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

2. Formal Organization

17 2 FORMAL ORGANIZATION A t least one active castle of the Knights was operating in Baltimore by early 1859, when Bickley arrived. It existed in the south central neighborhood near St. Vincent’s Church, where Wilkes Booth had grown up in a townhouse on Exeter Street. Among the castle’s members were Samuel Street, a schoolmate of Booth, and the O’Laughlen brothers.1 Michael O’Laughlen, a close friend of Booth, would later become one of the conspirators Booth enlisted in his Civil War plot to abduct the sitting president , Abraham Lincoln. It is likely that Booth became a∞liated with this castle when he returned to Baltimore from his acting stint in Richmond.2 Robert Charles Tyler, the commander of the KGC’s Maryland regiment, also joined the KGC in Baltimore in early 1859. Tyler, then working as a clerk, had been raised in Baltimore in a lower-class household. He had recently returned from Nicaragua, where he had served for the preceding three years as a first lieutenant of infantry for William Walker’s filibustering expedition. During 1859, Tyler invested two thousand dollars of his own money in the Knights. In soliciting a potential KGC recruit from Boston , Tyler advised: “We all expect to be benefitted by being members, and if you enter the lists you will be rewarded according as your ability and zeal in the working for us may justify. In this organization, merit, not pride of family name or date of commission will have any influence whatever, it rests with the individual man himself to decide whether he reaps a rich reward or not.”3 KGC member Cypriano Ferrandini, the Baltimore barber and militia drillmaster who would lead the February 1861 plot to assassinate Lincoln, also appears to have joined the organization at this time.4 knights of the golden circle 18 After arriving in Baltimore, Bickley employed his superb writing and editing abilities to produce an eight-page pro-expansionist newspaper titled the American Cavalier: A Military Journal Devoted to the Extension of American Civilization.5 The first (and perhaps only) issue, dated May 28, 1859, is an eclectic array of articles on Manifest Destiny, definitions of “Fillibustero ” and “Political Words,” military tactics, as well as reports from correspondents in Cuba, Mexico, and other locations. In an article titled “What We Mean by American Civilization,” the editor notes that it is “our duty to enlarge the area of its influence until the whole Continent shall be thus Americanized.” Downplaying Cuba as an expansion target, the paper indicates that another U.S. filibustering attempt was impossible there due to Spanish vigilance . It also notes that the “golden chance” to purchase that island from Spain by the Buchanan administration had slipped away due to “timid and unfriendly counsels” (as well as Republican and Spanish intransigence). It concludes: “There is no reason . . . that can be advanced for the acquisition of Cuba, which is not ten-fold more cogent for our exercising control over Mexico.”6 The paper accordingly includes a May 8, 1859, letter from “76” [Bickley ], who purports to be in Vera Cruz, the capital of Mexico’s Liberal faction on its eastern seacoast. Bickley indicates that contrary to the popular belief that Mexico is a poor nation, it is a country rich in mineral and other wealth, but its corrupt rulers have continually robbed these from its people. He reports that in Mexico, there is an indigenous U.S. party as well as German and Swiss colonists who “really desire peace and good Government.” Bickley notes that while the Liberal faction in Mexico, headed by Benito Juárez, hopes for assistance from the U.S. government, the U.S. Congress is unlikely to provide this directly and “would do well to let the job by contract [i.e., support the Knights’ colonization drive].” He predicts that one of the two warring parties in Mexico’s raging civil war will, “in desperation . . . invite private assistance from the Americans.” In an article titled “The Question of Mexican Interference,” the editor [Bickley] tries to spur U.S. military men (such as Quitman’s followers) into action: The fact is we want a fight, but how to get it is the question. The warhorse is saddled, but he has no rider; the cannon is charged, with no one to fire it. 19 formal organization While this is the case here, the Mexicans have just about...