 7, 1849, August Belmont married a woman who was the niece of John Slidell (Jr.). Their child was named after his father, August Belmont (Jr.) who bred a pedigreed Arabian stock on the sire’s side to the most respected English stock on the dam’s. Belmont, who was sixty-five years old, volunteered to serve in World War I.

He was used by the U.S. Army to procure mules for the service. Mrs. Belmont (Elizabeth Hamilton Morgan, a descendant of Alexander Hamilton), named the new foal “My Man o’ War” in honor of her husband. As the war dragged on, Belmont cabled home for his wife to sell the 1917 string of yearlings including “Man o’ War” (“My” had been dropped.) The rest is history.

JUDAH PHILIP BENJAMIN

Judah Benjamin was born in the island of St. Croix in the Caribbean. His parents, Philip Benjamin and Rebecca de Mendes were Sephardic Jews who had moved from London to this island in the Danish West Indies when it was occupied by Britain during the Napoleonic Wars.

Philip and Rebecca had been shopkeepers in London and emigrated to the West Indies in search of better opportunities. Rebecca’s family had been prominent in Spain before being forced to leave under the Expulsion Edict of 1492. The same as some of Belmont’s relatives.

From the island of his birth, his family moved to Wilmington, then Fayetteville, North Carolina then to Charleston, South Carolina. In Charleston, they were with the largest number of Jews in the country at that time. At the age of fourteen, Judah attended Yale College but left without graduating (gambling?) and moved to New Orleans. Benjamin apprenticed at alaw firm and began to study for the bar, which was a complicated course of action because, to become a lawyer in Louisiana, the state’s use of the Napoleonic Code required fluency in both English and French. To fulfill this requirement, Benjamin took a job teaching English to the daughter of a prominent Creole family, Natalie St. Martin, so that he could learn French.

The tutoring sessions worked well and provided unintended benefits. For on February 12, 1833, the 21-year-old Benjamin and the 16-year-old Natalie were married. Judah purchased a sugar cane plantation in Belle Chasse, Louisiana, along with 140 slaves. As a condition of marriage, Benjamin agreed that the couple’s children would be raised in the Catholic faith. That same year, Benjamin was admitted into the Louisiana bar. He soon became a law partner with an influential Louisiana politician, prominent lawyer and plantation owner--John Slidell.

JOHN SLIDELL

Here is what this historical marker says about John Slidell:

“John Slidell rose to prominence as a Louisiana politician in the decades before the war between the states. A lawyer who began his career as a businessman, he moved to New Orleans in 1819.

He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1841. As a states-rights democrat he supported James K. Polk for the presidency in 1844 and assured him a Louisiana majority in the presidential election. Polk appointed Slidell commissioner to Mexico, with instructions to settle the Texas-Mexico boundary dispute and purchase New Mexico and California.

Slidell was elected to the Senate in 1853 and cast his lot with other pro-southern congressmen. For a brief time, he was considered the most powerful man in the U.S. Senate. In the 1860 campaign, Slidell supported Democratic Presidential candidate John C. Breckinridge. He remained a moderate until Abraham Lincoln’s election pushed the southern states into seceding siding with the south. Slidell accepted a diplomatic appointment to represent the confederacy in France.

His arrival in Europe was delayed by the Trent Affair, when he and fellow diplomat James M. Mason were removed from a British-Registered ship by the commander of a federal vessel. In order to avoid a war with Britain, Lincoln had the two men released on 1 January 1862. Upon arriving in Europe, Slidell found the French sympathetic to the Confederate cause, but met with little success in securing extensive military aid or the Franco-Confederate Treaty of Alliance he sought. Slidell remained in France lobbying throughout the war. Though he was never able to accomplish a Franco-Confederate liaison, Slidell, through his political abilities and bolstered by his marriage to a Louisiana creole woman arranged Confederate financing through private French interests d’Erlanger family, [who was his son-in-law].

Dismayed be the defeat of the C.S.A., in 1865, Slidell and his family stayed in Paris. He never sought pardon from the federal government for his Confederate service. Dying in London, England, 29 July 1871, he is buried in the St. Roman Tomb in, Villejuif, France. In 1918, John Slidell’s son-in-law, Baron Erlanger, who was a financier and large landowner in St. Tammany Parish, founded a city in Louisiana and named it Slidell.”

D’ERLANGERS

The city of Erlanger, Kentucky, located a couple of miles from here, was named after the Parisian family of Baron Emile d’Erlanger which helped finance the town’s early development. They made the loan to Erlanger, Kentucky to help build its train depot for the trains to run to Chattanooga from Cincinnati. Also, the Erlanger family floated the only foreign loan to the Confederate States of America, called the “Erlanger Loan.”

Since d’Erlanger’s wife, Marguerite Mathilde Slidell, was a Roman Catholic, he agreed to rear their four sons as Catholics. He married her in 1864. She was the daughter of the influential American lawyer, businessman and politician John Slidell. Slidell was the Ambassador of the Confederate States of America at the court of Emperor Napoleon III. His wife, Maria Mathilde Deslonde, was from an influential Creole family whose ancestors emigrated from Brest, France, in the seventeenth century.

After the resolution of the Trent Affair, the two diplomats set sail for England on January 1, 1862. From England, Slidell at once went to Paris, where, in February 1862, he paid his first visit to the French minister of foreign affairs. His mission to gain recognition of the Confederate States by France failed, as did his effort to negotiate a commercial agreement for France to get control of Southern cotton if the blockade were broken. In both cases, France refused to move without the co-operation of England. He succeeded in negotiating a loan of $15,000,000 from Emile Erlanger & Co. and in securing the ship “Stonewall” for the Confederate government. In 1870, the d’Erlanger family left Paris during the Franco-Prussian War for London, England.

BELMONT'S

SLIDELL'S

D’ERLANGERS

Raphael Erlanger converted from Judaism to Christianity for his wife’s sake.

Frederic Emile d’Erlanger was a Frankfurt merchant who became a partner in the bank. He married Marguerite Mathilde Slidell, the daughter of John Slidell (Jr.) and his wife, Mathilde (Deslonde) Slidell. Her father served as Ambassador of the Confederate States of America to the court of Emperor Napoleon III. Her sister married P. G. T. Beauregard, General of the Confederacy.

She first met her husband in New Orleans during a trip he made to America. She grew up on the plantation Belle Pointe in Laplace, Louisiana, 25 miles west of New Orleans. She accompanied her parents to Paris, where she received a great deal of attention because of her exceptional beauty.

Her husband helped to fund the construction of a French transatlantic telegraph cable in 1869. Mathilde sent the first message.

JUDAH BENJAMIN

Well, so far, we have Schonberg aka Belmont, d’Erlanger, and the Slidell families all intertwined, and they were also linked to the House of Rothschild. And there is more. The most important person of the Confederate States of America who wasn’t even born an American, was Judah Benjamin.

Baron Frederic Erlanger was married to John Slidell Jr.’s daughter. So, John Slidell’s son-in-law was a French Jewish financier that funded the Confederacy, gouging the South with usurious interest rates and fees too! In 1863 the Confederacy entered an arrangement with the French banking house of Emile Erlanger& Company. Erlanger agreed to market $15,000,000 worth of Confederate bonds backed by cotton. He could receive bonds at 77 (i.e., $77 per $100 face value) and sell them in foreign financial markets at 90. In addition, he received a five percent commission for selling the bonds.

Confederate chieftans:  Judah Benjamin is at the top, with Jefferson Davis, third from the top in the middle, and Slidell to our left of Jefferson Davis.

The bonds were attractive to speculators because they could be exchanged for cotton after the war at a price well below the current market value. The bonds fluctuated wildly during the war, however, as Confederate military fortunes waxed and waned. The bonds became worthless when the South finally collapsed, but by that time Erlanger had reaped enormous profits. He held no bonds by the time their value disintegrated, and although Erlanger had taken much of the sale price, the South had received more than $6,000,000 (out of $15,000,000) to aid in their war effort.

Then there was John Slidell’s niece who was married to northern financier August Belmont (Schonberg), another Rothschild agent.  After the war between the states was over, “Confederate” Slidell would make his “Unionist” nephew-in-law, August Belmont, his political protégé. They both were hooked up this tangled North-South-Rothschild knot.

If the South was to have any chance of gaining independence, it will have to win early, before the more industrialized and populated North could outlast them. The first battle of the war at Bull Run (Manassas, Virginia) was therefore critical. To make a long story short, the rebels force a Union retreat that soon turns into a full rout.

The Union Capital, Washington DC, is just miles away and was essentially undefended. It is the South’s for the taking. The capture of the capital and other parts of the north would have delivered a huge psychological blow to the North. Because many northerners aren’t in favor of the war anyway; the capture of this capital city might very well have ended the war that same year. But instead of finishing the job, someone has decided to spare the Capital -- a decision that inflames the Southern press and leads to bitter finger-pointing.

Who was guilty of stopping the South from an early victory? It was known that Jefferson Davis relied on his Jewish Attorney General and former Louisiana Senator Judah Benjamin who was referred to by critics as “Davis’ pet Jew.” Benjamin held the titles of Secretary of War, Secretary of State, and Attorney General for the Confederacy.

Such a delaying scenario would fit perfectly with a Rothschild plan to have a long war, one in which both sides could be indebted and weakened before the British & French could arrive. Confederate Generals “Stonewall” Jackson, P. G. T. Beauregard and Henry Wise all hated Judah Benjamin. Was this enmity in their hearts?

Alexander Hamilton and Judah Benjamin were similar in their actions. Both were Rothschild agents, and both were born British subjects as they were birthed in the Caribbean islands. What the banking agent Alexander Hamilton had been to George Washington, the same is true for Judah Benjamin and Jefferson Davis. There is simply no exaggerating the influence of Judah Benjamin.

In 1862, Judah Benjamin, under intense Congressional pressure, was forced to resign as War Secretary. Jefferson Davis then appoints his beleaguered adviser as the South’s Secretary of State! In this position, Benjamin will work with Slidell and Slidell’s French Jewish son-in-Law Erlanger to secure not just financing from the Rothschild syndicate, but also to induce the direct involvement of Rothschild’s Britain & France into the war, on the side of the South. A joint British & French entry into the war would have tipped the scales in favor of the South, and ultimately led to two American nations, both under foreign influence. Lincoln and his Secretary of State, William Seward, blocked Judah Benjamin’s scheme by turning to Russia for help.

In a clear message to his old Rothschild-funded foes from the Crimean War, Czar Alexander II stations the better part of his Pacific fleet in San Francisco, and a portion of his western fleet in New York. The British & French instigators of the Crimean War get the message and are forced to back off. Judah Benjamin and the Rothschild financiers are thus thwarted.

Together, Alexander II and Lincoln have defied the London Bankers and will both pay a heavy price for it. After the war, in recognition of, or payback for, Russia’s help in keeping Britain & France out of the war; Seward will arrange for the purchase of Alaska from Russia after the war – an act dismissed at the time as “Seward’s Folly”. But now we know the reason for the “folly”. And two, Lincoln, would be assassinated.

CONCLUSION

The families of Slidell, Erlanger, Belmont, and Benjamin (three Sephardic Jews and one Roman Catholic) are all connected with the banking firm of the Rothschilds. Catholics and Jews seem to be a permanent pattern in the control of our government.

• Judah Benjamin became a law partner with an influential Louisiana politician, prominent lawyer and plantation owner-- John Slidell. He was also helped by Frederic Emile d’Erlanger (Slidell’s (Jr.) son-in-law in financial situations.
   
• Slidell, through his political abilities and bolstered by his marriage to a Louisiana Creole woman arranged Confederate financing through private French interests with his in-law, the d’Erlanger family. Creole means “native”—or, in the context of Louisiana history, “native to Louisiana.” In a narrower sense, however, it has historically referred to people of African, European, and/or mixed African, European, and Indigenous ancestry who are native to Louisiana. As such, the word “Creole” can refer to persons who are Black, white, or multi-racial, with Creole ethnicity regarded by some as independent of skin color.
   
• General P.G. T. Beauregard married John Slidell’s (Jr.) wife’s sister, Caroline Deslonde, a Creole.
   
• August Belmont married Slidell’s (Jr.) sister, Caroline Slidell Perry, a Creole.
   
• Frederic Emile d’Erlanger married John Slidell’s (Jr.) daughter, Marguerite Mathilde Slidell, a Creole.
   
• Judah Benjamin married Creole Natalie St. Martin.
   
• August Belmont’s (Sr.)son married Elizabeth Hamilton Morgan, a descendant of Alexander Hamilton. 
   
• Frederic Emile d’Erlanger agreed with Slidell to provide the Confederacy with a $15,000,000 loan. It gave to the Confederacy badly needed funds.
   
•  August Belmont, a Prussian Jew, came to the United States in the diplomatic service, became a representative of the Rothschilds (European bankers), founded the banking house, August Belmont & Co.
   
• Belmont tried to dissuade the Rothschilds and other French bankers from lending funds or credit for military purchases to the Confederacy.
   
• Russia kept Britain and France out of the war thwarting Rothschild banks for the enemies that they funded during the Crimea war. Rothschild paid Russia back by:
  1. Creating the sale of Alaska territory to America, and
  2. Giving them the Communist Revolution which almost destroyed their nation.
      
• Benjamin, d’Erlanger, and Belmont were agents of Rothschild. Both of their ancestors had left Spain during the Spanish Inquisition. 
   
• Judah Benjamin made many decisions for the Confederacy that were very damaging to it. As a result, Generals “Stonewall” Jackson, P. G. T. Beauregard and Henry Wise all hated Judah Benjamin. 
   
• Governor Brown low of Tennessee attacked verbally Benjamin calling him a “Christ-killing Jew”. 

• Senator Slidell – his Jewish son-in-law Erlanger – his Jewish northern nephew in-law Belmont, and Jewish fellow Senator Benjamin form an incestuous North-South connection with direct links to the House of Rothschild.

  One big reason why the South lost the war was this four-family syndicate: Slidell-Belmont—Erlanger—Benjamin. Two Jews who married into the Slidell family and one Jew, Benjamin, who had financial relations with the other three.

  Slidell-Belmont-Erlanger-Benjamin; three were not born in the United States (Belmont in Germany, Erlanger in France, and Benjamin in St. Croix) and three are buried outside the United States (Slidell in England, Erlanger in France, and Benjamin in England). They all had a significant role in the war of northern aggression.

  Three were Jewish and one had his family married with Jews. Sounds like someone else in the United States today.

  Our President-elect has at least one in his family who is married to a Jew. He has a daughter who has converted to Judaism and is married to an important Jew in a very influential Jewish family. His first two sons have been married and divorced and are all pro-Jewish. His first wife was born in Czechoslovakia, his second wife in America, and his third wife was born in Novo Mesto, Slovenia, Yugoslavia.

  The Democratic candidate who lost is married to a Jew and is stepmother to his two children. Her husband cheated on his first wife by having sex with their nanny. The candidate slept with the mayor of San Francisco for ten years while he was still married, and he was over 30 years her elder. She is the daughter of a woman from India and her father is an Irish-Indian from Jamaica. She has held positions of the District Attorney of San Francisco, Attorney General of California, United States Senator and Vice-president. She was born in Berkley, California and lived for over a dozen years, until she went to college, in Canada.

  Will the results be different? Insanity is the practice of doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome.

  The Bible gives us a story when Israel was defeated by the Assyrians. All their territory and people were either captured, escaped or killed, with only one city left. They were doomed. But God sent his death angel and killed 185,000 Assyrians in one night and Jerusalem was saved.

  Judah had another chance to do what God had instructed them to do. But they soon failed, and they were taken captive too.

  What will America do? They are given another chance. Will they change or will they remain the same? Will they repent and follow their God’s commandments?

  Ezra 10:2a:

  2) “And Shechaniah the son of Jehiel, one of the sons of Elam, answered and said unto Ezra, We have trespassed against our God, and have taken strange[foreign] wives of the people of the land….”

  May God have mercy on our souls.

  To be continued.

  Blessed be the LORD God of Israel