Creature From Jekyll Island by G. Edward

although women had not yet gained that right even in the North—but, because of their lack of education and political awareness, no one expected them to play a meaningful role in government for many years to come. Furthermore, those taking the oath had to swear that they had never taken up arms against the Union. Since almost every able-bodied white male had done so, the effect would have been to deny the South political representation for at least two generations.

Under Lincoln's amnesty policy, it would not be long before the Republicans would be overwhelmed in Congress by a large majority of Democrats. The Democrats in the North were already gaining strength on their own and, once they could be joined by the solid block of Democrats from the reunited South, the Republicans'

political and economic power would be lost. So, when Lincoln vetoed the bill, his own Party bitterly turned against him.

Running throughout these cross-currents of motives and special interests were two groups which found it increasingly to their advantage to have Lincoln out of the way. One group consisted of the financiers, Northern industrialists, and radical Republicans, all of whom wanted to legally plunder the South at the end of the war.

The politicians within that group also looked forward to further consolidating their power and literally establishing a military 392

THE CREATURE FROM JEKYLL ISLAND

dictatorship.1 The other group was smaller in size but equally dangerous. It consisted of hothead Confederate sympathizers—

from both South and North—who sought revenge. Later events revealed that both of these groups had been involved in a conspiratorial liaison with an organization called the Knights of the Golden Circle.

KNIGHTS OF THE GOLDEN CIRCLE

The Order of the Knights of the Golden Circle was a secret organization dedicated to revolution and conquest. Two of its better known members were Jesse James and John Wilkes Booth, ft was organized by George W.L. Bickley who established its first

'castle' in Cincinnati in 1854, drawing membership primarily from Masonic lodges. It had close ties with a secret society in France called The Seasons, which itself was a branch of the Illuminati.

After the beginning of the war, Bickley was made head of the Confederacy's secret service, and his organization quickly spread throughout the border and Southern states as well.

In the North, the conspirators were seeking 'to^seize political power and overthrow the Lincoln government.' In fact, the Northern anti-draft riots mentioned previously were largely the result of the planning and leadership of this group. In the South

'they tried to promote the extension of slavery by the conquest of Mexico.'5 In partnership with Maximilian, the Knights hoped to establish a Mexican-American empire which would be an effective counter force against the North. In fact, the very name of the organization is based on their goal of carving an empire out of North America with geographical boundaries forming a circle with the center in Cuba, and its circumference reaching northward to Pennsylvania, southward to Panama.

1. For highly readable accounts of this movement, see Theodore Roscoe, The Web of Conspiracy: The Complete Story of the Men Who Murdered Abraham Lincoln (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1959); also Claude G. Bowers, The Tragic Era: The Revolution after Lincoln, (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1957).

2. 'No Civil War at All, Part Two,' by Will^m Mcllhany, Journal of Individualist Studies, Fall, 1992, pp. 18-20.

3. Horan, p. 15.

4. Ibid., pp. 208-23.

5. Ibid., p. 16. Regarding the annexation of Mexico, also see the Columbia Encyclopedia, Third Edition, p. 1143.

GREENBACKS AND OTHER CRIMES 393

In 1863 the group was reorganized as the Order of American Knights and, again the following year, as the Order of the Sons of Liberty. Its membership then was estimated at between 200,000 and 300,000. After the war, it went further underground and remnants eventually emerged as the Ku Klux Klan.

J O H N W I L K E S B O O T H

One of the persistent legends of this period is that John Wilkes Booth was not killed in Garrett's barn, as generally accepted, but was allowed to escape; that the corpse actually was that of an accomplice; and that the government, under the firm control of War Secretary Edwin M. Stanton, moved heaven and earth to cover up the facts. On the face of it, that is an absurd story. But, when the voluminous files of the War Department were finally declassified and put into the public domain in the mid 1930s, historians were shocked to discover that there are many facts in those files which lend credence to the legend. The first to probe these amazing records was Otto Eisenschiml whose Why Was Lincoln Murdered?

was published by Little, Brown and Company in 1937. The best and most readable compilation of the facts, however, was written twenty years later by Theodore Roscoe. In the preface to this work, he states the startling conclusions which emerge from those long-hidden files:

Of the immense 19th century literature that exists on Lincoln's assassination, much of the writing treats the tragedy at Ford's theater as though it were Grand Opera.... Only a few have seen the crime as a murder case: Lincoln dying by crass felony, Booth a stalking gunman leading a gang of primed henchmen, the murder plot containing ingredients as base as the profit motive. Seventy years after the crime, writers were garbling it with a dignity it did not deserve: Lincoln, the stereotyped martyr; Booth, the stereotyped villain; the assassination avenged by classic justice; conspiracy strangled; Virtue (in the robes of Government) emerging triumphant, and Lincoln 'belonging to the ages.'

But the facts of the case are neither so satisfying nor so gratifying.

For the facts indicate that the criminals responsible for Lincoln's death got away with murder.1