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Knights of the Golden Circle

Secret society in the mid-19th-century US From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Knights of the Golden Circle
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The Knights of the Golden Circle (KGC) was a secret society founded in 1854 by American George W. L. Bickley, the objective of which was to create a new country known as the Golden Circle (Spanish: Círculo Dorado), where slavery would be legal. The country's "circle" – of 16 degrees radius, about 2,400 miles (3,900 km) in diameter.– would have been centered on Havana. It would have consisted of the Southern United States, Mexico (which was to be divided into 25 new slave states), Central America, northern parts of South America, and Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and most other islands in the Caribbean.[1][2]

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Map of the proposed "Golden Circle" in dark green. Light green designates the remnants of the United States.
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Seal of the president of the Knights of the Golden Circle, National Archives

The KGC's proposal grew out of previously unsuccessful proposals to annex Cuba (the Ostend Manifesto), parts of Central America (the Filibuster War), and all of Mexico (the All of Mexico Movement). In Cuba, the issue was complicated by the desire of many in the colony for independence from Spain. Mexico and Central America had no interest in being part of the United States. Initially, the KGC advocated that the United States should annex the new territories to increase the number of slavery states vastly, and thus the power of slaveholders.

In response to the increased anti-slavery agitation that followed the Dred Scott decision (1857), the Knights changed their position: the Southern United States should secede, forming their own confederation, and then invade and annex the other areas of the Golden Circle.[3] The proposed new country's northern border would roughly coincide with the Mason–Dixon line, and within it were included such cities as Washington, D.C., St. Louis, Mexico City, and Panama City. In either case, the goal was to increase enslavers' political and economic power irreversibly.[3]

During the American Civil War, some Southern sympathizers in Northern states such as Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, and Iowa, joined the KGC, which was renamed first the Order of American Knights, and then, in a deliberate reference to the Sons of Liberty of the American Revolution, the Order of the Sons of Liberty.

The KGC has been called a "model" for the Ku Klux Klan.[4] Although nominally secret societies, the actual existence of the Knights of the Golden Circle and the Order of the Sons of Liberty were never considered a secret.

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Background

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European colonialism and dependence on slavery had declined more rapidly in some countries than in others. The Spanish possessions of Cuba and Puerto Rico and the Empire of Brazil continued to depend on slavery, as did the Southern United States. In the years before the American Civil War, the rise of support for the abolition of slavery was one of several divisive issues in the United States. The slave population there had continued to grow due to natural increase even after the ban on international trade. It was concentrated in the Deep South on large plantations devoted to cotton and sugar cane commodity crops. Still, it was the basis of agricultural and other labor throughout the southern states.

Prior to the formal foundation of the KGC, as early as 1834, there were numerous unaffiliated so-called "Southern Rights Clubs" throughout the South. These clubs created programs for the development of the South, advocated for the reopening of the slave trade – one went so far as to man and equip a slaver ship – and pushed for the extension of slavery into the organized territories of the United States. The clubs, which met regularly, had secret signs by which members could recognize each other.[5]

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Early history

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George Washington Lafayette Bickley, a doctor, newspaper editor, and adventurer who was born in Virginia[5] and lived in Cincinnati, Ohio, founded the association, organizing the first castle, or local branch, in Cincinnati in 1854.[6] However, records of the KGC convention held in 1860 state that the organization "originated at Lexington, Kentucky, on the fourth day of July 1854, by five gentlemen who came together on a call made by Gen. George Bickley".[7] Hounded by creditors, Bickley left Cincinnati in the late 1850s and traveled through the eastern and southern United States, promoting an armed expedition to Mexico.

The KGC's original goal was to provide a force to colonize the northern part of Mexico and the West Indies and add them to the U.S. as states, which would extend the power of the slavery states, which was felt to be jeopardized by the power and population of the northern states. The membership, scattered from New York to California and into Latin America, was never large. Bickley received little encouragement on this journey, except in Texas, since attention in the South was focused on the 1860 United States presidential election and the possible election of a slave owning Democrat, John C. Breckinridge.[8]

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An alleged secret history of the Knights of the Golden Circle published in 1863

The KGC remained fairly obscure until 1858, when it began to be heavily promoted. An organizational meeting was held in White Sulphur Springs, Virginia in August 1859, and the group began to grow quickly afterwards, so that by 1860 it had spread throughout the South. Other meeting were held in Raleigh, North Carolina in May 1860, at which time rumors that Bickley was a fraud and an imposter were put to rest. Another meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, also in 1860, generated much enthusiasm for the KGC. Bickley, styling himself "President General of the American Legion, K.G.C.", continued to tour the South making speeches, holding meetings, and proselytizing for the group.[5]

Since it was a secret society, its actual numbers cannot be known with any accuracy. In November 1860, Bickley claimed 115,000 members for the group, but historians believe this number is exaggerated. Bickley also claimed that it contained most of the important men and leading citizens of the South, and some former members support this claim, with John C. Breckenridge, Robert Toombs, and John B. Floyd being touted as members. At least one historian, Ollinger Crenshaw, has debunked the claim that the membership was prominent, and another former member described the membership as "broken down hacks, gamblers, and drunkards." William L. Yancey, however, is known to have joined around the time of the 1860 Democratic National Convention in Charleston, South Carolina.[5]

Sympathy for the goals of the KGC was widespread in the South, even by people who were not necessarily members of the group. A few days after Lincoln's election, Robert Barnwell Rhett, who has been called "the father of secession", said:

We will expand, as our growth and civilization shall demand—over Mexico—over the isles of the sea—over the far-off Southern tropics—until we shall establish a great Confederation of Republics—the greatest, freest and most useful the world has ever seen.[9]

In August 1861, The New York Times described the order as a successor to the Order of the Lone Star, which had been organized to conquer Cuba and Nicaragua, succeeding in the latter cause in 1856 under William Walker before being driven out by a coalition of neighboring states. At that time, the order's prime objective was said to be to raise an army of 16,000 men to conquer and "Southernize" Mexico, which meant making slavery, not legal in Mexico, again legal while supporting the "Knights of the Columbian Star"—those in the KGC's highest level of membership—for public office.[10]

In the North, the KGC was cited by a Senator from Wisconsin as an exemplar of "Southern fanaticism", an exposé of the organization was published in Indiana in 1861, and its secret rituals were publicized in Boston in that year as well.[8] Some members active in northern states, such as Illinois, were accused of anti-Union activities after the Civil War began in 1861.[11]

Name

The name "Knights of the Golden Circle" was based on the concept of a "Golden Circle", with its center at Havana and a radius of 16 degrees, which would contain the source of much of the world's cotton, tobacco, and sugar, and some of the best coffee and rice. This "golden" land of precious commodities was conceived to be the center of slavery in the world as well, as the slaves were needed to produce these riches.[5]

Organization

The KGC was organized in three overall degrees, as wel as into local "castles". At the top was the political degree, the Knights of the Colombian Star, the ruling leaders of the group. Below them was the financial degree, the True Faith, those responsible for funding the organization.

Entry-level members were part of the Knights of the Iron Hand, the military degree. These men would be the troops that would fight for the KGC in the insurrections and invasions they intended to mount, and provide defense when necessary. The South would be divided into military districts headed by a Colonel, who was responsible for raising a quota of men to make up the 4,200 planned for the invasion of Mexico. Each local "castle" was required to performn military drills in preparation.[5]

Membership requirements

The initiation ritual of the KGC began: "the first field of our operations is in Mexico; but we hold it to be our duty to offer our services to any Southern State to repel a Northern army ... The Southern States must foster any scheme having for its object the Americanization and Southernization of Mexico. ..." Numbers were used to represent important places and phrases.

It was specified that candidates must have been born in a Slave State, or if born in a Free State must live in the South and be a whole-hearted supporter of the Constitutional rights of the Southern slaveholders. The candidate must be a citizen, and a Protestant. A candidate who was born in a Slave State need not be a Slaveholder "provided he can give Evidence of character as a Southern man." Initiates had to swear that "should my State or any other Southern State be invaded by Abolitionists I will muster the largest force I can, and go to the scene of the danger."[8][5]

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Plans to replace Lincoln with Breckinridge

Several members of President James Buchanan's administration were members of the order,[12] as well as Virginia's secessionist Senator James M. Mason.[1]: 102–104  The Secretary of War, John Floyd and of Treasury, Howell Cobb, were members of the circle, in addition to Vice President John Breckinridge.

Floyd received instructions from the Order to "seize Navy-yards, Forts, etc. while KGC members were still Cabinet officers and Senators".[12] The plan was to prevent Lincoln from reaching Washington by capturing him in Baltimore. Then, they would occupy the District of Columbia and install Breckinridge as president instead of Lincoln.[1] Floyd used his position as Secretary of War to move munitions and men to the South toward the end of Buchanan's presidency. His plot was discovered and led to greater distrust of secret societies and Copperheads in general. This distrust resulted from a confirmed plot to overthrow the U.S. government rather than general discontent.

Civil War

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With the onset of the American Civil War, it was difficult for the KGC to garner support for their filibustering schemes, since the South needed to expend its resources on preparing for war with the Union. Several KGC "castles" joined the Confederate Army as a group, and in early 1863 Bickley gave up his leadership of the organization to become a surgeon in a regiment from North Carolina.[5] He was arrested by the Union as a Confederate spy later that year, and was jailed until October 1865 without being tried.[4][13]

Southwest

In 1859, future Confederate States Army brigadier general Elkanah Greer established KGC castles in East Texas and Louisiana.[14] Although a Unionist, United States Senator Sam Houston introduced a resolution in the U.S. Senate in 1858 for the "United States to declare and maintain an efficient protectorate over the States of Mexico, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, and San Salvador." This measure, which supported the goal of the KGC, failed to be adopted.[14] In the spring of 1860, Elkanah Greer had become general and grand commander of 4,000 Military Knights in the KGC's Texas division of 21 castles. The Texas KGC supported President of the United States James Buchanan's policy of, and draft treaty for, protecting routes for U.S. commerce across Mexico, which also failed to be approved by the U.S. Senate.[15]

With the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, the Texas KGC changed its emphasis from a plan to expand U.S. territory into Mexico to focus its efforts on providing support for the Southern States' declared secession from the United States.[16] On February 15, 1861, Ben McCulloch, United States Marshal and former Texas Ranger, began marching toward the U.S. Army arsenal at San Antonio, Texas, with a cavalry force of about 550 men, about 150 of whom were Knights of the Golden Circle (KGC) from six castles.[17] As volunteers continued to join McCulloch the following day, United States Army Brevet Maj. Gen. David E. Twiggs surrendered the arsenal peacefully to the secessionists. Twiggs was appointed a major general in the Confederate States Army on May 22, 1861.[18]

KGC members also figured prominently among those who, in 1861, joined Lt. Col. John Robert Baylor in his temporarily successful takeover of southern New Mexico Territory.[19] In May 1861, members of the KGC and the Confederate Rangers attacked a building that housed a pro-Union newspaper, the Alamo Express, owned by J. P. Newcomb, and burned it down.[20] Other KGC members followed Brig. Gen. Henry Hopkins Sibley on the 1862 New Mexico Campaign, which sought to bring the New Mexico Territory into the Confederate fold. Both Baylor and Trevanion Teel, Sibley's captain of artillery, had been among the KGC members who rode with Ben McCulloch.

North

In early 1862, Radical Republicans in the Senate, aided by Secretary of State William H. Seward, suggested that former president Franklin Pierce, who was exceedingly critical of the Lincoln administration's war policies, was an active member of the Knights of the Golden Circle. In an angry letter to Seward, Pierce denied that he knew anything about the KGC and demanded that his letter be made public. California Senator Milton Latham subsequently did so when he entered the entire Pierce–Seward correspondence into the Congressional Globe.

Appealing to the Confederacy's friends in both the North and the border southern states, the Order spread to Kentucky and Tennessee, as well as the southern parts of such Union states as Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri. It became strongest among Copperheads, who were Democrats who wanted to end the Civil War by a settlement with the South. Some supported slavery, and others were worried about the power of the federal government. In the summer of 1863, Congress authorized a military draft, which the administration soon put into operation. Leaders of the Democratic Party opposed to Abraham Lincoln's administration denounced the draft and other wartime measures, such as the arrest of seditious persons and the president's temporary suspension of the writ of habeas corpus.

During the 1863 Gettysburg Campaign, scam artists in south-central Pennsylvania sold Pennsylvania Dutch farmers $1 (~$26.00 in 2024) paper tickets purported to be from the Knights of the Golden Circle. Along with a series of secret hand gestures, these tickets were supposed to protect the horses and other possessions of ticket holders from seizure by invading Confederate soldiers.[21] When Confederate Maj. Gen. Jubal Early's infantry division passed through York County, Pennsylvania, they took what they needed anyway. They often paid with Confederate States dollars or with drafts on the Confederate government. The Confederate cavalry commander J. E. B. Stuart also reported the alleged KGC tickets when documenting the campaign.

That same year, Asbury Harpending and California members of the Knights of the Golden Circle in San Francisco outfitted the schooner J. M. Chapman as a Confederate privateer in San Francisco Bay, with the object of raiding commerce on the Pacific Coast and capturing gold shipments to the East Coast. Their attempt was detected and they were seized on the night of their intended departure.[22][23][24]

Reorganization

In late 1863, the KGC reorganized as the Order of American Knights. In 1864, it became the Order of the Sons of Liberty, with the Ohio politician Clement L. Vallandigham, the most prominent of the Copperheads, as its supreme commander. In most areas, only a minority of its membership was radical enough to discourage enlistments, resist the draft, and shield deserters. The organization held numerous peace meetings. A few agitators, some encouraged by Southern money, talked of a revolt in the Old Northwest intending to end the war.[25] In some cases, Sons of Liberty members were imprisoned, deported, or tried by military tribunal and sentenced to death for their activities.

Among the many acts of guerrilla warfare attributed to the Sons of Liberty were the burning of the Walnut Ridge Friends Meetinghouse in Rush County, Indiana in 1864 and the Northwest Conspiracy, which plotted regime change uprisings aimed at forcibly bringing Iowa, Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana into the Confederacy.[citation needed]

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Influence

In The Idea of a Southern Nation (1979), historian John McCardell called the KGC "that most bizarre offshoot of Southern expansionism." He wrote:

In reality, the influence of the K.G.C. was practically nonexistent. ... Viewed in isolation, the K.G.C. would seem to be an aberration hardly deserving attention. But viewed in the context of the developments of the 1850s, the organization seems perhaps the logical extension of Southern expansionist rhetoric."[8]

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Post-war conspiracy theory

The Los Angeles Times noted that one theory, among many, on the origin of the Saddle Ridge Hoard of gold coins is that it was cached by the KGC, which "some believe buried millions in ill-gotten gold across a dozen states to finance a second Civil War".[26]

Members and alleged members

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George W. L. Bickley[8] founded the KGC, so he is a known member, but as a secret society, its membership cannot otherwise be known with accuracy. The following people have been suggested as possibly having been members, with differing degrees of certainty:

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In popular culture

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See also

References

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