True Crime/Paranormal/Conspiracy Stories Part VI

Knights of the Golden Circle (KGC)

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

Originally, the KGC advocated that the new territories should be annexed by the United States, to vastly increase the number of slave states and thus the power of the slave-holding Southern upper classes. In response to the increased anti-slavery agitation that followed the Dred Scott decision (1857), the Knights changed their position: the Southern United States should secede, forming their own confederation, and then invade and annex the area of the Golden Circle to vastly expand the power of the South. The new country's northern border would roughly coincide with the Mason–Dixon line, and within it were included such cities as Washington, D.C., St. Louis, Mexico City, and Panama City.

The KGC's proposal grew out of previously unsuccessful proposals to annex Cuba (Ostend Manifesto), parts of Central America (Filibuster War), and all of Mexico (All of Mexico Movement). In Cuba, the issue was complicated by the desire of many in the colony for independence from Spain. Mexico and Central America had no interest in being part of the United States.

As abolitionism in the United States grew in opposition to slavery, the KGC members proposed a separate confederation of slave states, with U.S. states south of the Mason-Dixon Line seceding and aligning with other slave states to be formed from the "golden circle". In either case, the goal was to increase the power of the Southern slave-holding upper class to such a degree that it could never be dislodged.

During the American Civil War, some Southern sympathizers in the Union or Northern states, such as Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa, were accused of belonging to the Knights of the Golden Circle, and in some cases, such as that of Lambdin P. Milligan, they were imprisoned for their activities.

An action attributed to The KGC was the burning of The Walnut Ridge Friends Meeting House in Rush County, Indiana in 1864.

Although nominally a secret society, the existence of the Knights of the Golden Circle was not considered a secret.

Background

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

Early history

George W. L. Bickley, a doctor, editor, and adventurer who was born in Indiana and lived in Cincinnati, founded the association, organizing the first castle, or local branch, in Cincinnati in 1854, although records of the KGC convention held in 1860 state that the organization "originated at Lexington, Kentucky, on the fourth day of July 1854, by five gentlemen who came together on a call made by Gen. George Bickley". Hounded by creditors, Bickley left Cincinnati in the late 1850s and traveled through the East and South, promoting an armed expedition to Mexico. The group's original goal was to provide a force to colonize the northern part of Mexico and the West Indies and add them to the U.S. as states, which would extend the power of the slave states, which was felt to be jeopardized by the power and population of the industrial North. The membership, scattered from New York to California and into Latin America, was never large. Bickley received little encouragement on this journey, except in Texas, since attention in the South was focused on the 1860 presidential election and the possible election of a Southerner, John C. Breckinridge to the Presidency.