Knights of the Golden Circle

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The Knights of the Golden Circle (KGC) was a secret society originally founded to promote Southern interests and prepare the way for annexation of a "golden circle" of territories in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean which would be included into the United States as southern or slave states. During the American Civil War, Southern sympathizers in the North, known as "Copperheads," were accused of belonging to the Knights of the Golden Circle. By 1863, membership in organizations influenced by it came to include many citizens and active politicians north of the Ohio River.

1 Early history
2 Civil War and demise
3 Post Civil War
4 Famous members
5 Popular Culture
6 Sources
7 Links
8 Notes

[edit] Early history

The association was founded by George W. L. Bickley, a Virginia-born doctor, editor, and "adventurer" who lived in Cincinnati. He organized the first castle, or local branch, in Cincinnati in 1854 and soon took the order to the South, where it was well received. It grew slowly until 1859 and reached its height in 1860.

Its original object was to provide a force to colonize the northern part of Mexico and the West Indies and thus extend pro-slavery interests, and the Knights became especially active in Texas. Bickley's main goal was the annexation of Mexico. Hounded by creditors, he left Cincinnati in the late 1850s and traveled through the East and South promoting an expedition to seize Mexico and establish a new territory for slavery. He found his greatest support in Texas and managed within a short time to organize thirty-two chapters there.

In the spring of 1860, the group made the first of two attempts to invade Mexico from Texas. A small band reached the Rio Grande, but failed.

[edit] Civil War and demise

The South’s secession and the outbreak of the Civil War prompted a shift in the group's aims from freebooting in Mexico to support of the new Confederate government. For example, on February 15, 1861, Texas Ranger Ben McCulloch began marching toward the Federal arsenal at San Antonio, Texas, with a cavalry force of about 550 men, about 150 of whom were Knights of the Golden Circle representing six different castles. While volunteers continued to join McCulloch the following day, U.S. Army Gen. David E. Twiggs decided to surrender the arsenal peacefully to the secessionists. 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, while other KGC members followed Brig. Gen. Henry Hopkins Sibley on the 1862 New Mexico Campaign, which sought to bring the whole New Mexico Territory into the Confederate fold. In fact, both Baylor and Trevanion Teel, Sibley's captain of artillery, had been among the KGC members who rode with Ben McCulloch.

Appealing to the Confederacy's friends in the North, particularly in areas that were suffering economic dislocation, the Order soon spread to the southern state of Kentucky as well as the northern states of Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri. Its membership in these states, where it became strongest, was largely composed of Peace Democrats, who felt that the Civil War was a mistake and that the increasing power of the Federal government was leading to tyranny. In the summer of 1863, a military draft that had been authorized by Congress was put into operation by President Lincoln. This act, together with the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, the arrest of seditious persons, and other measures that the Government deemed necessary for the maintenance of national authority, were denounced by the leaders of the party opposed to Lincoln's administration as unconstitutional and outrageous.

During the 1863 Gettysburg Campaign, scam artists in south-central Pennsylvania sold fearful Pennsylvania Dutch farmers paper tickets purported to be from the Knights of the Golden Circle for a dollar. Along with a series of secret hand gestures, these tickets were supposed to protect the possessions and horses of the ticket holders from seizure by invading Confederate soldiers.^[1] When Jubal Early's infantry division passed through York County, Pennsylvania, they scoffed at these ticket holders and took what they wanted anyway, often paying with Confederate currency or drafts on the Confederate government. Cavalry commander J.E.B. Stuart also reported these alleged KGC tickets in his official report on the campaign.^[2]

In late 1863, the Knights of the Golden Circle was reorganized as the Order of American Knights and again, early in 1864, as the Order of the Sons of Liberty, with Ohio politician Clement L. Vallandigham, 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. Numerous peace meetings were held and a few agitators, some of them encouraged by Southern money, talked of a revolt in the Old Northwest, which, if brought about, would have ended the war. Southern newspapers wishfully reported stories of widespread disaffection, and John Hunt Morgan's 1863 Great Raid into Indiana, and Ohio was undertaken in the expectation that the disaffected element would rally to his standard. Governor Oliver P. Morton of Indiana and General Henry B. Carrington effectively curbed the Sons of Liberty in that state in the fall of 1864. With mounting Union victories late in 1864, the order's agitation for a negotiated peace lost appeal, and officially dissolved.

[edit] Post Civil War

There exist reports of the KGC continuing after 1864 as a secret group which planning to start fighting the Civil War again, as soon as a generation or two had passed and they had regained their manpower and resources.

[edit] Famous members

Confederados (some)
Jesse James (possible)
John Wilkes Booth (likely)
Ryan W. Hatfield
Lambdin P. Milligan
Tom Poole, California Confederate Guerrilla
William Walker (soldier) (possible)

[edit] Popular Culture

A comic book series based on The Wild Wild West TV series featured the Knights of the Golden Circle enlisting the aid of Dr. Miguelito Loveless to assassinate President Grant and the president of Brazil during the Philadelphia Exhibition of 1876.

The four-part serial entitled "The Night of The Iron Tyrants" was published in 1990-91, scripted by novelist Mark Ellis, penciled by Darryl Banks.

The plot of the series was optioned for motion picture development.

The Knights of the Golden Circle were featured as the villains of the graphic novel "Batman: Detective No. 27" by Michael Uslan and Peter Snejbjerg and published by DC Comics in 2003.

The Knights of the Golden Circle are featured as the villains in the CD-ROM game PONY EXPRESS RIDER, published by AMERIKIDS USA and McGraw-Hill's new division, McGraw-Hill Home Interactive.

[edit] Sources

G. F. Milton, Abraham Lincoln and the Fifth Column (1942, reprinted 1962)
R. O. Curry, A House Divided (1964).
Donald S. Frazier, Blood and Treasure: Confederate Empire in the Southwest, (College Station, Texas: Texas A&M University Press, 1995).
Ollinger Crenshaw, The Knights of the Golden Circle: The Career of George Bickley, American Historical Review 47 (October 1941).
Roy Sylvan Dunn, The KGC in Texas, Southwestern Historical Quarterly 70 (April 1967)
Jimmie Hicks, ed., Some Letters Concerning the Knights of the Golden Circle, Southwestern Historical Quarterly 65 (July 1961).
Robert E. May, The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire, 1854-1861, (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973).
Scott L. Mingus, Flames Beyond Gettysburg: The Gordon Expedition, (Columbus, Ohio: Ironclad Publishing, 2006).
Warren Getler & Bob Brewer Shadow of the Sentinel: One Man's Quest to find the Hidden Treasure of the Confederacy (Simon & Schuster. ISBN 9780743219686)