Knights of the Golden Circle — A Video Map Guide

European colonialism and dependence on slavery had declined more rapidly in some countries than in others. The Spanish possessions of Cuba and Puerto Rico and the Empire of Brazil continued to depend on slavery, as did the Southern United States. In the years before the American Civil War, the rise of support for the abolition of slavery was one of several divisive issues in the United States. The slave population there had continued to grow due to natural increase even after the ban on international trade. It was concentrated in the Deep South on large plantations devoted to cotton and sugar cane commodity crops. Still, it was the basis of agricultural and other labor throughout the southern states. Prior to the formal foundation of the KGC, as early as 1834, there were numerous unaffiliated so-called "Southern Rights Clubs" throughout the South. These clubs created programs for the development of the South, advocated for the reopening of the slave trade – one went so far as to man and equip a slaver ship – and pushed for the extension of slavery into the organized territories of the United States. The clubs, which met regularly, had secret signs by which members could recognize each other.

George Washington Lafayette Bickley, a doctor, newspaper editor, adventurer, and "somewhat itinerant promoter" who was born in Virginia and lived in Cincinnati, Ohio, founded the association, organizing the first castle, or local branch, in Cincinnati in 1854. However, records of the KGC convention held in 1860 state that the organization "originated at Lexington, Kentucky, on the fourth day of July 1854, by five gentlemen who came together on a call made by Gen. George Bickley". Hounded by creditors, Bickley left Cincinnati in the late 1850s and traveled through the eastern and southern United States, promoting an armed expedition to Mexico. The KGC's original goal was to colonize the northern part of Mexico and add it to the U.S. as multiple states, either by negotiation with Mexican President Benito Juarez, or by force; part of the West Indies would also be annexed. This would expand the power of the slavery states, which was felt to be jeopardized by the growing population and power of the northern states. Potentially 25 new slave states could be added to the U.S. If the northern states refused to acquiesce to these annexations, the new territory could be added to the Southern states, creating a tropical empire, a "golden circle". The membership of the KGC, scattered from New York to California and into Latin America, was never large. Bickley received little encouragement on this journey, except in Texas, since attention in the South was focused on the 1860 United States presidential election and the possible election of a slave-owning Democrat, John C. Breckinridge. An alleged secret history of the Knights of the Golden Circle published in 1863 The KGC remained fairly obscure until 1858, when it began to be heavily promoted. An organizational meeting was held in White Sulphur Springs, Virginia in August 1859, and the group began to grow quickly af

Several members of President James Buchanan's administration were members of the order, as well as Virginia's secessionist Senator James M. Mason.: 102–104 The Secretary of War, John Floyd and of Treasury, Howell Cobb, were members of the circle, in addition to Vice President John Breckinridge. Floyd received instructions from the Order to "seize Navy-yards, Forts, etc. while KGC members were still Cabinet officers and Senators". The plan was to prevent Lincoln from reaching Washington by capturing him in Baltimore, a city with strong Southern sympathies, where the transfer of Lincoln's train from one railroad line to another had to be done by having horses pull the train cars through the street, presenting an opportunity to kill or kidnap Lincoln. Having disposed of the president-elect, the District of Columbia would be occupied, and Breckinridge installed as president. This plot was just one of the various conspiracies investigated by the Pinkerton Detective Agency, acting as railroad security for part of Lincoln's trip from Springfield, Illinois to Washington to be inaugurated.

With the onset of the American Civil War, it was difficult for the KGC to garner support for their filibustering schemes, since the South needed to expend its resources on preparing for war with the Union. Several KGC "castles" joined the Confederate Army as a group, and in early 1863 Bickley gave up his leadership of the organization to become a surgeon in a regiment from North Carolina. He was arrested by the Union as a Confederate spy later that year, and was jailed until October 1865 without being tried. Southwest In 1859, future Confederate States Army brigadier general Elkanah Greer established KGC castles in East Texas and Louisiana. Although a Unionist, United States Senator Sam Houston introduced a resolution in the U.S. Senate in 1858 for the "United States to declare and maintain an efficient protectorate over the States of Mexico, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, and San Salvador." This measure, which supported the goal of the KGC, failed to be adopted. In the spring of 1860, Elkanah Greer had become general and grand commander of 4,000 Military Knights in the KGC's Texas division of 21 castles. The Texas KGC supported President of the United States James Buchanan's policy of, and draft treaty for, protecting routes for U.S. commerce across Mexico, which also failed to be approved by the U.S. Senate. With the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, the Texas KGC changed its emphasis from a plan to expand U.S. territory into Mexico to focus its efforts on providing support for the Southern States' declared secession from the United States. On February 15, 1861, Ben McCulloch, United States Marshal and former Texas Ranger, began marching toward the U.S. Army arsenal at San Antonio, Texas, with a cavalry force of about 550 men, about 150 of whom were Knights of the Golden Circle (KGC) from six castles.[

In The Idea of a Southern Nation (1979), historian John McCardell called the KGC "that most bizarre offshoot of Southern expansionism." He wrote: In reality, the influence of the K.G.C. was practically nonexistent. ... Viewed in isolation, the K.G.C. would seem to be an aberration hardly deserving attention. But viewed in the context of the developments of the 1850s, the organization seems perhaps the logical extension of Southern expansionist rhetoric."

The Los Angeles Times noted that one theory, among many, on the origin of the Saddle Ridge Hoard of gold coins is that it was cached by the KGC, which "some believe buried millions in ill-gotten gold across a dozen states to finance a second Civil War".

George W. L. Bickley founded the KGC, so he is a known member, but as a secret society, its membership cannot otherwise be known with accuracy. The following people have been suggested as possibly having been members, with differing degrees of certainty: Asbury Harpending, a San Francisco financier, who joined in a failed conspiracy to create a "Pacific Republic" in California and Oregon, and with other members of the KGC outfitted a schooner as a Confederate privateer. John Wilkes Booth, assassin of Abraham Lincoln; other conspirators may also have been members. John C. Breckinridge, Vice President of the United States before the Civil War, and the candidate of the Southern Democrats in the 1860 presidential election won by Lincoln. Howell Cobb, Secretary of the Treasury under U.S. President James Buchanan. John B. Floyd, 31st Governor of Virginia and U.S. Secretary of War under James Buchanan, who preceded Lincoln as president; after secession, he became a Confederate General. Nathan Bedford Forrest, a slave trader who became a Confederate General, and later the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Parker H. French, adventurer, entrepreneur, swindler and spy for the confederacy. French had interest in the KGC and was tried, but was not convicted, of being a member. Elkanah Greer, an antebellum cotton planter and merchant, and then a general in the Confederate States Army. Sam Houston, a leader of the Americans in the war for Texas' independence from Mexico, later a U.S. Senator and governor of the state of Texas at the time of secession. Jesse James, Confederate "bushwhacker" who after the Civil War robbed trains and banks. Other members of the James-Younger Gang may also have been involved in the KGC. Lambdin

In November 1950, the anthology radio drama Destination Freedom recapped the early history of the Knights in the episode "The Golden Circle". In the novel Bring the Jubilee (1953) by Ward Moore, a victorious Confederacy annexes all of Latin America in the late 19th century (renaming Mexico City as "Leesburg"), leading to a mid-20th-century cold war with the German Empire, the world's only other superpower. The Night of the Iron Tyrants (1990–1991), written by the novelist Mark Ellis and drawn by Darryl Banks, is a four-part comic book miniseries based on The Wild Wild West television series. It features the Knights of the Golden Circle in an assassination plot against President Ulysses S. Grant and Dom Pedro II of Brazil during the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition of 1876. In the Southern Victory Series (1997–2007) by Harry Turtledove, the Confederacy's post-war territorial expansion into Latin America amounts only to the purchase of Cuba from Spain in 1878 and the purchase of Sonora and Chihuahua from the Second Mexican Empire in 1881, to construct a transcontinental railway and establish a Confederate naval presence in the Pacific. In the 1890s, the Confederacy attempted to build the Panama Canal but was dissuaded by an ultimatum from Union President Alfred Thayer Mahan. The KGC are the villains of the 2003 graphic novel Batman: Detective No. 27 by Michael Uslan and Peter Snejbjerg. The 2004 film C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America explores the results of a Southern victory in the Civil War and posits the Golden Circle as a plan enacted after the war. The KGC are portrayed as conspirators in the Lincoln assassination in the 2007 Disney movie National Treasure: Book of Secrets. In the 2012 film Lincoln, the KGC is indirectly alluded to by President Lincoln to Thaddeus Stevens of the Radical Republicans. Lincoln specifically states that slavery would "spread out