Books about the Knights of the Golden Circle

[cccalco]

K.G.C.
An Authentic Exposition of the Origin, Objects, and Secret Work
of the Organization Known as the Knights of the Golden Circle.

Knights of the Golden Circle.
[n.p.]: The U. S. National U. C., 1862.

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=moa;idno=ANY1772

 

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A History of Mining on the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska - Grab it through Amazon!

[cccalco]

Excerpt from, "The Social Order of a Frontier Community, Jacksonville, Illinois 1825-70, by Don Harrison Doyle is provided "for educational purposes only." Material is copyrighted.
www.press.uillinois.edu/books/.../85bxy6bg9780252010361.html

The antiwar movement took a more militant form in the rural environs. Copperhead southern sympathizers in Illinois organized a secret political society, the Knights of the Golden Circle, even before the war broke out. Its stronghold was in "Egypt" (the popular label for southern Illinois), but pro-Southerners in all parts of the state joined as the war continued, and the nightmare of treason and civil strife came home to Jacksonville. "We had hopes," the Journal lamented in March 1863, "that no such wicked clans of oath-bound, incipient traitors would pollute the air and soil of Morgan County' Within a week the Journal issued the alarm: "The Copperheads are Arming." It reported "an extraordinary call for Colt Revolvers, for knives, guns, buckshots," among the "rabid Copperheads from the rural districts." That fall the Journal began accusing Jacksonville Democrats of active sympathy for the Knights of the Golden Circle, claiming that at least one-third of the party belonged to the Knights' "castle" at nearby Woodson.

In September,1863 heavily armed Knights some two to four hundred strong swarmed into Jacksonville and swaggered about the square. Their mission was to rescue their leader, John Husted, who had assaulted an informant on the Knights at Jacksonville's railroad station and was being held in jail. They arrived the morning of Husted's trial and claimed that another thousand armed horsemen lay waiting at Mauvaise Terre Creek, ready to attack unless they received assurances that Husted would be given a fair trial and would not be bound over to military authorities.

Jacksonville's Republicans anticipated violence. They had already organized their own secret society, the Union League, as part of a statewide organization that gathered intelligence on Copperhead activities and compiled lists with names of suspected anti-Unionists. Union League members in Jacksonville devised a secret alarm: two quick raps repeated three times with a cane on the sidewalk warned of imminent danger. Just a month before the "Husted Raid," Quantrill and his guerilla raiders had sacked Lawrence, Kansas, and murdered many of its citizens. The morning of John Husted's trial the streets of Jacksonville echoed with the repeated warning taps of anxious Union Leaguers. Bank clerks on the square strapped on pistols to warn away the raiders; the Journal office, twice burned out by anti-Republican arsonists, barricaded its doors. A telegram was sent to nearby Camp Butler for army support, and orders were given to bring out repeating rifles to defend the town. Inside the courthouse Husted's trial proceeded hastily. He was bound over to circuit court under a $500 bond, and his militant defenders out on the square returned home satisfied that they had secured justice. The Journal editor denounced the Copperheads for "inducing a sort of semi-reign of terror amongst the Union men here," and then boasted, "the Knights of the Golden Circle scared nobody.... Jacksonville still lives."

Tensions generated by the war soon disrupted the celebrations of the very nationalism it was fought to defend. After the elaborate 1861 Fourth of July ceremony, the 1862 holiday found Jacksonville unable to organize even the most routine procession. "No general arrangements have been made for celebrating the day in this city," reported the Sentinel, "but the citizens will probably scatter and each enjoy the holiday occasion in his own way." For the first time separate Irish and German celebrations were arranged at picnic grounds outside of town. This, of course, was partly a function of the local temperance issue, but it also reflected the inability of nationalism to overcome internal factionalism during the war. The next year a committee met nearly a month in advance to plan a traditional community procession and barbecue; however, the meeting broke up when Democrats, according to the partisan account in the Journal, "tried to foist upon us" men of "doubtful loyalty" to serve on the arrangements committee.

Two separate committees later met to plan their own partisan celebrations; they came together to settle their "unhappy differences" two weeks before the day. A bipartisan committee was appointed and a new program agreed upon, but by the Fourth the alliance had dissolved in bickering. The Republicans met in their own "Union Yankee" celebration at Salem church, east of town; the Irish "celebrated the day in their own peculiar way" out at the fairgrounds; the Germans met at Bacon's Grove; and, the Journal snidely added, the Copperheads had their own meeting somewhere nearby.

When the Republicans returned to town after a long day of festivities, some gathered on the square. After a few spontaneous partisan harangues, they decided to cap off the day's festivities by harassing local Copperheads. A band of Republican patriots ran through the dark streets shrieking "demoniac yells" and then gathered outside the home of P. B. Price, a prominent Democrat. They called Price outside, shouted accusations of treason, and, according to the Sentinel's account, made "loud threats of hanging him, tearing down his house, etc." The police intervened before the mob got out of hand, but this was neither the first nor the last time Union patriots would threaten with their own "ruffianly raids." Soon after the Fourth an antiwar, Democrat named J. T. Springer was rudely awakened from his sleep when a large mob outside his home invited him to join them in celebrating the Union victory in Vicksburg.

In 1864 the Fourth passed again with "no united movement for the`due celebration of the fourth' in this city in the old fashioned style." Then, as the war drew to a close in the spring of 1865, there was cathartic rejoicing in Jacksonville. Early reports of the Confederate defeat proved premature, and "heartless copperheads" jeered the Union celebrants. When news of Richmond's fall finally came, an enormous crowd gathered spontaneously on the square. Immediately a group of Jacksonville's "enterprising citizens" huddled by the courthouse to design a "programme for the occasion," but the excitement of the crowd proved beyond their capacity to organize. The Journal reported the scene with a mixture of fascination and fear: "Ere any definite arrangements could be agreed upon the enthusiastic multitude becoming wild with joy, broke forth in the most indescribable demonstrations of uproarious, wild almost frantic enthusiasm, setting at defiance all efforts at system, order or arrangements." On through the afternoon and evening the demonstration continued entirely on its own momentum. Flags were displayed, fireworks and guns exploded, boys "and even men" ran through the streets with bells, tin pans, and horns, "rivalling Pandemonium in the noise and confusion they made." By the afternoon the Jacksonville Silver Coronet Band Played loudly, the Home Guards paraded, businesses closed, and the courts adjourned. That evening Chinese lanterns illuminated the festivities as the crowd listened to a series of speeches by local politicos, and "many still held revel in various parts of the city till after midnight." With Lee's surrender a few days later, Jacksonville's citizens were far too exhausted to repeat their orgy of patriotism. A few stalwart young patriots loaded an old cannon with a wad of paper and blasted it across the square through a drugstore window. They then carefully turned it around and sent another load through a window of Marshall Ayer's Bank.

"Cannot we, as one people, forgetting parties and past differences unite on this occasion, kiss the old flag and give it anew to the free winds of a brightly dawning Spring?" Thus queried the Republican editor at war's end. The spirit of patriotic unity did seem to come alive again; a bipartisan committee of arrangements formed as early as May 22 to prepare for the first community Fourth of July celebration since 1861. But the reconciliation was premature. Radical Republicans insisted that only "loyal citizens" be allowed to celebrate the Fourth, and on June 3 they called a new meeting to arrange a "loyal" Fourth of July.

Voices of moderation prevailed at the meeting, though, and a new bipartisan committee was appointed. The Radicals, still unsatisfied, called yet another meeting, appointed their own committee of arrangements, and pressured fellow Republicans to withdraw from the bipartisan committee. A community about to celebrate the end of the Civil War and the anniversary of the Union seemed unable to overcome its own internal divisions; by mid-June, however, the spirit of nationalism managed to subsume all the partisan insults and bickering. The two feuding committees each sent out negotiators "with a view to the conciliation of the unhappy differences that had arisen in the public mind in relation to a grand celebration of the 4th of July." A new committee, formed, "solely to harmonize the citizens of Morgan," planned a celebration that would smother any remaining differences in the largest and most elaborate pageant ever. Representatives from every precinct in the county were invited to participate in this display of unity. Colonel James Dunlap, a Democrat of southern background, was generously awarded the post of president of the day. No less than thirty-two vice-presidents shared the honors. Eight subcommittees were assigned special responsibilities for everything from financing to music and toasts; over them an Executive Committee coordinated plans. Altogether nearly fifty committeemen were involved in this elaborate demonstration of community organization.

The various committees arranged special trains to transport the country folk into town to celebrate the Union's birthday, and detailed plans were made to coordinate the ritual procession through town to the fairgrounds. O. D. Fitzsimmons, chief marshal of the day, was assisted by seventeen assistant marshals and military officers to regulate the enormous crowds. By eight in the morning the procession began to form; soldiers and veterans were placed conspicuously toward the front, behind the officers of the day. Delegations from each section of the town and county were instructed in advance about where to assemble, and at the signal of cannon fire they merged into the procession and marched to the fairgrounds, where the band greeted them with a rousing version of "Rally Round the Flag." There "a united people ... without distinction of party, policy or place" joined to eat and "to rejoice on that most fitting day together over ... an undivided and indivisible country."

The crowd, estimated at fifteen to twenty thousand, amassed at the fairgrounds to hear a full day of readings, toasts, and long speeches by politicians, all carefully prepared to maintain the nonpartisan spirit of unity. Lemonade, ice cream, and beer were served, along with the traditional burgoo. Underlining the frivolity of the day, an incredible Wild West exhibition was staged in the late afternoon. Posters tacked up all over the county had promised a genuine buffalo hunt by "wild Indians." As it turned out, the crowd was too large and unwieldy to risk an actual bow and arrow kill of a loose buffalo; nevertheless, people seemed satisfied with a brief Indian war dance and an exhibition of the beast. Buffaloes and burgoo were far better at inspiring patriotic unity than were civil wars.

 

[Texas Jay]

Crimes of the Civil War & Curse of the Funding System (1868) - Hon. Henry Clay Dean

From:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bloodybillandersonmystery
***
I watched the PBS "History Detectives" program, that I had
recorded last month, last night and it told the story of a cane with a top made
in the shape of a striking copperhead snake. It belongs to a descendant of a
Northern Copperhead leader named Henry Clay Dean. After certifying that the
cane was authentic and had been given to Dean by "rebel friends", the moderator
gave the title of this book that was published in 1868. The excerpt on this
site is fascinating. I intend to add this reprinted book to my collection in
the near future.
~Jay~

***
http://www.pointsouth.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=DEANH-\
CRIMES&Category_Code=&Store_Code=ABS

"Written by a Northern Christian judge, this extremely rare and suppressed book
exposes the despotism of Abraham Lincoln and the Republican party and unmasks
the great body of bankers and bondholders who sought to grow wealthy by loaning
the bankrupt United States government the money it needed to carry on war
against the South. The reader of this hefty volume will discover the origin of
unbacked "legal tender" paper "money" (today known as Federal Reserve Notes) in
the unconstitutional alliance between Lincoln's Administration and these
mostly-foreign financiers, and will learn the true purpose of the creation of
the national debt -- a debt which "shall not be questioned" under Section Four
of the bogus "Fourteenth Amendment" and which today has mushroomed to over five
trillion dollars. This book is must reading for those who wish to understand the
financial Leviathan which waged war against the South from 1861-1865 and which
continues to feed upon the people of both sections today. Originally published
in 1868. 546 pages. -Paperback (Confederate Reprint Company) < a name="article">
[Excerpt]

The Bloodmarket of the Rich
by Henry Clay Dean

All wars of modern times have been under the control of capitalists. In Europe,
the moneyed kings dictate terms to their political sovereigns, control wars and
make peace. In America, the bankers contrived the late civil war. It was quite
as much a scheme of money as of policy. War would not have been created if the
banks had refused to engage in it. It could not have been carried on, if the
capital of the country had manfully opposed it.

The liberty of the people, the peace of the world and material prosperity of the
poor would have been undisturbed, and even the condition of the negroes would
have been better than now, but for these men.

The capitalists and stock-gamblers in Europe, by their alliance with the
political adventurers of America, carefully planned this war, in the interest of
despotism and the funding system. They anticipated every argument and prepared
the public mind for war in advance. During the war they prepared for the debt
and continued the war, that the debt might reach its present enormous extent.

These gamesters upon human life and public misfortune, have fattened upon the
bloody conflicts of emperors and kings, and inherit fortunes coined out of the
most frightful battles of modern times. Austria, France, Prussia and England
have been fettered by the mortgages entailed by these brokers, upon their
property and industry.

Such is the perfection of the conspiracy against the property of the world,
entered into by these stock gamblers, that war is always precipitated upon a
particular country, whenever it is believed to be ripe for revolution or fat
enough to enrich the money trade.

For the purpose of creating civil war, destroying the agriculture of the South,
entailing a debt upon the people and, if possible, the utter destruction of
Republican government in the United States, English emissaries were, by the
monied interests of Europe, under religious guise, sent to America to stir up
civil war. Pamphleteers added their wicked labors to the work. Sumner's
celebrated visit to Europe was in the same general interest, and when Gen. James
Shields of the United States army, had left the valley of the Shenandoah, Sumner
assured him that he was glad that the rebels were not entirely defeated, because
his great object would not be accomplished if they were. The destruction of our
prosperity, the ultimatum of the stock gamblers, had not been reached. The raid
of John Brown and the partizan conflicts, were but incidents in the grand
purpose to create war and base a funding system upon it.

Such has been the unbroken success of the professional mischief-makers of the
world, that they have succeeded in Europe for a full half century, in fastening
ruin and bankruptcy upon every sovereignty which was directed by their counsels
or fell into their grasp.

Bonaparte eluded their machinations; this only provoked their wrath and drove
them to the combinations which culminated at Waterloo, in the destruction of his
empire and liberty.

The Mexican war was the first game played by the American stockbrokers, upon
which the general peace of the Western Hemisphere was staked and lost. The late
civil war has been a success, and if the stakes are delivered up by the ruined
people to the stockgamblers, permanent peace in the United States is gone
forever.

The successes have emboldened the stockbrokers, and given them possession of
every avenue to popular favor and power. The pulpit, the press and the army,
have been used as their instrument, to secure their prize in the blood market of
the world. These instruments of popular favor speak of war as the only means of
government to be used upon every occasion to gratify spites, to punish
indignities, or secure plunder. Unless this spirit be arrested promptly, our
peace is imperilled and will be destroyed.

There is only one way to counteract this wicked spirit; and that is, to give
notice to the world that debts contracted in such an enterprise, bind no one and
cannot be collected. If it be wicked to engage in wars, it is also unjust to pay
money to carry on wars; but if it be unjust to carry on wars by ready money, how
much more atrocious to carry them on by anticipating the credit of generations.
It is the duty of all sincere peace men to make a demonstration against this
usurpation; and let it be understood that no debt made on the interest of a war
of premeditated plunder, can be enforced upon a free people, or be sanctioned by
the friends of peace.

There is an Equity, which, in all public affairs, looks to the purposes, the
mode and the application of monies in the creation of debts, when debts have
been created in fraud, for purposes of corruption, and the parties issuing
evidence of debt were particeps criminis and beneficiaries, then the question
goes back to the legislatures, which must levy taxes before they can be
collected. The new legislature must be elected by the people. The people of no
country hasten to pay debts known to be fraudulent or unjust. Against the
indiscriminate payment of no debt ever contracted, has there been so many
conclusive arguments for utter repudiation as the debt now claimed by the
foreign capitalists and domestic speculators, holding bonds and certificates of
indebtedness against the United States, as the basis of a perpetual system of
gambling upon the labor and commerce of the country.

The objectors and objections are susceptible of a clear and easy classification,
and when carefully embodied, embrace all of the elements of good government.

Every consistent friend of peace must oppose the payment of the debt. If it be
wrong to engage in a war of unparalleled cruelty and horror, it cannot be right
to compensate the worst participants in it; men whose business is to inflame
wars, to fatten upon the blood of the innocent, and hoard up the treasure gained
by the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of human beings, hurried into the
presence of God without thought or preparation.

What care these men -- the brokers in immortal souls -- for the burning of
cities, barns, mills, and the desolation of whole regions of cultivated lands;
with the food and raiment of decrepid old men, feeble women, and helpless
children; the razing of churches and desecration of cemeteries?

Experience for the last three centuries demonstrates that the capitalists of the
world hold the peace and the destiny of nations in their hands; they create war
and make peace. The superstitions of religion and the malignity of politics, are
under the mercenary control of capital. The payment of this debt is a test
question of civilization, which the gamblers in public stocks, watch with an
intense interest, that Christians might well emulate in the propagation of the
gospel.

Wars in Europe have placed her mercenary bankers in princely opulence. They
furnish the sinews of war, and command peace whenever they have sufficiently
involved the imperial powers to secure an increase of annuities, and kings
quiescently yield to their behests.

These kingly brokers watch the probabilities of war with the same keen scent
that vultures follow the camp of moving armies, to fatten on the offal. Such has
been their success and sagacity, that whilst kings exercise arbitrary power over
the lives and liberties of their subjects, by war and conscription, these
bankers divide the regal power by subsidizing the labor of the subjects of kings
in advance, absorbing it in taxations levied at their direction; purchasing
kings, bribing judges, suborning witnesses, entering into partnerships with
legislatures, commissioning military officers, and hiring standing armies to
stamp out the liberties of the people, who are forced to support all of these by
taxation.

The United States have laid the foundation for just such a comprehensive system
of monied oligarchy. There is now thrust into our faces the frightful picture,
by every newspaper under the control of capital, predictions of war, and
clamoring for blood as the remedy for every trivial evil, that adventurers may
reap a rich harvest from the vices of the wicked, the follies of the weak, and
the general profligacy of society. Such is the spirit of fanaticism, and the
maddened temper of bad men aspiring to power, that all argument is ridiculed,
except that which opens up a new field of plunder, or draws new victims into the
net of their insatiate lust of gain.

If such men succeed in funding and consolidating the public debt made during the
war, they have established a precedent which will assure them the power to
incite a war at any time hereafter, when whim, interest or bad feeling may
indicate either its profit or necessity. A strict and rigid settlement,
according to the equities of eternal justice, is the only remedy for the great
evil upon us. This is the clearest and most direct way to teach these gentlemen
what they may not do, although they inflame the vilest passions of human nature
into war; yet they must be taught that they cannot control the public conscience
to enslave itself, and enforce perpetual bondage upon a people born free; that
they cannot safely create and carry on wars, wicked and destructive in
themselves, which might be averted, but for the persistent chicanery of capital,
which uses all of the well known arts of diplomacy to involve the people in
civil war; which, failing in every other means to precipitate their
revolutionary ends upon the country, connive at war, eschew compromise, and mob
and murder the friends of peace.

The only hope of peace is in the destruction of the prosperity of mercenaries
engaged in provoking civil wars. He is neither an intelligent nor a true friend
of peace, who will not boldly repudiate every illegal, fraudulent and vicious
claim against the labor of the people to satiate the venality of capital,
fattened on blood.

This style of mortgaging labor in anticipated taxation is a wicked device of
modern times, to carry on wars of conquest, wars of subjugation, wars for
plunder and wars to feed the malignity of bad men. It has never been
successfully carried out to ensure more than annually accruing interest on the
debt, and then only at reduced rates, and when it could be made the ministering
servant of a system of aristocracy and overbearing power. Let it be an avowed
article of American faith, that no war of money, no war for money can be
successfully prosecuted and carried on under the auspices of a free people;
henceforth capitalists will have neither the will or power to involve a peaceful
people in universal carnage. Such has been the work of war upon our social
system, sought to be ratified by the sanction of the people in the submission to
this debt, that it binds us hand and foot and adds to war slavery, to slavery
all of its concomitant degradation."
***

~Texas Jay

 

[cccalco]

We have another rarely seen book on the Knights of the Golden Circle.
A Knight of the Golden Circle By U.S. Lesh has just been uploaded as a pdf accessable at:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Knights_of_the_Golden_Circle/files/A Knight of the Golden Circle.pdf

 

[Charmin]

Can anyone tell me if Dr. Roy William Roush's books are still available from his website? ( http://knightsofthegoldencircle.net/TheBook.html ) I have one of the books and would like to get the other two, but didn't know if he's still filling orders or not?
I've checked on eBay & Amazon.com and they are occasionally listed for an outrageous price.....I didn't know if that's because you can't get them anymore or what .
Thanks!!

 

[cccalco]

Can anyone tell me if Dr. Roy William Roush's books are still available from his website? ( http://knightsofthegoldencircle.net/TheBook.html ) I have one of the books and would like to get the other two, but didn't know if he's still filling orders or not?
I've checked on eBay & Amazon.com and they are occasionally listed for an outrageous price.....I didn't know if that's because you can't get them anymore or what .
Thanks!!

I haven't dealt with them but you could contact: http://graphicimagepublications.net/knights_golden_circle.htm

 

[Charmin]

Can anyone tell me if Dr. Roy William Roush's books are still available from his website? ( http://knightsofthegoldencircle.net/TheBook.html ) I have one of the books and would like to get the other two, but didn't know if he's still filling orders or not?
I've checked on eBay & Amazon.com and they are occasionally listed for an outrageous price.....I didn't know if that's because you can't get them anymore or what .
Thanks!!

I haven't dealt with them but you could contact: http://graphicimagepublications.net/knights_golden_circle.htm

Okay--Thanks cccalco .

 

[cccalco]

A new link to the book "A Secret Society History of the Civil War" was recently brought to our attention
http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/29ppy7ss9780252036552.html
We have covered this work by author Mark Lause, a University of Cincinnati assistant professor of history, in past articles http://knights-of-the-golden-circle.blogspot.com/2011/04/secret-society-history-of-civil-war.html
http://knights-of-the-golden-circle.blogspot.com/2011/08/secret-society-became-model-for-kkk.html
and still believe you will find it interesting.
CCC

A Secret Society History of the Civil War
Unraveling the influence and power of antebellum secret societies

This unique history of the Civil War considers the impact of nineteenth-century American secret societies on the path to as well as the course of the war. Beginning with the European secret societies that laid the groundwork for Freemasonry in the United States, Mark A. Lause analyzes how the Old World's traditions influenced various underground groups and movements in America, particularly George Lippard's Brotherhood of the Union, an American attempt to replicate the political secret societies that influenced the European revolutions of 1848. Lause traces the Brotherhood's various manifestations, the most conspicuous being the Knights of the Golden Circle (out of which developed the Ku Klux Klan), and the Confederate secret groups through which John Wilkes Booth and others attempted to undermine the Union. Lause profiles the key leaders of these organizations, with special focus on George Lippard, Hugh Forbes, and George Washington Lafayette Bickley.

Antebellum secret societies ranged politically from those with progressive or even revolutionary agendas to those that pursued conservative or oppressive goals. This book shows how, in the years leading up to the Civil War, these clandestine organizations exacerbated existing sectional tensions in the United States. Lause's research indicates that the pervasive influence of secret societies may have played a part in key events such as the Freesoil movement, the beginning of the Republican party, John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, Lincoln's election, and the Southern secession process of 1860-1861.

This exceptional study encompasses both white and African American secret society involvement, revealing the black fraternal experience in antebellum America as well as the clandestine operations that provided assistance to escaped slaves via the Underground Railroad. Unraveling these pervasive and extensive networks of power and influence, A Secret Society History of the Civil War demonstrates that antebellum secret societies played a greater role in affecting Civil War-era politics than has been previously acknowledged.

"A fascinating and provocative study that illuminates the history of the Civil War era by probing the relationship between political secret societies and social radicalism in Europe and antebellum reform and sectional crisis in the United States. This book will be a tremendous resource of information for scholars, and it is one of the most genuinely original works that I have ever read."--Robert E. May, author of Manifest Destiny's Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum America

"A challenging look at the reality of Civil War-era secret societies. This work opens up enormous possibilities for future research, prompting us to reconsider--or indeed consider for the first time--people and perspectives that have been, at best, on the periphery of studies of the Civil War era."--Susan-Mary Grant, author of The War for a Nation: The American Civil War

"Dispelling the mysticism and self-aggrandizement of fraternal orders in antebellum America, Mark A. Lause successfully removes the Panjandrum from the panorama of American secret societies. The result is a careful examination of the consequence of secret societies and their place in shaping America’s national identity on the eve of the Civil War."--Michael A. Halleran, author of The Better Angels of Our Nature: Freemasonry in the American Civil War

Mark A. Lause is a professor of history at the University of Cincinnati and the author of numerous books, including Price's Lost Campaign: The 1864 Invasion of Missouri, Race and Radicalism in the Union Army, The Antebellum Crisis and America's First Bohemians, and Young America: Land, Labor, and the Republican Community.

 

[cccalco]

This book review is somewhat dated and contained a link that is broken. I have replaced with a link to the same article at the University of Texas/ CCC

Dark Union
The Secret Web Of Profiteers, Politicians, And Booth Conspirators That Led To Lincoln's Death

(Conspiracy Nation) -- Dark Union (Hoboken: Wiley & Sons, 2003. ISBN: 0-471-26481-4) by Leonard F. Guttridge and Ray A. Neff is the best book yet explaining what really was behind the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln on Good Friday, April 14th, 1865.

Guttridge is an historian and author of several books. Neff is an Emeritus Professor at Indiana State University. Archival material upon which Dark Union is based is available to scholars at Indiana State University's Cunningham Memorial Library.

Neff is well-known to Lincoln conspiracy students as the scholar who first discovered Colonel Lafayette Baker's coded messages in an old copy of Colburn's United Service Magazine and Military Journal. Baker, head of the Union's National Detective Police (NDP, the FBI of its day), knew plenty but feared for his life. So, he cautiously revealed what he knew, shortly before he died from apparent arsenic poisoning. Conspiracy Nation previously covered Neff's circa 1957 find in Ray Neff Discovers Coded Messages. (http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~wbova/fn/history/lincoln_02.htm)

Readers may be familiar with the system of fiat money, known as "Greenbacks", inaugurated during Lincoln's presidency. According to a hard-to-obtain book, Lincoln: Money Martyred (Omni Publications, first published in 1935; latest reprint 1989), Lincoln and his Treasury Secretary tried to obtain loans from New York bankers to finance the Union war effort. Terms offered for the loans were a usurious 24 to 36 percent interest. Indignant, Lincoln refused the loans. Pondering what to do, the president reportedly was advised by a close friend to get Congress to authorize the printing of "legal tender" treasury notes -- greenbacks. There is some debate over whether the greenbacks worked as reliable money. The author of Lincoln: Money Martyred claims they did, until Congress tacked on an "exception clause" rendering greenbacks "Good for all debts both public and private except duty on imports and interest on government debts." The exception clause "put the government in the light of refusing its own money for duty on imports, and gave the bankers an excuse to refuse or discount [greenbacks], which they promptly did, 30 percent..." (Lincoln: Money Martyred)

The issue of whether greenbacks (issued by the government and not by the later, so-called "Federal" Reserve) were or could have been viable is hotly debated. Whatever the case, the authors of Dark Union portray the Union as going bankrupt and in desperate need of gold. To get the needed gold, Lincoln was forced to allow secret trading of Confederate cotton, "trading with the enemy": a triangle of trade involving the South, Northern speculators, and Europe.

"But in early 1865 Lincoln began to vacillate in regard to trading with the enemy, which, along with the imminent end of the hostilities, threatened the huge profits at stake." (Dark Union) The aspect of an imminent end of hostilities threatening huge business profits suggests a theme developed by author Otto Eisenschmil: that Union victory may have been purposefully botched for years.

Also motivating Lincoln's assassination was his planned policy to go easy on the defeated Confederacy. This flew in the face of members of his own Republican Party favoring harsh treatment toward the defeated South, and of business types eager to profit from "Reconstruction."

Barely mentioned by the authors of Dark Union are the "Copperheads", renegade Democrats operating a secret society called the Knights of the Golden Circle. The power of this clandestine organization is admirably described in Shadow of the Sentinel by Warren Getler and Bob Brewer. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003. ISBN: 0-7432-1968-6)

Fleshing out the little-known history of Civil War intrigue is the book, Come Retribution, which offers a scholarly look at the Confederate Secret Service. (by William A. Tidwell. University Press of Mississippi, 1988)

Bottom line: many covert forces were at work during the Civil War, and information about them has only slowly been coming to light.

Odds and Ends
Among the interesting pieces of information in Dark Union

Wall Street operated its own, private telegraph network which gave speculators (insiders) advance knowledge about war-time events.
During the Civil War, southern cotton sold, in Europe, for six times its usual price, payable in gold.
The notorious Dahlgren Raid apparently was originated by Secretary of War Edwin Stanton.
Mary Lincoln's indebtedness due to her shopping sprees gave mega-merchant A.T. Stewart extraordinary influence.
Presence or lack of cotton exports directly influenced the nation's gold supply; more gold available strengthened the greenback by a sort of par: less gold meant more greenbacks needed to buy gold and vice-versa.
The war dragged on perhaps because an early end would have left Northeners less embittered and more inclined to go easy on the South. This would have damaged rapacious businessmen's "Reconstruction" schemes.
Mexico was the favored choice for postwar Confederate headquarters (this ties in with Knights of the Golden Circle info contained in Shadow of the Sentinel (op. cit.)
As in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, so too following the Lincoln assassination: a limited view of what had actually happened was quickly foisted upon the public.
Robert Lincoln, son of the murdered president, caused many of his father's papers to be removed to Chicago, where some of them were soon thereafter destroyed.
Following the Civil War, the National Detective Police (NDP) ceased to exist. Most NDP agents migrated to the "United States Detective Service" a "private agency controlled by God knows who," according to Lafayette Baker's protege Andrew Potter.
A secret investigation of events surrounding the Lincoln assassination was almost certainly conducted by the government during the 1870s.
Booth Survived
This One Mad Act, by Izola Forrester, who claimed to be Booth's granddaughter, presents persuasive evidence that Lincoln's assassin did not die weeks after that sad event but survived many years thereafter. Forrester has the assassin eventually residing in Ceylon. So too do the authors of Dark Union prove the likelihood of Booth's survival and seclusion in Ceylon. (Noteworthy is that Shay McNeal, author of The Secret Plot To Save The Tsar, demonstrates that the Romanovs also were secluded in Ceylon following their supposed assassination by the Bolsheviks.)

The authors of Dark Union also present a photo credibly that of John Wilkes Booth taken in 1873, eight years after his supposed death. It appears that Booth exchanged identities with a British man, John B. Wilkes, to facilitate his seclusion. It also appears that the U.S. government had no wish to reclaim the real Booth, due to the embarrassment to its credibility that would cause as well as for fear that Booth would implicate others, those truly complicit in Lincoln's death.

... "Today," complain the authors, "as always, there are too many people who have a vested interest in preserving a standard version of history. Instead of welcoming new discoveries, as genuine historians should, they ignore or even try to suppress fresh evidence that tends to contradict conventional accounts."

 

[cccalco]

Selected bibliography for Knights of the Golden Circle and selected downloads
http://digital.library.schreiner.edu/sldl/pdfs/SelBib0324.pdf


Background
Knights of the Golden Circle (KGC)
http://digital.library.schreiner.edu/sldl/hcc/kgc.html


EXCERPT: "In 1854, Virginia-born George W. L. Bickley organized the covert Knights of the Golden Circle to establish a commercial empire based on the expansion of slavery into the West Indies, Mexico, and parts of Central America. With the southern United States included, the area would become a “Golden Circle” intended to control commerce in tobacco, sugar, rice and coffee; the annexation of Mexico was the ultimate goal.


Bickley’s scheme was one of many that simmered beneath the surface of America’s republican crisis exacerbated by congressional decisions over the extent of slaveholding: the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the Gag Rule of 1836, the Wilmot Proviso, and the Compromise of 1850. Because the extension of slavery into the Mexican cession was part of the controversy, Texas became the location of thirty-two local chapters of the Knights. In 1860, these “castles” provided support for unsuccessful attempts to invade Mexico from Texas.


Although the organization became less visible as the American Civil War progressed, it operated as a fifth column and boasted that its membership included prominent Americans from both sides of the conflict. The Union arrested Bickley for spying in 1863 and held him as a prisoner until the end of the war."


The Bylaws of the Castroville Castle of the KGC (5 image files | 1 PDF)
http://digital.library.schreiner.edu/sldl/hcc/bylaws.html
http://digital.library.schreiner.edu/sldl/collection/HCC/KGC/pdfs/bylws_trnsc.pdf


An Exposition of the KGC (1 image file | 2 PDF’s)
http://digital.library.schreiner.edu/sldl/hcc/expos.html
http://digital.library.schreiner.edu/sldl/collection/HCC/KGC/pdfs/Exposition.pdf
http://digital.library.schreiner.edu/sldl/collection/HCC/KGC/pdfs/expos_ocr.pdf


Military Degree (13 image files | 1 PDF)
http://digital.library.schreiner.edu/sldl/collection/HCC/KGC/pdfs/mildgr.pdf

 

[Texas Jay]

Our Bloody Bill Anderson Mystery group members have discovered an online version of one of Captain Jason W. James's rare books, Memorable Events in the Life of Captain Jason W. James since my last post on this thread. Capt. James was an avowed member of the Knights of the Golden Circle and also served as a Texas Ranger in Brown County, Texas several years after the Civil War ended.

Memorable events in the life of Captain Jason W. ... . - Full View | HathiTrust Digital Library | HathiTrust Digital Library

Home - Knights of the Golden Circle

~Texas Jay

 

[L.C. BAKER]

Do you really believe Neff's claim about the hidden message? Do you think that L.C. Baker was in fear for his life before he was poisoned? Great info, but I am always the skeptic......

L.C.

 

[L.C. BAKER]

I have yet to see the mention of the true assassin's in the conspiracy, except for those that were hung or escaped.
L.C.