Knights of the Golden Circle, Order of the Lone Star, and Northern Mexico

Mexico

Here’s an excerpt from David C. Keehn’s new book Knights of the Golden Circle: Secret Empire, Southern Secession, Civil War that sheds light on the KGC and their activities in Northern Mexico:

“U.S. filibusters had long been lusting after Mexico’s four northern-tier provinces – Nuevo León, Coahuila, Chihuahua, and Sonora. These provinces were barren and sparsely populated, but Sonora, as well as Guanajuato Province to the immediate south, were rich in silver, gold, and other minerals. In 1840, Texans had backed an attempt by Mexican Federalist Party leaders, including northern strongman Vidaurri, to declare independence from Mexico’s central government and create an independent “Republic of the Rio Grande” to include the four provinces. This was nipped in the bud by Mexico’s central army, but between 1849 and 1859, five separate U.S.-based filibuster expeditions had been launched to try to wrest portions of Mexico’s northern provinces. Participants in each risked the outcome of the 1857 expedition into Sonora led by California state senator Henry Crabb. In Crabb’s unfortunate case, the Mexican army captured and systematically executed him and his company of one thousand men.

Bickley and the KGC sought to use the shaky position of the Liberals to advance their goal of expansion southward. Northern Mexican stongman Santiago Vidaurri was a committed KGC supporter and actively cooperated with its leaders. Manuel Doblado, second in command of the Liberal army and governor of Guanajuato Province, also had reportedly reached an understanding with the KGC’s emissaries. “We have the invitation of four [Mexican] State Governors to come and shall receive their cooperation if only we take care of the people of those States.” 

The Knights of the Golden Circle grew out of an older established group based in Texas called the Order of the Lone Star:

“To continue the mission of freeing Cuba from Spanish rule and eventually annexing it to the United States as a slaveholding territory, Cuban ex-patriots and southern adventurers formed the Order of the Lone Star in 1851 at the offices of the pro-expansionist Lafayette (La.) True Delta newspaper. John Henderson, a Mississippi cotton planter and U.S. senator, formulated the OLS ritual, and Pierre Soule, another U.S. senator from Louisiana, served as its president.

The OLS, like its KGC successor, was organized in a hierarchical fashion with three degrees, including the military degree at the bottom and a fund-raising benevolent degree above that. At the apex was the political degree, with the goal of supporting U.S. political candidates who would advance the society’s filibustering and proslavery objectives. A supreme council governed the group’s overall policy. …

Ford described the OLS’s secret initiation ceremony as highly ritualistic, with candidates passing through a succession of increasingly solemn steps incorporating cabalistic passwords. The final step was a dramatic conclusion that Ford said ended with something the initiate would never forget. An observer of a Lone Star encampment at Richmond, Virginia, similarly described the initiation ceremony as a “magnificent spectacle” that pantomimed with López expedition.”

The Knights of the Golden Circle became a mass membership organization by merging with the Order of the Lone Star:

“During his sojourn across the South, George was somehow able to convince the leaders of a preexisting southern society called the “Order of the Lone Star” (OLS) to merge with his Knights. This had truly an exponential impact since the OLS already had more than fifteen thousand members and at least fifty chapters spread across ten southern states with large concentrations in Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and Alabama. It also had chapters in northern port cities including Baltimore and New York, where it operated out of Tammany Hall and the Empire Club. This merger with the OLS suddenly transformed Bickley’s nascent KGC into a truly powerful force with far-flung members and prestige.”

About Hunter Wallace 12378 Articles
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22 Comments

  1. Re: Mosin

    Are you saying that southerners would think and vote differently if only they were not part of the United States?

    The presidency is a national office.

    In order to become president, you have to win the electoral college, which means that you can’t just win 1/3 of the country. Any Southerner running for president has to compete in the North and West.

    But southerners DID choose and create these evil liberal leaders, who eventually came to rule over ALL the states as “Commander in Chiefs” for many years!

    Every Southerner who runs for the presidency has to move to the left in order to pander to Northern voters to get elected. Similarly, Northerners have to pretend to be more moderate and conservative than they really are.

    If the Union was dissolved, we would no longer have to play this stupid game. Yankees would have no influence over our elections and the political spectrum would shift massively to the right because they would no longer be part of the electorate.

  2. “Every Southerner who runs for the presidency has to move to the left”

    Obviously I was referring to southern elections, IN southern states, for southern state offices, in which southern voters choose all by themselves to elect liberals from among themselves, like Carter, Clinton, Gore, Edwards, Lindsay et al. As I wrote above, “southerners DID choose and create these evil liberal leaders, who eventually came to rule over ALL the states as ‘Commander in Chiefs’ for many years”, and shall we type out a complete list? Not necessary, since it is all commonsensical. Now back to my question: “Are you saying that southerners would think and vote differently if only they were not part of the United States?” — Restated: Do you really think that once the Union finally lets go (assuming it does), no more liberal leaders like Clinton, Gore, etc. will be born, bred and elected by genuine southern stock to their “con-federal” (not a real word but a pun) and state offices?

  3. “Every Southerner who runs for the presidency has to move to the left in order to pander to Northern voters to get elected.”

    There is plenty moving to the right, pretending to be conservative or moderate, by liberals, to get elected in the northern states. Some of us have been fooled/disappointed many times until we learned.

  4. Buried by the Derek Black frenzy, my question (see above: Mosin Nagant, July 17, 2013 at 5:50 pm) still stands.

  5. I’m not much interested in trying to convince anti-Southern Americans that their Empire is evil and anti-White and that my people have always been the real bastion of traditionalism and pro-White support in the failed Leftist experiment that is the USA. Who cares what people in Chicago and Vermont and Oregon think? I don’t. Most of them are anti-White and anti-Southern anyhow. The ones who agree with us will come to that conclusion on their own based on their readings and experiences. And if they do, great. I always welcome allies. But most will not, and that’s fine too.

  6. If “my people have always been the real bastion of traditionalism and pro-White support in the failed Leftist experiment that is the USA”, HOW IS IT THAT THEY ELECT FROM AMONG THEMSELVES such consistent leftists as LBJ, Carter, Clinton, Gore, Edwards, Lindsay et al — some of whom became or almost became “Commander in Chiefs” to rule over the rest of us (as I asked before in preceding comments) ?

  7. “I’m not much interested in trying to convince anti-Southern Americans that their Empire is evil and anti-White and that my people have always been the real bastion of traditionalism”

    Southern Americans ALSO need to be convinced that the Empire is evil, and you all must stop being the main bastion of support for Globalist imperialism! Replacing one Globalist Empire based in Washington with another globalist “Golden Circle” elitist empire based in Richmond will not really change anything, but only serve to divide and conquer white nationalisms everywhere. Secession from the evil Empire is a good goal for ALL white and Christian peoples, but consider what are you seceding INTO!

  8. Southerners are not Americans – not in the sense that ‘America’ is a universalist proposition nation dedicated to equality. Name all the Leftists from the South that you want. You know how extremely disingenuous that argument is when the South is universally recognized as far more Rightists than the non-South USA and when most of those Leftists you can name were more strongly supported by non-Southerners than by my people. Read any article on a Leftist website about the South and it is full of hatred against us for being supposedly evil Rightwing ‘racists’ who oppose all the ‘Progress’ of America. If Vermont were independent it would have a Leftist, anti-White government even though it’s nearly all White. Meanwhile, if Mississippi were independent it would have a Rightists, pro-White government even though it’s nearly half non-White. The reality of this may be lost upon you, but not most others. Like I said, I’m tired of trying to demonstrate this to people who hate us anyhow.

  9. Americans chisel fine sounding words on stones, create fine monuments for these fine stones and proceed to worship them. If you believe in their fine sounding words, you’re free to colonize their country and displace the existing peoples. If don’t believe in their fine sounding words, they will attack and kill you sooner or later.

    Southerners aren’t like that at all. They are about kith and kin and mind their own business. The South is about as different from propositional America, as you can get.

  10. “most of those Leftists you can name were more strongly supported by non-Southerners than by my people”

    They were/are full-blooded southern liberals elected to southern state offices by Southerners in the first place, before some of them went on to become Emperors. Furthermore, southern white voters are some of the MOST enthusiastic supporters of the Empire’s global imperialism.

    “I’m tired of trying to demonstrate this to people who hate us anyhow.”

    It is a grievous mistake to assume that whites north of the Line hate whites south of the Line.

    “Southerners are not Americans”

    Yet they self-identify as such more than any other demographic group. Check the Census statistics. Perhaps there is a better term than “American” to identify our indigenous white population, the white descendants of the original, Protestant northwestern European white settlers.

  11. Once again Mosin Nagant disregards half of the argument in order to essentially attack a straw man. For example, the point on Southerners not being Americans in the sense that ‘America’ is a universalist proposition nation dedicated to equality. Prgo-White Joe apparently read and understood the second half of that sentence and the argument. Mosin Nagant was apparently too eager to attack to consider the point. I’m through responding to you, MN, because of this. It’s as pointless as responding to Chris313 – perhaps more so.

  12. Mosin – I am al for Nationalism. I believe in the right of a People to BE a distinct People. If enough White Southerners SAY and BELIEVE and ACT, to be White Southerners – then White Southerners they ARE.

  13. “not Americans – NOT IN THE SENSE THAT (my caps) ‘America’ is a universalist proposition nation dedicated to equality”

    I understood that fully, but offered an interesting aside that southerners more than any consider themselves “American” people, rather than Italian, German, Polish, etc.

    It seems clear you don’t reject the term “American” entirely, but may prefer to use the more specific term “Southerner” or “Southron”, as ProWhiteJoe does.

    In any case, I don’t like the term Amerikan either, with all its evil universalist empire connotation. We might agree on that.

    But you don’t want a nation dedicated to the proposition of equality, and I don’t want a nation dedicated to rule by an elite over white and multiracial underclasses.

  14. “I am al for Nationalism. I believe in the right of a People to BE a distinct People. If enough White Southerners SAY and BELIEVE and ACT, to be White Southerners – then White Southerners they ARE.”

    Exactly.

  15. “Southerners are not Americans”

    My impression of America is pretty much the North and the West.Southerners is known as the Confederation Dixie.

  16. I’m through responding to you, MN, because of this.

    I don’t even bother reading his posts anymore. If I see his name I just keep scrolling down.

  17. Long Live Dixie, don’t read and you won’t risk disturbing the anti-(northern-)White mindset. Otherwise, if you read and think, it may be too “hard for you to kick against the pricks” of conscience.

  18. “I don’t even bother reading his posts anymore. If I see his name I just keep scrolling down.”

    Sage advice, LLD. Thanks.

    Deo Vindice

  19. From Oklahoma to the Carolinas we have a common understanding which those from out of our great states cannot and will never understand. Fellow Southerners, consider that we are the true Americans as the intent of the constitution was clearly state /nation sovereignty. Just as our southern forefathers, I am an American not a United Statesian intent on rebuilding the all powerful tower of babble which God will again break apart and we will be free to be a people.

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