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Defends her PFL world title. One last time. Unforgettable and got you, Margaret. To an unforgettable career. Saturday, August 22nd, live from Benchmark International Arena.
For tickets, visit pfl.info/slash tampa. Spending time outdoors, then let's talk about skin cancer. Non-melanoma skin cancers, or NMSCs, including basal cell carcinoma and cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, are the most common cancers in the U.S. and can become harder to treat if left undetected. That's why sun protection and timely detection matter.
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This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories. Knights in shining armor, duels of honor, jousting tournaments, tales of yore. You might think we're talking about medieval Europe. but you'd be about an ocean away on that guess.
We're actually talking about the American South. That's because before the Civil War, the Southern aristocracy was absolutely obsessed. with that aesthetic.
so much so that they'd form a secret society dedicated to the look. and a bit of territorial expansion. Here to share the story of the Knights of the Golden Circle is Mark Kowar, author of America But Bigger. But first, a bit from David C. Kane, author of Knights of the Golden Circle: Secret Empire, Secession, Civil War.
Let's get into the story. When you go on the internet, you'll find all kinds of myths and legends about the Knights of the Golden Circle.
Some say that Booth was a member. That they were behind the Lincoln assassination.
Some say that they bury gold throughout the South at the end of the Civil War. National Treasure 2 begins with a castle of the Knight of the Golden Circle in Washington the night before the Lincoln assassination. The implication is that Booth is there and they go off and accomplish the assassination the next day. And then Nicholas Cage and his cohorts go off looking for gold across the South. Oops.
That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. How much of this could be true? Uh I'm Mark Kawar. I'm the author of America But Bigger. It's a real thing.
But the Knights of the Golden Circle would come across today as ridiculous if they weren't so serious and dangerous.
Okay. Secret societies were very popular in the mid-19th century. It was a common part of social lives for a lot of American men in the age before mass communication. And there were secret societies across the nation, but In the South, it's not surprising that there were secret societies dedicated to expanding slavery. Slavery was the number one issue in the United States.
By far, nothing else came close. It infused every other debate, even things that didn't seem to be connected to slavery. like expansion. There was always the question: Are we going to expand to benefit the free north? or the slave-holding South.
Often, this tension prevented the United States from expanding further. And I have no doubt that if the Confederacy had won the Civil War, within a few years, they would have been going after. northern Mexico and Cuba and trying to expand their slavery system. Yeah. The golden circle that the Knights got its name from encompasses the American South.
Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean islands. And the goal was to establish an empire equal to the grandeurs of ancient Rome, as they said. The Knights of the Golden Circle were led by a man named George Bickley, who's a fascinating figure. His father died when he was young. He had a Gallavanine mother.
She would run around Petersburg and Richmond, and he grew up there sort of as a loner. And at the age of 12, just left home. And he roamed around the South, visiting some cases relatives. He started a trading business in Alabama, fathered a son in North Carolina. He was a professor of medicine in Cincinnati.
His specialty was. phrenology, which is sort of like a cross between brain surgery and astrology, where you would read people's the bumps on their head to determine what their well-being is and what their future is going to be. The one thing, when George wandered around the South, he also became a very convincing liar. He could convince anyone of anything. He had no medical training and lied about his credentials to get the job.
He went to an upstart medical institute in Cincinnati and convinced them that he had studied in Philadelphia and London. And so they appointed him as a medical professor. And he taught there for a number of years. And then he decided there was an easier way.
So he married a wealthy widow who was connected with the Kinney banking family. She had a farm about 100 miles east of Cincinnati and lived in her farm and could engage in all kinds of promotions and schemes. He founded a magazine and a patent company. You know, he was selling farm implements in Russia, coal mines in the Dominican Republic, and One of his business ventures was he founded this traveling drill team. Of men who were going to go around and do complicated military maneuvers as a money-making scheme.
They would hold jousting contests where thousands of people would show up. And it was during this period that he developed the ritual and the structure of the Knights of the Golden Circle. The ritual was premised on Very popular writer at the time, Sir Walter Scott, who wrote the book Eidenhoe, particularly popular in the South in the idea of the chivalrous knight. And it was a social club that set up clubhouses that they called castles.
Now, the knights used code words, passwords. They had signs of recognition to each other. They would dress in costumes that resembled medieval chainmail. They would take long and complicated oaths to expand the nation's borders. They drilled with weapons and they were kind of a a paramilitary force.
Bickley took kind of a tour of the South. And stumped for the group. He was a bit of a carnival barker figure. He would go into a town and get people excited and set up a castle. The knights were organized on a hierarchical basis.
At the bottom was the first degree called the Order of the Lone Hand. And the Order of the Lone Hand was the Knights' Army. The next degree was the Order of the True Faith. These were the enablers. These were the money men that backed the Knights' various missions.
Also, the editors. For example, in Texas, the Knights had 20 different affiliated editors who supported the work of the Knights. By many accounts, the Knights had probably tens of thousands of members in the late 1850s. And by a lot of accounts, they had some very prominent supporters. The third degree was the Order of the Columbian Star.
It was kept secret. Even their identities were kept secret.
Some accounts show that governors, senators, Even cabinet members. were either knights themselves or aligned with the knights.
So, they had this great political influence, and they were really channeling. this popular idea in the South that The South needs to expand. The only way to create a balance of power and ensure the future of slavery is to keep adding territory, keep adding states that allow slavery. And so the knights tried to put these Ideas into practice. They were actually going to go out and conquer territory.
And so In early 1860, they organized their first invasion of Mexico. Sam Houston, the governor of Texas, was talking about invading Mexico because Mexico was in a civil war and sometimes that was spilling across the border. The central part, the more populous part of Mexico, was controlled by a Mexican general named Miramar. While the coastal region was controlled by a constitutional lawyer, he had been a Zapata Indian named Bonito Juarez. has become a folk hero in Mexico.
But in any event, Juarez and Miramar, their armies, were to clash for years. Neither could gain the ascendancy. And the Knights kind of hopped on that bandwagon. The Knights offered their services of their army to both sides. But they ended up making a deal, not with Juarez himself, but with some of the provincial leaders of Juarez that said, come on in and what they call colonize northern Mexico.
It doesn't appear that Houston really wanted anything to do with the Knights, but when the federal government wouldn't get behind his invasion, he called it off. But the Knights were undeterred. They gathered in Texas, but they had practically no organization. By this time, by the way, Bickley was up north. He got word.
He rushed down, told him, hold on, he's going to bring an army of a division of knights from the east. And he's going to bring another million dollars and just give him time. But Bickley showed up empty-handed. No one was thinking about logistics or supplies. It was.
Of a disorganized mob gathering near the border and occasionally straggling across, and eventually they gave up and went home. Bickley was humiliated. People were calling him a fraud and an imposter. The knights got together in North Carolina that summer to kind of. regroup and reorganize.
And they said, we're going to give this another shot.
So they organized another invasion of Mexico in late 1860, and that was even less successful than the first one. No weapons ever showed up. He didn't show up. The whole group and the whole. invasion was a bit of a farce.
Oh. The Knights had grand ambitions, terrifying ambitions, of conquering across Central America and the Caribbean and even northern South America. And if they were better organized, they might have done some real damage. But they liked playing at soldier rather than actually acting with military precision. In modern language, you could call them a bunch of LARPers.
And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Monty Montgomery. And a special thanks to Mark Kowar, author of America But Bigger. And you learned a lot about these folks, and they were serious. And then in the end, Well, create absolute chaos in the United States when things weren't going their way. It didn't end well in the end for them, but we tell all these stories here on Our American Stories: the good.
Sometimes the bad and the ugly. The Knights of the Golden Circle. Their story. Here. on our American stories.
Saturday, August 2013. August 22nd in Tampa, witnessing MMA Legends final fight. Chris Cyborg, one of the greatest in history. She's an absolute pioneer in the sport. Defends her PFL world title.
One last time. Unforgettable and stopped! To an unforgettable career. Saturday, August 22nd, live from Benchmark International Arena. For tickets, visit pfl.info slash tampa.
Spending time outdoors, then let's talk about skin cancer. Non-melanoma skin cancers, or NMSCs, including basal cell carcinoma and cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, are the most common cancers in the U.S. and can become harder to treat if left undetected. That's why sun protection and timely detection matter. Our sponsor, Regeneron, is raising awareness about advanced NMSCs.
Learn more and take the pledge to see a dermatologist annually at let's get real about skincancer.com. IceCube's big three season has come down to this. The big three championship is coming to Charlotte, who will be crowned the big three season nine champion. Plus the big three all-star game, the biggest names in the game, all on one court one more time. Two games of the most physical, competitive, and non-stop three-on-three action.
The gameplay the way you love. Watch live Saturday on CBS at 1 p.m. Eastern, 10 a.m. Pacific, and catch replays Monday on BET. Presented by iHeart.
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