This unique history of the Civil War considers the impact of nineteenth-century American secret societies on the path to as well as the course of the war. Beginning with the European secret societies that laid the groundwork for freemasonry in the United States, Mark A. Lause analyzes how the Old Worlds traditions influenced various underground groups and movements in America, particularly George Lippards Brotherhood of the Union, an American attempt to replicate the political secret societies that influenced the European Revolutions of 1848.Lause traces the Brotherhoods various manifestations, including the Knights of the Golden Circle out of which developed the Ku Klux Klan, and the Confederate secret groups through which John Wilkes Booth and others attempted to undermine the Union.
