The Knights of the Golden Circle or K.G.C. had its
beginnings in the formation of Southern Rights Clubs in
various southern cities in the mid-1830s. These clubs were
inspired by the philosophies of John C. Calhoun
(1782–1850). Calhoun had an illustrious political career
serving as a congressman from his home state of South
Carolina, a state legislator, vice president under the
administrations of both John Quincy Adams and Andrew
Jackson, and a U. S. senator. In addition to the Southern
Rights Clubs, which advocated the re-establishment of the
African slave-trade, some of the inspiration for the
Knights may have come from a little-known secret
organization called the Order of the Lone Star, founded in
1834, which helped orchestrate the successful Texas
Revolution resulting in Texas independence from Mexico in
1836. Even before that, the K.G.C.'s roots went back to
the Sons of Liberty of the American Revolutionary period.

The Knights of
the Golden Circle was reorganized in Lexington, Kentucky,
on July 4, 1854, by five men, whose names have been lost
to history, when Virginia-born Gen. George W. L. Bickley
(1819–1867) requested they come together. Strong evidence
suggests that Albert Pike (1809–1891) was the genius
behind the influence and power of the Masonic-influenced
K.G.C., while Bickley was the organization's leading
promoter and chief organizer for the K.G.C. lodges, what
they called “Castles,” in several states. During his
lifetime, Boston-born Pike was an author, educator,
lawyer, Confederate brigadier general, newspaper editor,
poet, and a Thirty-third Degree Mason. From its earliest
roots in the Southern Rights Clubs in 1835, the Knights of
the Golden Circle was to become the most powerful secret
and subversive organization in the history of the United
States with members in every state and territory before
the end of the Civil War. The primary economic and
political goal of this organization was to create a
prosperous, slave-holding Southern Empire extending in the
shape of a circle from their proposed capital at Havana,
Cuba, through the southern states of the United States,
Mexico, the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central
America. The plan also called for the acquisition of
Mexico which was then to be divided into fifteen new
slave-holding states which would shift the balance of
power in Congress in favor of slavery. Facing the Gulf of
Mexico, these new states would form a large crescent. The
robust economy the KGC hoped to create would be fueled by
cotton, sugar, tobacco, rice, coffee, indigo, and mining.
These seven industries would employ slave labor.
In early 1860 newspapers across the country reported that
the Knights of the Golden Circle were recruiting troops in
numerous cities to send to Brownsville, Texas, for the
planned invasion of Mexico. History is unclear about what
went wrong with this invasion, but most historians agree
that the well-laid plans never materialized and the
invasion never happened. Some say that it failed because
George Bickley was unable to provide adequate troops and
supplies, but with a civil war looming on the horizon, the
invasion’s failure may have been caused by the K.G.C.
leaders believing they could not go to war on two fronts
simultaneously. They called off their plans for Mexico and
started preparing for war with the North.
When tensions between the North and South were at a
breaking point and the Civil War had not yet begun, the
Knights of the Golden Circle held their convention in
Raleigh, North Carolina, from May 7–11, 1860. George W. L.
Bickley, as president of the K.G.C., presided at this
historic event. The records of this convention have
survived until the present day and provide an excellent
view of this order's divisions or degrees, goals,
accomplishments, and size.
The K.G.C.'s first division was described as being
"absolutely a Military Degree." The first division is
further divided into two classes: the Foreign and Home
Guards. The Foreign Guards class was the K.G.C.'s army and
was composed of those who wanted "to participate in the
wild, glorious and thrilling adventures of a campaign in
Mexico." Those of the second class or Home Guards had two
functions: to provide for the army's needs and "to defend
us from misrepresentation during our absence."
The second division or class was also divided into two
classes which were the Foreign and Home Corps. The Foreign
Corps was to become the order's commercial agents,
postmasters, physicians, ministers, and teachers and to
perform the other occupations that were vital to the
achievement of K.G.C. goals. The second class of this
degree was the Home Corps. Their job was to advise and to
forward money, arms, ammunition, and other necessary
provisions needed by the organization and its army and to
send recruits as rapidly as possible.
The two classes of the third division or degree were the
Foreign and Home Councils. The third division is described
in the convention's records as being "the political or
governing division." The responsibilities of the Foreign
Council were governmental, and it was divided into ten
departments similar to those of the United States federal
government.
One little-known historical fact that is presented in the
records from the 1860 K.G.C. convention is that the
Knights had their own well-organized army in 1860, before
the Civil War had even begun, so they were prepared in the
event of war with the North. In May of 1860 the Knights of
the Golden Circle reported a total membership of 48,000
men from the North, who supported "the constitutional
rights of the South," as well as men from the South, with
an army of "less than 14,000 men" and new recruits joining
at a rapid rate.
Shortly before the Civil War began, the state of Texas was
the greatest source of this organization's strength. Texas
was home for at least thirty-two K.G.C. castles in
twenty-seven counties, including the towns of San Antonio,
Marshall, Canton, and Castroville. Evidence suggests that
San Antonio may have served as the organization’s national
headquarters for a time.
The South began to secede from the Union in January 1861,
and in February of that year, seven seceding states
ratified the Confederate Constitution and named Jefferson
Davis as provisional president. The Knights of the Golden
Circle became the first and most powerful ally of the
newly-created Confederate States of America.
Before the Civil War officially started on April 12, 1861,
when shots were fired on Fort Sumter, South Carolina, and
before Texas had held its election on the secession
referendum on February 23, 1861, Texas volunteer forces,
which included 150 K.G.C. soldiers under the command of
Col. Ben McCulloch, forced the surrender of the federal
arsenal at San Antonio that was under the command of Bvt.
Maj. Gen. David E. Twiggs on February 15, 1861. Knights of
the Golden Circle who were involved in this mission
included Capt. Trevanion Teel, Sgt. R. H. Williams, John
Robert Baylor, and Sgt. Morgan Wolfe Merrick. Following
this quick victory, volunteers who were mostly from K.G.C.
companies, forced the surrender of all federal posts
between San Antonio and El Paso.
Perhaps the best documentation as to the power and
influence of the Knights of the Golden Circle during the
Civil War is The Private Journal and Diary of John H.
Surratt, The Conspirator which was written by John
Harrison Surratt and later edited by Dion Haco and
published by Frederic A. Brady of New York in 1866. In
this journal, Surratt goes into great detail when
describing how he was introduced to the K.G.C. in the
summer of 1860 by another Knight, John Wilkes Booth, and
inducted into this mysterious organization on July 2,
1860, at a castle in Baltimore, Maryland. Surratt
describes the elaborate and secret induction ceremony and
its rituals and tells that cabinet members, congressmen,
judges, actors, and other politicians were in attendance.
Maybe the most significant revelation of Surratt's diary
is that the Knights of the Golden Circle began plotting to
kidnap Abraham Lincoln in 1860, before Lincoln was even
inaugurated in 1861, and continued throughout the Civil
War, resulting in President Lincoln's assassination by
fellow Knight Booth on April 14, 1865.
After trying unsuccessfully to peacefully resolve the
conflicts between North and South, the Knights of the
Golden Circle threw its full support behind the
newly-created Confederate States of America and added its
trained military men to the Confederate States Army.
Several Confederate military groups during the Civil War
were composed either totally or in large part of members
of the Knights of the Golden Circle. One notable example
of K.G.C. military participation in the Civil War included
the Confederate's Western Expansion Movement of 1861 and
1862 led by Lt. Col. John Robert Baylor and Gen. Henry
Hopkins Sibley.
In 1861 Albert Pike travelled to Indian Territory and
negotiated an alliance with Cherokee Chief Stand Watie.
Prior to the beginning of hostilities, Pike helped Watie
to become a Thirty-second Degree Scottish Rite Mason.
Watie was also in the K.G.C., and he was later
commissioned a colonel in command of the First Regiment of
Cherokee Mounted Rifles. In May 1864 Chief Watie was
promoted to the rank of brigadier general in the
Confederate States Army making him the only Native
American of this rank in the Confederate Army. Watie's
command was to serve under CSA officers Albert Pike,
Benjamin McCulloch, Thomas Hindman, and Sterling Price.
They fought in engagements in Indian Territory, Kansas,
Arkansas, Texas, and Missouri.
One of the most feared organizations of all Confederates,
whose members were in large part Knights of the Golden
Circle, was what was called Quantrill's Guerrillas or
Quantrill's Raiders. The Missouri-based band was formed in
December 1861 by William Clark Quantrill and originally
consisted of only ten men who were determined to right the
wrongs done to Missourians by Union occupational soldiers.
Their mortal enemies were the Kansas Jayhawkers and the
Red Legs who were the plague of Missouri. As the war raged
on in Missouri and neighboring states, Quantrill's band
attracted hundreds more men into its ranks. Quantrill's
Guerrillas became an official arm of the Confederate Army
after May 1862, when the Confederate Congress approved the
Partisan Ranger Act. Other leaders of Quantrill's
Guerrillas included William C. “Bloody Bill” Anderson,
David Pool, William Gregg, and George Todd. Some of the
major engagements this deadly guerrilla force participated
in included the Lawrence, Kansas, raid on August 21, 1863,
the battle near Baxter Springs, Kansas, in October 1863,
and two battles at and near Centralia in Missouri in
September of 1864. The bulk of Quantrill's band wintered
in Grayson County, Texas, from 1861 through 1864.
The K.G.C. played the major role in what is referred to as
the Northwest Conspiracy. The Confederate plan was to use
the great numbers of Knights in the Northern states to
foster a revolution that would spread across Indiana,
Illinois, New York, Ohio, and any other state in the North
where it was feasible. The Baker-Turner Papers, part of
the U.S. War Department’s conspiracy files, revealed much
of the history of this widespread movement but were kept
sealed for ninety years. James D. Horan, the first person
ever allowed access to the U.S. War Department's Civil War
conspiracy files and the Baker-Turner Papers in the early
1950s, published Confederate Agent: A Discovery in History
in 1954, which details the Northwest Conspiracy. His work
used these previously-sealed documents and information
gathered by numerous investigators, including the private
papers of Capt. Thomas H. Hines, C.S.A., of Kentucky, who
was the mastermind behind the huge conspiracy.
Throughout the Civil War, one of the Knights of the Golden
Circle's most important roles came in its infiltration of
Union forces. Nowhere in the country was this influence
more apparent than in the state of Missouri where K.G.C.
members filled the ranks of the Enrolled Missouri Militia
which was commonly known as the Paw Paw Militia. A
newspaper article from the Daily Times of Leavenworth,
Kansas, July 29, 1864, serves as a good example in their
interview with a member of the Paw Paw named Andrew E.
Smith. Smith said:
I am 22 years old and live in Platte county, about two
miles west of Platte City I was a member of Captain
Johnston's company of Pawpaw militia, under Major Clark,
and served about six months.... I am a member of the
Knights of the Golden Circle. I joined them at Platte
City, and was sworn in by David Jenkins of that place. All
of the Pawpaw militia, so far as I know, belong to
them....
Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of
Northern Virginia at Appomattox on April 9, 1865. Most
historians accept this date of surrender as the official
end of the Civil War. The Knights of the Golden Circle as
an organization, however, continued to work to achieve
their goals, which included a prosperous South, for many
decades after the Civil War. What had been a secret
society adapted to changing conditions and, after the war,
became even more secretive than ever before.
In October 1864 U. S. Judge Advocate Joseph Holt submitted
a detailed warning to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton about
the dangers posed by the Knights of the Golden Circle that
was, by that time, operating under various aliases. This
document is commonly called the Holt Report, but its real
title is A Western Conspiracy in aid of the Southern
Rebellion.
After the war's end, the K.G.C. went underground and used
many aliases to hide their activities which included
making preparations for a second civil war should that
option be necessary. Some K.G.C. members accompanied
Confederate Gen. Joseph O. Shelby to Mexico. Some soldiers
returned to their homes, while others relocated to more
remote frontier areas like West Texas where they could
help build towns and cities that conformed to their
ideals. Some Knights like Jesse Woodson James, older
brother Frank James, and Cole Younger turned to robbing
Northern-owned railroads, businesses, and banks after the
Civil War.
The Knights of the Golden Circle, according to most
authorities, ceased its operations in 1916 for two primary
reasons. The United States had entered World War I, and by
that time most of the old Knights of the Golden Circle had
died.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: An Authentic Exposition of the “K.G.C.”
“Knights of the Golden Circle,” or, A History of Secession
from 1834 to 1861, by A Member of the Order (Indianapolis,
Indiana: C. O. Perrine, Publisher, 1861). Donald S.
Frazier, Blood & Treasure: Confederate Empire in the
Southwest (College Station: Texas A&M University
Press, 1996). Warren Getler and Bob Brewer, Rebel Gold:
One Man’s Quest to Crack the Code Behind the Secret
Treasure of the Confederacy (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 2004). Dion Haco, ed., The Private Journal and
Diary of John H. Surratt, The Conspirator (New York:
Frederic A. Brady, Publisher, 1866). Joseph Holt, Report
of the Judge Advocate General on “The Order of American
Knights,” alias “The Sons of Liberty.” A Western
Conspiracy in aid of the Southern Rebellion (Washington,
D.C.: Union Congressional Committee, 1864). James D.
Horan, Confederate Agent: A Discovery in History (New
York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1954). Jesse Lee James,
Jesse James and the Lost Cause (New York: Pageant Press,
1961). K.G.C., Records of the KGC Convention, 1860,
Raleigh, N.C.
(
http://gunshowonthenet/AfterTheFact/KGC/KGC0571860.html),
accessed May 5, 2010. Dr. Roy William Roush, The
Mysterious and Secret Order of the Knights of the Golden
Circle (Front Line Press, 2005).
Bloody Bill Anderson Mystery group:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bloodybillandersonmystery
Jay Longley and Colin Eby
The Knights of the Golden Circle Research and Historical
Archives
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Knights_of_the_Golden_Circle
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