The KGC Theory Again

[L Verge]

I may have had my head underground for awhile because I was not aware of this program that I just watched on the computer completely by accident. I found it interesting because I'm interested in the KGC, but it should be taken with a grain of salt. I have actually had several phone conversations with Warren Getler, who is featured in this. Would like to have conversations with the Mark Stout from CIA and Spy Museum - he seems the most legit, and I am interested in the Northwest Conspiracy. I also want to know what David Keehn thinks about this. I know that he is aware of Mr. Getler.

Claims that Surratt and Stanton could have been KGC are a little far-fetched. Bill, tell us your thoughts about Shelby. I only know him as a good Confederate general.


http://xfinitytv.comcast.net/watch/Ameri...aunearthed

[L Verge]

I asked for Bill Richter's thoughts on Gen. Shelby, and got a lot more history to boot - which is what I love about my favorite codger. This is being posted with his permission:

Hell, Laurie, I am going to give you my thoughts on this whole thing, not just General J. O. Shelby.

Now anyone who knows me or has read my stuff on Booth and the Confederacy knows that I am an unreconstructed Confederate, if there ever was one. I have been accused by a fellow student from LSU of writing Confederate history in my treatment of Texas Reconstruction. At least he did not call me some of the epithets others have used.

Mind you, I agree with Scott Wolter that a lot of US history did not happen the way we all were taught. But this Scott Wolter piece is really bad news. It takes a bunch of unrelated incidents and ties them together with suppositions and a liberal use of the word "might" to make them sound true and related. He does this on a lot of things--I have followed his show over the years. What follows is just off the top of my head with no real research, as most of my Forum posts were, and for which I was roundly and constantly criticized for knowing next to nothing by my professed betters, and for which they were correct.

First of all, John H Surratt, Jr., did not introduce JWB to his whole gang. JWB knew Arnold and O'Laughlen from boyhood, and Dr Samuel Mudd introduced JWB to Surratt.

Any history of the KGC leads one to suspect that they were a bunch of disorganized weirdos--dangerous under certain conditions but loud mouths in most cases. Albert Pike never headed the KGC, George Bickley did and he was arrested during the Civil War in Tenn. He never could get these guys off the ground and into real operation. As for the initiation rites, I would take a lot of it with a grain of salt. More than anything else, it smacks of Masonic Order rites, as revealed in the William Morgan affair where he revealed Masonry's secrets and was killed by being dumped over Niagara Falls. Out of that grew the Anti-Masonic political party that became part of the National Republicans, then the Whigs, then the Republicans. Linda Anderson knows about some of that as William H Seward and his propagandist Thurlow Weed were prominent in it. So was Thaddeus Stevens, if I remember correctly. For that matter, JWB was probably a member of the KGC in the 1850s, at least. this is in his sister's book, I think.

As for the Northwest Conspiracy, the show leaves out George N Sanders and the fact that while the Rebels were ready to fight, their alleged Northern allies all wimped out in the end. Hence the hanging of John Yates Beall.

Underground deposits of gold all over the South and Southwest? That is pure B.S. Stelnick fell for some of this in Dixie Reckoning. But whatever gold was stolen from the Confederate treasury went to the cavalry escorts and prominent fleeing Confederates like J P Benjamin and Jacob Thompson and the rest of the Confederate Secret Service after the war. They had to live on something. If there were gold deposits and the KGC as potent and organized as Wolters tells us, do you think that the gold would not have been dug up by now? Especially if the KGC lives on as the New World Order. I doubt the Georgia Guide Stones have anything to do with any of this.

[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

[JMadonna]

And if it didn't happen that way - It should have!

- Great line Bill.

[Wild Bill]

That will drive a history class nuts, I guarantee.

---

The other one is: "If you can't trust your history professor, whom can you trust?"

[Gene C]

Not to confuse you more Laurie, are you aware of the secret of Col. Harlan Sanders and the KFC?

[L Verge]

I think he took that "secret ingredient" to his grave, didn't he?