The Knights of the Golden Circle: December 2010

Friday, December 31, 2010

Brad Meltzer’s ‘Decoded’ Hunts For Confederate Gold Treasure

By Andrew Zarowny
http://law.rightpundits.com/?p=2677

Brad Meltzer’s ‘Decoded’ team were at it again last night on the History Channel, this time hunting for missing Confederate gold treasure. In the waning days of the Confederacy, it’s president, Jefferson Davis, ordered that the Confederate Treasury move all of it’s gold and silver out of Richmond, Virginia. Estimated to be valued at some $500,000 at the time and considerably more today. The banks in Richmond also shipped their gold and silver, too, estimated to be around $9 Million dollars worth back then.

The treasure was to be hidden and later used to raise a fresh army and continue the fight against the Union. Needless to say, things didn’t work out as planned. The ‘Decoded’ team split up to check out two locations where the Confederate treasure had been seen during it’s flight. In Danville, Virginia, the team meets up with Bob Brewer. He claims to be a descendent of a member of the Knights of the Golden Circle, the KGC, which allegedly was charged by Jefferson Davis to hide the Confederate gold and silver.

Brewer tells the ‘Decoded’ team that he was taught about the KGC and is familiar with the code they used to mark their caches. He has been successful in locating several stashes of gold and silver in his native Arkansas, thanks to his ability to interpret KGC codes and a plastic template allegedly found in the trunk of a deceased ‘modern’ member of the KGC, which Brewer believes still exists to this day.

The Knights of the Golden Circle were a fun bunch. Founded in the 1850s, they schemed to take over the entire Caribbean and almost got their hands on the Yucatan Peninsula. During the War Between the States, the KGC plotted to kidnap Abraham Lincoln and send his severed head back to Washington, DC. While their base of support was very strong in the ‘Deep South’, they were known to have a strong following in some Northern states, like Pennsylvania.

The KGC code uses a combination of numbers, letters and symbols, like animals, and left markings on rocks and trees to denote the distance and direction to the next clue and eventually to their secret caches of loot. Brewer locates such symbols and characters on a tree at the Green Hill Cemetery in Danville, VA. After a couple of days of poking around, including the use of ground penetrating radar, they come up empty handed. However, Brewer is convinced that there is a cache somewhere in the area due to the KGC signs.

The other location, Washington, Georgia, has a more valid connection to the missing Confederate gold and silver treasure. There, Union troops actually did intercept and find about $100,000 worth of treasure, mostly silver coins. However, on the night of May 24th, 1865, a detail of five Union soldiers transporting the loot in two wagons were robbed near the Chennault Plantation in Lincoln (yes, Lincoln) County. The ambush was carried out by a group of Confederate veterans, whom oddly enough had earlier switched sides and joined the Union army.

The ambush and robbery was a messy affair, as the hijackers left thousands of silver coins on the ground in their haste. But since that night, the whereabouts of the stolen treasure is unknown. Naturally, the speculation is that the raiders were members of the KGC. The treasure of this lot was intended to be shipped overseas to France to fulfill a promise by Jefferson Davis to repay loans made to the Confederacy by France. Did it make it’s way to the French, courtesy of the KGC? Or was it already spent by the robbers? Nobody knows, at least nobody who is talking.

This episode of Brad Meltzer’s ‘Decoded’ on the History Channel was interesting in that we have here a genuine historical mystery. The idea of missing Confederate gold and silver treasure is perfect for those who fantasize about finding buried treasure. As for whether or not the Knights of the Golden Circle are still around these days, who can say? Unlike other secret societies, these guys would appear to be taking the secret part seriously. So break out the metal detectors and the bourbon, it’s time to do some treasure hunting and look for some lost Confederate gold!

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

Top 10 Secret Societies (again)

6 of 10

Same article, new website. This article, like a couple of others on the K.G.C.
seems to have taken on a life of its own and is often reposted by various
bloggers. We archive it again due to its new url.

BACHUN TOP !
http://bachunbachunsmanka.blogspot.com/2010/12/10.html

6. THE KNIGHTS OF THE GOLDEN CIRCLE

Famous Members

PHOTO:
John Wilkes Booth, Jesse James (above), Franklin Pierce (all rumored)

The Knights of the Golden Circle was a secret society that flourished in the
U.S. during the American Civil War. In the beginning, the group sought to
encourage the annexation of Mexico and the West Indies, which they believed
would help the waning slave trade to once again flourish. But once the Civil War
started, the group switched its focus from colonialism to fervent support of the
newly established Confederate government. The Knights soon had thousands of
followers, many of whom formed guerilla armies and began raiding Union
strongholds in the West. In the Northern states, the mysterious order had an
even bigger impact. Many newspapers and public figures engaged in witch-hunts
where they accused supposed Southern sympathizers, including President Franklin
Pierce, of being members of the Knights of the Golden Circle.

Secret Practices

Unlike most secret societies, the Golden Circle didn't just concern itself with
clandestine meetings and mysterious plans. Instead, the group often formed
renegade armies and bands of bushwhackers in order to forward their agenda by
force. In 1860, a group of the Knights made a failed attempt to invade Mexico.
During the war, they robbed stagecoaches and attempted a blockade of the harbor
in San Francisco, and a group of them even managed to briefly take control of
southern New Mexico.

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

$2,000,000 in James Boys Loot? (Part 1)

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2010
http://treasuretrovegold.blogspot.com/2010/12/2000000-in-james-boys-loot-part-1.html

$2,000,000 in James Boys Loot?

There's a lost treasure tale concerning Jesse and Frank James that's been circulating now for at least as long as 80 plus years, if not longer. The real eye opener on this one is not so much that the James Boys were supposedly involved but that the trove that they buried and subsequently never recovered contains at least $2,000,000 in stolen "goodies."

Yep, you heard right...two million dollars. The only other James Boys cache I know of that approximates this high-dollar amount is one that is ostensibly buried here in New Mexico where I live. But that's another story entirely. By the way, don't bother looking for the latter trove...I already recovered it (yep, and I was once the King of Spain too!).

As the famed treasure yarn author J. Frank Dobie once wrote, "The James gang robbed not to live; they lived to rob, and they robbed on a magnificent scale." Dobie is correct in this regard, but whether the "magnificent scale" he mentions includes the heist of a cool $2,000,000 by the James Boys is open to debate. You see, there is nothing to verify this legend in the way of hard facts.

The Boys Just Got Lucky

Exactly how, where, and when Frank and Jesse pulled off a $2,000,000 robbery is lost in the fog of time and in the telling of this tale over the years. There are those who believe this vast amount of money was accumulated over time in numerous small bank and train robberies.

Then there are others who say that the James Boys (and their gang) intercepted a Mexican transport train on its way to Saint Louis, Missouri. In the latter case the James gang is said to have had no prior intelligence or knowledge that the Mexicans were carrying this much in gold, silver, and other valuables...the boys just got lucky.

Are There Other Parts to this Treasure Puzzle?

After they pulled off the heist, the James Boys (all by their lonesomes) are said to have buried their ill-gotten gains somewhere in or near southwestern Oklahoma's Wichita Mountains. More specifically, this trove is said to be stashed along the road or highway leading from Fort Sill northeast to the Keeche Hills.

In the old days, this sort of waybill to a buried cache might have made sense. But in today's world with private land ownership and extensive land development, and the growth of the area mentioned in general, these directions to the possible location of this treasure trove leave much to be desired.

The most pertinent question that needs to asked here is, "How could Frank and Jesse bury $2,000,000 in stolen loot and never recover it?" Are there other parts to this treasure puzzle? Or, can we throw in the proverbial kitchen sink and propose the theory that this stash was meant as a Knights of the Golden Circle (KGC) repository?

There's more to come so stay tuned. Until then, good hunting to you.
(c) J.R. 2010
Questions? E-mail me at jr872vt90@yahoo.com

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

Thursday, December 30, 2010

William "Wild Bill" Lincoln

http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com/nwsltr39.html

EXCERPT: "The article concerns the legendary Wild West lawman Pat Garrett, who
gunned down the legendary Wild West outlaw Billy the Kid -- except that it seems
as though that story may not actually be true. According to the Times article,
"modern science is about to touch Garrett's fame in a way that some say could
expose him as a liar who covered up a murder to save his reputation."

The scenario being investigated is that Garrett killed the wrong man and then
covered that fact up to save his own skin. A more likely scenario though is that
Garrett actively conspired with the Kid to fake his death, after assisting him
in making an escape. The Times piece acknowledges that one enduring story "holds
that Garrett and the Kid may have been in cahoots for some reason and that
Garrett had stashed a gun in the outhouse at the jail that the Kid used to kill
the deputies and escape." Just weeks after that escape was when Garrett
supposedly killed the Kid.

But according to sources cited in the Times article, and elsewhere, the Kid may
have lived to the ripe old age of 90, after taking the name "Brushy" Bill
Roberts. Roberts died in 1950, shortly after his photo appeared in the January
21, 1950 edition of the San Antonio Express: (PHOTO) Roberts is the gentleman
standing in the center of the photo. To his right, seated, is Colonel James R.
Davis, who claimed to be a former U.S. Marshal for the Cherokee Indian Nation.
Davis was 109 when this photo was taken. To Roberts' left, lying in bed, is
102-year-old J. Frank Dalton. Dalton claimed to have been an even more notorious
Wild West outlaw than Billy the Kid: Jesse James.

And that brings us to our topic for this outing: the strange and twisted tale of
the man known as Jesse James. I actually started to write on this topic last
year, So let me now dust off that discarded missive and present it here for your
reading pleasure.

But wait a minute, you're thinking, what does Jesse James have to do with
gaining an understanding of twenty-first century U.S. politics? What does
America's most famous outlaw have to do with contemporary 'conspiracy theory'?
Where is the relevance? What, as my mother used to say, does Jesse James have to
do with the price of tea in China?

I'm not really sure why mom used to say that, just as I am not sure why any
statement by me or my siblings that began with the words "I want ... " would get
the response: "That's too bad; people in Hell want ice water." Apparently during
the 1960s and 1970s there was some sort of logistical problem with getting
adequate supplies of ice water to Hell, but I never really understood why that
meant that I couldn't have a BB gun.

But none of that really has anything to do with this story.

The question here is: what is to be gained from examining the life of Jesse
James? If this was to be a standard recitation of the life of the Wild West's
most notorious figure, then the answer would be: not much. But this isn't the
account of Jesse's life that has passed into popular mythology; this is the
account of Jesse's life that was told by his grandson.

If this account is accurate, and much of it does have a ring of truth to it,
then it illustrates once again the extent to which the official history of this
country is nothing but a tangled web of lies. But how much of this story is
true? That, alas, is difficult to determine. When the lies run so deep, when
they have been repeated so frequently as to become a faux reality - a collective
hallucination - then it is a daunting task finding anything close to the truth.
But whether true or not, it is a story that is too good to not pass along.

This story was published nearly three decades ago, by Jesse James III and a
writer by the name of Del Schrader, under the title Jesse James Was One of His
Names (the title refers to the claim that James operated under some six dozen
assumed identities). The book is all but impossible to find today.

Before we get to the alternative history, let's first review the facts of
Jesse's life that are generally agreed upon. Jesse James was the second son born
to a Baptist minister named Robert James and his wife, born Zerelda Cole Mimms.
The couple's first-born son was Alexander Franklin James, better known as Frank.
Frank entered this world on January 10, 1843, and Jesse followed on September 5,
1847.

Robert James died when the boys and a younger sister were still very young. In
1855, Zerelda married again, to a wealthy doctor, landowner, and slave owner
named Rueben Samuels. Six years later, the South seceded from the Union, forming
the Confederate States of America, and the bloody American Civil War began.

At the onset of war, Frank James joined an elite Confederate military unit known
as Quantrill's Raiders, and brother Jesse, who wasn't yet 18 when the Civil War
ended, soon followed suit. The 200-man force, led by homicidal schoolteacher
William Quantrill, included an elite sub-group led by the possibly even more
homicidal William "Bloody Bill" Anderson.

Anderson once reportedly lined up a group of captured Union soldiers and
personally executed all twenty-six of them. Included in his elite unit were such
luminaries as Thomas Coleman "Cole" Younger and, of course, the James brothers.
These men, and the rest of the Raiders, made a name for themselves during the
war by repeatedly perpetrating massacres of both soldiers and civilians. The
Raiders' most notorious act was the August 21, 1863 burning and pillaging of
Lawrence, Kansas that left more than 150 unarmed civilians dead.

After the war, the James brothers and various others embarked upon a life of
crime in the Wild West, robbing banks and trains and stagecoaches and doing all
the other sorts of things that the Wild West outlaws were supposed to have done,
just like they do in the books that we have all read and in the movies and
television shows that we have all seen.

In April 1874, Jesse's uncle, Methodist minister William James, officiated at
the wedding of Jesse to his cousin, Zerelda Amanda Mimms -- not to be confused,
of course, with his mother, Zerelda Cole Mimms. Frank took as his bride a young
schoolteacher named Anna Ralston.

Meanwhile, local authorities and the notorious Pinkerton organization -
forerunner of the modern FBI - relentlessly pursued the James Gang in a
cat-and-mouse game that now captures the imaginations of millions of Americans
who are prone to view the James brothers as romantic anti-heroes.

In an example of law enforcement excess from the days of yore, the Pinkertons
once reportedly tossed a bomb into the Samuels' family home. Frank and Jesse
weren't there, but the blast reportedly killed their disabled half-brother and
blew off one of their mother's arms.

Missouri Governor Thomas Crittenden ultimately put a $10,000 price tag on the
James brothers' heads -- an unprecedented reward in those days. Jesse was
allegedly shot in the back by the Ford brothers, Charles and Robert, on April 3,
1882. He was buried on the Samuels' farm. Frank reportedly attended the
services, alongside a veritable army of law enforcement officers, even though he
was wanted "dead or alive" at the time.

Frank later surrendered to authorities and was brought to trial for his crimes;
he was twice acquitted of all charges brought against him. Frank James remained
a free man until his death in 1915. Charlie Ford, meanwhile, caught a bullet to
the head, while brother Bob met up with a fatal shotgun blast.

All of that, alas, can be found in official retellings of the legend of the
larger-than-life Wild West outlaw known as Jesse James. But that isn't quite the
whole story, at least not according to Jesse James III and a number of witnesses
cited in the James/Schrader book.

Jesse, you see, was a member of an occult-based 'secret society,' The Knights of
the Golden Circle, that formed the core of the massive intelligence apparatus
assembled by the Confederacy. Other key members of the order were President of
the Confederacy Jefferson Davis, Albert Pike (a notorious occultist who has been
credited with playing a key role in the creation of the Ku Klux Klan), and
Captain William Clarke Quantrill, whose Raiders were essentially an early
version of an elite, 'Special Forces' unit.

The South did in fact have an extensive intelligence infrastructure. And Albert
Pike was a key figure in that intelligence network. The only real news here is
the claim that Jesse James was a key figure within that intelligence community
as well. And, of course, the business about The Knights of the Golden Circle.

Schrader claims, quite credibly, that the Confederate intelligence network did
not simply disappear with the official end of the war; it remained largely
intact and continued to fight the war from 'underground' for another two
decades. And it continued to be under the control of the Knights of the Golden
Circle. Jesse James remained a key figure.

The James Gang's train and bank robberies, it is claimed, were fundraising
operations to finance the activities of the Knights of the Golden Circle, as
well as to wreak general havoc with the plans of the Northern
reconstructionists. James is also said to have been involved in supplying
weapons and training to the Plains Indians, as a means of waging proxy war
against the Union Army.

In 1861, at the onset of the Civil War, populist Benito Juarez had been legally
elected president of Mexico. While his imperialist northern neighbor was
preoccupied with waging a brutal war of self-destruction, Juarez set about
instituting a number of reforms that proved to be popular with the Mexican
people, but not so popular with the Western powers. In 1864, French forces
dispatched by Napoleon III deposed Juarez and installed Maximilian as Emperor of
Mexico. Maximilian, the brother of Austria's Emperor, Francis Joseph, had
previously been the Archduke of Austria.

After the Civil War ended, Maximilian's unstable puppet regime continued to be
threatened by forces loyal to Juarez. According to the Schrader book, a force
composed of 2,000 Missouri cavalrymen and a regiment of Confederate-led Red Bone
Indians was dispatched to Mexico in support of Maximilian. When this force ran
into stiff resistance, an elite force was sent to the rescue; that force was led
by Captain William Quantrill and Colonel Jesse James.

History books say that Maximilian was executed by firing squad on June 19, 1867,
after being captured by Juarez loyalists. Schrader and James claim that he was
rescued by the James/Quantrill team and transported back to the States, where he
lived out his life under the name John Maxi. The James' team also allegedly
transported a vast amount of plundered wealth back to the States, for which they
were richly rewarded by Maximilian.

James is said to have been one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in
America, even before being rewarded by Maximilian. He is said to have invested
heavily in the Texas oil boom, and to have provided financial backing for the
Hughes Tool Company, founded by Howard Hughes, Sr., and the Ford Motor Company,
founded by Henry Ford.

The most fascinating part of the Jesse James story, as presented by James III
and Schrader, concerns another rather notorious figure in American history whose
death has been called into question by numerous researchers: John Wilkes Booth.

An inconvenient and therefore unmentionable fact is that Booth was not acting as
a lone assailant when he shot President Lincoln; he was acting as part of a
larger conspiracy, as was openly acknowledged at the time. No fewer than six
additional conspirators were brought to trial; four received death sentences and
two were sentenced to life imprisonment.

Booth, of course, never stood trial. He was allegedly killed by agents who were
attempting to capture him. Schrader and James, and numerous others, say that
Booth's death was faked to allow him to escape prosecution and punishment. They
also say that Booth, like James, was an agent of the Confederate intelligence
services.

Booth is said to have functioned as a courier -- and his career, it must be
said, would have provided the ideal cover for such activities. It will be
recalled that Booth was one of the most popular actors of his day. As such, he
traveled extensively with various productions, and therefore had the unusual
ability to move rather freely between North and South.

The story goes that after killing Lincoln, Booth was given safe passage to Texas
by the Confederate underground. Once there, he took the name John St. Helen and
worked as a bartender. A problem arose, however, when Booth developed a drinking
problem, and with it a tendency to shoot off his mouth about the life he used to
lead.

Booth, in other words, became a liability that had to be dealt with. Sent to
deal with the problem was none other than Jesse James, accompanied by William
"Wild Bill" Lincoln, a distant cousin of the slain former president. The pair
tracked Booth to Enid, Oklahoma, where he was poisoned.

Now I will be the first to admit that the claim that famed Wild West outlaw
Jesse James was sent as an assassin to 'neutralize' notorious presidential
assassin John Wilkes Booth seems a little, shall we say, iffy. Strangely enough
though, the authors back that incredible claim up with a sworn statement by
William "Wild Bill" Lincoln:

"Our branch of the Lincoln family was never satisfied with what really happened
to Booth, and I spent fourteen years of my life running down the true story.
Strangely enough, I learned it from Jesse W. James, head of the Confederate
underground. I was present at Booth's real death."

So there you have it -- the Jesse James story from a slightly different
perspective than it is normally told. I leave it to each of you to decide for
yourselves whether to file this one in the 'truth is stranger than fiction'
file, or in the circular file. Meanwhile, I've got to move on to other things -"

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Knights_of_the_Golden_Circle
http://knights-of-the-golden-circle.blogspot.com

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Brad Meltzer's "Decoded"

"Brad Meltzer's Decoded" on the History Channel will air two episodes about the mysteries surrounding John Wilkes Booth and the Lost Confederate Gold

HIST Thu, Dec 23 10:00 PM The Lincoln Assassination
HIST Fri, Dec 24 2:01 AM The Lincoln Assassination
HIST Sun, Dec 26 11:00 PM The Lincoln Assassination
HIST Mon, Dec 27 3:01 AM The Lincoln Assassination

HIST Thu, Dec 30 10:00 PM Confederate Gold
HIST Fri, Dec 31 2:01 AM Confederate Gold

There is a special rebroadcast of these two shows back to back on New Years Day at noon- do they see some relationship here (?).

HIST Sat, Jan 1 12:00 PM The Lincoln Assassination
HIST Sat, Jan 1 1:00 PM Confederate Gold

Knights of the Golden Circle Archive Research and Historical forum
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Knights_of_the_Golden_Circle
http://knights-of-the-golden-circle.blogspot.com

Monday, December 20, 2010

Ruled By Secrecy

Ruled By Secrecy

PART III REBELLION AND REVOLUTION

SECRET SOCIETY AGITATION

The secretive Knights organization was the creation of surgeon and
author Dr. George W. L. Bickley, who in 1854 founded his first
knightly "castle" in Cincinnati, Ohio, drawing heavily from local
Freemasons. This society "had close ties with a secret society in
France called The Seasons, which itself was a branch of the
Illuminati," charged G. Edward Griffin.

Patterned after Masonic lodges, the Knights had similar passwords,
handshakes, "temples," and grand, lesser, and supreme councils.
Initiates were sworn to secrecy with a live snake held over their
head accompanied by this bloodcurdling oath:

Whoever dares our cause reveal, Shall test the strength of Knightly
steel; And when the torture proves too dull, We'll scrape the brains
from out his skull And place a lamp within the shell To light his
soul from here to hell.

The name Knights of the Golden Circle was derived from Bickley's
grandiose plan to create a huge slaveholding circular empire 2,400
miles in circumference with Cuba as the center point. This new nation
was to include the southern United States, Mexico, part of Central
America, and the West Indies in order to gain a dominance over the
world's supply of tobacco, sugar, rice, and coffee.

While modern historians either ignore or downplay the significance
of the KGC, it is evident from contemporary writings and newspaper
coverage that the organization was considered an extremely credible
threat at the time. Bickley was certainly a mysterious individual,
always claiming to be MI need of money, yet constantly traveling and
entertaining dignitaries. The "financial nucleus" of his order was
the American Colonization and Steamship Company, organized in
Veracruz, Mexico, and capitalized for $5 million. Somebody other than
Bickley was paying the bills.

He also had demonstrable ties to Great Britain, claiming to have
been an 1842 graduate of the University of London. Early in the war
Bickley was in the Confederate capital of Montgomery, Alabama,
identifying himself as a correspondent for the London Times, and
after the war he lectured extensively in England.

Bickley appeared to have shifting allegiances and philosophies.
Previously, he had founded a society called the Wayne Circle of the
Brotherhood of the Union, which purported to seek constitutional
unity. Just before the war started, Bickley wrote an article for his
Cincinnati paper Scientific Artisan in which he predicted the end of
slavery, stating "this institution is one altogether unenviable, [as]
every reasonable man in America will at once admit."

Despite the ideas put forth in his article, the first step in
Bickley's plans for the Knights of the Golden Circle was to create a
separate slaveholding Southern nation, then move southward to Mexico.
Like the Nazis much later, the KGC were concerned with purity of
blood, as demonstrated by his call for "Anglo-Saxon blood" for
the "Texasizing" of the Mexican population.

By 1860 there were more than fifty thousand Knights, mostly in
Texas, awaiting orders to march on Mexico. Headquartered in San
Antonio, Bickley gained popularity by pledging to "kill Wall Street"
bankers, who he said were scheming against the South. He also said
that if Lincoln was elected president, "Washington, not Mexico, would
become the target" of the Knights.

In fact there were two tentative invasions of Mexico in the spring
of 1860, but both were repulsed after Bickley failed to provide his
men with promised reinforcements and supplies.

Texas hero and governor Sam Houston reportedly was a member of the
Knights at the time but resigned when the Knights turned their
attention from the invasion of Mexico to the secessionist movement.

It was in the cause of Southern secession that Bickley proved more
successful, as the KGC came to form the nucleus of the Southern
military. According to writer Ollinger Crenshaw,

"The Southern press received the plans of the order with enthusiasm
and many newspapers became its exponents... The Vicksburg Sun said
tin Knights of the Golden Circle gave the South a military
organization capable of defending her rights at home and abroad."

The KGC was divided into three sections or "degrees"—the "Foreign
and Home Guard Militia," the "Foreign and Home Guard Corps" of
civilian support, and the "American Legion" which was the political
and governing arm. Reportedly, by 1860 membership in the KGC was more
than sixty-five thousand and constituted the "brains" of the South.
Bickley made their objective clear when he declared, "The fact is, we
want a fight, but how to get it is the question."

Through constant agitation, the Knights stirred up hatreds and
fears throughout the North and South.

"After Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860, this minority of the
Southern minority conspired to bring off a last gamble. In 1861, to
the extremists' amazement, disunion triumphed," wrote historian
William W. Freehling.

KGC activity in Northern states involved a plan to create
a "Northwest Confederacy" composed of pro-Southerners in several
states, including Ohio, Indiana, Minnesota, and Michigan. Illinois
alone was reported to have a KGC membership of some twenty thousand.
The plan was to seize federal arsenals, then take control of the
states and release all Confederate prisoners. One state official,
Edmund Wright, tried to opposed the Knights, only to have his wife
poisoned and his home burned. In August 1862 sixty KGC members—out of
a reported fifteen thousand members in Indiana—were indicted for
conspiracy and treason but later released. Federal prosecutors were
fearful of creating martyrs and the conspiracy cases were weak.

The Knights' actions created havoc with the national government,
prompting President Lincoln to lament, "The enemy behind us is more
dangerous to the country than the enemy before us."

The Lincoln administration was compelled to imprison more than
thirteen thousand people on charges of "disloyalty," which meant
anything from speaking against the government to discouraging
military enlistment. "Those who before the war had been called 'the
loyal opposition' found themselves after 1861 commonly referred to as
traitors," wrote author Larry Star key.

Such repression incensed Democrats and anti-Republicans, who
charged federal officials with exaggerating the KGC threat in order
to suppress criticism of the administration. Membership in the
Knights' organization and its spin-offs, the Order of American
Knights and the Sons of Liberty, grew to number in the hundreds of
thousands. According to Griffin, the Knights went underground after
the war, eventually emerging as the Ku Klux Klan.

In 1863 Bickley was arrested as a spy in Indiana and held without
trial until his release in 1865. A broken man, Bickley died in
Baltimore on August 10, 1867.

With national attention focused on the Southern Rebellion and
disunity in the North, far-reaching financial measures were being
taken in Washington.

In mid-1861, with the war just beginning, U.S. Treasury secretary
Salmon Chase (the namesake of Chase Manhattan Bank) asked for and
received from Congress the first income tax instituted in America. It
began as a meager three percent federal tax on all income, but only a
year later the tax was raised to five percent on all income over
$10,000. "It was a graduated income tax, just as proposed by Karl
Marx just 13 years before," noted Epperson, intimating that hidden
agendas were being pressed behind the contingencies of war.

As the war progressed, Lincoln desperately needed more money.
Instead of borrowing from the European banks as expected, in 1862 he
issued about $450 million in currency printed with green ink
called "greenbacks." This paper money was legalized by an act of
Congress with nothing to secure it. Endorsing this debt-free, fiat
money, Lincoln proclaimed,

"Government, possessing power to create and issue currency... need
not and should not borrow capital at interest... The privilege of
creating and issuing money is not only the supreme prerogative of the
government but it is the government's greatest creative opportunity."

It is fascinating to note that the two U.S. presidents who have
issued debt-free currency—Lincoln in 1862 and John F. Kennedy in 1963—
were assassinated. Lincoln's assassin, Southern sympathizer John
Wilkes Booth, has been established as a member of the Knights of the
Golden Circle (along with the famous outlaw Jesse James). Various
conspiracy researchers have connected Booth to the previously
mentioned Illuminati, the Italian Carbonari, and through Southern
secretary of state Judah Benjamin to the House of Rothschild. After
the war, Benjamin, often called the "sinister power behind the
throne" of Southern president Jefferson Davis, fled to England where
he became a successful attorney.

As in the Kennedy assassination, Lincoln's death sparked cries of
conspiracy which still echo today. The Lincoln assassination
conspiracy involved several persons, four of whom were hanged,
including Mary Surratt, the first woman executed in this country for
a capital offense. It is historic fact that the Lincoln assassination
case was a complex plot including smuggling and kidnapping plans that
involved Knights of the Golden Circle agents.

"The fact remains that the story of why Abraham Lincoln was murdered
can only be completed within the confines of the Confederate cabal in
Canada [which included KGC members as well as British agents] ..."
noted author Starkey.

The plot also involved some of the highest offices in Washington,
including Lincoln's secretary of war Edwin Stanton. The full story of
this plot has yet to reach a wide audience.

Despite pervasive use of the term, the conflict between 1861 and
1865 was never truly a civil war, which is defined as a conflict
between factions or sections within a nation. The majority of
citizens in each Southern state freely elected to leave the Union.
Confederate President Davis, a former United States senator and
secretary of war, in his inaugural address on February 18,1861, cited

"the American idea that governments rest on the consent of the
governed, and that it is the right of the people to alter or abolish
them at will whenever they become destructive of the ends for which
they were established. . . . Thus the sovereign states here
represented have proceeded to form this Confederacy; and it is by
abuse of language that their act has been denominated a revolution."

"Secession—or rebellion, as the Jacobins preferred to call it—
might be treason, but no court had ever said so—or ever would say so—
no matter what the opinion the radicals had on the matter," observed
historian Shelby Foote.

But Lincoln and the radical Republicans did proclaim that
secession was treason and prepared huge armies and a naval blockade
to force the Southern states back into the Union. And while twenty-
two million Northerners were locked in strife with nine million
Southerners, France and Britain made moves to encircle the conflicted
nation.

With regimental bands playing "Dixie," Britain sent eleven
thousand additional troops to Canada, which had become a haven for
Confederate agents. France's Napoleon III installed Austrian Archduke
Maximilian as emperor of Mexico, which promptly opened negotiations
with the Confederacy and allowed the transportation of supplies into
Texas, bypassing the Union blockade. French troops were poised on the
Texas border. Both France and England were ready to step in just as
soon as flu- North and South had bled each other dry.

Two eventualities forestalled the complete breakup of the United
States: Lincoln's proclamation freeing slaves in Confederate states
and the quiet intervention of Russia.

Floyd Mann's K.G.C. website CIVIL WAR

CIVIL WAR

K.G.C.

KNIGHTS OF THE GOLDEN CIRCLE

Most stories about the KGC concern the fact that a bunch of loyal Confederates started stashing loot and supplies to get ready for a second Civil War---which the SOUTH would win !

These depositories might be worth TRILLIONS of dollars today. There are so many possible clues to KGC depositories within the stories of the Civil War that a researcher needs to study the Civil War as much as they can.

On this page I have listed just a tiny amount of the websites available concerning the Civil War. As you read through these sites you will be directed to more and more sites. You would probably never be able to read them all, but: you CAN learn some valuable clues !

This category of this website is hard to categorize. There are so many aspects of the Civil War.

Look for clues of money shipments being moved and/or lost. I'm assuming that MOST people are interested in the KGC because of the possibility of learning how to find some of their secreted treasure.

Some of these links concern the Indians, Blacks, Outlaws, Booth, Lincoln and other people who figured into our history books during ( or around ) the Civil War. They are ALSO associated with the KGC !

CIVIL WAR RELATED LINKS:

http://civilwarmini.com/links.htm

http://www.civilwarhome.com/biograph.htm

http://www.civilwarhome.com/csa.htm

http://history-sites.com/cwmb/

http://groups.msn.com/TheConfederatePerspective

http://www.ah.dcr.state.nc.us/sections/hs/bentonvi/confed-units.htm

http://groups.msn.com/ConfederateFlag

http://www2.cr.nps.gov/abpp/battles/bystate.htm

http://www.sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/warweb.html

THESE CIVIL WAR WEBSITES MENTION THE KNIGHTS OF THE GOLDEN CIRCLE:

http://gwillritter.tripod.com/otherdocuments.htm

http://www.vahistorical.org/publications/Abstract_1091_Keller.htm

http://ezines.firelands.net/MuzzleBlastsOnline/Vol1No4/Articles/House_1.htm

THE LINCOLN ASSASSINATION BY KGC AGENT BOOTH:

http://home.att.net/~rjnorton/Lincoln74.html

http://www.newburgh-ny.com/HistoricNB/stories/lincoln.htm

http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~wbova/fn/history/booth_01.htm

http://www.shout.net/~bigred/Booth.htm

http://tedn.hypermart.net/booth.htm

http://www.upress.state.ms.us/catalog/fall2001/come_retribution.html

http://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg06919.html

http://loc.harpweek.com/LCPoliticalCartoons/IndexDisplayCartoonMedium.asp?SourceIndex=Topics&IndexText=Knights+of+the+Golden+CIRCLE&UniqueID=21&Year=1865

http://www.crimelibrary.com/terrorists_spies/assassins/booth/8.html?sect=24

COPPERHEADS & OTHER RELATED GROUPS:

http://community.lib.oh.us/Working_SCL/OHIO200/CivilWar/Copperheads.htm

http://www.lib.niu.edu/ipo/iht319615.html

http://members.aol.com/CintiCWRT/copper.html

http://classicals.com/federalist/TheCivilWarhall/messages/72.html

http://members.tripod.com/~nycopperhead/

http://loc.harpweek.com/LCPoliticalCartoons/IndexTopicsSearchList.asp?IndexText=Copperheads+or+PeaceDemocrats

THEN: DO A SEARCH ON www.google.com for these three categories: Order of AmericanKnights, Sons of America, and Sons of Liberty

OUTLAWS:

http://www.texas-ec.org/tcp/899coward.html

http://www.shout.net/~bigred/JesJames.htm

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~jganis/tarheelswithjessejames.html

http://www.bisonbill.com/Bison8.html

http://userpages.aug.com/captbarb/moon.html

http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/Bunker/3802/guerilla.htm

http://luckydan.com/congold.htm

http://www.potterflats.com/suemundy.html

MANY U.S. BURIED TREASURE/LOST MINES STORIES ARE BELIEVED ( BY A LOT OF PEOPLE ! ) ---TO ACTUALLY BE KGC TREASURES or ? TEMPLAR ?( OR DECOY STORIES ): The Lost Dutchman, Oak Island, and the Peralta Stones are just three to consider:

http://www.desertusa.com/mag02/sep/per_stone.html

http://home1.gte.net/ltdan/stones.htm

http://www.sombreromines.com/qfg/default.asp

http://www.desertusa.com/mag02/june/ld1.html

http://www.desertusa.com/mag98/aug/stories/lost1.html

http://www.lost-dutchman.com/dutchman/links.html

http://www.oakislandtreasure.co.uk/knight.htm

http://www.oakislandtreasure.com/

http://www.activemind.com/Mysterious/Topics/OakIsland/

The January 22, 2004 issue of ROLLING STONE magazine had a very good ( 8-page ) article on OAK ISLAND.

BLACKS AND KU KLUX KLAN:

http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~shgape/disclist/klan.html

http://truedemocracy.net/td2_3/66_dyk.html

http://www.endoftheoregontrail.org/blaktime.html

http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/2363 ---Scroll down to the third paragraph from the bottom

http://gesswhoto.com/paradise-chapter8.html -----Scroll down to the second paragraph from the bottom of page ONE

http://www.beyondweird.com/ufos/Bruce_Walton_The_Underground_Nazi_Invasion_34.html

Scroll down to The Racial Laws.

INDIANS AND KGC:

http://www.archaeolink.com/native_americans_cherokee_indian.htm

http://www.people.virginia.edu/~pnm3r/kituwah/index.htm

http://www.civilwarhome.com/cherokeecauses.htm

http://www.atholbooks.org/magazines/heresiarch/ambeaut/america4.html

http://www.southern-cherokee.com/about/history.htm

http://digital.library.okstate.edu/Chronicles/v012/v012p402.html

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

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Re: Floyd Mann's K.G.C. website MASONS