Golden Circle (proposed country)

Map of the Golden Circle with its possible subdivisions. The rest of the United States is in light/pale-green because the Knights of the Golden Circle originally planned to have the US take over these areas.

The Golden Circle (Spanish: Círculo Dorado) was an unrealized 1850s proposal by the Knights of the Golden Circle to expand the number of slave states. It envisioned the annexation of several areas — Mexico (which was to be divided into 25 new slave states), Central America, northern parts of South America, Cuba, and the rest of the Caribbean — into the United States, in order to vastly increase the number of slave states and thus the power of the slave-holding Southern upper classes. After the Dred Scott Decision (1857) increased anti-slavery agitation, the Knights of the Golden Circle advocated that the Southern United States should secede, forming their own confederation, and then invade and annex the area of the golden circle to vastly expand the power of the South.

Background

European colonialism and dependence on slavery had declined more rapidly in some countries than others. The Spanish possessions of Cuba and Puerto Rico and the Empire of Brazil continued to depend on slavery, as did the Southern United States. In the years prior to the American Civil War, the rise of support for abolition of slavery was one of several divisive issues in the United States. The slave population there had continued to grow due to natural increase even after the ban on international trade. It was concentrated in the Deep South, on large plantations devoted to the commodity crops of cotton and sugar cane, but it was the basis of agricultural and other labor throughout the southern states.

Development

Proponents argued that their proposed Golden Circle would bring together jurisdictions that depended on slavery. In 1854 George W. L. Bickley, a Virginia-born doctor, editor, and adventurer living in Cincinnati, Ohio, formed the Knights of the Golden Circle, a U.S. organization which aimed to promote and help create a Pan-American union of states. Membership increased slowly until 1859 and reached its height in 1860. The membership, scattered from New York to California and into Latin America, was never large. Some Knights of the Golden Circle active in northern states, such as Illinois, were accused of anti-Union activities after the American Civil War began (1861). Robert Barnwell Rhett, called by some the "father of secession", said a few days after Lincoln's election:

"We will expand, as our growth and civilization shall demand – over Mexico – over the isles of the sea – over the far-off Southern tropics – until we shall establish a great Confederation of Republics – the greatest, freest and most useful the world has ever seen."

Description

The Golden Circle was to be centered in Havana and was 2,400 miles (3,900 km) in diameter. It included northern South America, most of Mexico, all of Central America, Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic, most other Caribbean islands, and the American South. In the United States, the circle's northern border roughly coincided with the Mason-Dixon line, and within it were included such cities as Washington D.C., St. Louis, Mexico City, and Panama City.

Representation in media

• The alternate history novel Bring the Jubilee and the similarly themed movie C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America explore the results of a Southern victory in the Civil War. Both works posit the Golden Circle as a plan enacted after the war. Both also have the Confederacy take over all of South America rather than the northern portion of the continent. However, in the former, the Confederacy annexes both Hawaii and Alaska, and in the latter the Confederacy also annexes all of the United States.
• In the Southern Victory Series, the Confederacy's post-war territorial expansion into Latin America amounts only to the purchase of Cuba from Spain and the purchase of Sonora and Chihuahua from the Mexican Empire (for the purposes of constructing a transcontinental railway and establishing a Confederate naval presence in the Pacific).

See also

• All of Mexico Movement
• American imperialism
• Antebellum South
• Manifest Destiny
• Republic of Sonora
• Republic of Yucatán
• Slave Power
• Slavery in the United States
• Walker affair

Further reading

• May, Robert E. (1973). The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire, 1854-1861. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 0-8071-0051-X.
• An Authentic Exposition of the “K.G.C.” “Knights of the Golden Circle,” or, A History of Secession from 1834 to 1861, by A Member of the Order (Indianapolis, Indiana: C. O. Perrine, Publisher, 1861).
• Donald S. Frazier, Blood & Treasure: Confederate Empire in the Southwest (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1996).
• Warren Getler and Bob Brewer, Rebel Gold: One Man’s Quest to Crack the Code Behind the Secret Treasure of the Confederacy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004).
• Dion Haco, ed., The Private Journal and Diary of John H. Surratt, The Conspirator (New York: Frederic A. Brady, Publisher, 1866).
• Joseph Holt, Report of the Judge Advocate General on “The Order of American Knights,” alias "The Sons of Liberty." A Western Conspiracy in aid of the Southern Rebellion (Washington, D.C.: Union Congressional Committee, 1864).
• James D. Horan, Confederate Agent: A Discovery in History (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1954).
• Jesse Lee James, Jesse James and the Lost Cause (New York: Pageant Press, 1961).
• K.G.C., Records of the KGC Convention, 1860, Raleigh, N.C., Gun Show on the Net Website