<P> During the 1863 Gettysburg Campaign, scam artists in south - central Pennsylvania sold Pennsylvania Dutch farmers $1 paper tickets purported to be from the Knights of the Golden Circle . Along with a series of secret hand gestures, these tickets were supposed to protect the horses and other possessions of ticket holders from seizure by invading Confederate soldiers . When Confederate Maj. Gen. Jubal Early's infantry division passed through York County, Pennsylvania, they took what they needed anyway . They often paid with Confederate States dollars or with drafts on the Confederate government . The Confederate cavalry commander J.E.B. Stuart also reported the alleged KGC tickets when documenting the campaign . </P> <P> That same year, Asbury Harpending and California members of the Knights of the Golden Circle in San Francisco outfitted the schooner J.M. Chapman as a Confederate privateer in San Francisco Bay, with the object of raiding commerce on the Pacific Coast and capturing gold shipments to the East Coast . Their attempt was detected and they were seized on the night of their intended departure . </P> <P> In late 1863, the KGC reorganized as the Order of American Knights . In 1864, it became the Order of the Sons of Liberty, with the Ohio politician Clement L. Vallandigham, most prominent of the Copperheads, as its supreme commander . In most areas only a minority of its membership was radical enough to discourage enlistments, resist the draft, and shield deserters . The KGC held numerous peace meetings . A few agitators, some of them encouraged by Southern money, talked of a revolt in the Old Northwest, with the goal of ending the war . </P> <P> According to a few fringe historians, after the Civil War, the KGC went underground and became a secret society . They claim that the KGC's new mission was to support a second, former confederate, uprising against the U.S. Federal Government . Furthermore, it has been alleged in the History Channel program America Unearthed, (episode "Lincoln's Secret Assassins") that the James - Younger Gang was the principal source of funds for a second American Civil War that never occurred . No evidence has been provided for such suppositions . </P>

What is the order of the golden circle