George W. L. Bickley

George Washington Lafayette Bickley (July 18, 1823 – August 10, 1867) was the founder of the Knights of the Golden Circle, a Civil War era secret society used to promote the interests of the Southern United States by preparing the way for annexation of a "golden circle" of territories in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean which would be included into the United States as southern or slave states. Bickley was arrested by the United States government as a Confederate spy in July 1863, and was jailed without trial until October 1865. During this time he wrote a letter to Abraham Lincoln expressing his distaste for Lincoln's handling of the government.

Life and career Bickley was born in Russell County, Virginia on July 18, 1823. His father died of cholera in 1830 and Bickley ran away from home to live an adventurous life around the country.

Medicine By 1850, Bickley was a practicing medical doctor in Jeffersonville (now Tazewell), Virginia. In Jeffersonville, he founded a local historical society and began writing the manuscript for the History of the Settlement and Indian War of Tazewell County, Virginia.

In 1851, Bickley moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, after being offered to serve as "Professor of Materia Medica, Therapeutics, and Medical Botany" at the Eclectic Medical Institute, an institution teaching a form of alternative medicine known as eclectic medicine. Bickley had secured the offer by claiming to have been a graduate in the Class of 1842 of the University of London. Bickley stated that he had studied medicine under the renowned English physician John Elliotson, who supposedly had signed his diploma. The University of London failed to find Bickley's name in their records for the list of university graduates. Furthermore, Elliotson had resigned from the university in 1838, which would falsify Bickley's claim.

Writing In 1853, Bickley published Adalaska; Or, The Strange and Mysterious Family of the Cave of Genreva, an anti-slavery novel and the Principles of Scientific Botany. Bickley was also the publisher of the Western American Review, a New York-based conservative publication. In May 1861, members of the KGC and Confederate Rangers attacked a building in Texas which housed a pro-Union newspaper, the Alamo Express, owned by J. P. Newcomb, and burned it down.

KGC members largely aligned with Copperhead politicians who wanted a negotiated end to the war. In late 1863, the Knights of the Golden Circle were reorganized (sans Bickley) as the Order of American Knights and again, early in 1864, as the Order of the Sons of Liberty, with Clement Vallandigham, the most prominent of the Copperheads, as its supreme commander, dissolved in 1864 after being exposed and members arrested and tried for treason.

American Civil War Bickley joined the Confederate States Army at the beginning of 1863 to serve as a surgeon for a North Carolina regiment under General Braxton Bragg. He was never tried but remained under arrest until October 1865. Meanwhile, the Knights of the Golden Circle became a model for the creation of the Ku Klux Klan.