The Origins of the American Mafia and the Pinocchio Slave Boys of “Pleasure Island”
The French Connection: The Knights of Malta, the Scottish Rite & the Rise of the Mafia Brotherhoods Part VIII
In Part VII of this series we left off with Joseph Macheca, the man who would create the American Mafia. 1868, was the year of the presidential campaigns, with Ulysses S. Grant running for the Republicans and Horatio Seymour for the Democrats. Horatio Seymour, had declared the Emancipation Proclamation unconstitutional when he was governor of New York. ‘The Republicans were offering a harsh policy toward the South and special privileges for Southern blacks. The Democrats, at least in Confederate eyes, lined up as the pro-South, pro-white party.’[1]
Macheca launched an extraordinary campaign in New Orleans in support of Horatio Seymour’s presidential election and had according to the New Orleans Daily Picayune “organized and commanded a company of Sicilians, 150 strong, known as the Innocents. Their uniform was a white cape bearing the Maltese cross on the left shoulder. They wore side arms and when they marched the streets they shot at every Negro that came in sight. They left a trail of a dozen dead Negroes behind them.”
This was the beginning of what would become the American Mafia, and it was not the only occasion in which Macheca was involved with pro-Confederate activities as we will see.
In this paper the origins of child trafficking in the United States will also be discussed, where Italian Mafia channels were used to transport kidnapped children from Italy into New York. This process was protected and defended by the New York judicial system, which never went against this phenomenon even after it had become public. All gang activity during this time in New York answered to Tammany Hall, the political machine of Aaron Burr which controlled and funded the Democratic party, which let us remind ourselves was at the time, pro-Confederate.
