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Lincoln's Counterfeiters: The Wisconsin Gang that Funded the Union and Started the Chicago Mob
192 pages, Paperback
Published August 19, 2025
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October 4, 2025
My first thought seeing this title on Linkcat is "you've got to be kidding me." So, if you don't have the stomach to tolerate your last American myth and your idea of the one remaining revered politician being shattered, this isn't the book for you. Not only that, but we also see the Unitarians and Abolitionists in new light as well. If high school history were taught with this type of "intersectionality", the classes would be packed and the students awake. Below are notes for my own purposes. I'd recommend you read the short book and not my notes/excerpts; it will hit differently.
Counterfeiters were the elite of organized crime and the crime spread as the families moved throughout the U.S. Napoleon Bonaparte Latta, career counterfeiter, was deeply intertwined with the ruling class in the rough agricultural village and former mining town of Monroe, Wisconsin, who were in turn deeply intertwined with Universalism Abolitionists, and the Republican Party and Abraham Lincoln. Remember, abolitionism brought cheap labour North and Northern bankers didn't hold slaves but invested heavily in the South.
The Monroe ruling class included banker Arabut Ludlow, A. C. Dodge, C.S. Foster, H. Howe, J.F. Pool, E. Bartlett, Charlton J. Simmons, and probable former prostitute/madame and current owner of hotel with whiskey bar (bordello) Almira Humes Churchill Robertson. Allan Pinkerton was a common thread amongst the subsequent history and dirty as the rest. These people originated in the East Coast and travelled West to the "wild" Wisconsin territory/State for various reasons, which are detailed in the book. These patrician families often made money through prostitution, piracy, and land seizures. Latta's eventual arrest for counterfeiting made the ruling class sweat, but at no eventual cost to anybody other than 5 years incarceration for Latta.
The book turns from Latta's arrest for counterfeiting to its use in funding politics. Lincoln's Secretary of the Treasury Salmon Portland Chase and his fiddling (S.P. Chase sprung Joshua D. Miner, the physical manufacture of Latta's large denomination Treasury bills, from jail) make their appearance. The Underground Railway was invested in by Northern businessmen including Thurlow Weed to bring cheaper labor to Northern railway developers. Yes, even the Underground Railway was dirty, exploiting the vulnerable like Harriet Tubman who was financially dependent on the William H. Seward Family. Northern businessmen's need for Northern railroads will be critical to the need for the Republican party and Lincoln.
Lincoln's expensive War was not uniformly popular in the North. Ludlow etal organized a group to assault any Monroe WI resident who was insufficiently supportive of Lincoln in 1862 and intimidated them into signing loyalty oaths. Anyone who didn't sign was "investigated." Sound familiar? Some were rode out of town on rail, one of whom Mr. Steves of Durand then sued for assault. Good on him.
So, how did Lincoln finance a war when not supported by the bankers (who were heavily invested in the South)? He used inflation, a type of counterfeiting, to coerce the bankers. John Thompson was the architect and supporter of the 1863 National Banking Act that forced banks to use government-printed money as reserves instead of gold and gave the government ability to sell war bonds to raise cash - bonds that Thompson brokered (and made him wealthy). The Act required National banks to hold 25% of deposits in their reserves in greenbacks, which were legal tender only by writ of law vs. private issued banknotes which had value based on a strong bank balance sheet. Banks resisted, so Thompson sent a federal bank examiner, Charles A. Meigs to hype up First National Bank City of New York (eventually Citibank). Its "astronomical" profits were made by lending against U. S. government bonds. FNBCNY exploited having first access to legally mandated capital by lending to other banks, the original correspondent bank. When these other national banks made bad loans or had a run on them, the Thompson brothers would deliver newly printed greenbacks or maybe Latta's faux U.S. bills to the banks. These inflationary counterfeit greenbacks and bills would be "off book" for the Treasury.
The book then segues to Chicago, its corruption, and how counterfeiting intertwines with political power domestically and internationally. This is dense with information. Distressingly, Chicago's leaders used the tactics of the Prussian emperor to co-opt socialism and use of organized crime to crush political dissent. Infiltrate local immigrant groups, cause a problem, give police control of crime (kickbacks, provide protection in returns for information, pimp child prostitutes to highly placed officials.) In this manner, the Hapsburgs were able to corrupt democratic institutions and keep power. Eastern European (often Jewish) pimps were also employed in the same manner as the American Pinkertons to break up political rallies that frightened the Hapsburgs or Romanovs. Austro-Hungarian organized crime dominated procuring women for the global sex trade. Vienna, like Chicago, effectively legalized it by giving police control over it. In Chicago, favored pimps then organized election-rigging. The result of tolerated prostitution in Eastern Europe was massive institutionalized corruption. There then follows a trail from NY Astors and Livingston families, President Grant's son Frederick marrying KY Colony girl Ida Marie Honoré, who was Bertah Palmer's sister. Fred was ambassador to Vienna and the couple a favorite at Franz Joseph's court. Upon return Fred served as NYC police commissioner alongside Teddy Roosevelt, who "reformed" the tenements from which Austria-Hungary's gangsters worked in the U.S. President Harrison later appointed Bertha Honoré Palmer to be female President of 1893 Columbian Exposition, which corresponded with a massive boom in Chicago sex tourism. Chicago was wide open for Vienna's state-sponsored crime problem. The prostitution money underwrote the control of corrupt aldermen.
This "bossism" (buying politicians through a system of patronage and bribery with vice money) was in multiple large industrial U.S. cities but behind the frontline crooks were the cartels of respectable business people who owned the Republican party. So both sides (Democrats and Republicans) played their constituents off each other, gaining what they wanted politically and financially. Families like the Livingstons, Astors, or Lorillards would invest in prostitution by owning the tenements used by the bordellos and the most exclusive bordellos would be located within easy walking distance of the owners' flagship hotel, like the Astor's Waldorf-Astoria.
Back to Chicago, beef businessmen were so big that they were able to control railroad pricing. This did not suit Northern businessmen, who needed to suppress additional slave states (and their cheap railroad labor) entry to the Union and expand Northern railway service. Thus was born the Party of Lincoln; in return, President Lincoln delivered the 1862 Pacific Railway Act. Lincoln had been a whiskey dealer, a shady enough profession for him to mislead people about it while campaigning.
There's so much more exposure of the corruption in Chicago including Palmer House real history as center for training pimps and organizing votes, Marshall Field's store role as a feeder institution for White Slavery (sex trafficking), the Columbia Exposition's birth of Ziegfeld Follies and their Central Music Hall, which was a favorite venue for Democratic Party conventions. Dr. Ziegfeld - a German immigrant - had inexplicable connections with German power elite (including Johann Strauss). Less inexplicable when you know that Austro-Hungarian police identified traveling musical acts as one of the primary vectors for sex trafficking. Ziegfeld's show included children like 14 year old Doris Eaton, of whom he'd take nude pictures. The rise in Orientalism, its connection with sex slavery and the occult, and Bertha Honoré Palmers connection to it all are noted. She had a nomadic lifestyle but always hung in her bedroom Renoir's painting Acrobats at the Cirque Fernando (two young girls painted even younger than they were holding oranges and watched by men. Oranges symbolized theatrical prostitution.) Oh, and to circle back, Monroe WI's Arabut Ludlow was friends with Potter Palmer, husband of Kentucky Colony (family syndicate) daughter Bertha Honoré Palmer, and his business partner Marshall Field.
Unitarians and Universalism, now joined, share roots in the conflict between the Holy Roman Empire and adjacent Muslim Ottoman Empire. Rich border lords from Bohemian Crown lands wanted to trade with the Ottomans in European slaves, despite Hapsburg opposition.9 The Bohemian elite bucked Hapsburg pressure with help of Muslim slave-soldiers 10, giving way to religious compromise of Unitarianism 11, which denies the Holy Trinity. This found its way to British Civil War thinkers. At the same time in London, religious radical were interested in Universalism (belief that everyone will be saved), an outgrowth of the occult writings of Jakob Bohme and radical Pietism. 13 Bohme's Hermeticism and Pietism both drew on occult traditions preserved in the Islamic world. 14
8. S.A. Nigosian, Islam, Its History, Teachings and Practices (Indiana University Press 2004) 37-38
9. Edward, Bristow, Prostitution and Prejudice: The Jewish Fight Against White Slavery 1870-1939 (Clarendon Press Schocken Books, 1982) Julius Kemeny, Hungara: Ungarissche Madchen auf dem markte (1903).
10. Fred Donner, The Early Islamic Conquests (Princeton University Press, 1981), 251+. Islam was a "unifying ideology" that brought disparate military forces under one empire.
11. Susan Ritchie, "The Islamic Ottoman Influence on the Development of Religious Toleration in Reformation Transylvania," Seasons Journal 3 (2004): 59-70.
12. Particularly in the views of William Walwyn and John Lilburne. See Rachel Foxley, The Levellers: Radical Political Thought in the English Revolution (Manchester University Press, 2016), 123-25; "John Biddle," Encylopedia Britannica, January 1, 2024, https://www.britannica.com.
13. J. Charles Godbey, "Unitarianism and Universalism," Encyclopedia Britannica, October 31, 2022, https://britannica.com. Boehme's contribution to Universalism came from the interpretation of his ideas by his followers. See M. McClymond, The Devil's Redemption: A New History and Interpretation of Christian Universalism (Baker Academic, 2018), 479-87, 563-68; R. Parry, A Large Hope? Universal Salvation from the Reformation to the Nineteenth Century (Cascade Books, 2019) 35-62.
14. Pietists profited immensely from Hermetic "medicine", really magic potions, based on the Ottoman-curated Greek texts, The Medikamenten Expedition in Halle was the international headquarters of this undertaking and the first global pharmaceutical company. See pharmazeutischen Industrie am hallenschen Beispiel der Waisenhause- Medikamentenexpedition" in Parmazeutische Praxis (1975), 187-92; V. Pugliano, "Pharmacy, Testing, and the Language of Truth in Renaissance Italy", Bulletin of the History of Medicine 91, no. 2 (2017): 233-73.
Counterfeiters were the elite of organized crime and the crime spread as the families moved throughout the U.S. Napoleon Bonaparte Latta, career counterfeiter, was deeply intertwined with the ruling class in the rough agricultural village and former mining town of Monroe, Wisconsin, who were in turn deeply intertwined with Universalism Abolitionists, and the Republican Party and Abraham Lincoln. Remember, abolitionism brought cheap labour North and Northern bankers didn't hold slaves but invested heavily in the South.
The Monroe ruling class included banker Arabut Ludlow, A. C. Dodge, C.S. Foster, H. Howe, J.F. Pool, E. Bartlett, Charlton J. Simmons, and probable former prostitute/madame and current owner of hotel with whiskey bar (bordello) Almira Humes Churchill Robertson. Allan Pinkerton was a common thread amongst the subsequent history and dirty as the rest. These people originated in the East Coast and travelled West to the "wild" Wisconsin territory/State for various reasons, which are detailed in the book. These patrician families often made money through prostitution, piracy, and land seizures. Latta's eventual arrest for counterfeiting made the ruling class sweat, but at no eventual cost to anybody other than 5 years incarceration for Latta.
The book turns from Latta's arrest for counterfeiting to its use in funding politics. Lincoln's Secretary of the Treasury Salmon Portland Chase and his fiddling (S.P. Chase sprung Joshua D. Miner, the physical manufacture of Latta's large denomination Treasury bills, from jail) make their appearance. The Underground Railway was invested in by Northern businessmen including Thurlow Weed to bring cheaper labor to Northern railway developers. Yes, even the Underground Railway was dirty, exploiting the vulnerable like Harriet Tubman who was financially dependent on the William H. Seward Family. Northern businessmen's need for Northern railroads will be critical to the need for the Republican party and Lincoln.
Lincoln's expensive War was not uniformly popular in the North. Ludlow etal organized a group to assault any Monroe WI resident who was insufficiently supportive of Lincoln in 1862 and intimidated them into signing loyalty oaths. Anyone who didn't sign was "investigated." Sound familiar? Some were rode out of town on rail, one of whom Mr. Steves of Durand then sued for assault. Good on him.
So, how did Lincoln finance a war when not supported by the bankers (who were heavily invested in the South)? He used inflation, a type of counterfeiting, to coerce the bankers. John Thompson was the architect and supporter of the 1863 National Banking Act that forced banks to use government-printed money as reserves instead of gold and gave the government ability to sell war bonds to raise cash - bonds that Thompson brokered (and made him wealthy). The Act required National banks to hold 25% of deposits in their reserves in greenbacks, which were legal tender only by writ of law vs. private issued banknotes which had value based on a strong bank balance sheet. Banks resisted, so Thompson sent a federal bank examiner, Charles A. Meigs to hype up First National Bank City of New York (eventually Citibank). Its "astronomical" profits were made by lending against U. S. government bonds. FNBCNY exploited having first access to legally mandated capital by lending to other banks, the original correspondent bank. When these other national banks made bad loans or had a run on them, the Thompson brothers would deliver newly printed greenbacks or maybe Latta's faux U.S. bills to the banks. These inflationary counterfeit greenbacks and bills would be "off book" for the Treasury.
The book then segues to Chicago, its corruption, and how counterfeiting intertwines with political power domestically and internationally. This is dense with information. Distressingly, Chicago's leaders used the tactics of the Prussian emperor to co-opt socialism and use of organized crime to crush political dissent. Infiltrate local immigrant groups, cause a problem, give police control of crime (kickbacks, provide protection in returns for information, pimp child prostitutes to highly placed officials.) In this manner, the Hapsburgs were able to corrupt democratic institutions and keep power. Eastern European (often Jewish) pimps were also employed in the same manner as the American Pinkertons to break up political rallies that frightened the Hapsburgs or Romanovs. Austro-Hungarian organized crime dominated procuring women for the global sex trade. Vienna, like Chicago, effectively legalized it by giving police control over it. In Chicago, favored pimps then organized election-rigging. The result of tolerated prostitution in Eastern Europe was massive institutionalized corruption. There then follows a trail from NY Astors and Livingston families, President Grant's son Frederick marrying KY Colony girl Ida Marie Honoré, who was Bertah Palmer's sister. Fred was ambassador to Vienna and the couple a favorite at Franz Joseph's court. Upon return Fred served as NYC police commissioner alongside Teddy Roosevelt, who "reformed" the tenements from which Austria-Hungary's gangsters worked in the U.S. President Harrison later appointed Bertha Honoré Palmer to be female President of 1893 Columbian Exposition, which corresponded with a massive boom in Chicago sex tourism. Chicago was wide open for Vienna's state-sponsored crime problem. The prostitution money underwrote the control of corrupt aldermen.
This "bossism" (buying politicians through a system of patronage and bribery with vice money) was in multiple large industrial U.S. cities but behind the frontline crooks were the cartels of respectable business people who owned the Republican party. So both sides (Democrats and Republicans) played their constituents off each other, gaining what they wanted politically and financially. Families like the Livingstons, Astors, or Lorillards would invest in prostitution by owning the tenements used by the bordellos and the most exclusive bordellos would be located within easy walking distance of the owners' flagship hotel, like the Astor's Waldorf-Astoria.
Back to Chicago, beef businessmen were so big that they were able to control railroad pricing. This did not suit Northern businessmen, who needed to suppress additional slave states (and their cheap railroad labor) entry to the Union and expand Northern railway service. Thus was born the Party of Lincoln; in return, President Lincoln delivered the 1862 Pacific Railway Act. Lincoln had been a whiskey dealer, a shady enough profession for him to mislead people about it while campaigning.
There's so much more exposure of the corruption in Chicago including Palmer House real history as center for training pimps and organizing votes, Marshall Field's store role as a feeder institution for White Slavery (sex trafficking), the Columbia Exposition's birth of Ziegfeld Follies and their Central Music Hall, which was a favorite venue for Democratic Party conventions. Dr. Ziegfeld - a German immigrant - had inexplicable connections with German power elite (including Johann Strauss). Less inexplicable when you know that Austro-Hungarian police identified traveling musical acts as one of the primary vectors for sex trafficking. Ziegfeld's show included children like 14 year old Doris Eaton, of whom he'd take nude pictures. The rise in Orientalism, its connection with sex slavery and the occult, and Bertha Honoré Palmers connection to it all are noted. She had a nomadic lifestyle but always hung in her bedroom Renoir's painting Acrobats at the Cirque Fernando (two young girls painted even younger than they were holding oranges and watched by men. Oranges symbolized theatrical prostitution.) Oh, and to circle back, Monroe WI's Arabut Ludlow was friends with Potter Palmer, husband of Kentucky Colony (family syndicate) daughter Bertha Honoré Palmer, and his business partner Marshall Field.
Unitarians and Universalism, now joined, share roots in the conflict between the Holy Roman Empire and adjacent Muslim Ottoman Empire. Rich border lords from Bohemian Crown lands wanted to trade with the Ottomans in European slaves, despite Hapsburg opposition.9 The Bohemian elite bucked Hapsburg pressure with help of Muslim slave-soldiers 10, giving way to religious compromise of Unitarianism 11, which denies the Holy Trinity. This found its way to British Civil War thinkers. At the same time in London, religious radical were interested in Universalism (belief that everyone will be saved), an outgrowth of the occult writings of Jakob Bohme and radical Pietism. 13 Bohme's Hermeticism and Pietism both drew on occult traditions preserved in the Islamic world. 14
8. S.A. Nigosian, Islam, Its History, Teachings and Practices (Indiana University Press 2004) 37-38
9. Edward, Bristow, Prostitution and Prejudice: The Jewish Fight Against White Slavery 1870-1939 (Clarendon Press Schocken Books, 1982) Julius Kemeny, Hungara: Ungarissche Madchen auf dem markte (1903).
10. Fred Donner, The Early Islamic Conquests (Princeton University Press, 1981), 251+. Islam was a "unifying ideology" that brought disparate military forces under one empire.
11. Susan Ritchie, "The Islamic Ottoman Influence on the Development of Religious Toleration in Reformation Transylvania," Seasons Journal 3 (2004): 59-70.
12. Particularly in the views of William Walwyn and John Lilburne. See Rachel Foxley, The Levellers: Radical Political Thought in the English Revolution (Manchester University Press, 2016), 123-25; "John Biddle," Encylopedia Britannica, January 1, 2024, https://www.britannica.com.
13. J. Charles Godbey, "Unitarianism and Universalism," Encyclopedia Britannica, October 31, 2022, https://britannica.com. Boehme's contribution to Universalism came from the interpretation of his ideas by his followers. See M. McClymond, The Devil's Redemption: A New History and Interpretation of Christian Universalism (Baker Academic, 2018), 479-87, 563-68; R. Parry, A Large Hope? Universal Salvation from the Reformation to the Nineteenth Century (Cascade Books, 2019) 35-62.
14. Pietists profited immensely from Hermetic "medicine", really magic potions, based on the Ottoman-curated Greek texts, The Medikamenten Expedition in Halle was the international headquarters of this undertaking and the first global pharmaceutical company. See pharmazeutischen Industrie am hallenschen Beispiel der Waisenhause- Medikamentenexpedition" in Parmazeutische Praxis (1975), 187-92; V. Pugliano, "Pharmacy, Testing, and the Language of Truth in Renaissance Italy", Bulletin of the History of Medicine 91, no. 2 (2017): 233-73.
December 16, 2025
This is a book of interest to anyone who is wants to learn more about Chicago gang activities in the late 1800's/early 1900's, as well as those who live in or know about Monroe, Wisconsin. The author packs a lot of detail into under 200 pages, probably too much. Most folks you associate with high society and politics in Chicago do not survive unscathed. Who knew ab
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