Booknotes: Treason and Traitors in Texas

New Arrival:

• Treason and Traitors in Texas: Facilitators of the American Civil War by Randolph W. Farmer (Histria Academic, 2026).

By their very nature, the size of secret societies and their influence upon history will always be sources of debate and conjecture. The Knights of the Golden Circle was one of the most prominent of such groups that operated during the Civil War era, and it has received quite a bit of attention in the recent literature. The latest addition to the discussion, Randolph Farmer's Treason and Traitors in Texas: Facilitators of the American Civil War, is a companion to his 2021 book The Knights of the Golden Circle in Texas. It is "(a)n exposé on the influential members of the Knights of the Golden Circle."

I have not read Farmer's earlier book on the subject, but from the description it seems clear that he heartily agrees with David Keehn's contention in Knights of the Golden Circle: Secret Empire, Southern Secession, Civil War (2013) that the KGC was a driving force of exceptional strength in Texas's secession movement.

George Bickley is the individual most commonly associated with the KGC, and both Keehn and Farmer devote a great deal of attention to reexamining his degree of involvement with the society. Farmer's Treason and Traitors in Texas "includes previously unpublished material on the lost years of George W. Bickley—often mistakenly credited as the organization’s founder—as well as new revelations about the role played by a member of his own Bickley family." All of that and more are detailed in the book's foreword and seven following chapters.

In addition to providing more information about Bickley and his family, the society's role in the Texas secession convention, and the KGC-implicated murders of two members of the Riedel Family during the war, the book "uncovers even more conspirators and provides in-depth biographical details on those involved." That collection of roughly 3 to 4-page (including endnotes) biographical treatments of the alleged conspirators comprise the bulk of the volume. All of the material is fully annotated. I can't tell exactly how many individuals are featured in total, but overall coverage of the volume's register of conspirators, aside from the Bickley material, runs nearly 350 pages.