Knights of the Golden Circle, an extinct order, which was organized in the South to promote secession by all sorts of methods.
1860. Every day strengthens my conviction that the whole K.G.C. enterprise will end in smoke…. Gen. Bickley is said to have swindled the young men throughout the South out of about $40,000, in the way of initiation fees.—Corr., Charleston Mercury: Richmond Enquirer, April 20, p. 4/7.
1860. They are led by the “Knights of the Golden Circle,” whose mystic “K. G. C.” has the magic of King Arthur’s horn, which could not only call his thousand liegemen at the blast, but before whose blast the enemy fell down.—S. S. Cox, ‘Eight Years in Congress,’ p. 140 (1865).
1861. Out of it [the “Order of the Lone Star”] sprung the “Knights of the Golden Circle,” whose leader was a ci-devant minister, professor, editor, politician, named Geo. W. L. Bickley—a “smart” but unprincipled person, well fitted by temperament and ambition for the direction of perfidious projects.—O. J. Victor, ‘The History … of the Southern Rebellion,’ i. 135. [Further particulars follow; see also ii. 375.]
1861. In a note to the Congressional Globe, Jan. 23, p. 532, it is stated that the K.G.C. originated in Alabama, under the auspices of Mr. Yancey, the whole purpose being the dismemberment of the Union.
