Excerpt: "“Secret Societies” like the “Knights of the Golden Circle” who were organized “in every county and township” in Indiana."

Fear and Loathing in Indiana
By STEPHEN E. TOWNE

PHOTO: Governor Richard Yates of Illinois.

Disunion follows the Civil War as it unfolded.

In February 1863, the states of Illinois and Indiana teetered on the precipice of revolution. So thought their governors, Republicans Richard Yates and Oliver P. Morton. Antiwar Democrats had won legislative majorities in the fall elections of 1862 in resounding fashion, energized by the public’s hostile reactions to the failing war effort and response to President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.

With the opening of legislative sessions in Springfield and Indianapolis in early January, the new Democratic majorities were eager to flex their muscles; even the Union victory at Stones River in Tennessee at the first of the year could not quell a rampant democracy intent on ending coercive war against the Confederate rebels and beginning peace talks. At the state level, they aimed to take power away from Republican governors and vest it in Democrat-controlled boards. Yates and Morton employed all their considerable wits to stop them.

Springfield and Indianapolis were the scenes of epic partisan battles. At the Indiana State House, animosities quickly boiled over when Republican members “bolted” out of town, thus denying a quorum. This first bolt prompted a feud over Governor Morton’s message to the joint session. When Morton sent written copies of his speech to each chamber, Democrats refused to accept it and passed a resolution substituting that of Gov. Horatio Seymour, a New York Democrat.

Beneath the petty squabbling lay serious war-related disputes. First on the agenda for the Democratic caucuses was curtailing the military authority of the Republican governors. Democrats aimed to take away control over the raising of volunteer and militia troops and appointment of officers for the war. They also planned to seize the governors’ control over state finances that paid war-related bills. Illinois Democrats pushed resolutions condemning the war effort and calling for an armistice with the Confederate rebels and a peace conference in Kentucky. Only a Republican filibuster in the state senate blocked passage. In mid-January, a beleaguered Governor Yates wrote to his Indiana counterpart that “the legislature here is a wild, rampant, revolutionary body — will attempt to legislate all power out of my hands.” Adding, “I feel sure that there is concert between the traitors of your and our state,” he asked if Morton had “made any preparations for an emergency.”

Indeed, the Indiana executive took extraordinary steps to combat Democratic legislators with a powerful tool at his disposal: the Union Army. In late January, cooperative army commanders in Indianapolis deployed an artillery battery near the State House, running exercises with them in an effort to intimidate the legislators. Anticipating that legislators aimed to seize state-owned arms, late one night the governor signed over ownership of the contents of the state arsenal to the local commander.

Both governors had for months seen and believed evidence from credible sources that their Democratic opponents were intent on more than just partisan games.

Yates and Morton received reports that secret organizations allied with Democrats aimed to obstruct the war effort. In past months these groups’ efforts had focused on discouraging enlistments and, most recently, encouraging desertion from the army.

Indeed, in the winter of 1863 desertion was widespread among troops from old northwestern states. Tens of thousands of troops went missing from the armies at the front, many of them encouraged to desert by a massive letter-writing campaign from home offering shelter and protection from arrest. Commanders voiced consternation. Rank-and-file troops in the field, angry at these and other signs of lack of support for the war at home, lashed out at their legislatures and antiwar-Democratic neighbors generally for what they saw as treasonous efforts to sow dissent. The governors and army commanders alike believed that conspiratorial groups were behind the efforts.

PHOTO: Governor Oliver P. Morton of Indiana.

With a hostile legislature aiming to strip his powers and bands of armed civilians and deserters beginning to cause problems in parts of his state, in early February a worried Governor Yates pleaded with President Lincoln for aid. He wrote: “The slightest cause, as for instance the arrest of a deserter for instance in Southern Illinois, would likely precipitate revolution in the State unless the Government in such case suffers the deserter to be released. In at least two marked instances such deserters have been released by mobs.” He asked that four veteran Illinois regiments be sent home, “for the purpose ostensibly of recruiting,” but actually to police the state and “enforce the authority of the Government.” Brig. Gen. John M. Palmer, an Illinois “War Democrat” (that is, supportive of the war effort and the president) and friend of Lincoln, carried Yates’s letter to Washington. Palmer recalled the meeting in his memoir:

   "Mr. Lincoln, in response to the letter of the governor, handed him by me, answered with one of his jokes which cannot be repeated, and said: ‘Who can we trust if we can’t trust Illinois!’ and referred me to the secretary of war. … I called on … Mr. Stanton … and after I told him my business was from Governor Yates, and that he asked authority to raise four regiments of cavalry for service in Illinois, he said: ‘You are to command these troops, are you not?’ and when I replied, ‘No, I am not, and would refuse the command of troops raised for service in my own state and amongst my own people…’ He then said: ‘That shows the d—d nonsense of the whole thing; if you thought your own family and friends were in danger, you would be willing to command troops raised to protect them.’"

Days later, Governor Morton penned a letter to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton that carefully analyzed the extraordinary challenges facing Indiana and the Northwest. “The Democratic scheme,” he wrote, “may be briefly stated thus: End the War by any means at the earliest moment.” Democrats would let the rebel states leave the Union and recognize them as an independent country. “They will then propose to the Rebels a re-union and a re-construction upon the condition of leaving out the New England States.” This “North Western Confederacy” scheme, he added, had broad support among Democratic leaders and party masses, abetted by “Secret Societies” like the “Knights of the Golden Circle” who were organized “in every county and township” in Indiana.

To remedy the problem, he recommended a vigorous military campaign focused on securing the Mississippi River to open commercial traffic, thereby guaranteeing

the loyalty of the Northwest and cutting the rebellion in half. In writing of the Northwestern Confederacy plot, Morton reiterated his warning made to Lincoln in October in the aftermath of the disastrous fall elections.

Morton’s letter traveled to Washington with Robert Dale Owen, a noted Indiana reformer, War Democrat and friend of Stanton, who briefed the secretary on

Indiana affairs in person. Afterward, Owen reported that Stanton “fully believes in the plot to reconstruct leaving New England out”; however, he “feels sure it cannot succeed.” Owen added that “in my judgment [Stanton] does not fully appreciate the imminence of the danger.”

In the immediate term, neither Yates nor Morton got the action from Lincoln that they requested. Washington leaders did not understand the severity of the threat and left the governors to their own devices. Stanton initially approved Yates’s request for the four regiments, but a month later rescinded the order.

The Illinois General Assembly adjourned in February to reassemble later, by which time Democrats hoped to have armistice talks underway. Reconvened in June, legislators mistakenly disagreed on the closing date of the session, affording Yates the opportunity to end it before his opponents could eat away at his powers. During those months Illinois was the scene of violent clashes, as armed groups harbored deserters, resisted their arrest by troops and obstructed draft enrollments.

In Indiana, Republicans in the legislature again bolted to prevent passage of Democratic bills, running out the legislative clock. Refusing to call a special session, Morton went on to govern Indiana illegally without legislative appropriation, borrowing funds from the War Department and taking out personal loans from New York bankers and Republican-controlled county governments to cover state expenses. Like in Illinois, during spring and summer Indiana faced a rising tide of organized violence in opposition to the war. The internal threats about which Yates and Morton warned Washington in February 1863 did not go away, but festered and grew.

For years, historians downplayed the difficulties that faced governors like Yates and Morton in the Old Northwest, preferring to portray them as either unscrupulous local despots or unreasonable whiners who had to be calmed and managed by Lincoln. As scholars continue to study and learn about Northern life during the Civil War, it becomes increasingly clear that the Old Northwest was also the scene of its own violent civil war, a battlefield of clashing ideologies about the future of the country.

Follow Disunion at twitter.com/NYTcivilwar or join us on Facebook.

Sources: Richard Yates to Salmon P. Chase, Feb. 2, 1863, Oliver P. Morton to Stanton, Feb. 9, 1863, Morton to Abraham Lincoln, Oct. 27, 1862, Edwin McMasters

Stanton Papers, Library of Congress; Yates to Morton, Jan. 19, 1863, Yates Family Papers, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library; Robert Dale Owen to Morton,

Feb. 13, 1863, Oliver P. Morton Papers, Indiana State Archives; John M. Palmer, “Personal Recollections of John M. Palmer: The Story of an Earnest Life”;

“Kenneth M. Stampp, Indiana Politics during the Civil War”; Jack J. Nortrup, “Yates, the Prorogued Legislature, and the Constitutional Convention,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 62 (1969).

Stephen E. Towne is an associate university archivist at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and the editor of “A Fierce, Wild Joy: The Civil War Letters of Colonel Edward J. Wood, 48th Indiana Volunteer Infantry Regiment.”

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/22/fear-and-loathing-in-indiana/

Sent: 13 February 2013 21:07
Subject: LSU Press to Release "Knights of the Golden Circle: Secret Empire,
Southern Secession, Civil War"

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: February 13, 2013
Contact: Erin Rolfs
erolfs@lsu.edu/225.578.8282

LSU Press to Release "Knights of the Golden Circle: Secret Empire, Southern
Secession, Civil War"
Book Traces Expansion of Nineteenth-Century Secret Southern Society

Baton Rouge—Based on years of exhaustive and meticulous research, David C.
Keehn’s study provides the first comprehensive analysis of the Knights of the
Golden Circle, a secret southern society that initially sought to establish a
slave-holding empire in the “Golden Circle” region of Mexico, the Caribbean,
and Central America. Keehn reveals the origins, rituals, structure, and complex
history of this mysterious group, including its later involvement in the
secession movement. Members supported southern governors in precipitating
disunion, filled the ranks of the nascent Confederate Army, and organized
rearguard actions during the Civil War.

The Knights of the Golden Circle emerged in 1858 when a secret society formed
by a Cincinnati businessman merged with the pro-expansionist Order of the Lone
Star, which already had 15,000 members. In 1860, during their first attempt to
create the Golden Circle, several thousand Knights assembled in southern Texas
to “colonize” northern Mexico. Due to insufficient resources and organizational
shortfalls, however, that filibuster failed. Later, the Knights shifted their
focus and began pushing for disunion, spearheading prosecession rallies, and
intimidating Unionists in the South.

According to Keehn, the Knights likely carried out a variety of other
clandestine actions before the Civil War, including attempts by insurgents to
take over federal forts in Virginia and North Carolina, and a planned
assassination of Abraham Lincoln as he passed through Baltimore in early 1861
on the way to his inauguration. Once the fighting began, the Knights helped
build the emerging Confederate Army and assisted with the pro-Confederate
Copperhead movement in northern states. With the war all but lost, various
Knights supported one of their members, John Wilkes Booth, in his plot to
assassinate President Lincoln.

Keehn’s fast-paced, engaging narrative demonstrates that the Knights' influence
proved more substantial than historians have traditionally assumed and provides
a new perspective on southern secession and the outbreak of the Civil War.

David C. Keehn is an attorney from Allentown, Pennsylvania, with a history
degree from Gettysburg College and a juris doctorate from the University of
Pennsylvania.

April 15, 2013
328 pages, 6 x 9, 41 halftones
ISBN 978-0-8071-5004-7
-----------------------------------
Bruce E. Baker
Senior Lecturer in United States History
Royal Holloway, University of London
http://bruceebaker.com
List Editor, H-SOUTH
Co-Editor, American Nineteenth Century History

http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=H-South&month=1302&week=b&msg=e2wB5xeQVn0RoHXy1cz/1A&user=&pw=

Bestselling Author’s Manuscript Destined For Hollywood Bidding Frenzy   From best-selling author Boston Teran comes The Cloud and The Fire, the epic story of the Knights of the Golden Circle, forerunners of the Ku Klux Klan, and their attempt to create out of California the first apartheid state.

I remember as a kid in Enid hearing the story that John Wilkes Booth died in Enid. Just recently I ran across this tidbit from the book "Jessie James Was One Of His Names".
( pages 137 - 138 ): "In a sworn statement at Zephyrhills, Florida, on October 1, 1950, William S. ( Wild Bill ) Lincoln said, 'While trying for years on my own to run down the John Wilkes Booth mystery, I landed right in the middle of the Jesse Woodson James mystery without half trying.' In the spring of 1903 ... McDaniel said ... 'The end is coming for that scoundrel, John Wilkes Booth.... I've spared that rascal's life many times. The Golden Circle just had a meeting down in Texas, and we voted to execute Booth.... We know he's registered at the Grand Avenue Hotel in Enid [ Oklahoma ] tonight under the name of James St. George.'"
( page 139 ): "A half block from the Grand Avenue Hotel that night a young Indian boy was selling lemons from a small basket.The Colonel stopped and said to Wild Bill, 'Have this kid make you about a quart of lemonade, pronto, while I duck into this drug store.' Four Golden Circle agents sat in the lobby while the other three joined the two agents already surrounding the hotel - just in case Booth made a run for it. 'Mr. St. George expects us,' the Colonel told the desk clerk and he started up the steps, followed closely by Wild Bill with a jar of lemon juice. The door was unlocked and the two men could see the shape of a man lying on the bed."
( page 140 ): "'... Being a hot night, Mr. Booth, we brought you something cool to drink. Now, Wild Bill, you talk to Mr. Booth while I fix up his drink.' Jesse went over to the wash stand with the jar of lemonade. Hastily, he pulled two bottles from his pocket and poured pure arsenic into the jar. Then he stirred the mixture with a table fork. He poured the loaded lemonade into a glass. Approaching the bed, Jesse said, 'Now, Mr. Booth, I think you've had enough alcohol for tonight. This lemonade will really fix you up. I personally guarantee it.' ... Booth gasped, went into almost a stage fall, but hit the floor with a thud. Jesse James bent over and felt his heart. 'Deader than a mackerel,' he said. 'Wild Bill, stay here. I'm sending up the four agents in the lobby to go through Booth's luggage. I'll be back in a few minutes.'
( page 141 ): " ... The six men were amazed at the records Booth had kept through the years. After they had finished sorting it, Jesse said, 'You know, men, I'm just glad Booth didn't put all this in that crazy book his lawyer wrote - he could have put a noose around all of our necks!' Colonel James then directed his men to plant just enough evidence around the room so that the U. S. Marshals could identify the dead man as John Wilkes Booth. Then they took the trunk and departed.... Late that afternoon from Guthrie, Jesse had an agent send a telegram to the U. S. Marshal's office telling them John Wilkes Booth was dead and where his body could be found."
( pages 141 - 142 ): " ... Three days later, Jesse, accompanied by Wild Bill and two agents, went back to Enid.... The clerk said, 'Whole bunch of lawmen were here yesterday morning up there in Mr. St. George's room, but his body is still there in the bed. It's starting to turn black-like and is tough as leather.' 'Don't worry, son,' Jesse said, 'we're relatives and we've come to claim his body.' ... Carting the body of Booth back to Guthrie, Jesse looked up a doctor friend and asked him for a diagnosis.'It would appear that this man swallowed so much poison, probably arsenic, that he is permanently preserved. He's like a damn Egyptian mummy!' Through a friendly town marshal, Jesse learned that the federal men had checked out John Wilkes Booth's body and papers in Enid and reported some transient posing as Booth had committed suicide. The report listed the dead man's name as James St. George. Wild Bill wrote years later, 'Was the Booth case still too hot to touch in 1903? I'm sure Dr. Samuel Mudd along with others would have been vindicated, and it would have exposed the earler ill-conceived, hysterical investigation, but the U. S. Marshals just turned their backs on the case. Maybe the U. S. government by 1903 had uncovered the real facts in the Booth case and was too ashamed to admit the big blunders made by the government in 1865.' Under Jesse James' direction, the leathery, mummified body of John Wilkes Booth was put in a special coffin and several of his men took it on an exhibition tour all over the United States. Jesse James III reports the Booth body was owned by a Glencoe, Minnesota, jeweler named Jay Gould, a relative of the financier, who had it stored. 'This was in 1955 and I believe Gould has passed away. What happened to the body? Who knows? Perhaps John Wilkes Booth, hated by both the North and the South, is destined to lie forever unburied and unwanted.'"
SO, I started doing a little research and came up with the following newspaper reports:
The Houston Daily Post. (Houston, Tex.) 1886-1903, January 18, 1903
COMMITTED SUICIDE Claimed to Be John Wilkes Booth—Took Poison Guthrie, 0. T., January 17—George an old man, reputed to be wealthy, committed suicide at Enid, O. T., by taking poison. He owned land in Indian Territory and Oklahoma and at Dallas, Texas, Before his death he declared that he was John Wilkes Booth.
The Paducah Sun. (Paducah, Ky.) 1898-1906, January 22, 1903
IS STILL A MYSTERY Old Man Claiming to be John Wilkes Booth Unidentified Man Supposed To Havo Killed Booth Is Summoned to View the Remains BODY IS BEING HELD St Louis, Jan. 22.—A telegram to the Globe-Democrat from Guthrie, Ok., says: It is announced here that Boston Corbett the man who was supposed to have shot and killed John Wilkes Booth in a burning Virginia barn after the assasinatlon of President Lincoln, has been summoned from Old Mexico to identify, if possible the remains of D. E. George, the man who committed suicide at Enid, Okla. and announced just prior to his death that he was John Wilkes Booth. It is also stated that secret service men have been summoned from Washington, D.C., for the same purpose and the remains are being held in the morgue pending identification One thing of Interest connected with the above is the fact that Corbett is alleged to be a fugitive from justice having escaped from an asylum in Kansas. George E Smith who came from Colfax, Ia., left for home Monday without making any disposition of the remains. He visited both Enid and El Reno in looking into the property interests left by the suicide. Relative to George being Booth Smith stated he was in possession of no secrets and knew only of Georges own statement in that matter. Smith said: "He may have been Booth. He was a man of wide experience. I knew him about two years and can say he was an extensively traveled man, unusually well informed. He confided his life secrets to me only to a small extent. He had a pact and told of having killed a man in Texas for which crime I think he was acquitted."
The St. Louis Republic. (St. Louis, Mo.) 1888-1919, January 22, 1903
WAS NOT JOHN WILKES BOOTH. Oklahoma Man Who Knew D. E. George Tells Story of His Life. REPUBLIC SPECIAL Oklahoma City. Ok., Jan. 21—C. M. Clark of Oklahoma City stated to-day that D. E. George, who committed suicide at Enid and left a note to the effect that he was John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Lincoln, had no connection with the death of Lincoln. George was born in Mississippi In 1636 and served as a Major on Bedford Forrest's staff In the Confederate Army. George fought three duels and was wounded many times. After the war, it is said, he killed "Ben" Thompson in a. theater at San Antonio. Tex., and was acquitted. Thompson was a noted Texas "man killer." The killing in the Texas theater probably led up to the Booth story.
The Paducah Sun. (Paducah, Ky.) 1898-1906, June 04, 1903
THE BOOTH MYSTERY One of the Pall Bearers Tells a Sensational Story Says the Body Buried as John Wilkes Booth Was Not That of Booth DEVELOPS INTERESTING STORY The recent dispatches slating that a man who committed suicide at Enid, I. T., in January has been identified as John Wilkes Booth, president Lincolns slayer, has revived interest in the somewhat hackneyed mystory of the actors tragic fate. It has been claimed for many years from time to time that Booth was really never shot, captured or killed and sensational stories have flourished for a time and then been exploded as myths. This last one may share the fate of its predecessors, but following it comes the following story from Baltimore, Md.,: Basil Moxley, the veteran doorkeeper at Fords opera house in this city and the sole survivor of the pallbearers who carried what is supposed to be Wilkes Booths remains to the tomb in Green Mount cemetery today made the surprising statement that it was only a mock funeral. The late John T. Ford, theatrical manager, Charles Bishop the comedian and Samuel Glenn wore the other pallbearers. Mr Morley has preserved silence until this time non account of the Booth family. He now says: "I have never cared much about talking in regard to the truthfulness of the statement that John Wilkes Booth was buried in Green Mount cemetery for there has always been a certain amount of doubt existing as to whether or not the assassin of President Lincoln was ever captured killed or even shot. But in order that I might clear up at least one supposition I'll tell you positively that his body is not and never was buried in this city to my knowledge. Certainly the body buried in Green Mount was not that of Booth. "Never were any two things in this world which resembled each other less than that body did John Wilkes Booth. I had known Booth all my life and was a very close to the family which I think Is shown by the fact that they asked me to act as pallbearer at the funeral of the dead man whom they had been led to believe was that of their relative. I saw the body several times and examined it The hair on the dead body was of a reddish brown color, while Booths was black." Mosley says further: "However that mere detail made no difference for we all knew at the time that the body was not that of John Wilkes Booth and my examination was only prompted by curiosity alone not that I believed for one minute that the body was that of the assassin. You see the whole affair was planned by friends of the family and was done for purpose which they deemed imperative. Mrs Booth, the mother of John Wilkes Booth, was naturally nearly prostrated with grief at her sons action and the stories of his horrible death in the barn and latter the report that the government had taken charge of his body only acted as a vehicle to a general breaking down of her system and for a time it seemed as though she would not survive that shock." "Then in order that the affair might become a thing of the past as soon as possible some friends determined that it would be best to bring the body here and bury it in the family lot in Green Mount. Through these friends Mrs. Booth applied to the government for the body. This brought matters to a crisis, for I do not believe that John Wilkes Booth was ever killed in that barn and if any one was slain it was some innocent man who knew nothing of the real assassin." "At any rate it was incumbent upon the government to furnish a body to make good their report that Booth bad been killed and they did so. What we got and what was sent here for the body of John Wilkes Booth is what I have already described to you a red haired man who looked no more like the tragedian than you do yourself." "I am now the only one of the five left all of the others have died. I never will believe that Booth was killed and am confident that he escaped, but how I have never been able to make up my mind, or have I any positive knowledge that he did. Yet the one point that has always caused me to doubt the various stories of his death is that if he was killed why did not some one receive the immense reward offered for his capture dead or alive? You can search all records in Washington or Interview any officials then in office who are now alive and I will wager you will be unable to learn of any reward being paid for the delivery of John Wilkes Booths body to the government." I also remember several rumors to the effect that Booth had been seen at the crossroads near Penmar and I have heard men say that they had drank with him in that locality, but I must say I believe those rumors were of the same material as those hatched out about his death and peculiar burials, the funniest of which is the one told by Captain E. W. Hllliad of Metropolis, Ill., to the effect that he helped to sink the body in the Potomac river." Another incident bearing indirectly on the case is reported by a prominent Paducah man who was talking in the Palmer house last season to young Junius Booth, who is a nephew of John Wilkes Booth, and played here in a Mrs. LeMoyne's company several months ago. He declared to the Paducah man that John Wilkes Booth was never captured or killed, and if he was dead he died a natural death.
The National Tribune. (Washington, D.C.) 1877-1917, February 05, 1903
SAW BOOTH AFTER DEATH Capt Owen Ridicules the Story of the Oklahoma suicide     Capt Silas Owen Deputy State Factory Inspector of New York, now residing at Buffalo, N. Y., ridicules the story of the Oklahoma suicide to the effect that he was Wilkes Booth. Capt Owen was Commander of the U. S. Ship Primrose the last year of the war and while in Washington met John Wilkes Booth several times. The last time was two weeks before the tragedy. He says"     "The next time I saw him was in Fords Theater on the night he shot President Lincoln. I sat in seat D 179, right back of the orchestra, with William H Ford, the Executive Officer of the Primrose. I saw Mrs Lincoln stand up in the Presidents box and scream and saw Booth leap to the stage. This Oklahoma story says that the fellow who claimed to be Booth had a broken leg such as Booth sustained in that leap. Booth did not break his leg then. He only broke a tendon in his ankle. On his way across the stage Laura Keene stopped him and asked him, "What have you done?" For answer he slashed at her with his knife. I can hear the sleeve of her dress rip yet as the knife tore through it. I had a good look at him and recognized him as the man who addressed me less than two weeks before.     "I saw him once again. This time he was lying on a tarpaulin on the deck of the Lehigh in the Washington Navy Yard. The Lehigh was in dry dock and the body was laid there. He was dead, dead as a door nail. One bullet had gone through his lungs and another broke his leg. I was allowed on board being a naval officer and being in the company of the Lieutenant of the Lehigh     Booths body was buried in a cell under the old Arsenal on the point at Washington. A flagstone in the floor of the cell was raised and the body let down then the stone covered it. I learned this at the time from one of the three named officers who saw the body buried. Three Secret Service men were also in the secret with President Johnson, Secretary of War Stanton and the Attorney General. It stayed there until 1872 when it was removed by members of the Booth family.
The Paducah Sun. (Paducah, Ky.) 1898-1906, February 05, 1903
MORE BOOTH TALK It May be John Wilkes Booth Was Not Killed After all A Metropolis Man Recalls Incidents of the Mysterious Burial of Booth OTHER INTERESTING DETAILS     Since a man died out west claiming to be John Wilkes Booth many papers of the country have been speculating on the question whether or not Booth was ever really killed as is generally supposed     The Metropolis Herald says:     "Sundays St. Louis Post-Dispatch contained a startling article concerning a man by the name of D.E. George who recently committed suicide at Enid, Okla., and who just before his death confessed that he was John Wilkes Booth, the murderer of Abraham Lincoln. There was in many ways evidence tending to prove that the mans dying confession was true.     "The article is of special interest to Metropolis people from the fact that Captain E. W. Hilliard, of this city, assisted in the final disposition of Booths body, or what was supposed to be Booths body.     "To a representative of the Herald Captain E. W. Hilliard read the story and recalled carefully the time when he and five other soldiers took a body down the Potomac river and buried it beneath the waves with the impression that it was that of Booth, and he was quite forcibly impressed with it.     "He says the whole affair of Booths capture and the disposition of his body was a peculiar circumstance and shrouded in mystery and while the body was positively identified by a military surgeon it is possible the body was that of some man resembling Booth which had been substituted for the purpose of quieting the country at the time when the authorities realized that they had failed to capture the right man     "Captain Hilliard never saw Booth while alive but remembers that he saw what was said to have been an excellent likeness of the man and on the night that he assisted in disposing of the mysterious body he noted the fact that the resemblance was quite similar. However one side of the head and faoe wero badly burned     "Mr, hilliard has a letter from Horace L. Trim of Providence, R. I., 59 Lydia street, corroborating his former story of disposition of the body which was published in the Herald during the soldiers reunion here in the fall of 1901. Trim was a first-class boy on the steamer Dragon at the time the body was unwrapped and examined that night and assisted in handling the tarpaulin.     "The statement that the real Booth was never captured has been made more than once and now it seems quite plausible."     A few years ago a well known man of Unionville, Ill., came to Paducah and told a number of his friends that be had received a latter from John Wilkes Booth who was an old school mate and tbat Booth was running a coffee plantation in BraziL. The story was repeated and copied into the big newspapers, and one or two of them sent staff correspondents to the old mans home across the river to interview him and take photographic copies of the letter.     He never showed it to anyone however and subsequently declared it was only a joke but many such incidents as this and the one of the western man who recently died and claimed to be Booth have occurred since the war to arouse momentary interest.
The Houston Daily Post. (Houston, Tex.) 1886-1903, February 17, 1903
WAS HE JOHN WILKES BOOTH? An Embalmers Story of a Recent Suicide in Oklahoma     Corsicana, Texas, February 15, Jack L. Ogilvie, representing an embalming fluid company of Detroit, Mich., spnt yesterday in this place and told The Post representative a story of the old man who suicided in Oklahoma a few days ago, and who said he was John Wilkes Booth, the man who killed Lincoln.     The old man took his life at Enid, O. K., on the last day of December, 1902, and Mr. Ogilvie was in Oklahoma at the time. He was given charge of the body and learned the story of the man. It seems that the old man, who seemed to be at least 70 years old, went to El Reno in November last. He was a cultured man and of sociable disposition and soon made many aquaintances. He dressed well, lived at the best hotel and seemed to have plenty of money. About December 23 he took an overdose of morphine with suicidal intent. Before doing so he sent for the wife of a prominent lawyer there with whom he was very friendly and told her he was Booth, but requested her to keep the secret until he was dead. Physicians were were summoned when it was found that he had taken the drug, and they countered the poison, and the old man recovered.     A few days later the lawyer moved to Enid and the old man appeared there. He again took morphine and sent for the lady and to her presence he wrote:     "I am John Wilkes Booth, the man who murdered Abraham Lincoln, the greatest man the country ever produced."     After his death the lady told of his former confession to her and made a sworn statement to that effect.     Before the man was buried an old schoolmate of Booth's, living in Memphis, Tenn., came to Enid to see the remains. Before looking at the body this man told the undertaker that Booth's body could be identified by three marks. One was sort of a wen on the right instep, two peculiar marks on the right arm, and a scar behind the left ear. The body was examined and these markes were there just as the memphis man had described them, and he was thoroughly satisfied that the body was that of his former schoolmate, John Wilkes Booth.
The copy of the above is hard to read and the word "wen" is the best I can make it out. I have no idea what it could be as a mark though.
New-York Tribune. (New York, N.Y.) 1866-1924, February 19, 1903
.............The sixty-nine acres comprised in the Washington barracks became a military post as far back as 1803, and a regular depot for military supplies located there was burned by the British in 1814. Under the old United States Penitentiary, located there, were buried John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Lincoln, and Mrs. Surratt and the conspirators with him. who were hanged in the court Of the penitentiary at the same time. When the penitentiary was torn down, however, these bodies were removed to established cemeteries.
From Historia 13 July 1922
BOOTH LEGEND Legend tells that John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Pres. Abraham Lincoln, using the name David E. George, committed suicide in Enid, Oklahoma Territory, in 1903. Booth, a popular and talented southern actor, accomplished his task of assassination on April 14, 1865, and following his escape into Virginia, was shot by Sgt. Boston Corbett of the Sixteenth New York Cavalry. Conflicting stories still exist about the identification of Booth's body, and there were errors made in the identification process along with errors in supplying information to the public about the identification. Legend tells that Boston Corbett, the man who shot Booth against orders, was involved in identifying the body as Booth's; within a short time rumors began to circulate questioning the true identity of the corpse doubts and rumors that continue today among Lincoln/Booth scholars and enthusiasts. At approximately 10:30 a.m. on January 13, 1903, in the Grand Avenue Hotel in Enid, the screaming of a guest who had occupied room number four for three or four weeks brought others to his side; David E. George was soon dead. A doctor diagnosed the cause of death as self-administered arsenic poisoning. Later it was told that the deceased had purchased strychnine that morning at a local drug store. The body was taken to Penniman's Furniture Store, also a funeral home. A coroner's jury soon heard stories about this strange, locally unknown man: he was a house painter who did not know how to paint, who always had access to money but died penniless, who frequented bars and loved alcohol, who often quoted Shakespeare, who knew no one but was known by many outside Enid, who was quoted as saying ". . . I killed the best man that ever lived." After George was embalmed, he was placed in a chair in the window of the furniture store/funeral home so that the public could view him, and a photograph was taken. It was believed that he had a "remarkable likeness" to Booth and that his leg had been broken above the right ankle the same break that Booth had suffered in jumping from the Ford's Theater balcony. However, the doctor who had set Booth's leg reported it to be the left leg. Many Enid citizens believed that if George was Booth, the body should be burned. Just as public interest was beginning to fade, Finis L. Bates from Memphis, Tennessee, arrived in Enid. Bates identified the body as his old friend John St. Helen. Bates had been a lawyer in Granbury, Texas, and claimed to have known St. Helen (George) as a client and friend in the early 1870s. After about five years of friendship St. Helen became seriously ill and believing that he was dying, confessed to Bates that he was Booth. He recovered and later gave a detailed account of his life, the assassination, and the escape, to Bates information that only Booth would know. However, some information that Bates later published about St. Helen was inconsistent with documented facts. Nevertheless, the body, which had been embalmed well enough for long-time preservation, was turned over to Bates, who then leased it to interested parties for specified time limits. The George story created enough attention to have the body displayed during the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904; then the mummified cadaver was displayed in different places from time by time by different people, such as carnival sideshow promoters. Shipped by rail to California in 1920, the body was stolen after the train wrecked. Bates later recovered the remains and kept it until his death; his widow sold the mummy. It may today be stored in someone's basement or closet. The Booth Legend has been perpetuated by articles in journals such as Harper's Magazine, Saturday Evening Post, Life, Literary Digest, and many others as well as in numerous newspapers throughout the years. As a young boy growing up in Enid, Henry B. Bass saw the body on display and became fascinated with the story. He became a Lincoln poetry collector as well as a major collector of Booth artifacts. He also became an authority on the actor and the legend about Booth, or George, having lived in Enid. Bass, a widely known and respected building contractor, is the man who discovered and reported the strange coincidence that Sgt. Boston Corbett is buried in Enid. http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~okgarftp/people/booth.htm

Jesse James or Warren Getler

To listen Knights Of The Golden Circle Mp3 just click Play

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Review of A Secret Society History of the Civil War 

by Mark A. Lause 

© University of Illinois Press 2011. 

ISBN 978-0-252-03655-2

• Brewer, Bob & Getler, Warren; Shadow of the Sentinel: One Man’s Quest to Find the Hidden Treasure of the Confederacy © Simon & Schuster 2003 andRebel Gold: One Man’s Quest to Crack the Code Behind the Secret Treasure of the Confederacy © Simon & Schuster 2004.
• Bridges, C. A.; The Knights of the Golden Circle: A Filibustering Fantasy ©Southwestern Historical Quarterly 1941.
• Crenshaw, Ollinger; The Knights of the Golden Circle: The Career of George Bickley © American Historical Review 1941.
• Dunn, Roy S.; The KGC in Texas, 1860-1861 © Southwestern Historical Quarterly 1967.
• Frazier, Donald S.; Blood and Treasure: Confederate Empire in the Southwest © Texas A& M University Press 1995.
• Hicks, Jimmie; Some Letters Concerning the Knights of the Golden Circle in Texas, 1860-1861 © Southwestern Historical Quarterly 1961.
• Klement, Frank; Dark Lanterns: Secret Political Societies, Conspiracies and Treason Trials © Louisiana State University Press 1984.
• http://suite101.com/article/counterfeit-csa-civil-war-confidence-game-a400218

    I thought y'all might be interested in this history on one of our Alabama Bickley's from Virginia. it comes from the "Memorial Record of Alabama. A concise account of the state's political, military professional and Industrial progress, together with the personal memoirs of many of its people. In Two Volumes. Illustrated. Brant & Fuller, Madison Wis., 1893. Volume I. pp. 687-691"

  While it only briefly mentions G.W.L.Bickley and the KGC it gives an excellent representation of the family that influenced him. I have more to write and hope that this one is not too lengthy but will post again if any find this interesting.
Confederately
William Rozier



MAJOR E. L. BICKLEY, one of the prominent and well known business men of
Tuscumbia, Ala., proprietor and senior partner of the firm of Bickley & Raiford,
the largest hardware store in the city, was born in Clinch Valley, Scott county,
Va., June 30, 1843. He is a son of Chas. W. Bickley, who was born May 16, 1798,
at the old Bickley Mills homestead in Castles Woods, Russell county, VA. His
father, Charles Bickley, came from eastern Virginia, was the son of John who was
the son of William Bickley, who was the first of the Bickley family to settle in
America, at Williamsburg, Va., in 1670. He was a knight of the garter of
Northamptonshire, England. Charles Bickley the grandfather was a soldier in the
Revolutionary war, and his son Chas. Wesley, the father of the subject of this
sketch, though but a beardless boy of fourteen, volunteered his services for the
war of 1812.

After the wars were over he remained in Castles Woods with his father until
1823. He went to Scott county and bought what is yet known as the Bickley
homestead in Clinch Valley, promising $1,500 for about 500 acres of river bottom
land, made a cash payment of 4400 (about all he was worth) and had five years
time granted him in which to pay the deferred amount, his neighbors predicting
that he had simply lost or would have to forfeit his first payment, as it would
be impossible for him without any operative capital to meet his obligations.

He knew no such thing as failure, however, and went to work, built him an
humble cabin, felled the timber, and made a fair crop, the first year. On March
16, 1825, he married Miss Mary P. Burdine, who was born in Russell County, Va.,
February 16, 1809. She was the daughter of Rev. Ezekiel Burdine, and itinerant
Methodist preacher, who from the year 1809 to 1812 traveled a circuit, the
territory of which now, constitutes the whole of the Holston conference.

Charles Wesley, with his new made bride, returned to their new home on the
Clinch, March 20, 1825. Realizing their situation, surroundings and obligations,
they met the issues of life as a reality, and with their united efforts and
labors they were enabled to and did meet the obligations in the purchase of the
home, discounting the last note a year before it was due. They were the parents
of eleven children, nine of whom lived to maturity, and seven of whom are still
living, four sons and three daughters. Both were consistent members of the
Methodist Episcopal Church, south.

Politically the father was an uncompromising democrat of the Breckinridge
wing. After accumulating a competency for old age and seeing the children (all
living) self sustaining, the mother died of diphtheria, December 29, 1866, and
the father remaining at the old home with his son until May 17, 1880, when he
passed from earth to his reward. The eldest of their children, Chas. Washington,
was born July 3, 1827, and went west in 1852, was married to Miss Laura R.
McFarland of Jackson county Mo., November 1, 1857. They had born unto them the
following named children: Otelia, Charles D., Leroy Hopkins, Laura Emmagene,
Willie E., Katie L., Jennie, Oscar, Paralee, and Hettie.

At Pikes Peak and other points in the Rocky Mountains his health was impaired
and he came back to Alton, Ill., and from thence back to the Old Dominion; he is
still living near the home of his youth. Nancy Elizabeth, born May 28, 1829,
married to Col. James H. Godsey, an attorney at law of Prestonburg, Ky.,
September 6, 1853; they afterwards moved to Platte City, Mo., where they lived
until the opening of the Civil war. Col. Godsey raised and organized the Fourth
regiment, Missouri infantry, which he commanded under General Price and was
killed in the battle of Osage, Kan., in 1863.

Mrs. Godsey with her sons Willie and James returned to the old home, April,
1865, where she remained with her parents until May 18, 1868, when she married
John W. Banner, of Russell county, Va., and is still living at St. Paul. Her
oldest son, W. E. Godsey, of Spring Valley, Ala., is an employee of the B., S. &
T. R. R. company; his brother, James H., Jr., is engaged in stock raising in
Tazewell county, Va., and the younger brother, and only child of J. W. Banner,
is with his parents on the farm. The third child, Martha J., was born December
1, 1831. Was married to Rev. W. P. Queen of the Holston conference; they raised
two children, both girls. Mr. Queen was the representative of Scott County in
the senate of Virginia at the time of his death. Mrs. Queen with her youngest
daughter, Mattie, is still living at the Queen homestead, near Hagan Sulphur
Springs. The fourth child was Mary Ann Eliza, born September 20, 1834, and died
March 20, 1843. Emily Burdine and John Hopkins (twins) were born February 1,
1837. Emily died August 31, 1871. John H. was living at old Estillville (now
Gate City) in 1861, with Col. H. A. Morison; he volunteered and went out with
Capt. H. Clint Wood's company of infantry., Col. Samuel J. Fulkerson's
Thirty-seventh regiment, twelve months Virginia troops, Confederate States army,
was with Stonewall Jackson at Laurel Hill, Mt. Arry, Gettysburg,
Chancellorsville, after which he was transferred to cavalry, and commanded
company C, Thirty-fourth battalion Virginia cavalry until the close of the war.
Was married to Miss Rhoda Thompson, of Ryecove, Scott County, Va., January 10,
1867. They had born unto them the following named children, viz.: Anna Bell,
Mary Ellen, Charles W. Lee, William Elbert, Clarence, Myrtle and Grover
Cleveland.

They still live at the old Bickley homestead on the Clinch, and the land that
his father bought, in 1823, for three dollars per acre is now worth fifty
dollars per acre. The captain established a post office in connection with a
lucrative mercantile business at the old home. Henry Powell was the seventh
child, and born February 10, 1840, died April 20, 1840. Elbert La Fayette was
the eighth. Margarette Minerva Ellen and Joseph Wellington were twins, born
February 21, 1846. Ellen was a gentle, loving Christian child, professed
religion and joined the Methodist church, south, when but a girl and lived a
consistent, cheerful member of the same; died in the triumphs of faith in the
Saviour she had so early learned to love, and had so faithfully served, which
was the greatest delight and joy of her short earthly life. She died May 24,
1870, leaving the saviour of her life, both precept and example, as a rich
legacy, to her bereaved and sorrowing brothers, sisters and a host of other
relatives and friends. Joseph W. being the youngest son, had some advantages
more than his elder brothers, his education was more liberal, finishing up at
Emory & Henry College.

He was married to Miss Mary E. Petty, late of Texas (at the time of Cuba), May
24, 1874, they subsequently made their home in Virginia at the old homestead
until about the year 1877, they removed to Alabama, where they now live at
Hunter, having with the aid of General Joseph Wheeler, M. C., established this
new post office, of which J. W. Bickley was the first postmaster appointed, and
has served the office as such ever since. He has also run a general supply store
in connection with a farm.

They have a family of six children: the eldest, Miss Leila E., is about grown;
second daughter, Miss Elberta, and Mary A.; George W. L., the first son was
named for his kinsman, Dr. George W. L. Bickley, late of Baltimore, Maryland.
Dr. G. W. L. Bickley, it will be remembered, was the originator and organizer of
the order of Knights of the Golden Circle, about the year 1848, with the purpose
of invading Mexico and making himself emperor of the same; he however failed to
carry his scheme of conquest; notwithstanding the organization had reached a
formidable point numerically, he was betrayed and his plans and purposes
exposed. He wrote a history of Tazewell county, Va., in 1852, where he was
living at that time, and was president of the Jeffersonville Historical society,
he also published a work on botany, besides writing a number of novels and other
miscellaneous matter of journalism.

The fourth and last daughter is Josephine, and the baby boy Seldon Preston
Hopkins, who is now six years old. The youngest daughter, eleventh and last
child of Charles W. and Mary P. Bickley, was Melissa Catharine, born April 18,
1848. She was married to the Rev. J. M. Massey, of the Holston conference,
November 5, 1868; they now live at Dungannan on the Clinch, Mr. Massey having
located, studied and gone into the practice of medicine.

They had only one child, a daughter, Ellena, who married John Hagan, son of the
Hon. Patrick Hagan, of southwest Virginia fame and notoriety as a lawyer and
capitalist. We now come back to the proper and central subject of this sketch,
viz., the early life training, education and personal character of Elbert
Lafayette, fourth son of Chas. Wesley and Mary P. Bickley. His early training in
the home of his parents so impressed him as to develop, and establish in his
character the principles of industry, economy, prudence and piety. Inheriting
the most potent features of his father's character, with strong convictions, and
indomitable energy of purpose, he as it were forged his way, and built character
from his boyhood.
School facilities were very poor, and the most schooling he got was by walking
about three miles to an old log schoolhouse, and this through snow and slush.
After having made a full hand on the farm through the crop season, which he
always did, leading the hands of the plantation from the age of twelve until he
was grown, in the fall of 1855, on a camp-meeting occasion in Castles Woods, he
joined the Methodist Episcopal church, south, and has lived an acceptable member
ever since.

He was at Stony Point Academy at school the winter of 1861-2, and in the spring
he felt an impulse to go into the confederate army, and with the approval of his
parents left home in March, 1862, going out as special courier with Maj. Ben F.
Bradley, Humphrey Marshall's brigade—was in the first battle at Princeton; in
West Virginia; the following May was with Gen. John H. Morgan at Perryville and
Hickman, Ky.; in Bragg's campaign the following fall. He was kept in West
Virginia along the mountain passes most of the year 1863, having been
transferred to Col. V. A. Witcher's Fifty-fourth Virginia cavalry, and was with
Gen. Joseph Wheeler through Tennessee and Alabama. Thence back to Virginia under
Gen. Preston, serving as adjutant of the Thirty-fourth battalion, Virginia
cavalry.

An attack having been made on the garrison at Winfield, W. Va., Maj. McFarland
was run in and hemmed behind the blockhouse with half a dozen other men—cut off
from the command. Adjt. Bickley planned and led a charge upon the garrison in
the night, and succeeded in liberating Maj. McFarland, losing Lieut. J. L.
Williams and two or three other men. For this Maj. Bickley was presented with a
beautiful sword, which he yet has and prizes very highly.

After the surrender of the confederate State of America, Maj. Bickley returned
to the old home, spent the summer of 1865 in agricultural pursuits, and, not
being satisfied with his education, he resolved to go to school one more
session, which he did, at the rye cove academy during the winter of 1865-66.
Leaving school he spent two years with Col. H. A. Morison at Estillville (as
clerk in a dry goods store), and from thence with Dickenson & Alderson, in
Russell county, where he was given general control of their mercantile business,
until the year 1869, when he engaged in the stock business, and after going east
with and selling a drove of cattle in Loudon county, he returned to the
southwest and continued his journey, passing the old home with the purpose of
visiting his uncle, Joseph Bickley, at Indianapolis, Ind.

Stopped off at Tuscumbia, Ala., and visited a cousin, T. B. Bickley, of Spring
Valley. While there he met and was introduced to Miss Sue Jackson, daughter of
James and Sarah (Hodges) Jackson, whom he subsequently married February 14,
1871. Returning to Virginia with his bride they spent one summer and the
succeeding fall returned to Alabama, locating in what is now Spring Valley, in
Colbert County. Here he opened and established a mercantile business, which he
runs successfully in connection with agriculture; he also, through the
assistance of Maj. Joseph A. Sloss, member of congress, of his district,
established a post office, the first the community had ever had.

Remaining at Spring Valley until 1888, he then removed to Tuscumbia, where he
erected a handsome residence where he now lives. Mr. Bickley was raised to the
master's degree in Free Masonry by Catlett Lodge No. 34, at Estillville, Va., in
1866, and took the degrees as a Knight of Honor about the year 1875, and in 1889
was made a Knight of Pythias by Colbert lodge, No. 12, and of which he is now
the V. C. C. Mrs. Bickley, whilst delicately constituted, and almost an
incessant sufferer, has borne it all patiently, and has been truly a helpmate to
her husband temporally and spiritually. Her life has been a benediction to him
and we might say to all with whom she has come in contact.

With no children of their own they have adopted a niece, Miss Katie L.,
daughter of his elder brother, C. Washington Bickley, having taken her when but
a child of six or seven. She is much the same as if their own, educating her in
the Deshler Female Institute, Tuscumbia, and finishing in the Huntsville Female
College. She is the pride of the household and truly an affectionate, dutiful
child—the staff and comfort of her uncle and aunt—as they pass down the stream
of time.

Confederately
William Rozier

The below is from Jay's forum:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BloodyBillAndersonMystery

It took me two and a half hours to transcribe this important Official
Record to post on this message board so I hope our members appreciate my efforts. :) Please read the entire report carefully as it explains many important things about the KGC. It also tells of their
resolve to go to any lengths to prevent the second inauguration of Lincoln.


http://moa.cit.cornell.edu/moa/browse.monographs/waro.html
run a simple search of this site for the keywords: Knights of the Golden Circle


http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BloodyBillAndersonMystery
***


From: The War of the Rebellion Official Records
"OFFICE PROVOST-MARSHAL,
MIDDLE DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA,
Sacramento, August 10, 1864
Brig. Gen. JOHN S. MASON,
Acting Assistant Provost-Marsal-General, San Francisco, Cal.:
SIR: I have the honor to report the result of my investigations of
the secret work of the association called 'Knights of the Columbian
Star,' through Hiram Potter, one of their number. This has been a
very tedious and slow business, for the reason that the whole system
is so cloaked and guarded that but few of the members really know
anything about it. The organization, as near as I can now determine,
is as follows: There is a governor-general for the State, and a
lieutenant-governor-general for each locality, who has a deputy
lieutenant-governor-general to assist him. There are no large
meetings held of the order in their capacity as an association, but
few only of the officers and trusted members get together to initiate
new members and devise the work which is to be carried out. Potter
has only lately learned that there is a third degree, which he has
not yet obtained, but it is proposed to give it to him soon. I may
here remark that it is one of the cardinal principles of the order
that no member of an inferior degree knows of a higher until he is
prepared and expected to receive it. In the first degree, which is
called thirty-three defenders, the candidate is first examined and
[if] found to be a suitable person for their use, he is then sworn in
a solemn and imposing manner. The substance of the obligation is that
he will not support in any election or employ in business an
abolitionist if any other person can be had; that he will obey his
officers in all things; that he will resist the enforcement of any
and all unconstitutional laws by the Administration, his officers
being the judges of the unconstitutionality of the laws; that he will
furnish himself with a rifle or double-barrel shotgun if possible,
and positively to furnis a revolver pistol and bowie knife, and
always to keep on hand a supply of ammunition for a three-days hunt.
After taking this obligation they are invested with the signs,
password, and grip, to enable them to recognize their brothers and
make themselves known, which are: First, to attract attention of any
brother present, take hold of the breast of the coat or about the
third button, carrying the hands about an inch out from the body and
back twice, as if in the act of fitting the coat to your body. The
answer to this sign is to throw the left hand to the small of the
back carelessly. This satisfies the party that they are recognized,
but they will have no communication until they have been further
proved. After selecting a proper place the challenger proceeds to
prove his brother as follows: Q. 'Do you know Jones?' A. 'What
Jones?' Q. 'Preacher Jones.' A. 'Yes.' Q. 'Have you the password?'
A. 'I have.' Q. 'Will you give it to me?' A. 'That is not the way I
obtained it.' Q. 'What will you do with it?' A. 'I will divide it
with you.' Q. 'Well, you divide it, and begin.' A. 'No; you begin.'
Q. No, you begin; the word is yours.' A. 'Death.' Q. 'To.' A. 'All.'
Q. 'Traitors.' They then take hands, the questioner giving the grip,
which is given by inserting the little finger between the little
finger and the next one and then clasping the hands, the questioner
giving one shake and saying 'Right,' the answering man another shake
and saying 'Brother.' This completes the proof of each belonging to
the thirty-third or first degree, and any communication between them
is proper. So far neither man is supposed to know that any other or
higher degree exists. But for the purpose of explanation we will
suppose that they both have the second degree, or what is called the
fifty-seventh degree, meaning 'constitution.' The first hailing sign
in this degree is made by taking off the hat with the left hand,
bringing it down to the side of the head, and placing the right hand
on the top of the head in an easy, careless manner; this is answered
by taking off the hat with the left hand in the same manner. Test
sign follows: The thumb and forefinger of left hand rub the under
lip; the answer is made by touching the pit of the stomach with the
thumb and forefinger of the right hand, as in the act of holding a
pen. This having been properly answered the question may be
asked: 'Have you the password?' Upon the reply in the affirmative the
password is given with the same ceremony as before, being divided.
The word is 'Andalusia,' being divided An-da-lu-sia. The questioner
then asks, 'Have you the sacred password?' and upon an affirmative
answer the same process of getting is observed, with this difference,
that this word is lettered. The word is 'Eloi.' After this grip is
given. The right hand of each is placed together and thrust up until
each grasps the wrist of the other, and the questioner gives one
shake, saying 'Right;' the other party then reaches with the left
hand and takes the left hand of the questioner in the same manner,
giving it one shake, and says 'Brother.' This completes the proof of
membership in the second degree. There are some other signs for
special occasions. Sign of caution or danger: Place the left hand
upon the breast and raise the right vertically, the elbow as high as
the shoulders. Sign of distress: Clasp the hands together, unlocking
the fingers; raise them to the chin, saying, 'Santa Maria.' Sign of
recognition on horseback: Grasping the left breast of the coat with
left hand, giving two moves of the hand and coat about two inches and
back, the party answering salutes with right hand. There is a night
sign, made by clasping the hands and calling out 'Ho!' which is
answered by saying 'Hi!' Before being invested with these signs the
candidate is carefully examined as to his age, occupation, residence,
former place of residence, birthplace, what military service he has
done, his opinions upon the political views of the day, State rights,
slavery, the right to resist unconstitutional laws, &c. If this
examination is satisfactory, he is sworn. The oath is very long and
elaborate. The substance only can be given, which is to resist the
election of Lincoln for President by all possible means, including
the force of arms; to adhere to and obey the call of the governor-
general of the State or the lieutenant-governor-general of your
district in all cases and at all times; that you will resist any and
all unconstitutional laws by the Administration; that you will adhere
to and support the old State rights doctrines and the right of each
State to protect itself, and assist it to carry out the right to
maintain slavery or any other domestic institution to which it is
entitled, by force of arms if necessary; that you will resist with
arms any attempt upon the part of the U.S. authorities to execute any
unconstitutional law of any kind or character, your officers being
the judges of the unconstitutionality. In addition to this, Potter
says he has ascertained that there is a third degree, and has the
promise of having it conferred upon him. Beriah Brown, editor of the
Press in San Francisco, is the present governor-general of the State;
C.L. Weller, who has lately been arrested, is lieutenant-governor-
general of the State, or of the district of San Francisco; not
certain as to the extent of his jurisdiction. It is contemplated to
elect a governor-general of the Pacific Coast, including Nevada
Territory and Idaho, who shall have the general supervision of the
order. Joseph P. Hoge, of San Francisco, is talked of for that
position. This will not be done until after the nomination at the
Chicago Convention, when a meeting of the governors and lieutenant-
governors is to be held at some point not yet known. Each member of
the order pays money into the treasury, and when parties cannot get
arms for themselves they are to be furnished by the society, the
intention being that every man who is with them shall be armed for
instant service when required by his officers. They only make one
member of the fifty-seventh degree for from three to seven of the
thirty-third degree, and it may well be imagined that the third
degree is still less in number than the second and still more
dangerous, all the power resting in a small council or single
governor. The officers in the Sacramento district are: General J.L.
English, lieutenant-governor-general; J.C. Goods, deputy; Thomas
Edwards, secretary, and A.A. Bennett, treasurer. Ex-Governor John
Bigler is a prominent member, and has lately left as a delegate to
the Chicago Convention; he is reported as having carried $160 in
money to be delivered to the rebel sanitary fund; the money was sent
from here to Maggie Perry, in San Francisco, to be delivered to
Bigler there. John R. Ridge, at present of Nevada City, was a
traveling agent of the order, and is now an officer in the Nevada
district. Doctor Fox, of San Francisco, is one of the most active
agents of the order in the State. He estimates that there are 24,000
men at present in the order and reliable for their purposes, and that
this order, with the Knights of the Golden Circle and the men they
can control, will reach 50,000. The actual number is very hard to
arrive at by any one below the head of the order, or a general agent,
as the utmost secrecy prevails between all its parts, and all are
subject to the power of an officer whom they do not know. Amongst
themselves it is freely talked of that there will be war in
California; they expect it and are all the time providing for it.
General J.L. English here talks peace, and the other officers and
prominent men say he is an old fogy and afraid he will lose his
property. Whenever they feel strong enough to make resistance to the
laws they intend to do it. This seems to be the tendency of all the
circumstances that come to my knowledge, and their conversation
reported by Potter will bear no other construction. There is also a
regular system of raising money to be transmitted East under pretense
of giving to the rebel sanitary for rebel prisoners. Since I reported
to you that trouble was expected in San Francisco at the time of the
meeting an order has been issued by Governor Brown (as is reported)
that all Democrats cease to carry arms until further orders, but to
have them always ready where they can find them. In relation to the
arms heretofore spoken of, the only further information we have been
able to gain is that the muskets, 'about 1,000,' were under the
control of Don Juan de Dias, a Mexican, who disappeared about two
weeks since, and whether the arms went with him or not cannot be
ascertained. The result of my observation is that the secret
political organization is very powerful and very dangerous. Second,
that the moving power which controls it is in sympathy with and
acting for the benefit of the Southern rebellion. Third, that it is
most important now to ascertain exactly who they are and what they
are doing. Fourth, that more men should be employed in this service
unknown to each other, so that their information may be compared.
Almost any man who takes upon himself these obligations is more or
less unreliable to us, and I do not feel safe in relying altogether
upon one man, more especially as I have some reason to believe that
he does not push his inquiries as fast as he might, or else keeps
back something that he ought to inform us of.
I submit, then, this matter to you, in addition to what I have
heretofore reported, for your consideration and advice.
I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant.
ROBERT ROBINSON,
Captain and Provost-Marshal."

***
~Jay~
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BloodyBillAndersonMystery

Caveat Lector
ccc

South Carolina
 This is a topic that OD (Occidental Dissent) will be returning to at some point in the future:

Short History of the Golden Circle
Posted on May 8, 2013 by Hunter Wallace


http://www.occidentaldissent.com/2013/05/08/short-history-of-the-golden-circle/comment-page-1/

Knights of the Golden Circle: Secret Empire, Southern Secession, Civil War

Video streaming by Ustream

Knights of the Golden Circle, David C. Keehn

Author David C. Keehn will speak before the Filson Historical Society in Louisville, Kentucky on May 21st. Mr. Keehn, I believe, has written the most comprehensive authoritative book on the history of the Knights of the Golden Circle to date and if you are in this area I urge you to attend this meeting.

Reservations are required.

Filson Historical Society
1310 S. Third St., Louisville, KY, 40208

“Knights of the Golden Circle: Secret Empire, Southern Secession, Civil War”
– David C. Keehn

Based on years of exhaustive and meticulous research, David C. Keehn’s study provides the first comprehensive analysis of the Knights of the Golden Circle, a secret southern society that initially sought to establish a slave-holding empire in the “Golden Circle” region of Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America. Keehn reveals the origins, rituals, structure, and complex history of this mysterious group, including its later involvement in the secession movement.

David C. Keehn is an attorney from Allentown, Pennsylvania, with a history degree from Gettysburg College and a Juris Doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania.

Start:   May 21, 2013 6:00 pm
End:    May 21, 2013 7:00 pm
Venue:    The Filson Historical Society
Phone:    502-635-5083
Address: 1310 S. Third Street
               Louisville, KY, 40208
Cost:    $5.00 for non-members

If you find yourself going to Bismark Missouri you might want to plan your trip around the opening of the new "Knights of the Golden Circle Bar and Grill".
We will give you more details later.

There is another presentation in Richmond, Virginia as well:




 Tickets are $4-$6

 Virginia Historical Society
 428 North Boulevard
 Richmond, Virginia
 23220

Tel: 804.358.4901

What we thought: 150 years ago
By From the editorial archives of Sauk Valley Media
Monday, May 20, 2013

The Gazette
May 16, 1863

Bishop dared to do his patriotic duty

Disloyalty rebuked

Bishop Symit, the Roman Catholic bishop of Dubuque, a week ago last Sunday afternoon openly denounced the secret order of the Knights of the Golden Circle.

In his character as a confessor, he had learned of its existence there, and that its object was evil towards our government. He at once exposed it, and told his hearers that those of them who had been duped into joining this conspiracy should come forth from it immediately.

He gave all such members of his church two weeks to leave it. All who then continued in it, would be excommunicated. The bishop then appealed to his hearers to stand by the government, and not to be led by the wicked politicians in any schemes for its overthrow.

Dubuque is the headquarters of the Knights in Iowa, and this blow from a quarter whence they little expected it, is a crushing one on their schemes of wickedness.

All honor to the bishop who dares to do his duty and openly rebuke the doings of this treasonable organization.

Serves him right

[Clement] Vallandigham, the great Copperhead mogul, has been sentenced to the Tortugas for two years by Gen. Burnside. He can there talk treason to lizards and tadpoles to his heart’s content.

The sentence is a just one, and all loyal men will endorse Gen. Burnside for it; but it shows he has little respect for the natural inhabitants of that pleasant locality.

Good bye, Val; our love to your future comrades.

P.S. – The Philadelphia Inquirer of the 14th says that the president has changed the sentence by sending Vallandigham south during the war. Conscientious Lincoln.

The original Copperhead

The first Copperhead, without doubt, made his appearance in the Garden of Eden.

The first, however, that made his appearance in this country was Benedict Arnold.

On the 20th of October, 1780, while the war of the Revolution was progressing, he issued a “proclamation to the citizens and soldiers of the United States,” appealing to them to turn against Washington, Hancock and their compatriots, just as certain politicians are now appealing to the people to turn against the government.

Meagher bows out

Gen. Thomas Francis Meagher, the renowned Irish orator and gallant commander of the Irish Brigade, has tendered his resignation. The brigade has been so reduced by repeated conflicts in the Army of the Potomac that it now numbers less than one thousand men, and the general does not wish to risk the lives of the remaining few by asking them to follow where he may choose to lead.

He does not, however, withdraw from the service, but offers himself to the government in another capacity.

Stonewall’s death

Late Richmond papers confirm the reports of the death of [Confederate Gen.] Stonewall Jackson. He died on Sunday last, from the effects of the amputation of his left arm, and pneumonia.

http://www.saukvalley.com/2013/05/14/from-our-archives-bishop-dared-to-do-his-patriotic-duty/abh9ww5/

Knights of the Golden Circle: Secret Empire, Southern Secession, Civil War by David C. Keehn is now available via Project Muse. Project Muse is available only to select Universities for use by scholars, faculty and students and is accessed only by registered users at those Universities through verified IP addresses.

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http://muse.jhu.edu/books/9780807150054

Knights of the Golden Circle: Secret Empire, Southern Secession, Civil War
By David C. Keehn
Publication Year: 2013

Based on years of exhaustive and meticulous research, David C. Keehn’s study provides the first comprehensive analysis of the Knights of the Golden Circle, a secret southern society that initially sought to establish a slave-holding empire in the “Golden Circle” region of Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America. Keehn reveals the origins, rituals, structure, and complex history of this mysterious group, including its later involvement in the secession movement. Members supported southern governors in precipitating disunion, filled the ranks of the nascent Confederate Army, and organized rearguard actions during the Civil War. The Knights of the Golden Circle emerged around 1858 when a secret society formed by a Cincinnati businessman merged with the pro-expansionist Order of the Lone Star, which already had 15,000 members. The following year, the Knights began publishing their own newspaper and established their headquarters in Washington, D. C. In 1860, during their first attempt to create the Golden Circle, several thousand Knights assembled in southern Texas to “colonize” northern Mexico. Due to insufficient resources and organizational shortfalls, however, that filibuster failed. Later, the Knights shifted their focus and began pushing for disunion, spearheading pro-secession rallies, and intimidating Unionists in the South. They appointed regional military commanders from the ranks of the South’s major political and military figures, including men such as Elkanah Greer of Texas, Paul J. Semmes of Georgia, Robert C. Tyler of Maryland, and Virginius D. Groner of Virginia. Followers also established allies with the South’s rabidly pro-secession “fire-eaters,” which included individuals such as Barnwell Rhett, Louis Wigfall, Henry Wise, and William Yancey. According to Keehn, the Knights likely carried out a variety of other clandestine actions before the Civil War, including attempts by insurgents to take over federal forts in Virginia and North Carolina, the activation of pro-southern militia around Washington, D. C. and a planned assassination of Abraham Lincoln as he passed through Baltimore in early 1861 on the way to his inauguration. Once the fighting began, the Knights helped build the emerging Confederate Army and assisted with the pro-Confederate Copperhead movement in northern states. With the war all but lost, various Knights supported one of their members, John Wilkes Booth, in his plot to abduct and assassinate President Lincoln. Keehn’s fast-paced, engaging narrative demonstrates that the Knights proved more substantial than historians have traditionally assumed and provides a new perspective on southern secession and the outbreak of the Civil War

The Knights of the Golden Circle Research and Historical Archives
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Knights_of_the_Golden_Circle
http://knights-of-the-golden-circle.blogspot.com
http://knightsofthegoldencircle.webs.com

Copperhead Activities
by Dr. John W. Miller
©1996 The Cincinnati Civil War Round Table

Copperhead, a sinister word when used during the time of the War between the States.

It usually struck terror and consternation to the hearts of the Union Administration. A ray of
hope and possibly a way out, to the Confederacy.

The names Copperhead or Butternuts were used to cover all groups of Peace Societies,
Peace Democrats, Peace at any Price, or militant groups working to overthrow the existing
government and interfere by force, or otherwise with the conduct of the War between the States.

They were instrumental in bringing about one of the most controversial issues of the War.
Were they traitors to the Union, or were they people fighting for freedom of action, of speech
and the pursuit of their own convictions?

In the words of Lincoln, "were they testing whether that Nation, or any Nation, so
conceived and so dedicated could long endure."

Many Northern political leaders and writers thought the Slave States had a perfect right to
accede and were glad they were doing so.

Senators and Congressmen made speeches in the Halls of Congress, such as Pendleton,
Long, Greeley and others, that nowhere in our Constitution did it say that any State had agreed or
were they duty bound to remain in the Union if they wished to do otherwise. I do not believe that
our Constitution as it stands today, has any rule or disciplinary action to follow if a State wished
to secede.

In fact, some went so far as to say that in all probability the Founding Fathers had planned
it this way. That if any State in due time felt that they could do better alone or in another group,
they were perfectly free to leave the Union.

The confusion of ideas and impulses in the South was equalled by the hysterical state of the
North in the face of actual secession.

The abolitionists, or most of them, thought that nothing at all ought to be done to bring back
the seceded Statea. They felt that the Northern people should thank God that secession had
helped the Union to get rid of slavery. Horace Greeley wrote ponderously in the New York
Tribune that secession was justifiable, and that he was glad the slave Statea were saying
good-bye. Wendell Phillips delivered an impassioned, erratic speech in which he declared that
a War against the South could end only in disaster. The people of the North would not fight, he
said, and the only result of a War would be the conquest of the North by the South, with slavery
fastened on the country forever.

New York City was a center of disunion sentiment. Its Mayor, Fernando Wood, proposed
in black and white that in case of hostilities, the Metropolis should dissociate itself from the
Uhion and become a free and neutral City. The bankers and politicians whom W. B. Russell met
in New York on his arrival from England held similar views. "They told me", he wrote in the
London Times, "that the majority of the people of New York, and all the respectable people,
were disgusted at the election of such a fellow as Lincoln to be President, and would back the
Southern Statea if it came to a split".

The story of the Copperheads, gaudy with secret symbols, passwords and other
conspiratorial paraphenalia, is bloody and full of mighty terror. Beneath the theatrical props
were real violence and fanticism. The true scope of the Copperheads will probably never be
known. When Richmond was burning, Secretary of State, Judah Benjamin burned the record of
his and Hines' secret dealings with the Copperhead leaders. However, Hines kept copies of
many of his reports and letters, which he sent to his wife with instructions to hide them.

The Knights of the Golden Circle Mayor may not have been the outgrowth of the Southern
Rights Clubs of the 1830's. Six ships, all equipped for piracy, were sent out on the high seas by
the Clubs, but they were seized and burned by the British.

In 1854 a wonderful old humbug, George W. L. Bickley, took over the Clubs and organized
the Knights of the Golden Circle, with headquarters in Cincinnati, Bickley had an impressive
list of medical degrees - all forged, of course, - and a suitcase of secret signs, symbols and a
"book of rites". Under his management the Knights spread like wildfire all through the Cotton
South. From hocuspocus rituals they turned to violence and conquest when they tried to promote
the extension of slavery by the conquest of Mexico.

Secession wee their goal in 1860. "Castles" as the Knights called their lodges, sprang up in
non-seceding States. Bickley, active in this work in Kentucky, was threatened with arrest and
fled to Virginia. But the movement flourished in Kentucky and became a real danger to the Union
Army after war broke out.

Not all the Knights knew the secret aims of their leaders. Many solemnly went through the
fantastic rituals, swore their oaths, believing themselves to be only Democrats preserving the
freedom of the ballot against tyrannica1 Republicans. Only those who took the last two
advanced degrees of the ritual were told - then only orally - of the violent goals their leaders
had set. Armed sentries, sometimes the strength of a full Company, guarded the meeting places.

In Illinois the Knights were openly gathering recruits for the Confederate Army in 1861. In
Iowa they burned the homes of men who joined the Federals. In Des Moines the U. S. Marshall
found evidence that the Knights were gunnrunning into Missouri for Quantrill's guerrillas. In
August, 1862 the Chicago Tribune declared the movement had 20,000 members. Missouri
membership was reported from 10,000 to 60,000 with Castles springing up in every section of
the State.

Althought I find no connection between the two groups, long before the hysteria of
secession and actual warfare which brought the Copperheads into being, a group of men in our
government dreamed of an empire to stabilize slavery in the area. They took the first opportunity
to do just that. Their idea was that an imaginary Golden Circle be drawn, 16 degrees latitude
and 16 degrees longitude, with its center at Havana, Cuba. It reached north into Pennsylvania
and Ohio, also including the slave States, and South - - to the Isthmus of Darien. It embraced the
West Indian Islands and those of the Carribean Sea with a great part of Mexico and Central
America. The idea was, to purchase Cuba if possible, otherwise take it by force. Their first
opportunity came when the U. S. Merchant vessel Black Warrior wee seized and condemned by
authorities at Havana (28th Feb. 1864) for an error in her manifest. A clamor for war with Spain
broke out among expansionists in Congress. Pierre Soule' U. S. Minister to Spain, presented a
claim for damages, followed by an ultimatum demanding immediate satisfaction. Secretary
Marcy checked Soule', and in 1855 the U. S. accepted a Spanish apology and reparation. Soule'
was instructed by Marcy to meet at Ostend, Belgium, with John Y. Mason, and James Buchanan,
U. S. Minister to France and Great Britain, respectively, for the purpose of shaping a policy on
the acquisition of Cuba. The meeting with the approval of President Pierce, resulted in the
Ostend Manifesto. Declaring Cuba indispensable for the security of slavery, the Ministers
recommended that the U. S. should make every effort to buy Cuba, should Spain refuse, "then by
every law, human and divine, we shall be justified in wresting it from her, if we possessed the
power."

The aggressive pronouncement of the document was the work of Soule'. The document
brought Marcy's disavowal, and Soule' resigned. Publication of the Manifesto aroused Northern
feeling and intensified Spanish resentment of the administration's annexationists policy. The
newly born Republican party pointed to the Manifesto as proof that a Southern-dominated
administration had surrendered to pressure for more slave territory, Buchanan's participation
recommended him to Southern Democrats.

What were the economical and social reasons that made secession seem so important to the
South? And a possible creation of a New Empire?

I find the best estimation of this has been made by the historian Dr. Woodward, and I quote,
- There were somewhere near 1,600,000 white families in the South, lesa than 400,000 held
slaves. Three-fourths of the southern families held no slaves and had no direct interest in its
continuance. About 10,000 families owned the great slave plantations and constituted the
wealthy and ruling class of the slave States and they wanted to keep it that way.

The rank and file of the Copperhead movement were the smaller farmers and poor artisans
of the region, if measured by the accumulation of wealth. They, like the poor whites of the South,
saw another vision from that which was seen by the followers of Lincoln. Why were they so
strong in the middle west? The census of 1860 shows that about 6% of the white population of
Ohio were immigrants or descendants of immigrants from slave States, chiefly, Virginia and
Kentucky, and from 12 to 25% from the same states in Indiana, Illinois and Missouri.

The name Copperhead and Butternut, first came into use in 1861 and it depended on which
side you were, as to meaning. If you were a Union sympathizer it was likened to the Copperhead
snake that struck without warring, and the Butternut wood was so soft it was useless. If you
were a Southern aympathlzer, the head cut out of a copper penny indicated freedom, and a
butternut cut in half showed two perfectly shaped hearts joined together which could not be
separated either by law or war.

Different peace societies had many different names: Knights of the Columbian Star,
American Knights and Sons of Liberty, Corps de Belgium, The Democratic Invincible Club,
Democratic Reading Room, Knights of the Mighty Host, Knights of the Circle of Honor and
Mutual Protective Society. These names were obviously used to confuse as to their real
purpose. Their Lodges or Castles, as they were called, were scattered over a number of
Western States. They were strongly entrenched in Southern California, and a number of Lodges
were reported in Michigan, Iowa, New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Maryland and
Delaware. In several counties in Pennsylvania and even as far north as Boston, the agents tried
to get a foothold. Who sent these agents out, I have been unable to determine, but they certainly
were active. Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky and Ohio were the hot beds of the
Copperhead movement.

By 1863, Vallandigham speaking in Dayton on the strength of the Copperheads, estimated
their number to be 500,000 in the United States, and this according to Judge Advocate Holt was
very near the truth. They were organized in almost every county and by this time had set up a
military organization. Indiana, alone, was divided into four military districts by a man named
Dr. Wm. Bowles, a wealthy physician from French Lick, who planned, when the time came, to
murder all State and City Officials and take over the government. They used the same signs as
the Confederate Army, such as hand-grips, marking houses that were known to be Copperheads
and firing four shots, counting to fifty between shots. When in trouble, the penalty for any traitor
to the Copperhead cause, was to have his body cut into four pieces and cast to the four winds. It
is amazing, in the light of al1 this, that some men had the courage to divulge these and other
secrets and to become Federal counter-spies within the organization. Among them was a young
clerk named Felix Stidger, under order from Col. Carrington, who was the Union Commander at
Indianapolis. If Hines was the Confederacy's most dangerous agent, Stidger was his Northern
counterpart. When Stidger's reports arrived, Col. Carrlngton, a judicious man of sober
judgement thought his investigator's imagination had run away with him. But when Stidger
predicted that certain Federal supply warehouses would be burned, and they were burned, then
Col. Carrington acted.

On March 19, 1863, Col. Carrington, in a direct wire to Lincoln, reported of Morgans next
raid, that he (Morgan), will leave the command and quietly reappear to raise the standard of
revolt in Indiana. Thousands believe this and his photograph was hung in many homes. In some
counties his name was daily praised. It would appear, then, that by this time the purpose of
Morgan's raids had expanded. Now according to Col. Carrington's information, the
Confederates - or at least Morgan - had made some sort of alliance with the Copperheads for a
revolt in the Northwest. On April 1st, Gen. Burnslde, who had been given the command of the
department of Ohio after the Fredericksburg debacle, issued his famous Order No. 38, which
authorized the death penalty for Confederate Couriers carrying secret mails, recruiting officers
of secret societies and "persons found concealed in lines belonging to service of the enemy".

The following day 3,000 wildly chearing Copperheads greeted Vallandigham at an
open-air meeting in Dayton, to watch the former Congressman spit on a copy of the Order and
hear him denounce Gen. Burnside as a "Usurper of American Freedom". That afternoon Gen.
Burnside heard of the speech. He immediately ordered the Provost Marshall of Ohio to arrest
Vallandigham. The hour of midnight was melodramatic enough, but Vallindigham added a few
tricks. Grabbing a pistol and barricading himself and his wife in a bedroom, he fired several
shots from a window, shouting "Asa, Asa, Asa", into the darkness. What the words meant, no
one knows. But it is said they were signals to secret agents who were watching his house night
and day in case a Burnside man attempted to arrest him. The Soldiers smashed in a door,
arrested Vallandigham and took him to a Dayton Military prison. Word swept across the
countryside. In towns and villages men fastened the copper Indian head of a penny in their
lapels, armed themselves with rifles and pistols and marched on Dayton. Thousands streamed
into the City all day, Soldiers with bayonets ringed the jail three deep to stand off the shouting,
jeering mob. When they were usable to break through the ring of steel, the mob led by
Copperhead leaders, took its revenge on the City. Public buildings were burned to the ground,
stores looted, houses broken into and hundreds wounded by stray bullets. In the morning the mob
was gone, leaving behind streets littered with rocks, splintered glass and overturned wagons. A
pall of smoke hung over the City.

Across the sides of many buildings was painted "Release Vallandigham". Vallandigham
was whisked to Cincinnati, where several lawyers of distinction defended him. His defense was
that no Military Court could try him as there was no rebellion in his State. In the newspapers
were frequent accounts of bands of armed men galloping about the squares of small towns, firing
pistols and shouting and cheering for Jeff Davis, John Hunt Morgan and Vallandigham. On May
10th, Vallandigham was convicted, found guilty of treason and sent to Ft. Warren in Boston.
Then Lincoln reviewed his case and decided he, (Vallandigham) could do less harm in exile
than at home. He sent him to Gen. Rosecrans' headquarters to be sent through the lines. On the
25th of May he was taken to Murfreesboro, Tenn., and held there under guard. The next day he
was placed on the Shelbyville Pike and before nine wee riding into the Confederate lines to be
escorted to Gen. Braxton Bragg's headquarters at Shelbyville. On June 2nd Vallandigham left
Gen. Bragg's headquarters for Chattanooga. He next appears in Canada, a man without a country.

Felix Stidger probably did more to bring the Copperhead leaders to trial than any other
man, along with a man named S. P. Coffin, who was not trusted by Copperhead leaders and was
ordered by Dr. Wm. Bowlee to be murdered by Stidger. This did not occur, as Stidger had him
removed in time to save his life. (There were four other detectives working with this group, but
I found no record of their activities.) This gives us an idea of the lengths to which the leaders
would go to gain their ends. The same organization prevailed also in Ohio, Illinois, Missouri
and Kentucky.

In the spring of 1864, Jefferson Davis and his Cabinet, willing to believe almost anything
that would aid the Confederacy, had come to the conclusion from the report of the Copperhead
organization, that it could be of great aid if the Northwest was invaded.

On March 16th of that year (1864), Capt. Thomas Henry Hines and several other officers
chosen by Hines'were detached from Morgan's command and instructed by Jefferson Davis and
Secretary of War Seddon, to proceed to Canada in any manner possible to collect and organize
all Confederate soldiers in that country, most of whom were escaped prisoners. With these men
as agents, he and the officers named Lieutenants Bennett, Martin, Headley, Castleman, Young,
Ashbrook and Thompson, who was already in Canada as Commissioner for the Confederate
government. They were to try to organize the Copperheads into a formal group to aid in what is
now known as the Northwest Conspiracy. At the same time, to show that the feeling was
general, a group of 1,500 men in Holmes County, Ohio, defied the Union troops in Columbus to
come and get them. Troops were dispatched from Columbus and in one charge the so-called
Copperhead "Army" was dispersed. But they gained the name in history of "The Holmes County
Rebellion".

Hines made his first report to Sec'y. of War, Seddon, in June 1864, from Toronto. Hines
reported that he had met Thompson and had been requested by him to "submit to you (Seddon)
the proposed plan for a revolutionary movement in the West".

The two regiments now in the process of formation in Chicago, will be placed under
my command, to move upon Camp Douglas and free the prisoners. Simultaneously
with this movement, the Democrats in every county of Illinois, and portions of Indiana
and Ohio will rally to arms. A force of 3,000 Democrats under a competent leader
will march upon Rock Island for the release of the 7,000 prisoners at that place. The
remainder will concentrate upon Chicago and Springfield. State governments of
Indiana, Ohio and Illinois wilt be seized and their executives disposed of. By this
means we hope to have, within 10 days after the movement has begun, a force of
50,000 men. We hope to make a certainty of releasing the prisoners.

Perhaps this dispatch best shows the narrow-mindedness, the provincialism, found in many of
the leaders of the Confederacy. They could never understand that Lincoln's high ideals of "Union
Forever" really inspired a large section of the North. It was this blind prejudice which made
them believe that they could overthrow the Republic. Relying on the ignorance and credulity of
men, in the end they deceived only themselves.

At about the same time that Hines was planning to move on Chicago, Capt. Castleman on
Rock Island, a group under Capt. Robt. M. Martin attempted to burn New York City. Capt.
Kennedy was captured and executed for his part in the New York City conflicts and other spy
work. Another group under John Yates Beall tried to capture the U.S.S. Michigan, the only
gun-boat on the Lakes, raid the Lake Cities and storm the Johnson Island prison. Beall was
captured and executed for his part. Lt. Bennett H. Young robbed three St. Alban's balks, Cal.
Martin and Dr. John W. Headley planned and attempted to kidnap Vice-President Andrew
Johnson in Louisville.

On the 29th day of Aug. 1864 the Democratic Convention was held in Chicago, which was
also to be the time for the uprising of the Copperhead group, but owing to the great number of
Union soldiers in the City, the plan had to be given up to be tried at another time. A very bitter
disappointment to the Confederate leaders.

In the early fall of 1864, the plan of Capt. Thomas H. Hines to bring revolution to the
Northwest received its most severe blow. Carefully conceal- ing the identity of his counter-spy,
Felix Stidger, Col. Carrington, Union Commander at Indianapolis, in one swoop arrested H. H.
Dodd, Dr. Wm. A. Bowles, L. Milligan and other Copperhead leaders in the State. Col.
Carrington made sure there were no leaks in his command. He gathered together a picked band
of provost marshals and detectives and at a melodramatic midnight meeting handed out the arrest
warrants in sealed envelopes. In isolated farmhouses, secret hideouts and City flats, men were
taken from their beds. They were forced to listen in sleepy bewilderment as the warrants
charging treason were read to them, then they were hustled off to the military prison. More than
30,000 rifles, revolvers and cane of powder were found under floors, in hay- stacks, and in
graveyards. The Indianapolis trials opened in early October. Bowles, Dodd, Milligan and the
others entered the court room, which was packed with their friends, all hostile to the
Commission. Outside soldiers stood guard, their bayonets keeping at bay the hundreds who
milled about, "shouting that Bowles and Dodd and the rest must be freed or they would have
their vengeance". The military tribunal was sworn in and took their seats. The first witness
shook the court room. He was Felix Stidger, former Grand Secretary of the Sons of Liberty, and
second in command only to Bowles. Stidger testified for two hours. A recess was taken until the
next day. The following morning the Judge Advocate rose to announce to the court that Dodd had
escaped at 4 o'clock by sliding down to the ground from the second floor by means of a rope
"furnished by his immediate friends". Bowles and Milligan were sentenced to be executed by
hanging. Gallows were erected on the parade ground of Camp Chase. The State bubbled with
excitement. Riders of the "Sons of Liberty" galloped along roads and lanes, calling the faithful
to arms. Men drilled openly in the yards of schoolhouses, behind churches or on village greens.
As Col. Carrington reported, "The State is ripe for revolution". Col. Carrington and even Gov.
Morton and Democrats of both factions sent telegrams to Seward and Stanton, predicting that
widespread rioting and blood- shed would follow the hangings. But at the 11th hour, Lincoln
acted. The death sentences were commuted to life imprisonment and order slowly returned to
the State.

The humiliating failure of the attempted insurrection during the Democratic national
convention in Aug. 1864, convinced the Confederate commissioners in Canada that the Sons of
Liberty could not be depended upon to lead a revolutionary movement in the Northwest ...
Captains Hines, Cantrill, Anderson and a few of the Confederate officers who still lingered in
the vicinity of Chicago, did not consider the situation so hopeless. They continued to believe
that members of the secret organization could be used to advantage in fomenting a revolution in
the rear of the Union armies. They conferred with some of the more radical peace men and found
that they were still disposed to assist in an attack on Camp Douglas for the purpose of releasing
prisoners.

Tuesday, Nov. 8, 1864, the night of the Presidential election, was selected as the time for
this second attempt. Public interest at that time, they thought, would be centered on the result of
the election and the presence of a large body of men from southern Illinois, members of the Sons
of liberty and southern sympathizers, would not create any suspicion in a city the size of
Chicago. Furthermore, the garrison at Camp Douglas had been reduced to 800 men, chiefly of
the veteran reserve corps, with Col. E. J. Sweet, commanding. At this time the prisoners
numbered between 8,000 and 9,000 Confederates, many of whom were reckless bushwhackers
from Morgan's band of raiders. Captain Hines was confident, that if these men could be set at
liberty, they would create consternation in the northwest.

The small Chicago contingent, in the meantime, was employed in the purchase of arms, and
the manufacture of ammunition. The home of Charles Walsh, one of the most active of the Sons
of Liberty, who lived within a block of Camp Douglas was made the store house and the factory
for these amateur revolutionists. The campaign was to be under the direction of Captains Hines
and Fielding, Colonels George St. Leger Grenfel, and Vincent Marmaduke. The plans in general
were the same as those adopted for the uprising on Aug. 29, with the exception that the field of
operation was to include only Indiana and Illinois. At a given signal on the night of election
Camp Douglas was to be attacked from three sides and the Confederate prisoners were to rise in
revolt and overpower the guards; arms were to be seized in different parts of the city; telegraph
wires were to be cut, banks robbed, and a band sent west to free the prisoners at Rock Island
and seize the arsenal. These things accomplished, the forces were to move through Indiana and
Illinois, accumulat- ing strength as the proceeded south, to a chosen rendezvous on the Ohio
where a junction was to be made with the Confederate forces under Forrest, then in Kentucky.

There was some reason for their confidence in a successful attack on Camp Douglas, for,
according to Cal. Sweet's testimony, there were not more than 250 men on duty at any one time.
The Camp, including an area of 60 acres, was surrounded by a board fence 12 ft. high and could
be easily assailed from either side. A band of 500 men on the outside, working in conjunction
with 8,000 seasoned Confederate soldiers on the inside, could readily overpower so small a
garrison. Moreover, the time chosen was a most seasonable one. In the midst of the rejoicing
over the result of the election the firing of signal rockets would not be noticed and the presence
of the citizens down town would leave the region about the Camp practically free of inhabitants.

But the Confederate leaders were again at fault in their estimation of the character of the
men with whom they had to deal. Informers were within their own camp. A majority of the
members of the Sons of Liberty were men of smell calibre and little honor and they admitted
into their confidence - - men who had no scruples against the role of informer. These men
offered to report the transactions of the order for a stipulated sum per report. Col. Sweet
employed not only these men, but two Confederates who were willing to betray their comrades.
(John T. Shanks and Maurice Langhoon.) To verify the reports of these informers he enlisted the
services of Col. Thomas H. Keefe, of the war department secret service, and Capt. E R.P.
Shurly of the veteran reserve corps, acting adjutant general at Camp Douglas. Since the fiasco of
Aug. 29th, Col. Sweet had not ceased his vigilance. He learned through these agents that the plan
for the release of prisoners had not been abandoned . . . At his request Gen. Hooker, commander
of the department, came to Chicago to confer with him. A number of conferences were held with
the military, State and City authorities, all of whom were convinced that a plot for the release of
the prisoners was developing.

The election, it will be remembered, was to take place on Tuesday, Nov. 8th. On the 5th,
Col. Sweet was informed of the arrival of a large number of suspicious characters from Fayette
and Christian counties. On Sunday, the 6th, it became evident that additional bands had arrived
in the city, many of whom were escaped Confederate prisoners of war and soldiers of the rebel
army. Colonel Sweet delayed making any arrests, hoping that by Monday, the 7th, all the leaders
and many more of the men and arms of the expedition might be captured. But he decided, as he
says in his report, that "the great interests involved would scarcely justify taking the inevitable
risks of postponement". He, therefore, sent a dispatch to Brigadier General John Cook,
commanding the district of Illinois, urging him to send reinforcements at once.

Col. Sweet made arrangements at once for a raid on the conspirators. Col. Lewis C.
Skinner, commander of the Eighth Veteran Reserve Corps, was sent with a squad of 50 men to
search and guard the house of Charles Walsh, another squad, under command of Capt.
Pettiplace, was sent to surround the Richmond House, While a third detachment of 100 men,
under Capt. Strong, marched into the heart of the City to preserve order and arrest suspects.
After some difficulty Col. Skinner gained admittance to Walsh's house where he arrested Walsh
and three of the Confederate Officers - Captains Cantrill, Travers, and Daniel. At the Richmond
House, Col. St. Leger Grenfel and J. T. Shanks were arrested - the latter for mere form's sake,
for he was employed by Col. Sweet to spy on Grenfel. At the home of Dr. E. W. Edwards, 70
Adams St., Col. Marmaduke and Capt. Hines were known to be stopping. The former was
arrested, but the latter (Hines) eluded Detective Keefe. Judge Buckner C. Morris, treasurer of
the Sons of Liberty, was next arrested at his home. All of these arrests were completed before
Monday morning, Nov. 7th.

These prisoners were examined at Camp Douglas by Col. Sweet and his assistants The
testimnyy convinced him that the Sons of Liberty furnished the inspiration for this attempted
insurrection and that some of the leaders were in consultation with the rebel officers. These
arrests completely crushed

The Knights of the Golden Circle Research and Historical Archives
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Knights_of_the_Golden_Circle
http://knights-of-the-golden-circle.blogspot.com
http://knightsofthegoldencircle.webs.com

THE KNIGHTS OF THE GOLDEN CIRCLE.
Published: August 30, 1861

http://www.nytimes.com/1861/08/30/news/the-knights-of-the-golden-circle.html

Under this head an article appears in the London Spectator, of Aug. 17, which is of especial interest, as the journal in which it appears is well known to be American property and under American inspiration. It has a prominent place among the articles on the leading topics of the day, which forms a conspicuous and valuable feature of the Spectator, and will be read with interest by men of all hues in politics on this side of the Atlantic;

Just before the descent of LOPEZ on Cuba, the American papers were full of allusions to an association called the Order of the Lone Star, said to be organized for the purpose of conquering Cuba and Nicaragua. M. SOULE was said to be its President, and the appointment of that individual as Minister to Madrid was regarded by the Court of Spain, as a wilful discourtesy. LOPEZ himself belonged to the society, and it was from the ranks of the Order that WALKER obtained his most ardent recruits. After the failure of WALKER's first expedition, the rumors of the society died away, and though its members, under the quaint title of "Precipitators," were supposed to be active in the work of disunion, the society itself, as such, ceased to play any prominent part. The more violent members, however, saw in it a power which might be effectively used, and on the first symptom of the predominance of the Free-Soilers, they organized a new association, under the name of the Knights of the Golden Circle, with new and better defined objects, and an obligation of secrecy. The secret of the Order, however, has been betrayed during the intestine strife raised by disunion in Kentucky, and the revelation exposes a plot which, for audacity, ability and wickedness, has rarely been surpassed in the long history of conspiracy.

The object of the Order may be briefly stated. It is nothing less than to raise an army of 16,000 men for the conquest of Mexico, and the establishment in that vast Territory of a strongly organized monarchy, resting on a basis of slave institutions. The precise mode of accomplishing this object has already been settled. As soon as the internal warfare is over, all members of the Order, under their secret leaders, are to repair to Guanajuato, with the Governor of which province of Mexico, MICHAEL DOBLADO, the Order has concluded a formal treaty. By the provisions of this precious document the Governor is to add 16,000 men of his own, and the entire army is to march forward under his command to the permanent subjugation of the country. Means are found from the revenues of the province, and its State property is "mortgagad" for the payment of the soldiery, at one-eighth above the American rates.

To secure the necessary cohesion, the Order has been organized after this fashion. Every applicant for admission is first sworn to secrecy under the penalty of death, and then the design of the Order is revealed. If he assents to its propriety, and is, moreover, an American born, and a slaveowner, or can produce proof that he is imbued with Southern sentiments, and is a Protestant, he is admitted as a soldier of the Order, and informed of its signs, pass-words, and organization. On the recommendation of the chiefs of the Order he is admitted to the second degree, informed that the stores and ammunition for the Army are collected at Monterey, and acquainted with the names of the officers to whom he is to look for pay. He is also supposed to be on active service, and the President has, we perceive, summoned all Kentuckian members to attend a rendezvous, where they will be drilled and organized by regular instructors, and whence they are, for the present, to control the Kentucky elections in favor of Southern men. If influential enough, he is next admitted to the third degree, the council of the Order, which under the Presidency of Mr. GEORGE BICKLEY, the future monarch, regulates the affairs of the Order, without communication, except through GEORGE BICKLEY, to the other degrees. He swears in this degree to obtain all the neophytes he can, to support his colleagues the Knights of the Columbian Star in all efforts for office, to conquer Mexico and "Southernize" its institutions; to drive all free negroes into Mexico, there to be enslaved, and to reduce the peon population of Mexico to slavery, dividing them as chattels among the members of the Order, and to recognize for the present monarchical institutions, as tending to strong government. Moreover, after the conquest of Mexico, he is to contend for the exclusion of every Roman Catholic from office and from the priesthood, and to support a system of passports enforced by the penalty of death. He again swears to a scheme of government which, from its utter want of resemblance to any American idea, we give entire:

13. The successor to GEORGE BICKLEY must be over thirty years of age, of Southern birth, liberally educated, Knight of the Columbian Star, sound of body and mind, and married, and Protestant. He shall swear to carry out this policy, and to extend Slavery over the whole of Central America if in his power. He shall try to acquire Cuba and control the Gulf of Mexico. No one else will I sustain. But for such a one, who must be proposed by the Cabinet Ministers and elected by all Knights of the Star, or a majority of them, I will sustain here, there, or elsewhere. When the Knights cross the Rio Grande, I will do all I can to send in recruits for the Army, and if I should ever cease to be an active worker for the Star, I will keep secret what I know of the real character of the organization, and I promise never to confer this degree in any other way than in the way I have here received it, and I will forward to GEORGE BICKLEY, or to the Governor-General of this State, the name and fees of every candidate whom I shall initiate as Governor. In witness, I do voluntarily, here and in these presence, sign my name and address."

He is then informed that Mexico can provide any amount of means, that funds to the extent of a million of dollars are lying at Matamoras, and two millions more at Monterey; that the Governor of Guanajuato is rapidly organizing his province for the reception of the Order, and that the march of the invading Army will commence on the 6th of October, 1861.

It reads, all this, rather like a dream of some mad slaveholder than a grave and definite project, which, nevertheless, we believe it to be. The Order is already powerful in the South, the alliance with the Governor is sufficiently probable, and the whole plan is strictly in accordance with the views known to be entertained by the most prominent slaveholders. Nor is the execution of the plan so difficult as to create any prima facie suspicion of falsehood. The South is full of men without slaves, with no place in society, and hungry for profitable adventure. They have been accustomed for years to regard the immense republic to their south, with its vast territory, its real and imaginary wealth, its disorganized government, and powerless white population, as a certain and easy prey. The successful annexation of Texas is a proof of what may be accomplished by a few unscrupulous and resolute men, and the laws of the Order tend directly to secure effective cohesion among its members. Quarreling and seduction are absolutely forbidden, every member is responsible for the orphans of those who fall, and societies released from the law are apt to protect themselves by somewhat effective guarantees for their own extra-legal code. The Order has men at command, so numerous that they are said to be objects of terror in Kentucky, Missouri and Arkansas, and the bribe offered is of stupendous magnitude. It is nothing less than to bestow on 16,000 men a body of slaves equal to the whole slave population of the South, and slaves, too, more easily controlled than the negro race. To men thirsting for ownership, and convinced that Slavery is lawful, the temptation must be almost irresistible, more especially as every American overratesthe case with which Mexico might be subdued. The pure Spaniards and the landed proprietors, utterly weary of anarchy, would probably bail a strong Government of any sort, while the native and quadroon population have never been able to resist the hated and dreaded "North." Of the awful increase of human misery which would follow the conquest it is unnecessary to speak. Slavery, as it exists, is bad enough, but the deliberate addition of 3,750,000 people and their children forever to the ranks of a slave population, is a crime from which the imagination itself recoils. It seems from its very magnitude impossible. CORTEZ, however, conquered these people with far inferior means, and there is no evidence that the Mexican peon of to-day is better able to resist a rifleman than his ancestor was to defeat CORTEZ's heavy armed cavalry. The only element of effective resistance would be the religious fanaticism the laws of the Order are so well adapted to arouse. These laws, however were obviously intended to serve only a tem porary purpose, the exclusion of Catholics being rendered essential by their friendly feeling for Mexico. A priest informed of the design in the confessional would be certain to put the Mexicans on their guard, perhaps cause the arrest of the Governor who is so coolly selling his country. Mexico once conquered, the necessity for the restriction would disappear, and though one of the laws of the Order, an obligation to dissolve all monasteries and open all convents, seems dectated by a real religious dislike, it is difficult to believe that it would endure in spite of the political advantage of tolerance. The whole scheme may be unreal, and the Knights of the Golden Circle as little disposed to fulfill their promises as Masons are to preserve the obligation of Christian brotherhood. But it must not be forgotten that this whatever the truth as to this society, is one of the designs of the South, and that the plan, which thus boldy stated seems incredibly atrocious is part of the permanent policy of the Government which has just won its first battle in front of Manassas Gap. The design, we fear, if the North succumbs, is at once as possible of execution as it is remorselessly wicked in concention

The Knights of the Golden Circle Research and Historical Archives
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Knights_of_the_Golden_Circle
http://knights-of-the-golden-circle.blogspot.com
http://knightsofthegoldencircle.webs.com

David Keehn, author of Knights of the Golden Circle: Secret Empire, Southern Secession, Civil War, is scheduled to speak at the following two venues this month.

RICHMOND, VA:

June 13, 2013 (Thursday) 12 noon.
Virginia Historical Society, Banner Lecture Series.
428 N. Boulevard, Richmond, VA 23220.
Phone: (804) 358-4901
Slideshow Presentation on Knights followed by Book Signing.
$6 for non-members.

GETTYSBURG, PA:

June 22, 2013 (Saturday) 2 p.m.-3:15p.m.
Gettysburg Civil War Institute [Enrollees only]
Concurrent session presentation titled,
“In Search of Northern Collaborators: Morgan’s 1863 Raid,”
followed by 5 p.m. Book-signing and Banquet.

http://www.davidkeehn.com/events/