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 organised 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
""colonise"" northern Mexico. Due to insufficient resources and
organisational 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.
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