Knights' Gold . . . 5,000 Gold Coins . . . Largest KGC Treasure Ever Discovered

[franklin]

Early on in the war, the South and it's leaders felt the war could not be won. The South when succeeded from the Union depended on the KGC and it's military formation for protection and funds until troops could be assembled and the government could be organized. The KGC already had vaults of treasure put away. The information I have seen when they put gold and silver away they would place them in "D" depositories. When the Civil War began all of these depositories that became Confederate Depositories became known as "CD" but some of their depositories were "OCD" and determined that to mean the Old KGC Depositories had now become "Old Confederate Depositories." But anyway the Confederacy mostly paid for everything with promissory notes. Once in a while these were not excepted and gold specie and silver in specie and bars had to be shipped to them or obtained from some of their other resources in the Bahamas, Havanna, Cuba or Liverpool Assurances from Liverpool, England or the Fraser, Trenholm Shipping Enterprise. There were hundreds of tons of gold and silver put away for a Second Civil War. As I said they even tried to ship one million in gold specie out of the United States almost two years after the end of the war. With Maximilian's gold of over seventeen million dollars and the Aztec or Montezuma's gold of millions plus the CSA Gold Depositories and the KGC Depositories after the Civil War all of this became the KGC's gold and it's efforts to fight a Second Civil War. Hopes died down after the dead of their beloved leader Robert E. Lee and then when World War I broke out the Knight's all became soldier's and fought for the sovereignty of the United States. After World War I the KGC closed it's books for fifty years. What happened to all of their Gold Depositories is a huge question. Did the South use these funds during the Reconstruction and the modernization of the infrastructure and railroads? Or are they still intact because most of the Knight's were killed in World War I and the locations of the treasures or depositories was lost. We won't know until we open up these OD of the KGC.

 

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[Old Bookaroo]

franklin: Thank you for your reply! That's an interesting view. I still don't understand why gold and silver bars and coin would be sent to the South when what it needed was elsewhere.

I hope you recover what you seek!

Good luck to all,

The Old Bookaroo

 

[Old Bookaroo]

The New York Times

THE REBEL COTTON LOAN.
January 12, 1864

From the London Index (rebel organ.)

During the year now closing, about 130,000 bales of cotton, of about 500 lbs. weight each, have found their way through the blockade to European ports, which, at the ruling prices, sold for upwards of £6,000,000 sterling. With this fund to its credit, had the cotton been exported for its own account, instead of, for the most part, private speculators, the Confederate Government might have dispensed with foreign loans, might have bought its warlike stores at the lowest cash rates, and supplied its citizens with commodities of prime necessity at a moderate advance on cost. Not only would it have earned the fabulous profits pocketed by foreign merchants, but it would have saved itself the issue of that flood of promises to pay with which it purchased importations, and which the importers made haste to dispose of on any terms. And what creditor at home could have doubted the solvency of a debtor who was the largest holder of foreign exchange in the country?

Let it not be said that the Government would have failed where private enterprise succeeded. The experiment has been sufficiently tried to demonstrate that the Government, in blockade ventures, has been even more fortunate than individuals, probably for the reason that, thanks to the patriotic enthusiasm of the whole people, it is at present the best served Government in the world. To its success in this respect is due the credit which, amid the most adverse circumstances, it still commands in the markets of Europe. The question, then, would simply have been to extend on a larger scale what has been done with considerable success on a small one. The mercantile marine of every country, not excepting that of the North, is open to it to select the staunchest and the swiftest vessels. It commands a staff of naval officers Inferior to those of no country in skill, courage and dash; and although the service may not be so brilliant and so much to their taste, at the country's bidding they would render it as zealously and as devotedly as though they trod the decks of Merrimacs [CSS Virginia - that error started early, didn't it!] and Alabamas. It will scarcely be contended that vessels avowedly the properly of the Confederate Government would run greater risks on the high seas from the enemy's cruisers than those owned by British subjects run under the warm neutrality of the Foreign Office.

But if private enterprise must be called into aid, the cotton bonds now in the hands of European holders afford the desired machinery, provided all private exportation, except in redemption of these bonds, is prohibited. The £3,200,000 which the Government now owes in Europe, represents, at 6d. per pound, 260,000 bales of cotton, which, at the rate of this year's exportation, could be run through the blockade in about two years. Every obligation thus redeemed would make room for a new one, which, as the only means of purchasing cotton, would be eagerly sought at prices remunerative to the Government. We are told that sound political economy forbids the granting of monopolies; but blockade-running is virtually already the monopoly of those firms which were the first and the most enterprising in the attempt. Why not, if a monopoly must exist, give it to those who have trusted the Government? Besides, no one is injured thereby, for those who new hold this virtual monopoly may still retain it by merely changing their purchasing medium.

We have reasons to believe that in advocating this recommendation of Mr. MCRAE we express the convictions of nearly every important officer of the Confederate States in Europe, and of the great majority of the friends and well-wishers of the Confederate cause. If anything approaching the same unanimity exists in the Congress now assembled at Richmond -- and there appears no cause to doubt it -- we may expect by any steamer, within the next four or five weeks, to hear of the passage of an act laying an embargo on the exportation of cotton, under conditions similar to those here indicated.

Good luck to all,

The Old Bookaroo

 

[franklin]

One must remember that the Fraser & Trenholm Shipping brought in about 90 percent of all the CSA imports and exported likewise. Without the shipping firm moving to Liverpool before the Civil War the South and the Confederacy as a whole could not have held out for one year let alone four years. The blockade runners helped but they lost about 20 percent of everything going and coming whereas the Fraser & Trenholm Shipping lost nothing as they sailed under the British Flag. Should Lincoln had interferred with their ships would have brought England into the war on the side of the CSA. I guess life is better as a two way street some believe one way and others believe the other way. That is what keeps life going.

 

[Old Bookaroo]

franklin:

I have come to believe the primary reason the Confederacy was able to hold out so long against the Union was the fact that the North was largely supplying both armies. Had the Federal government realized that and taken careful steps to guard its supplies, the War would have been shorter.

After John Mosby captured a Union general and a herd of horses, President Lincoln is supposed to have remarked "I can always make more generals. But horses...!"

I remember reading about Rebel soldiers throwing away their heavy overcoats in the spring. They knew that in the fall, when they again needed them, they would be able to capture new ones.


The Agnes E. Fry -The purpose built blockade runners were beautiful ships!



This appears to be the same vessel - with a different name. Perhaps they all looked alike in the dark as they ran for shore and fortune?


I don't believe the vessel's flag permitted passage through the Federal blockade of the South. As for Fraser & Trenholm Shipping losing nothing, wasn't the Bermuda taken as a prize 27 April 1862?



Nassau - and the principal Confederate Atlantic Seaboard ports the blockade runners used.
[Map of Mexico, Central America and The West Indies; Philadelphia: 1860]


Good luck to all,

The Old Bookaroo

 

[L.C. BAKER]

franklin:

I have come to believe the primary reason the Confederacy was able to hold out so long against the Union was the fact that the North was largely supplying both armies. Had the Federal government realized that and taken careful steps to guard its supplies, the War would have been shorter.

After John Mosby captured a Union general and a herd of horses, President Lincoln is supposed to have remarked "I can always make more generals. But horses...!"

I remember reading about Rebel soldiers throwing away their heavy overcoats in the spring. They knew that in the fall, when they again needed them, they would be able to capture new ones.

View attachment 1394026
The Agnes E. Fry -The purpose built blockade runners were beautiful ships!

View attachment 1394027

This appears to be the same vessel - with a different name. Perhaps they all looked alike in the dark as they ran for shore and fortune?


I don't believe the vessel's flag permitted passage through the Federal blockade of the South. As for Fraser & Trenholm Shipping losing nothing, wasn't the Bermuda taken as a prize 27 April 1862?

View attachment 1394030

Nassau - and the principal Confederate ports the blockade runners used.
[Map of Mexico, Central America and The West Indies; Philadelphia: 1860]


Good luck to all,

The Old Bookaroo

Don't forget about the Virginia, Coquette, and Giraffe!

 

[L.C. BAKER]

There is some very interesting information on the very fragile, inflationary, paper-based finances of the Confederate (and various state) government(s) in this book. I won't quote all the relevant passages - they go on for pages. I did note the 3,000,000 pound loan (assuming $5 to the pound) netted the government approximately $11,550,00. The source accounts for it - $6,000,000 to purchase supplies and $6,000,000 in a failed attempt to "bull" the bonds. What is it they used to say on Wall Street? "Never fight the tape."

From the outset the Confederate Treasury relied mainly upon loans. The first issue of bonds was authorised in February, 1861, and was known as the Fifteen-million Loan. Interest at 8 per cent, was secured on the export duty on cotton. The government obtained the desired $15,000,000 in specie, principally through the generous help of the New Orleans and Charleston banks ; the proceeds were sent abroad for the purchase of war supplies. The amount, in addition to the funds seized in the United States' mints and custom-houses, constituted practically the only supply of specie that the government ever secured. The loan was the only successful one of a long series attempted during the war…

As the growing scarcity of cotton drove up its price in the Liverpool market, from 7d. a lb. at the outbreak of the war to nearly twice that amount in the early months of 1862, and to 2s. 1d. before the end of that year, the desire of the Confederate government to realise upon its accumulated stock of cotton led it to approach some foreign bankers who might be willing to enter into the speculation involved. The banking firm of Erlanger agreed in January, 1863, to guarantee a loan of £3,000,000 at 77. Interest at 8 per cent., as well as an annual amortisation of 1/26 of the principal, was payable in gold and in Europe. The bonds were payable in cotton at 6d. a lb.; delivery to be made within the Confederacy. Six months after the declaration of peace this exchange was to cease ; and the bonds were thereafter payable at their face value in gold. The bonds were favourably received and subscribed for at 90, but they soon began to decline, and continued to fall till the end of the war. The news of Federal victories drove them down, the rumours of repulses of the blockading fleet temporarily drove them up. The bonds were quoted at a much higher figure than were other Confederate issues, owing to the mistaken notion of the security offered by the large amount of cotton held by the Confederate government. After the war they continued to be quoted, and there was talk of urging the United States government to assume the debt. So late as 1876 and even 1884—5 the hopes of the unlucky bondholders were revived ; but of course neither the Federal government nor those of the States felt bound to assume the obligations of the defunct Confederacy. The loss to the bondholders was not balanced by a corresponding gain to the Confederate government. The commission charged by Erlanger for floating the loan and paying the interest charges was large; moreover, $6,000,000 were wasted by the Confederate agents in a futile effort to "bull" the bonds in the foreign market. The loan netted for the government about $6,000,000, which were spent in buying ships and war supplies, a large part of which never reached their destination…

THE CAMBRIDGE MODERN HISTORY PLANNED BY the late LORD ACTON LL.D. EDITED BY A. W. WARD Litt.D. G. W. PROTHERO Litt.D. STANLEY LEATHES M.A
VOLUME VII THE UNITED STATES (1903)

ALL above the table money that was recorded. There were other funds available under the table and unrecorded. (illegal funds)

 

[L.C. BAKER]

What is interesting to note are the events at Chennault Plantation , Washington , Georgia (the Union tortured that family seeking information on the CSA treasury), and the amount of gold and Mexican silver dollars carried by CSA Se of State Judah P Benjamin, CSA Sec Of War Gen John C Breckinridge, and Davis's nephew, CSA Capt John Taylor Wood as they escaped the Union through Florida and then out of the country.

empty handed so to speak.

 

[franklin]

franklin: Thank you for your reply! That's an interesting view. I still don't understand why gold and silver bars and coin would be sent to the South when what it needed was elsewhere.

I hope you recover what you seek!

Good luck to all,

The Old Bookaroo

It is the same thing our government has been doing for years since the Civil War. Gold stored at Fort Knox and West Point and other locations. The gold supply backs up the paper money or notes or assurances as the South called them. That way you keep the gold to back up the cash. Yet when the war ended the promissory notes and assurances were worthless yet the gold was still in the vaults. Same thing Donald Trump did to become a billionaire off of us taxpayers.

 

[Old Bookaroo]

L.C. BAKER:

While the good citizens of Richmond were dining on rats, why wasn't that money spent to support the Cause?

Good luck to all,

The Old Bookaroo

 

[Old Bookaroo]

franklin:

I agree that the USA had, at one time, a gold-backed paper money system. And our nation still has significant gold reserves.

The CSA issued paper money that was rapidly discounted to gold. Why? Because the people didn't believe there was anything behind it. Citizens were forced to invest in bonds. As noted, almost half the major loan raised was lost in a failed attempt to support the price of the bonds. Sending gold bars or coin to the South from overseas wouldn't have helped solve the financial debacle or helped purchase desperately needed supplies.

As for Mr. Trump - he has defaulted on debt (promissory notes and assurances) but there was never any gold in the vault to back up the paper. Yes, rather like the CSA.

Good luck to all,

The Old Bookaroo

 

[Old Bookaroo]

L.C. BAKER:

Coquette - the perfect name for a blockade runner! I'll bet Margaret Mitchell would wish she'd thought of that for the name of Rhett Butler's ship.

Was the Virginia a blockade runner? I'm only familiar with the ironclad converted from the USS Merrimack.

I did find:

Atlantic: A wooden steamer seized for "public service" by order of Brig. Gen. Mansfield Lovell at New Orleans, 14 January 1862. Atlantic, under Captain Smith, turned up in Havana, 19 April, and again in May and September, with over 1,000 bales of cotton. The U.S. Consul in Havana mentions her again in June 1863 as leaving for Nassau. It is not altogether clear when her name was changed to Elizabeth, Capt. Thomas J. Lockwood, under British registry but owned by the Confederacy's secret office abroad, Fraser, Trenholm & Co., Liverpool. Her operations changed to Wilmington NC. Running in there 24 September 1863 she grounded and was burned to escape capture at Lockwood's Folly, 12 miles from Fort Caswell.

[Famous Blockade Runners - I do not believe that is the original source, based on the language of some of the other entries.]


Good luck to all,

The Old Bookaroo

 

[L.C. BAKER]

L.C. BAKER:

While the good citizens of Richmond were dining on rats, why wasn't that money spent to support the Cause?

Good luck to all,

The Old Bookaroo

The funds were placed into venues and alleys of new cause that supported the "lost cause" which represented ALL Southerners. Those investments made the K.G.C. large amounts of money and assets and did the common folks more good than a meal and some clothes would have. ("Sacrifice a few so that MANY shall live") The K.G.C. which WAS the so called lost cause, used those funds and took control of the NEW United States government that was created by a reconstruction of the old one. During that period "The Gilded Age" which refers too the late 19th century, from the 1870s to about 1900 they created many monopolies that lasted until they were noticed and then some. The Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914 was established and the Federal Trade Commission was put in place to start a new battle with the O.A.K. (former K.G.C.) whom the FTC did not even know existed or that it was who they were up against. It worked for them very well and continued to work for them at least until 1920 and maybe even longer. Teddy Roosevelt would have known what time to look through the needles eye at Nebraska City because he was initiated there and he was a member of the O.A.K. How can I prove he was a member? By his own hand.

That was an outstanding question Buckaroo! Thanks for posting it and giving me a chance to try and answer it to the best of MY knowledge.: L.C.

 

[L.C. BAKER]

The K.G.C. talking to the NEW president of the United States. Read page two carefully. TR Center - Letter from J. Sterling Morton to Theodore Rooseve

 

[franklin]

L.C. BAKER:

While the good citizens of Richmond were dining on rats, why wasn't that money spent to support the Cause?

Good luck to all,



The Old Bookaroo

You have got to be kidding. Where did you get that kind of information? Have you read any diaries of the people in Richmond? I don't believe they dined on rats. That is just another way of saying the South was broke like all lame historians. Not true,

 

[Old Bookaroo]

Lt. Gen. Richard S. Ewell, Richmond's military commander, was also under orders to destroy the city's tobacco, cotton, and foodstuffs before the Yankees got to them. To destroy the tobacco, Ewell had it moved to buildings that he believed could burn without setting the rest of the city on fire and asked the fire department to stand by to keep the fire from spreading.

In a city that had been suffering from scarcity, where high officials held "Starvation Balls," no one believed there could be much food left to destroy. But they were wrong. "The most revolting revelation," wrote LaSalle Pickett, "was the amount of provisions, shoes and clothing which had been accumulated by the speculators who hovered like vultures over the scene of death and desolation. Taking advantage of their possession of money and lack of both patriotism and humanity, they had, by an early corner in the market and by successful blockade running, brought up all the available supplies with an eye to future gain, while our soldiers and women and children were absolutely in rags, barefoot and starving." The crowd, seeing the commissaries filled with smoked meats, flour, sugar, and coffee, became ugly.

Enraged, they snatched the food and clothing and turned to the nearby shops to loot whatever else they found. They were impossible to stop. Ewell tried, but he had only convalescent soldiers and a few army staff officers under his command at this point. Not nearly enough men to bring order back to the streets. The fires, though, grew out of control, burning the center of the city and driving the looters away.

The Fall of Richmond, Virginia

 

[Old Bookaroo]

Looks like someone read the diaries of the people...

Letters, diaries, newspapers, and governmental communiques written in the South during the Civil War increasingly mention food shortages, hunger, and fears of famine as the war progressed. Reminiscences written after the war concur with these contemporary accounts. As Basil Gildersleeve, a Confederate officer and later a classics professor at Johns Hopkins University, wrote retrospectively: “Hunger was the dominant note of life in the Confederacy, civil as well as military.”1 Why did the South—the preeminent agricultural region of the nation—suffer from hunger, and what effect did this have on the outcome of the Civil War?

http://andrewfsmith.com/wp-content/themes/wooden-mannequin/pdf/HungerArticle.pdf

Starving the South: How the North Won the Civil War, by Andrew F. Smith
New York: St. Martin's Press, 2011. Pp. vi, 298. Illus., notes, index. $27.99. ISBN: 0312601816.

Starving the South, by food historian Smith, author of The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink and many other books about food, is not a cheery work, for it portrays the hard choices people, South and North, had to make.

At the beginning of the Civil War, most thought hostilities would end in about six weeks. However, the Confederacy died a slow death by geographic partitioning. Over time, the Confederate armies’ food supplies were systematically shut off which, in good part, caused the surrender at Appomattox, as Smith shows in this important economic, social, and military study. This reviewer, for one, have been waiting for years for someone to cover this story.

Starving the South puts to bed the notion of a happy Confederate citizenry. The war fell hardest on the common Confederate soldiers, who were subject to the draft and were mostly food producers. So while they starved in the army, so too did their families at home.
...
An interesting fact revealed is that before hostilities, the South imported most of its salt from Wales. Salt was necessary to sustain nutrition, preserve and cure meats and other foodstuffs, and tan leather. Thus Southerners scrambled to produce their own supplies: searching for new deposits, plumbing salt lakes and saline artesian wells, and desalinating sea water. Salt facilities also became Union military targets, especially those in the Kanawha Valley in Virginia and Goose Creek, Kentucky.
...

From the start of the war, the Confederate government impressed food supplies, a practice that increased beginning in 1863. This meant farmers were forced to sell their produce at below market prices, and were paid with inflated Confederate dollars or promissory notes, sometimes at as little as ten cents on the dollar. The demoralized population reacted by engaging in speculation, hiding, and hoarding; allowing land to go fallow; and reducing themselves to subsistence farming; while the soldiers from farm families began deserting. Thus the policy reduced the flow of food to both civilians and the military. As Lee wrote, wholesale food impressment will “deter many farmers from exerting all their efforts in producing full and proper crops.”
...
At the end, Confederates soldiers had been deserting at the reported rate of 200 a day. On April 1, Lee’s army supposedly had 150,000 men on its rolls, although thousands were sick or furloughed, or had been captured or died, or had deserted. On April 9, only 27,500 surrendered. A Confederate officer, J. H. Duncan thought the “controlling influence” over the deserters was simply “the insufficiency of rations.” In the previous eighteen months, thousands had also deserted, as their wives had written, pleading for them to come home because they were starving, or needed them for spring planting.

~ https://www.strategypage.com/bookreviews/800.asp

===

Remember at Appomattox, General Grant promised that rations would immediately be sent to the Confederate troops.

Good luck to all,

The Old Bookaroo

 

[ECS]

...]An interesting fact revealed is that before hostilities, the South imported most of its salt from Wales. Salt was necessary to sustain nutrition, preserve and cure meats and other foodstuffs, and tan leather. Thus Southerners scrambled to produce their own supplies: searching for new deposits, plumbing salt lakes and saline artesian wells, and desalinating sea water. Salt facilities also became Union military targets...

During the War of Northern Aggression, Florida was blockaded at her ports and the sea salt works at St Marks and Cedar Key on the Gulf were destroyed by the Union. At Cedar Key, an iron sea salt boiling caldron still remains , along with a brass coastal cannon at the local history museum.
What is neglected in most Civil War histories, is the brutal occupation of the Union in Florida that including looting and burning raids, and the displacement of families of those who supported the CAUSE.
In Florida, the war was fought against the civilians, mostly women and children, and the coastal and river blockade runners who supplied the Confederacy with food and other goods.
Actually encounters the Union army had with Florida CSA troops and militias, ended in Union defeats and routs, like the March 1865 Union raid into Marion county against Marshall's Plantation nd Holley's Grist Mill and Farm on the Oklawaha River.

 

[Old Bookaroo]

While war has rarely been kind to civilians, the War of the Rebellion was brutal on both sides. It was brother-against-brother - and that is often the most bitter sort of conflict.

Good luck to all,

The Old Bookaroo

 

[ECS]

While war has rarely been kind to civilians, the War of the Rebellion was brutal on both sides. It was brother-against-brother - and that is often the most bitter sort of conflict...

A cliché, like those who won get to write the history books.