The KGC Theory Again

[L Verge]

My apologies to Bill - I left out half of his response to me. Here is the rest of your history lesson for the day:

Jesse James did not ride with Quantrell. Frank James did. Jesse rode with Bloody Bill Anderson and Dave Pool and the like. And Jesse did not bury his loot for the future CSA--he spent it on his family. He had to live, too. I remember Getler from some televised gold hunts on the Hist Chan either in the South or in Kansas. Nothing was ever found. And several people have dug up various places like Brownwood, Texas, to no avail but the spending of thousands of dollars on backhoes.

I would swear that Jesse's body has been dug up several times in several places and the bones proved to be at best inconclusive with DNA studies. Also on the Hist Chan. But this much is true, the KGC was big in Secession all over the South as an organization and Texas Reconstruction, but as individuals not as an organization. The KKK in Texas was not part of Nathan Bedford Forrest's Klan, its nightriders were separate in every way, but just as deadly. The Knights of the Rising Sun even had blacks members--how's that!

And JWB did not die at Garrett's farm? Great Nate Orlowitz and Arthur Ben Chitty! I cannot remember how many tales of JWB living I have read and the only one that made any sense to me was Forresters' in 1939.

And now for General J O Shelby. Jesse, Quantrell, and all really never rode with Shelby. Instead they served as scouts during Price's Missouri Raid in 1864, and reported to Shelby who lead much of Price's cavalry. They were defeated at Pilot Knob and the Marais de Cygnes. Also Shelby crossed he Rio Grande with Brigade of several regiments not a regiment as said in this show. Price was the head of the KGC in Missouri, however.

As for killing Lincoln to stop the formation of the Golden Circle, dos anyone think that President US Grant would have let them get away with anything like that? I do not believe that Grant was threatened with assassination at any time during his presidency. Oh, yeah, Grant would not have had big retinue with him as guards at Ford's theater any more than did Lincoln, had Mrs Grant allowed them to go with the President that fateful night. She would not be in the same space as Mary Todd Lincoln on a bet. Anyone Grant traveled with would have been seated in the regular audience--no more room in the Lincoln box.

I recommend for reading, Steven C. Bullock, Revolutionary Brotherhood: Freemasony and the Formation of the American Social Order, 1730-1840 (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1996), the Hist Chan did a program or two on that book which are worthwhile; and David C. Keehn, Knights of the Golden Circle: Secret Empire, Southern Secession, Civil War (Baton Rouge: LSU press, 2013), he is a Surratt Society Member and quite a nice fellow to talk to, too. His bibliography will lead one to several books on the KGC. I have such biblios in my Historical Dictionary of the Old South (Lanham: Scarecrow, 2013, 2nd ed.), under "Filibustering," and "The Expansion of Slavery at Home and Abroad."

Bill