Showing posts with label KGC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label KGC. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 13, 2017

Diary of John Hay: Monday, June 17, 1864

I left Cincinnati Sunday evening and came to St. Louis about 11 o'clock Monday morning. The road is a very pleasant one, though rather slow. I sat and wrote rhymes in the same compartment with a pair of whiskey smugglers.

I reported to General Rosecrans immediately upon my arrival. After waiting some time in an anteroom full of officers, among them General Davidson, a young, nervous, active looking man; General Ewing, whom I had known before, a man of great coolness and steadiness of judgment: Rosecrans came out and took me to his room. I presented my letter; he read it, and nodded: — “All right — got something to show you — too important to talk about — busy just now — this orderly business — keep me till four o'clock — dine with us at the Lindell half-past five — then talk matter over at my room there. Hay, where were you born? How long have you been with the President?” etc. And I went away. He is a fine, hearty, abrupt sort of talker, heavy-whiskered, blond, keen eyes, with light brows and lashes, head shunted forward a little; legs a little unsteady in walk.

We dined at the Lindell quietly at six o'clock: Rosecrans, Major Bond and I. The General was chatty and sociable; told some old army stories; and drank very little wine. The dinner had nothing to tempt one out of frugality in diet, being up to the average badness of hotel dinners. From the dining room I went to his private room. He issued orders to his intelligent contraband to admit no one. He seated himself in a queer combination chair he had — which let you lounge or forced you to a rigid pose of business as you desired, — and offered me a cigar. “No? long-necked fellows like you don't need them. Men of my temperament derive advantage from them as a sedative, and as a preventer of corpulence.” He puffed away and began to talk, in a loud, easy tone at first, which he soon lowered, casting a glance over his shoulder and moving his chair nearer.

There is a secret conspiracy on foot against the Government, carried on by a society called the Order of the American Knights, or, to use their initials — O. A. K. The head of the Order, styled the high priest, is in the North, Vallandigham,  and in the South, Sterling Price. Its objects are, in  the North to exert an injurious effect upon public feeling, to resist the arrest of its members, to oppose the war in all possible ways; in the border States to join with returned rebels and guerilla parties to plunder, murder and persecute Union men and to give to rebel invasion all possible information and timely aid. He said that in Missouri they had carefully investigated the matter by means of secret service men who had taken the oaths, and they had found that many recent massacres were directly chargeable to them; that the whole Order was in a state of intense activity; that they numbered in Missouri 13,000 sworn members; in Illinois, 140,000; in Ohio and Indiana almost as large numbers, and in Kentucky a very large and formidable association.

That the present objective point was the return and the protection of Vallandigham. He intends, on dit, that the district convention in his district in Ohio shall elect him a delegate to the Chicago Convention. That he is to be elected and come over from Canada and take his seat, and if the Government should see fit to re-arrest him, then his followers are to unite to resist the officers and protect him at all hazards.

A convocation of the Order was held at Windsor, Canada, in the month of April under his personal supervision; to this came delegates from every part of the country. It is not definitely known what was done there. . . . .

I went over to Sanderson’ office, and he read to me his voluminous report to Rosecrans in regard to the workings of the Order, and showed me some few documents. . . . We went back and finished the evening at Roscrans rooms. I said I would go back to Washington and lay the matter before the President, as it had been presented to me, and I thought he would look upon it as I did, as a matter of importance. I did not make any suggestions; I did not even ask for a copy of Sanderson’s report, or any of the papers in the case: — 1st, because my instructions placed me in a purely receptive attitude; and, — 2d, because I saw in both R. & S. a disposition to insist on Sanderson’s coming to Washington in person to discuss the matter without the intervention of the Secretary of War. Two or three motives influenced this, no doubt. Rosecrans is bitterly hostile to Stanton; he is full of the idea that S. has wronged him, and is continually seeking opportunities to thwart and humiliate him. Then Sandn. himself is rather proud of his work in ferreting out this business, and is not unwilling to come to Washington to impress the President with the same sense; they wish a programme for future opportunities determined; and finally they want money for the secret service fund.

Gen. Rosecrans wrote a letter to the President Monday night, which I took on Tuesday morning, and started back to Washington.

. . . . I had bad luck coming back. I missed a day at Springfield, a connection at Harrisburgh, and one at Baltimore, leaving Philadelphia five minutes after the President, and arriving at Washington almost as many hours behind him. I saw him at once, and gave him the impressions I have recorded above. The situation of affairs had been a good deal changed in my transit by the Avatar of Vallandigham in Ohio. The President seemed not over-well pleased that Rosecrans had not sent all the necessary papers by me, reiterating his want of confidence in Sanderson, declining to be made a party to a quarrel between Stanton and Rosecrans, and stating in reply to Rosecrans’ suggestion of the importance of the greatest secrecy, that a secret which has already been confided to Yates, Morton, Brough, Bramlette and their respective circles of officers, could scarcely be worth the keeping now. He treats the northern section of the conspiracy as not especially worth regarding, holding it a mere political organization, with about as much of malice and as much of puerility as the Knights of the Golden Circle.

About Vallandigham himself he says that the question for the Government to decide is whether it can afford to disregard the contempt of authority and breach of discipline displayed in Vallandigham’s unauthorized return. For the rest it cannot result in benefit for the Union cause to have so violent and indiscreet a man go to Chicago as a firebrand to his own party. The President had some time ago seriously thought of annulling the sentence of exile, but had been too much occupied to do it. Fernando Wood said to him on one occasion that he could do nothing more politic than to bring Val. back; in that case he could promise him two Democratic candidates for President this year. “These War Democrats,” said F. W., “are scoundrelly hypocrites; they want to oppose you, and favor the war, at once, which is nonsense. There are but two sides in this fight, — yours and mine: War and Peace. You will succeed while the war lasts, I expect, but we shall succeed when the war is over. I intend to keep my record clear for the future.”

The President said one thing in which I differ from him. He says: — “The opposition politicians are so blinded with rage, seeing themselves unable to control the politics of the country, that they may be able to manage the Chicago Convention for some violent end, but they cannot transfer the people, the honest though misguided masses, to the same course.” I said:— “I thought the reverse to be true: that the sharp managers would go to Chicago to try to do some clever and prudent thing, such as nominate Grant without platform; but that the bare-footed democracy from the heads of the hollows, who are now clearly for peace would carry everything in the Convention before them. As it was at Cleveland: — the New York politicians who came out to intrigue for Grant could not get a hearing. They were as a feather in the wind in the midst of that blast of German fanaticism. I think my idea is sustained by the action of the Illinois Convention which endorses Val. on his return and pledges the party strength to protect him. In the stress of this war, politics have drifted out of the hands of politicians, and are now more than ever subject to genuine popular currents.”

The President said he would take the matter into consideration and would write to-morrow, the 18th, to Brough and Heintzelman about Val., and to Rosecrans at an early day.

SOURCES: Abstracted from Clara B. Hay, Letters of John Hay and Extracts from Diary, Volume 1, p. 201-8. See Michael Burlingame & John R. Turner Ettlinger, Editors, Inside Lincoln’s White House: The Complete War Diary of John Hay, p. 204-8 for the full diary entry which they date June 17.

Sunday, January 31, 2016

Diary of William Howard Russell: May 5, 1861

Very warm, and no cold water, unless one went to the river. The hotel baths were not promising. This hotel is worse than the Mills House or Willard's. The feeding and the flies are intolerable. One of our party comes in to say that he could scarce get down to the hall on account of the crowd, and that all the people who passed him had very hard, sharp bones. He remarks thereupon to the clerk at the bar, who tells him that the particular projections he alludes to are implements of defence or offence, as the case may be, and adds, “I suppose you and your friends are the only people in the house who haven't a bowie-knife, or a six-shooter, or Derringer about them.” The house is full of Confederate congressmen, politicians, colonels, and place-men with or without places, and a vast number of speculators, contractors, and the like, attracted by the embryo government. Among the visitors are many filibusters, such as Henningsen, Pickett, Tochman, Wheat.1 I hear a good deal about the association called the Knights of the Golden Circle, a Protestant association for securing the Gulf provinces and States, including— which has been largely developed by recent events — them in the Southern Confederacy, and creating them into an independent government.

Montgomery has little claims to be called a capital. The streets are very hot, unpleasant, and uninteresting. I have rarely seen a more dull, lifeless place; it looks like a small Russian town in the interior. The names of the shopkeepers indicate German and French origin. I looked in at one or two of the slave magazines, which are not unlike similar establishments in Cairo and Smyrna. A certain degree of freedom is enjoyed by some of the men, who lounge about the doors, and are careless of escape or liberty, knowing too well the difficulties of either.

It is not in its external aspects generally that slavery is so painful. The observer must go with Sterne, and gaze in on the captives’ dungeons through the bars. The condition of a pig in a sty is not, in an animal sense, anything but good. Well fed, over fed, covered from the winds and storms of heaven, with clothing, food, medicine, provided, children taken care of, aged relatives and old age itself succored and guarded — is not this——? Get thee behind us, slave philosopher! The hour comes when the butcher steals to the sty, and the knife leaps from the sheath.

Now there is this one thing in being an [ăvaέ ăvδpὣv1] that be the race of men bad as it may, a kind of grandiose character is given to their leader. The stag which sweeps his rivals from his course is the largest of the herd; but a man who drives the largest drove of sheep is no better than he who drives the smallest. The flock he compels, must consist of human beings to develop the property of which I speak, and so the very superiority of the slave master in the ways and habits of command proves that the negro is a man. But, at the same time the law which regulates all these relations between man and his fellows, asserts itself here. The dominant race becomes dependent on some other body of men, less martial, arrogant, and wealthy, for its elegances, luxuries, and necessaries. The poor villeins round the Norman castle forge the armor, make the furniture, and exercise the mechanical arts which the baron and his followers are too ignorant and too proud to pursue; if there is no population to serve this purpose, some energetic race comes in their place, and the Yankee does the part of the little hungry Greek to the Roman patrician.

The South has at present little or no manufactures, takes everything from the Yankee outside or the mean white within her gates, and despises both. Both are reconciled by interest. The one gets a good price for his manufacture and the fruit of his ingenuity from a careless, spendthrift proprietor; the other hopes to be as good as his master some day, and sees the beginning of his fortune in the possession of a negro. It is fortunate for our great British Catherine-wheel, which is continually throwing off light and heat to the remotest parts of the world — I hope not burning down to a dull red cinder in the centre at last — that it had not to send its emigrants to the Southern States, as assuredly the emigration would soon have been checked. The United States has been represented to the British and Irish emigrants by the Free States — the Northern States and the great West — and the British and German emigrant who finds himself in the South, has drifted there through the Northern States, and either is a migratory laborer, or hopes to return with a little money to the North and West, if he does not see his way to the possession of land and negroes.

After dinner at the hotel table, which was crowded with officers, and where I met Mr. Howell Cobb and several senators of the new Congress, I spent the evening with Colonel Deas, Quartermaster-General, and a number of his staff, in their quarters. As I was walking over to the house, one of the detached villa-like residences so common in Southern cities, I perceived a crowd of very well-dressed negroes, men and women, in front of a plain brick building which I was informed was their Baptist meeting-house, into which white people rarely or never intrude. These were domestic servants, or persons employed in stores, and their general appearance indicated much comfort and even luxury. I doubted if they all were slaves. One of my companions went up to a young woman in a straw-hat, with bright red-and-green ribbon trimmings and artificial flowers, a gaudy Paisley shawl, and a rainbow-like gown, blown out over her yellow boots by a prodigious crinoline, and asked her “Whom do you belong to? She replied, “I b'long to Massa Smith, sar.” Well, we have men who “belong” to horses in England. I am not sure if Americans, North and South, do not consider their superiority to all Englishmen so thoroughly established, that they can speak of them as if they were talking of inferior animals. To-night, for example, a gallant young South Carolinian, one Ransome Calhoun,3 was good enough to say that “Great Britain was in mortal fear of France, and was abjectly subdued by her great rival.” Hence came controversy, short and acrimonious
­­­_______________

1 Since killed in action.

2 This is as close of an approximation to the words printed in the original text as I could get.  Please see original text for the exact typography.

3 Since killed.

SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South, p. 164-7

Sunday, May 31, 2015

Diary of Salmon P. Chase, Monday, September 8, 1862


Jay Cooke came to breakfast, after which we talked financial matters. He thought gold could be easily obtained on deposit at 4%; and that, by and by, on a more favorable turn of affairs, 5-20s could be negotiated. Clay came in and Cooke left. Clay and I rode towards Department in wagon. Clay said he had made up his mind to take Department and that the President and Stanton were willing he should take that beyond the Mississippi. “Would I go with him to see Halleck?” “Certainly.” Halleck received us kindly but was unwell. Showed no favor to the new Department project.

Returned to Department and attended to general business. Nothing of special financial moment. Barney came in, and said that Stanton and Wadsworth had advised him to leave for New York this evening, as communication with Baltimore might be cut off before to-morrow. He would be governed by my advice. Told him I did not think the event probable, but he had best govern himself by the advice received.

After he had gone, Genl. Mansfield came in, and talked very earnestly about the necessity of ordering up, from Suffolk, 1st. Delaware and 3 and 4 New York, trained and disciplined now 14 months, each 800 strong, say 2,400 men; and from Norfolk 19th Wisconsin and 48th. Pennsylvania, say 1,600 men; leaving at Suffolk, Forey's Brigade of four diminished Regiments, say 1,800 men in all, late of Shield's division, — 11th. Pennsylvania Cavalry (a full and good Regiment) say 900 men;—and Dodge's Regiment of mounted Rifles except one Company; and at Norfolk, 99th NewYork, and one Company of Dodge's, sufficient for military police. He favored leaving Keyes and Peck at Yorktown. — He said the defences of the city were weak on the Eastern side; and that there ought to be at least 65,000 good men to hold it if McClellan is defeated — to improve victory if he is successful — He referred to old times. Was in Texas the Winter before the Rebellion broke out. Saw Twiggs who hated him because he was on Court-Martial. Was then told by officer in Council of War of K. G. C.1 that Floyd and Cobb in Cabinet and Jeff. Davis and Breckinridge, were members. In this Council of War, Orders were given to seize Navy Yards, Forts, etc. while its members were yet Cabinet officers and Senators. The Order of the K. G. C. ramified throughout the South. First offered services to Juarez, who refused them because too dangerous. They then plotted the invasion of Cuba, which failed. Then declared themselves Protectors of Southern Rights and levied a contribution upon all planters and slaveholders — some giving $5 and some $10, and some more or less. In this way they got large sums and commenced operations. They designed to seize Washington and inaugurate Breckinridge; and in reference to this Mason wrote Faulkner advising him not to resign — this letter being now in Seward's possession. This plot only failed through the bringing of troops to Washington, and the unwillingness of leaders to make a bloody issue so early. — He spoke of Genl. Scott. Said he had not treated him well — had placed McDowell in command over the river last year, superseding himself, and when he had asked for explanation he simply replied that his orders had been given. He felt himself wronged, but did his duty to the best of his ability. He was afterwards treated badly by Genl. Wool who did not like him, though he treated him civilly. Had lately been in command at Suffolk (an insignificant post) until summoned here to Court of Inquiry. Wanted active employment but was unable to get any. Had sent for his horses, and proposed to visit all the fortifications around the city on his own account. — I was a good deal affected by the manifest patriotism and desire to do something for his country manifested by the old General; and could not help wishing that he was younger and thinking that, perhaps, after all, it would have been better to trust him.

After the General left, went to War Department, where found the President, Stanton and Wadsworth. The President said he had felt badly all day. Wadsworth said there was no danger of an attack on Washington, and that the men ought to be severely punished who intimated the possibility of its surrender. The President spoke of the great number of stragglers he had seen coming into town this morning; and of the immense losses by desertion.

Returned home. Maj. Andrews and others called.
_______________

1 Knights of the Golden Circle.

SOURCE: Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1902, Vol. 2, p. 69-71

Friday, February 13, 2015

Diary of Corporal Alexander G. Downing: Friday, April 15, 1864

It is cloudy and quite cool. I harrowed all day, and I think that it is the last day's work that I shall do on the farm for some time, unless this cruel war soon comes to a close.

There are two families in this locality who are Copperheads and opposed to the war. They are members of the “Knights of the Golden Circle,” but are very quiet at present. They do not, however, give dinners to the returned veterans. About eighteen months ago, they, with some others, north and west from here, were giving the loyal people of the county a great deal of trouble, going so far as to recruit a company of cavalry for the rebel army and drill them at the county seat. Finally, some of our brave soldiers, Tipton boys, home on furlough, made it so hot for the would-be rebel soldiers, that they disbanded, and have not been seen drilling since.

Source: Alexander G. Downing, Edited by Olynthus B., Clark, Downing’s Civil War Diary, p. 179

Sunday, November 2, 2014

Governor Samuel J. Kirkwood to Edwin M. Stanton, March 18, 1863

Executive Office, Iowa,
Iowa Citv, Mar. 18,1863.
Hon. Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War, Washington, D. C:

Sir — I have to-day received the enclosed package of papers from Mr. Hoxie, United States Marshal of this State. There is no doubt there is a very unfortunate condition of affairs at this time in this State. A secret organization known popularly as the “Knights of the Golden Circle” is widely spread through the State, the object of which I am informed and believe is to embarrass the Government in the prosecution of the war, mainly by encouraging desertions from the army, protecting deserters from arrest, discouraging enlistments, preparing the public mind for an armed resistance to a conscription, if ordered, and, if possible, to place the State government at the next election in the hands of men who will control it to thwart the policy of the Administration in the prosecution of the war. Indeed, with the exception of advising desertions, the purposes above mentioned are openly advised and advocated by many persons in this State.

Lieutenant Henry came to me in regard to the matter mentioned in his letter to Marshal Hoxie, and, at my instance, Capt. Hendershott furnished him with a detail of ten armed men to go with him to his place of rendezvous, in Madison county, and remain with him. I also sent by him fifty muskets and some ammunition to place in the hands of loyal men. I have not heard from him since his return. There is undoubtedly a feverish and excited state of the public mind, and matters must be managed here prudently and firmly or a collision may ensue. I wrote you a few days since asking that you send me some arms, and also that you allow me to raise two or three regiuients as a ‘State Guard,’ not to leave the State. I regard these measures both as measures of precaution and prevention. Much that is said in regard to the resistance of the laws is no doubt mere bluster by self-important men of small caliber and small ambition to give themselves local importance and to secure for themselves petty offices, and who, if an outbreak were to occur, would not be in the way of danger.

But I also believe there are engaged in this work men of desperate fortunes, political and otherwise, who would have the courage to lead an outbreak, and who would rejoice in the opportunity. I think it extremely probable that there are in this and other Northern States paid agents of the Rebels, who are organizing machinery and using the means to effect the purposes herein attributed to the Knights of the Golden Circle; and there is real danger that the efforts of these men may so far operate on the minds of their honest but deluded followers in some localities as to cause a collision among our people. If we had arms in the hands of our loyal citizens, and a State Guard as I suggest, it might, and I think would, prevent this. The condition of things is, in my judgment, such that the Government can only make itself properly respected by convincing those disposed to be troublesome of its determination and ability to preserve the peace and enforce the laws. The dismissal of those “arbitrarily arrested,” as the phrase goes, has had a bad effect in this, that it has led many to suppose that the Government has not the power to punish. Let me impress upon you my conviction that in case of any armed resistance to the laws, the punishment be prompt, certain and sharp, as any thing looking like indecision or timidity would be disastrous.

I scarcely know what to advise in regard to these men who are “talking treason,” huzzaing for Jeff Davis, and organizing the Knights of the Golden Circle, etc. It would be worse than useless to arrest them, unless they can be tried and, if found guilty, punished. If arrests could be made, trials and convictions had and punishment sharply administered, the effect would be excellent. Has the United States District Attorney of this State had his attention called especially to this matter? It seems to me if it has not, it should be done, and he or the marshal furnished with the necessary money to detect arrest and punish some of these active scoundrels who are producing so much mischief.

I have already organized and armed a company in each of the southern tier of counties in the State. These have been placed under the orders of Provost Marshal Hiatt, of Keokuk, and will be placed under the orders of the new provost marshals in Congressional Districts as soon as I am advised of their names and appointment. I hope good selections have been made. I am now organizing a company in each of the second tier of counties from the south line, and, when organized and armed, I will also place them at the disposal of the Provost Marshals. If I had arms, I would organize companies in all the counties in the Stale where I think they may be needed. None of these companies would draw any pay or cause any expense except when called on by the proper authorities, except those in the southern tier, a squad of ten men, each of which is on duty all the time. I regard it as a matter of the first and most pressing importance to get a supply of arms and ammunition.  *  *  *

Very respectfully,
Your obedient servant,
Samuel J. Kirkwood.

SOURCE: Henry Warren Lathrop, The Life and Times of Samuel J. Kirkwood, Iowa's War Governor, p. 240-2

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Diary of Orville Hickman Browning, Wednesday, April 2, 1862.

Mrs Browning and Emma went this morning to Mount Vernon, with a party from the Presidents

*I was in the Senate all day At night I went up to the Presidents and had a talk with him about Genl McClelland whose loyalty is beginning to be questioned in some quarters I asked him if he still had confidence in McClellands fidelity. He assured me he had, and that he had never had any reason to doubt it. That he had now gone to Fortress Monroe with his Command, with orders to move on Richmond without delay, and that only on yesterday when McClelland came to take leave of him preparatory to marching, he shed tears when speaking of the cruel imputations upon his loyalty, and defending himself against them The President added that Genl Scott, and all the leading military men around him, had always assured him that McClelland possessed a very high order of military talent, and that he did not think they could all be mistaken — yet he was not fully satisfied with his conduct of the war — that he was not sufficiently energetic and aggressive in his measures — that he had studied McClelland and taken his measure as well as he could — that he thought he had the capacity to make arrangements properly for a great conflict, but as the hour for action approached he became nervous and oppressed with the responsibility and hesitated to meet the crisis, but that he had given him peremptory orders to move now, and he must do it.  *Whilst we were in conversation Secretary Stanton came in.

Supposing he had private business I proposed to leave, but both he and the President insisted that I should remain, and I did so. Stanton then commenced a conversation about McClelland, saying that there was a very general distrust of his loyalty growing up in the Country. He then took from his pocket a letter, which he said he had just received from one of the first men of the Nation, who was known to both the President and myself, but whose name he would not mention, and read from it a passage stating that McClelland some time in 1860 had been  initiated as a Knight of the Golden Circle by Jeff Davis — that Davis still had great power and influence over him, and that he would do nothing against the rebels which would be inconsistent with his obligations as a Knight of the golden Circle, and that disaster would come upon us as long as he was continued in the Command. Stanton added that he did not believe these* imputations of disloyalty, but they were believed extensively and did us injury1 When we left the President Stanton took me in his carriage and brought me home. As we rode down the Avenue he expressed the opinion that McClelland ought to have been removed long ago, and a fear that he was not in earnest, and said that he did not think he could emancipate himself from the influence of Jeff Davis, and feared he was not willing to do any thing calculated greatly to damage the cause of secession, *and that if I would propose to the President to appoint Col N B Buford of Illinois, a Majr Genl. and give him the Command of the army here he would second my application.

He said that when McDowell was appointed he was greatly dissatisfied — thought him unfit for the place, and when he lost the battle of Bull Run he denounced him fiercely; but since he became Secy of War, and had had much official communication with McDowell, and heard his explanations of the battle of Bull Run he was satisfied he had done him injustice, and with shame
for having said it, he took back all he had said That he was now satisfied that he was an able officer, more able than any on the Potomac, and an earnest, gallant man intent upon doing his duty &c.
__________

1 From various sources suggestions may be derived connecting McClellan with the treasonable organization known as the "Knights of the Golden Circle." In the diary of Edward Bates, under date of October 28, 1864, there is inserted a pamphlet entitled "General McClellan's Record: His Sympathy with the South — Read for Yourselves." This pamphlet consists of twelve pages and is made up of communications from various parties denouncing McClellan as a traitor and comparing him with Benedict Arnold. Says a correspondent of the Cincinnati Times, October 20, 1864: "It is rumored that McClellan is known to be a member of the . . . Knights of the Golden Circle and that after due deliberation by that order they decided that Mac should fight for the South on free soil, that Mac said he never intended to order an engagement . . . that Mac received Rebel letters during the engagement at Antietam and was in Lee's lines," etc. On the same date Bates pastes in his diary a newspaper clipping which is evidently taken from the Cincinnati Times. It is a communication to "Mr. Editor," signed by Edgar Conkling and dated Cincinnati, October 24, 1864. The writer mentions the "conclusive testimony . . . of General McClellan's treason," and demands a full publication of the facts in order to defeat the "election of the traitor to the Presidency." Bates writes this comment in the margin: "These fierce denunciations do no good, but great harm. McClellan has faults enough, both negative and affirmative, and his party is in the same condition. These charges of treachery and treason, not well established by proof, do but take off the edge from other accusations which cannot be defended, thus discrediting the best-founded objections against him, and exciting a popular sympathy for him as a persecuted man." It should be added that membership in the Knights of the Golden Circle, if such membership antedated the Civil War, would not necessarily imply treason. A convention of the "Knights," held at Raleigh, N. C, in May, 1860, issued an Address to Citizens of the Southern States, which shows that the order originated at Lexington, Ky., July 4, 1854, and that its early purpose was to combat emigrant aid societies and similar abolition activities, to anticipate the North in the settlement of Mexico, and to acquire that country for the purpose of increasing the area of the South which otherwise could no longer hope to obtain beneficial laws through Congress. For the privilege of examining the diary of Edward Bates in manuscript the editors are indebted to the courtesy of Miss Helen Nicolay, of Washington, D. C. The Address to Citizens of the Southern States, issued by order of a convention of the Knights of the Golden Circle, Raleigh, N. C, May 7-11, 1860, is to be found among the broadsides in the Manuscripts Division of the Library of Congress, Washington.

SOURCE: Theodore Calvin Pease, editor, The Diary of Orville Hickman Browning: Volume 1, 1850-1864, p. 537-9

Sunday, February 24, 2013

K. G. C.

AN AUTHENTIC EXPOSITION

OF THE

Origin, Objects and Secret work of the Organization known as the

KNIGHTS OF THE GOLDEN CIRCLE.
__________

(Published by the U. S. National U. C., February 1862.)

The loyal people of the United States have long been aware of the existence in this country and especially in the Southern States, of various secret organizations having for their object the “Americanization” of some of our weaker neighbors beyond the Southern limits of our domain, and the aggrandizement of their leaders and members through the forcible acquisition of the territory, and subversion of the Governments of the Central American States and Mexico.  Of this character was the order of the Lone Star, under whose auspices men and means were raised for the Lopez raids upon the Island of Cuba, in the year 1850, and 1851, and for the subsequent forays into the Central American States under the leadership of the "grey-eyed man of destiny," William Walker.  These Hostile designs upon the territory of our Southern neighbors having failed, the order fell into disrepute, and its secrets were exposed and burlesqued by the “Sons of Malta.”

This order of the Lone Star, was a branch of that now known as the K. G. C., if indeed it was not identical with it.  Probably thousands of our fellows citizens, North and South, who were once familiar with the secret work of the order of the Lone Star, will be able to discern the old landmarks throughout the exposition contained in these pages.  We are assured by an intelligent gentleman, once a member of this organization, that in its early history, it had no designs hostile to our Government and people but that its sole object was the acquisition of foreign territory by the force of arms, the introduction of immigrants from the Southern States, who should seize upon and possess the soil, and reduce the natives to the condition of slaves, or expel them from the country at the point of the bayonet.

These grand schemes failed for the time, and the surviving members of this band of land pirates soon found work at home.

Of the K. G. C., a writer in the Continental Monthly, for January, 1862, says:

“This organization which was instituted by John C. Calhoun, William L. Porcher, and others, as far back as 1835, had for its sole object the dissolution of the Union, and the establishment of a Southern Empire. – Empire is the word, not Confederacy or Republic – it was solely by means of its secret, but powerful machinery, that the Southern States were plunged into revolution, in defiance of the will of a majority of their voting population.  Nearly every man of influence at the South, (and many a pretended Union man at the North,) is a member of this organization, and sworn, under the penalty of assassination, to labor “in season and out of season, by fair means and by foul, at all times and on all occasions,” for the accomplishment of its object.”

Upon what evidence the above statement in regard to the agency of Messrs. Calhoun and Porcher in the foundation of this organization is made, we know not; but there can be no reasonable doubt that these men, and their associates, did resort to secret and powerful means for the spread of their views, and for the instruction of the public mind of the South in those doctrines of disunion and treason which they originated.  Through these means, and especially by the agency of the K. G. C., “the Southern mind has been educated and the Southern heart fired,” persistently and thoroughly, for a long series of years, until the hopes of the arch traitors were in part realized by the inauguration of civil war, on the 12th of April 1861, by that fatal shot for the South, the firing of the first gun at Fort Sumter!

Since the commencement of the internal dissensions in the United States, which culminated in the great rebellion of 1861-2, this treasonable organization has acquired new strength, and become widely disseminated throughout the length and breadth of our land, embracing within its circle many thousands of disloyal men, who are secretly conspiring against the rights and liberties of our people.  Men of all grades in society, from the lordly banker and merchant, the eloquent statesman and the ambitious politician, down to the lowest ruffian and assassin who infests the purlieus of our cities, are believed to be connected with this organization; their object being the advancement of their own ends, whatever they may be, even at the sacrifice of our government, our rights, our liberties and even our existence as a great and powerful nation.  Indeed, the cardinal object of the conspiracy seems to be the utter destruction of the Great Republic, and the establishment upon its ruins of a military despotism, or of an oligarchy, wherein the rich may lord it over the poor, making the laws which shall govern the “mudsills of society,” and dictating the terms upon which the great mass of the people of this broad land shall be permitted to exist.

There is good reason to believe that the chief seat of the power of the K. G. C. has recently been transferred from the Southern States to Canada, and that it has powerful allies among the mobility, bankers and merchants of England.  Having accomplished its great design at the South, by arousing the people to the fighting point, it leaves them in the hands of the military despots, who rule them with a rod of iron, joins hands with our foreign foes, and seeks by the foulest secret means, the overthrow of our liberties.  Our foreign enemies are banded together in this infamous league, by tens of thousands, and are vigorously at work, night and day, “at all times and all seasons, by fair means and by foul,” to accomplish the fulfillment of their long cherished hopes, and oft repeated predictions of the downfall of our Republican form of Government, the dismemberment of our Union, and the utter destruction of this last and greatest home of freedom for the oppressed nations of the world.

Men of America!  Who love your country with all its glorious memories, and all its bright prospect of future greatness, whose fathers freely shed their blood to secure to you and to your children the blessings of civil and religious liberty, those are facts! And you shall be convinced of them.  Your enemies are secretly at work in your very midst, and are in conspiracy with foreign emissaries to deprive you of the blessings which you have ever enjoyed under your paternal Government, and for the maintenance of which you may be compelled yet again to peril your lives and your fortunes.  Are you willing that this hellish conspiracy shall be permitted to go on undisturbed until the wicked traitors who are engaged in it shall have accomplished their designs, until you are bound hand and foot, and chained to the car of despotism by fetters that cannot be broken; or will you at once awake to a realization of the impending danger, and by a united effort strangle the monster?

For the purpose of exposing to the world the secret means by which this treasonable order has been so far successful in the accomplishment of its great end, the dismemberment of our Republic, this publication is made.  We have no wish, or design, to cause unnecessary alarm, or to arouse the passions; but our leading object is to convince the loyal people of the United States that their liberties are at this moment in greater danger from the secret enemies in their own midst, and the foreign enemies of our institutions who are in league with them, than from the armed hordes who are now in rebellion against the government.

The secrets of the K. G. C. are very carefully guarded, and we are not yet able to reveal to the world all that we could wish; but the work of investigation is in competent and faithful hands, and we hope that we shall be able hereafter to make known all the secret means by which this vile conspiracy is carried on.

The following exposition of the work of the K. G. C., was first published in the columns of the Louisville Journal, in July, 1854.  Of its authenticity there can be no doubt.  Geo. D. Prentice, Esq., the editor of the Journal, give his “solemn assurance as an editor and as a man,” that the documents from which he derived his information are authentic.  He asserts moreover, that he received them from a prominent Knight of the third degree.  The genuineness of these documents has never yet been denied by any man whose word can be regarded as valid testimony in the case.  Corroborative evidence was furnished in a violent newspaper quarrel, which occurred soon after the first publication was made, in which several “Knights of the 3d Degree” in the city of Louisville, were participants, the question in dispute being as to the authorship of the revelations made to Mr. Prentice.  After the warfare had subsided, he informed them that they were all mistaken, and that each one of the parties implicated was equally guiltless.

That the work, in many of its details, has been essentially changed since the first publication of this exposition, we are well aware.  But enough remains to convince the loyal people of the United States, that the objects and plans of the K. G. C., are inimical to the best interests of the country, and that this diabolical organization should be exposed in all its enormity, and crushed by the strong arm of power.  Since its introduction into the Northwestern States and Canada, the order has adopted a modus operandi materially differing from that herein revealed, and perhaps better suited to its new field of operations.  Its most active members are among the noisiest of the pretended friends of the Union; and there is reason to suspect that it has its emissaries in high and confidential positions in civil and military departments of our Government.  Its real designs are cloaked under a specious garb of patriotism, and of intense solicitude for the preservation of the Union and for the welfare of our people.  The revelations here made should convince the most incredulous that the true objects of the members of this order are of the basest sort; and that they are utterly unscrupulous as to the means by which their ends are to be attained.  They are banded together by the most solemn obligations, to obey the orders of their commanders, whatever they may be; and it is evident that human life is held to be of but little value, should it offer an obstacle to the accomplishment of the object sought.

[We omit the exposition published by the Journal, for want of space. – EDS. GAZETTE.]

That the K. G. C. planned the assassination of Mr. LINCOLN, either on his journey to the Capitol, or during the ceremonies of his inauguration, scarcely admits of a doubt.  The plot was discovered and revealed to his friends long before his departure from his home for the City of Washington, and was frustrated by the vigilance of his friends and the military precaution of Gen. SCOTT.

Enough has been revealed in regard to this wicked and treacherous organization to convince every man of sane mind that it is dangerous in the extreme; that it seeks the overthrow of our government, the disruption of the great American Union; the seizure, by fraud or by force, of the territory of our southern neighbors, with whom we are at peace, and the acquisition of an immense extent of territory in which slavery shall be made the leading institution, from which the free white laboring man shall be excluded, or in which he shall be reduced to the condition of a serf, and where a Paradise may be established for the exclusive benefit of the effete and bloated aristocracy of South Carolina, and the few despotic masters of the reckless cut-throats and ruffians who compose the rank and file of the K. G. C.

But our task is not yet done.  We propose now to give some evidence of the existence and thorough organization of this order among our neighbors of Canada, and among the nobility, aristocracy and moneyed classes in England.

From the first outbreak of the present rebellion the tone of the British Press toward the Government and people of the loyal portion of the United States, has been of the most hostile and ungracious character; and a careful comparison of the articles which have appeared in a majority of the leading British newspapers, with those published in the South, shows unmistakable evidence of identity of origin.  All have been dictated in the same spirit, and probably to a great extent by the same parties.  In the discussions arising out of the arrest of Slidell and Mason, the similarity of tone and temper was too palpable to be overlooked.  The British Press teemed with unfounded slanders upon our Government and people.  The public mind of England was inflamed by the publication of the most deliberate falsehoods, wholesale vituperation, and the fullest calumnies, such as could originate nowhere else than in the distempered brains of men who viewed everything from the Secession standpoint, and who were determined to accomplish, so far as was in their paper, the disruption of the Union by means of a foreign war, and the establishment of two separate confederacies within its limits.  That a large and powerful interest in England was determined on war with the United States, was perfectly plain.  Whence came these indisputable manifestations of hostility towards the United States, in consequence of an affair which every sensible man in England knew could and would be amicably arranged, and adjusted without a resort to arms?  Whence came the palpable and wicked falsehoods which were used to inflame the public mind against the only true friends that England ever had upon the face of the globe?  Whence came all the insult and vituperation against us, which disgraced the British Press and the British people in the eyes of the civilized world – whence but from the K. G. C. and its allies abroad?

The following letter is from the pen of a gentleman who has had ample opportunity to make himself acquainted with the facts whereof he writes, and who had devoted much time to the investigation of the secret and treacherous designs which he reveals.  His language shows him to be an intelligent man.  The statement which he makes is corroborated by proof which is within the reach of every man who is conversant with the tone of the British and Southern Press, and who closely watches events as they transpire.  This statement should be accepted as positive of the truth of the revelations made, unless disproved by evidence of the most convincing character.  Neither the word nor the oath of any member or number of members of the K. G. C. will suffice to refute this evidence of the treasonable character of the conspiracy in which they are engaged:

DEAR SIR.  Your note has been received asking for such information as I may have of the objects and working of the secret conclave of traitors in the Northern States, known as the “Knights of the Golden Circle” (K. G. C.) I have devoted considerable time and attention to this organization, and my opportunities have been very rare for gaining information.  And here let me say it is the sworn duty of every K. G. C. who is true to his obligation, to deny the existence of the organization, not generally by positive denials, but by heaping ridicule on the idea of such an organization, which implies that all Northern men are not loyal.  There is, however, ample and positive proof that the Order of K. G. C. is thoroughly organized in every Northern State, as auxiliary to the Southern rebellion.  It assumes various shapes and colors, yet all working under the same system of operations, and all aiming at the same end. – The designation of the “K. G. C.” having become unpopular on account of the known treasonable designs of that Order, is protean in its character, and sails under different cognomens to best effect its purpose – sometimes being the “Peace Party,” the “Union Party,” the “Constitutional Party,” the “Democratic Society,” “Club” or “Association,” the “Mutual Protection;” and, since the “Indiana leak,” as they call it, about the “M. P.’s,” they have chosen “S. P.” or “Self Protection,” as a name.  And since you ask for facts only, I may say it is properly a secret political treason party, as its members initiated are all most strictly limited to the known members of one political party.

THE IMMEDIATE OBJECT, is the overthrow of the Government established by our patriot sires, baptized in their life-blood, and handed down to us, to be forever defended and protected, as the best form of government ever given to man.  THE ULTIMATE OBJECT, the spoils of Office and the control of the Government, by the party which sustains the efforts of these “knights” of treason.  The great majority of the most active leaders are those who have heretofore emoluments of place in the Government, and which to be restored to power.  For this purpose they are willing to tear down the old fabric and erect a new one upon its ruins.  They have some definite plans of operation, and forming a strong network of treason around the Union, well calculated to draw in many true men, to be used by them unawares in carrying out their plots.  I will refer briefly to a few of the means they use:

1.  THEY WISH TO PROLONG THE WAR hoping that something may turn up to get their Southern rebel friends out of their position, without being made to acknowledge the supremacy of the Constitution and the Union.  They hope and work for a foreign war, to make that a pretext for stopping the domestic strife, and uniting against a common foe.  They are for prolonging the war also, for the purpose of tiring the patience of the country, while they can make a public sentiment ready to “compromise” with armed rebellion – to do anything honorable or dishonorable to stop the war.  To do this they appeal to the pockets of the people with exaggerated pictures of enormous taxes, and virtually say, that because it costs money to maintain the Union, we ought to surrender at discretion to the demand of those who have taken up arms in rebellion against it.

2.  THEY WORK BY TREACHERY. – Having first opposed the Government in asserting any authority to enforce the laws and maintain the Union and the Constitution, and done what they could to encourage the outbreak by tendering Northern sympathy and support in advance, they are now seeking to assist their friends in the Southern army, by getting themselves into positions to betray the Union cause for their benefit.  In the month of August last, immediately after the disaster of Bull Run, they marked out a new programme, and sent messengers through all the loyal States to give their friends – the K. G. C., the CUE for putting their new plan into extensive operation.  The treachery of their men at the head of a column of the Federal army, who turned the tide of battle against us at Bull Run, worked so well, that they determined at once, during the reorganization of our army, to fill it with their own men for similar future operations.  “Castles” were forthwith organized in all the States.  Those who had been vomiting treason among their loyal neighbors, to the full extent that public sentiment would tolerate, now very suddenly and mysteriously became seemingly loyal and patriotic, and are anxious for places to draw their swords in defense of the Union, and measure them with its rebellious foes.  They wanted to be decorated with epaulets.  They would serve as captains and from that up to Colonels of Regiments, Brigadier and Major Generals.  They wound a network of influence around Congress and the “powers that be,” to maintain men in the Departments, and to get others in, especially in the War Department – who were shining lights in the “Castles” of the K. G. C., for the avowed and express purpose of aiding the enemy by treacherously watching, and conveying the secrets of the Government to the rebel army. – Men were selected in the States, and sent hundreds of miles to Washington, with strong influences to back them, for this purpose.  Better to carry out their project, they adroitly raised the “No Party” cry, and by professing the most exalted and devoted loyalty, claimed the best places in which to betray the Union cause, for those who were trusted “Knights” – thus secretly plotting reason against the very cause that was to feed and clothe them!  Among the K. G. C. of the Third Degree they freely calculate their prospects of success from the “treachery” of Federal officers, and especially of officers in the Union army, who, if occasion presents, are to disobey orders, and screen themselves behind flimsy excuses for allowing the enemy to escape, when by acting in good faith, they might be defeated.  They point to the singular escape of Floyd and his crew in Western Virginia, after Rosecrans had so decoyed them into a position, that he was certain to bag the whole command, if orders had been executed by his subordinates.  At the time of the Ball’s Bluff disaster they also gave knowing winks to indicate that it was the fulfillment of a chapter in their programme to disgust and dishearten the loyal North, discourage any advance movements, and encourage the rebel army with the report of victory.  They claim a large number of officers of Companies, Regiments, and Brigades, and Divisions, secretly to be in their interests, and even have the audacity to whisper that Gen. McClellan understands their programme, and is not unfriendly to working up to it. They claim, also, a goodly number of friends and brethren in the officers of the Navy.  They deprecate the appointment of Stanton to the administration of the War Department, and regret that he is not one of their mystical number.  They fear that all the influences they can throw around him will not induce him to bend his policy to favor their projects; they are ever on the alert, and will make a concerted effort, by pretended confidence and flattery, to weave an influence around him that will partially capture him, and control his policy  They acknowledge their faint hopes, however, of being able either to induce him to become a “Knight,” or to lure him into their plausible scheme for the future control of the spoils of Government.

3.  PEACE CONVENTION AND NEW CONSTITUTION. – Another mode of arriving at their object, is a National Peace or Compromise Convention, is to be held when all thing are prepared.  The schedule is to call a convention of all the States, North and South, to arrive at an understanding, and compromise the difficulty upon a basis already fixed.  The basis is the Jeff. Davis Constitution of the Southern Confederacy – conceding and adopting some of its features, and yielding some of the important ones in our present instrument, as a “compromise.”  The main features of the compromise will be a constitutional recognition, guaranty, and protection of Slavery in the States and Territories, without distinction.  In the meantime, the country being tired and sick of war and taxes, they expect to manufacture a public opinion that will adopt their scheme.  To give popular strength to this “convention,” there is to be a most earnest and persistent effort to carry every local and State election this year against the administration, or War and Union party – so that it will appear that the country has changed, and is against the further prosecution of the war for the supremacy of the old Union and the old Constitution as it is; and that the party calling the “National Peace Convention” are the majority or dominant party, and represent the public will. Further to facilitate party success at the polls, and cover up or draw attention from their own treasonable plotting against the Government, they are to join in a united and harmonious howl of “ABOLITIONIST” against all loyal men who sustain the Administration and the war to crush the rebellion; for the purpose of trying to identify and stigmatize them with the sins, and the long odious (in the North) doctrines and sentiments promulgated by a band of fanatical disunionists headed by Garrison and Wendell Phillips – claiming that all whom they chose to call “Abolitionists,” including the whole party that elected the administration, and all who sustain it in the prosecution of the war, are equally “traitors” with those who are in arms against the Union; and if the life of a Southern man, caught in the overt act, is sacrificed, the life of an “Abolitionist” should balance the account.  While none but Southern men are in arms to overthrow the Government, the responsibility of the war is to be persistently charged upon the loyal North, which should be the first to offer terms of “peace” and “compromise.”  By throwing every obstacle in the way of the Government, added to secret treason, they hope to give plausibility, among the weak-minded, that whenever the control of the nation passes from their hands the country will get into trouble, and that the only party capable of governing the country is the one they lead – that peace and prosperity cannot return until they are restored to power.  “Look at the country in a civil war in less than three months after the change of rulers,” they say, with exulting triumph.  No means are to be left untried to “divide and conquer” the war party at the polls.  They have a systematic plan to discredit the Government in the eyes of the people.  They cry aloud about frauds, while they are busily employed seeking contracts for the very purpose of defrauding the Government, to give coloring to their charges!  If they cannot get original contracts, they seek sub-contracts from the friends of the Union, that the odium of their own dishonesty may fall on the shoulders of the War party.  They boast of having already used these tactics to great effect.  Doubting the ability of the Government to pay its liabilities, with a view of depreciating the public Securities and Treasury notes, the withdrawal of public confidence, and cutting off the supplies to carry on the war, is another favorite scheme.  It is seriously discussed in the “castle” meetings, whether they will not utterly refuse to pay the war tax, which they think will not only embarrass the Government, but create a great public excitement that may demand the discontinuance of further resistance to the rebellion.

The demand for the exchange of prisoners, upon the terms dictated by Jeff. Davis, was an effort for the recognition of the “Confederacy,” and to save the necks of the ringleaders of the treason when they are eventually caught (as they expect to be,) by claiming to be “prisoners of war” – “belligerents” – instead of traitors to their Government.  And when the war is over – whether the Union is re-established on its old basis, or upon the projected Jeff. Davis Compromise-Constitution – the K. G. C. party are to assume all the credit of ending the conflict through their influence, and of having been the special friends of the rebels during their rebellion, and thereby claim their political affinities and support in a consolidated party for the future control of the nation.  They will divide and distract the Union party by a hypocritical support and flattery of the President and his policy, to create distrust in the minds of the real friends of the Administration that it is not true to, and is about to abandon the party and the principles upon which it was raised to power.  In short, the schemes of the K. G. C. to overthrow the government, embrace the whole catalogue of strategy known to corrupt politicians.

4. FOREIGN INFLUENCE. – The K. G. C. are known to each other by secret signs and words.  They seldom trust any documents to the mails, but keep messengers constantly in the field, carrying information from one “Castle” (or “Club,” “Lodge,” Society,” &c.,) to another.  (The term “Castle” is the proper designation of the place where “Knights” congregate to concoct treason.)  There is the most perfect and uninterrupted communication between the South and England through this order.  Their principle avenue is through the Canadas, where they have numerous “Castles” and co-workers, as well as in Europe.  There are numerous Southerners located in Canada, as connecting links in the agency, and several of the employees of the Provincial railroads connecting with the States are the active agents and “messengers” of the secret treason against the Government.  At both ends of the Grand Trunk, the Great Western, the Buffalo & Lake Huron roads, these agents are busy, but mostly so on the Grand Trunk and the connecting lines into Vermont.  Several of the representatives of large British capitalists residing in Canada are known to be most active operators and sympathizers.  The Donneganna and St. Lawrence hotels at Montreal are the resorts of Southern rebels, where they are met and treated with great kindness and cordiality; also, at Quebec, Toronto, Hamilton, &c.  The K. G. C. claim to own, or have a controlling interest in nearly every leading newspaper in the Canadas.  In Canada, as in England, this organization, and sympathy with the rebellion, is confined to the feudal, aristocratic, and what they claim to be the ruling classes, viz: these “born to rule by royal prerogative.”  They dread the influence of Republican America; they consider her a rival power, dangerous to the extension of their own lease of monarchial rule, and are ready to seize upon the first favorable opportunity to assist in her overthrow – and thus demonstrate to their own subjects, already restless, if not clamorous, for many “reforms” approximating to our young Government, that the “model Republic” is a failure; that Democracy cannot constitute a permanent government; that nothing short of monarchical, or strong central government, can withstand the shock of ages.  The overthrow, or division and disruption of our government, would be pointed to as a fulfillment of the long-heralded prophecies of monarchists.  The active and adroit diplomacy of the rebel States, through their ablest men, knew well where to secure a strong foothold in Europe, and they struck with success.  They sought the association of aristocracy and capital, as the strong point to be gained, and hence to a large extent, have secured the tone of the aristocratic press without striking the responsive chord in the hearts of the great mass of the European people – the working and tax-paying classes, whose representatives are “reformers” – those who turn a listening ear to the musical strains of liberty and equality which float to them from across the Atlantic, and cause the inquiry why they cannot enjoy the same blessing without risking a perilous voyage from their native land to the New World, where all are “sovereigns,” and the rulers only the subjects and servants.  The K. G. C. never seem to lack money to send messengers on long journeys, and keep them constantly in the field, or do anything else they deem important.  This gives color to their claim that the European associated aristocracy are secretly furnishing large sums of money to second the base objects of the Southern rebellion.   I have no doubt of it.

5.  THE LAST RESORT — CIVIL WAR — ASSASSINATION! — But the most damnable and atrocious part of this dark plot is yet to be told, and if it does not arouse the languid patriotic blood now resting in security to stand united against the working of this foul treason, then, indeed, our liberties are in danger. The K. G. C, through this secret organization, have the blood-thirsty scheme of assassinating Northern Union men, and creating anarchy and civil war in the North, as a means of ending resistance to the rebellion!  Believing that other means will fail, they are already privately armed and arming for the conflict.

I have before stated as a part of the programme, that all Northern Union men who voted for Lincoln, or sustain the Government in a vigorous prosecution of the war to crush out the rebellion, are to be branded “ABOLITIONISTS,” ergo “traitors,” equally guilty with Jeff. Davis and his crew, because Garrison and Wendell Phillips and other fanatical Abolitionists, have been notorious and ignominious as disunionists.  “Let the Northern Abolition traitors and Southern Rebel leaders be hung up together, if at all,” is now the watchword. – “Let them perish in equal numbers, as the authors of the war.” – “The Abolitionists of the North must first be put down before the War can come to an end.”  The danger of a Northern uprising against the Government, if the war is not speedily brought to a close.”

“We are fighting our own brethren.”  “We are willing to compromise, but the Abolitionist will not.”  “The people will rise and fight before they will pay taxes to keep our soldiers killing our brothers in the South.”  “The Abolitionists are worse traitors, and more to blame than the South.” – “The Abolitionists must be cleaned out, and then we can have peace.”  “The people must rise and hang the Abolitionists at the same time the army put down the rebellion South.”

“Blood must flow in the North, as well as the South, before we get rid of the worst traitors to the Union.”  “Abolitionists must be put in Fort Warren as well as Southern men, if you want peace.”  These and numerous other similar dark and blood-foreboding expressions that may be heard in talking with high “Knights,” only go to fully corroborate the written evidence now before me, of a blood-thirsty plot to assassinate Union men to “secure the success of the South.”  I have seen and read the special dispatches of high “Knights,” sent from one castle to the high officials of another in which the whole programme of operations and the means to be used were elaborately laid down and commented upon, in which it is always distinctly stated that the only way to success in the North, is to secure the success of the South by a concerted action throughout the North, that the country must be tired and worried out with taxes and the horrors of a war, until a pretense is given to warrant a Northern civil war, and an uprising against the “Abolitionists,” as the cause of the beginning and continuance of the conflict.  Then the private arms are to be used.  Each K. G. C. is pledged to arm himself with a long knife and a revolving pistol.  They are also provided with a small dark pocket or police lamps.  One dispatch to a high functionary, stated that if secrecy and success attended the project – and he had no doubt on that score – it would prove a second Sicilian Vesper, which has referenced also to some of the test words of recognition.  “Are you going to Vespers?” – “Are you ready for Vespers?” is the sly way of asking each other if they are “armed” and “ready;” and also of asking a stranger if he is a K. G. C. – or if in a mixed crowd, any conversation in which the word “Vespers” is used indicates membership which leads to further tests.

I have heard the more desperate openly state that if this war is not closed in less than four months, “Abolition” blood would flow in every Northern city.  I am not permitted to go more into detail at this time.  I have given you but a faint outline of the plot, and the means to be used to overthrow the old Ship of State.  When it culminates into the assassination of Union men in the peaceful, loyal North, by a band of secretly organized traitors – when the bell shall toll for another Sicilian Vespers – when traitors shall shout their songs of rebellion as the signal for the Grand Carnival of Treason to commence, with one side secretly armed for the conflict – then the country will inquire with amazement, whether the events of March 30, 1282 are yet to have their counterpart here, in the year 1862, for no other crime than being loyal to the Government, and wishing to put down the most wicked and causeless rebellion that ever existed!  Then, perhaps, the Government will be aroused to the importance of not harboring vipers in its bosom to sting its very life-blood – then the loyal people will rise in their might and protect their own liberties, and woe to be unto those who have their lot cast with the K. G. C., or have followed their leadership.

These are startling developments, and will be vigorously hooted down by every K. G. C. who is true to his obligations.  Let it be so for the present. There are some among them who have yet an inkling of patriotism left, and cannot, and will not be bound to this wicked conspiracy.  It is to this source that you are indebted for the facts above stated – facts, which I will say to you, may be most implicitly relied upon, and the time will arrive when what I have stated will be verified, and much of the same character added to it.  At some future time, developments will be made that will satisfy you that I am no alarmist, and men high in the confidence of the people will be so connected with this secret treason, that the country will despise their memory.  In the mean time, let every loyal man, wherever he is, be watchful and vigilant for the signs that I have indicated, to the identify and mark the sure enemies of the Union, and in most cases the sure trade-marks of the K. G. C.  Their emissaries are busy and on the move.  The organization is extensive, penetrating the back woods and the plains.  In many cases, in remote places, one, two, or three trusted members, are all who are entrusted with the secrets, but they are busy in making and controlling opinion – in educating their partisans up to the proper point.  The New York “Caucasian” newspaper, sustained by a private fund of the order, is a special organ of the “Castles.”  The principal headquarters in the North, are Philadelphia, New York City, and Cincinnati.  They have a large number of small newspaper editors in their secrets, some of which have to be checked occasionally for too plain talk. * *

I have extended this communication to a far greater length than I had intended, but I could not well make it shorter and do the subject justice.  I submit it for your consideration, believing that you will discover many things in your State and vicinity to corroborate what I have said.  The Work of the K. G. C., as used here, is revised and changed from that used six months ago in the Southern States. – In the first degree but little of its real character is divulged.  It is simply represented as a “Society to oppose Abolitionists.”  Little by little the candidate is let into the vortex of treason.  I earnestly warn all good men against taking the first step.

Yours very truly, for the whole Union.
***.
__________

Fellow Citizens – Loyal Union-loving men of the United States! What think you of these things?  We have proved, upon testimony which you cannot reasonably doubt, the presence in your very midst, of a deadly conspiracy, which threatens your liberties, your rights as citizens, and even the existence of that Union which you so highly prize.  And yet the half has not been told.  There are other secrets of the K. G. C. yet to be revealed.  Those secrets are in the possession of those whose duty it is, and who have the power to punish the traitors who compose the organization; and if they do not perform that duty, we intend to make further disclosures.  For the present we must forbear.

That foul disease which traitors, thirty years ago, fastened upon the body politic, has grown to the proportions of a cancer of the most dangerous character.  It must be eradicated, or you will yet have occasion to mourn over the wreck of all your long cherish[ed] hopes of your country’s greatness and glory.  Traitors at home, leagued with enemies abroad, even now present the knife at the heart of your bleeding country. – Corruption, rank and poisonous, faithlessness and treachery in high places, disregard of the most sacred obligations of man to his fellow man and his God have born their legitimate fruits.  Treason stalks unblushingly through the land.  Artful intriguing politicians and unprincipled demagogues have brought your noble government to the verge of destruction.

Your patriotic, fathers through much of personal suffering, and untold sacrifices of blood and treasure, laid broad and deep, cemented in blood and baptized in tears, the foundations of this glorious fabric of free government, fondly cherishing the hope that it would stand to remotest ages, an asylum for the oppressed of all nations, a beacon to the weary victims of tyranny, and terror to the despotism of the Old World.  This priceless legacy must be preserved.  We cannot believe that you will prove recreant to your country, to posterity and to God.  We believe that the blood and treasure so freely expended in the suppression of the atrocious rebellion now rapidly reeling to its final doom, will bear yet more fruit – that you are ready yet again, if need be, to offer your lives and all that you possess, for the preservation of your Government, and for its establishment upon a basis so solid that it shall stand as a monument of human wisdom, and as the great bulwark of Christianity, Civilization and true Liberty, until time shall be no more!

– Published in the Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, April 12, 1862, p. 2

More About the K. G. C.

(From the Louisville Journal.)

A few days ago the subject of a letter written by a Dr. Hopkins in regard to a secret league of traitors in the non-slaveholding States under the name of the Knights of the Golden Circle was brought to the consideration of Congress.  Two members of the House of Representatives, Mr. Chandler and Mr. Howard, both of Michigan, attested the existence of the letter.  It has since been published in the Detroit Tribune and republished in some of the New York papers.  It gives an account of the success of Hopkins, its author, in organizing branches of the treasonable conspiracy in several of the States, and refers in very plain terms to its object, which is to rise against the Government of the United States and aid the rebels of the South in its overthrow.  Unquestionably the letter will now be laid before the public in a form that will preclude all dispute as to its genuineness.  For some time past we have not doubted the existence of a Northern rebel organization – small, to [be] sure, in numbers, but fierce and virulent in purpose. – We could name several newspapers which, beyond all question, in our mind, are conducted under its influence, and for the furtherance of its objects.  Those papers profess indeed to be loyal to the Union, for they are afraid of the swift retribution that they know would follow any open exhibition of treason; but they diligently devote themselves to the selection and publication of such matter as they deem calculated to dispirit the friends of the Union and to encourage the rebels, and they expect and find their reward in the liberal patronage of rebels in Kentucky, Missouri and elsewhere.

The New York Evening Post, one of the ablest and most respectable papers in the country, says that the testimony of the two Michigan members of Congress to the existence of the rebel conspiracy in the North was not necessary.  It says that the Knights of the Golden Circle have for months had their clubs in New York city – that the noted rebel General, Gustavus W. Smith, and his deputy, Lovell, belonged to it before they joined the Southern army.  It adds that so confident were these plotters at one time of success that they began to indulge in threats of vengeance against those who supported the United states Government, and it refers to the case of a prominent citizen, who, speaking zealously on all occasions against the heresy of Secession was given to understand that, if not more quiet, he would have his throat cut.  The post says we are on the eve of a Northern insurrection, and that there would have been one if the popular feeling in that section had not declared itself with irresistible energy on the side of the Constitution.

The Michigan members of Congress affirm that one of the effects of the conspiracy has been to get some of the worst enemies of the Union and the Constitution into the army, where they now are all working upon that high vantage ground, with all their might, in favor of the rebellion. – This may account for the conduct, otherwise inexplicable, of some of our military officers in high positions, and afford some clue to the deep mystery of the frequent promulgation, among the rebels, of the profoundest secrets of our military authorities at Washington and elsewhere.

– Published in the Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, April 12, 1862, p. 2

Thursday, December 27, 2012

Conspiracy Against the Government

In the Senate, March 25th, Mr. LATHAM said:

I have a resolution that I shall offer, and I beg the indulgence of the Senate while I make a brief preliminary statement, as I shall ask for its immediate consideration.  In the Boston Journal of Saturday evening, March 22, 1862, appeared the following article:


“TREASONABLE PLOT IN MICHIGAN. – The Detroit Tribune publishes a curious document revealing an attempt that in that State last fall to organize a league for the purpose of overthrowing the Federal Government.  This object is plainly avowed in a secret circular, which declares the purpose of the movement to be ‘to rise and unite if necessary, with the a--- (army) and the S----, (South,) overrun the N---- (North) like a hurricane, sweeping the A------------- (Administration) into eternity, or at least, driving them into complete and unconditional submission.’  The document is dated October 5, 1861, and says the league is doing a noble work in Maryland and among the soldiers at Fortress Monroe and that ‘President P----- (President Pierce) in his passage has drawn many brave and influential men to the league.’  The Tribune says the original of the document is now in the State Department at Washington, and that it led to the arrest and imprisonment of several persons in Fort Lafayette.  It was discovered that secret organizations existed in many towns in Michigan, and in numerous places in Canada West.”


This morning I received the following letter from ex-President Pierce:


CONCORD, N. H., March 24, 1862.

MY DEAR SIR:  I inclose a short notice from the Saturday evening edition of the Boston Journal, (March 22,) the substance of which it is quite probable you may have seen before.  Having originated in Michigan, and been reproduced in Boston, it can hardly be doubted that it has already secured a wide circulation.

The subject is not new to me.  It was the occasion of a correspondence between the Secretary of State and myself as early as December last.  I thought it reasonable to suppose, at the close of that correspondence, that the matter would cease to attract notice.

This expectation not having been realized, and the offensive charge alleged to be based upon a document, the original of which “is now in the State Department at Washington,” having been revived and extensively published, will you do me the favor to introduce in the Senate a resolution calling for the correspondence to which I have referred.

It will strike you, I am sure, both upon public and personal grounds, that such imputations should not be permitted thus to circulate unchallenged, especially when an answer to them, at least so far as I am concerned, has been for months upon the files of the first Department of the Government.

I am, very truly, your friend, &c.,

FRANKLIN PIERCE.

Hon. MILTON S. LATHAM, United States Senate, Washington, D. C.


Mr. President, I shall offer the resolution in my hand, and I trust the Senate will permit its consideration now, for I deem it nothing more than proper not only to this distinguished individual, but to the country.  That the truth in relation to this charge should be known, and if a malignant and base calumny, that it should be branded as such:


            Resolved.  That the Secretary of State be requested to transmit to this body copies of any correspondence which may have taken place between Hon. William H. Seward, Secretary of State, and Hon. Franklin Pierce, ex-President of the United States having reference to a supposed conspiracy against the Government.


Mr. CHANDLER.  Mr. President –

The VICE PRESIDENT. The Senator will allow the Chair first to ascertain whether there is any objection to the consideration of the resolution.

Mr. CHANDLER.  I wish to make some remarks in regard to the resolution.

The VICE PRESIDENT.  They are not in order unless the resolution is before the Senate.

Mr. HOWARD.  I hope there will be no objection to it.

Mr. CHANDLER.  A copy of that letter was furnished by me to the State Department, I think as early as November last, and it has been in my hands since the 7th or 8th day of October.  I should desire to read to the Senate the whole of the letter which that is an extract, but it is at my room, and I have not got it with me at this time.  The organization was most treasonable and infamous; it was wide spread; and it received the attention of the State Department, as I think it should have done.  The writer of that identical article – a Dr. Hopkins – was on his way to accept a commission as surgeon in the Federal Army when he was arrested and sent to Fort La Fayette.  About that time “the Knights of the Golden Circle,” as I was informed and believe, came to the resolution that they would be more patriotic than anybody else; that they would rush into the Federal army; that they would put men, if possible, in every regiment of the Federal army; and to my certain knowledge, they did succeed in getting a large number of the worst traitors in the United States into the Federal army; and they are there now.  This man Hopkins acknowledged the writing of this letter, but undertook to call it a joke.  Well, sir, it was a pretty serious joke.  I have, perhaps, more information than it is necessary for me to divulge at this time in reference to this matter.

Mr. LATHAM.  I do not wish to gainsay anything the gentleman has said.  What I wish, and what I feel is due to the Government and the country is to know whether a person who has filled the highest office within the gift of the American People, an ex-President of the United States, was in any manner connected with such an organization.  It is due to him, and it is due to the country, that it should be known whether such is the fact; and that is simply the object of my resolution.

Mr. HOWARD.  I am very glad, Mr. President, that the Senator from California has presented this resolution.  I think it is alike due to ex-President Pierce and to the country that the facts, so far as they are attainable at the State Department, should be obtained by the Senate and spread out before the country.  I do not undertake to say, nor to intimate, that the papers to which allusion is made by the Senator from California, will in any way implicate ex-President Pierce.  I do not know how that may be; I will not undertake to say.  That there is such a letter has been referred to by my colleague is certainly true; for I have seen the original with my own eyes; or that which is called the original.  I believe, however, that the resolution of my friend from California does not require a copy of that particular letter – the letter of Dr. Hopkins.  I would inquire of him whether it is broad enough to cover that letter.  It calls simply for any correspondence that may have taken place between ex-President Pierce and the State Department, and I think stops there; but I may be mistaken.

Mr. LATHAM.  At the suggestion of the Honorable Senator from Michigan, I will amend my resolution, so as to add at the conclusion of it, “and all other papers relating to the same.”

Mr. HOWARD.  I hope that amendment will be made, so that we may have all the documents before the Senate.  I will go further. – I do not know that my friend form California will – and suggest to him to extend his resolution so far as to require the production of any written or printed document in the possession of the executive department of this Government relating to the organization and purpose of a secret combination known commonly as the Knights of the Golden Circle.  I will not move such an amendment now myself; but I suggest it to him, and if he will move it, I shall be very glad to have him do that also.

Mr. LATHAM.  I think the resolution is broad enough as it is.  That might involve matters which the State Department might not deem conducive to the public interest to lay before this body.  I should certainly vote for such a resolution if that were brought in independently of my own; but I think it is embarrassing the resolution I now offer.

Mr. HOWARD.  I will not offer it myself, I am quite satisfied with the extent of the resolution as amended by my friend from California.  I hope it will pass.

Mr. CHANDLER.  Will the Secretary read the resolution as it now stands.

The Secretary read it as follows:


            Resolved.  That the Secretary of State be directed to transmit to this body copies of any correspondence which may have taken place between Hon. William H. Seward, Secretary of State, and Hon. Franklin Pierce, ex-President of the United States, having reference to a supposed conspiracy against the Government, and all other papers relating to the same.


The resolution was agreed to.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, April 5, 1862, p. 2