KGC: a Virtual Cemetery

See all by Wes T.

A Virtual Cemetery created by Wes T.

KGC

Individuals known to have been connected with the Knights of the Golden Circle. The Knights of the Golden Circle (KGC) were a pro-slavery secret society in the mid-nineteenth-century United States. The original objective of the KGC was to annex a golden circle of territories in Mexico (which would be divided into 25 slave states), Central America, northern South America, and Cuba and the rest of the Caribbean for inclusion in the United States as slave states. As anti-slavery agitation increased after the Dred Scott Decision was issued, the members proposed a separate confederation of slave states, with U.S. states south of the Mason-Dixon line to secede and to align with other slave states to be formed from the golden circle. In either case, the goal was to increase the power of the Southern slave-holding upper class to such a degree that it could never be dislodged.During the American Civil War, some Southern sympathizers in the Northern states such as Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa, were accused of belonging to the Knights of the Golden Circle, and in some cases they were imprisoned for their activities.