The 1857 Mexican Constitution introduced freedom of speech, conscience, press, assembly, and the right to bear arms. The passage of Mexico’s 1857 Constitution created a radical restructuring of Mexican law, horrifying the Conservative Party who wanted a traditional Colonial Aristocracy, where wealth, church, and military oversaw a peonage of bonded servitude, under a Police State. In a conspiracy to “seize Navy-yards, Fords, etc.,” Floyd moved munitions and men into the South to aid Confederate intentions, until the plot was exposed, creating a backlash against secret societies and Slavery advocates.
Golden Circle members in President James Buchanan’s administration included the Secretary of War John Floyd, Secretary of the Treasury Howell Cobb, and Vice President John Breckenridge. Tom Poole of Pajaro, a Knight of the Golden Circle. (Contributed) (President Benito Juarez, brought Democracy to Mexico, while fighting Civil War and invasion. Contributed) Meanwhile, Brownsville, Texas, was the center of two border wars with Mexico. He was driven out in 1857, returned to Honduras in 1860, only to be executed by a Honduran firing squad. Undaunted, in 1855 Walker invaded Nicaragua, conquered it, and in 1856 repealed its law forbidding slavery. This was partly realized by William Walker, who raised an army in San Francisco, to invade Baja and the gold-fields of Sonora for a Slave Republic, but Mexico forced him back to California, where he was tried-and-acquitted for violating the U.S. On July 4, 1854, George Bickley founded the “Knights of the Golden Circle” in Lexington, Kentucky, to promote the goal of a Slave Empire composed of Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean, headquartered in Havana, Cuba. These clubs were dedicated to reviving the African Slave Trade (banned in 1808), as a resource for expanding slavery to other states. Calhoun and the Order of the Lone Star inspired the founding of “Southern Rights Clubs” beginning around 1835, who made a fetish out of minority rule over the majority. The Order of the Lone Star was formed in 1834 to promote Texas Independence from Mexico, becoming a Slave State in 1836.
Fearing Free States would outnumber Slave States, some sought the conquest of border regions for new Slave States. Listening to minority stakeholders has become an important part of democracy, although Calhoun’s “minority” was Slaveholders, who ruled without the approval of the enslaved. Calhoun felt a ruling majority could be detrimental to a special interest group, and felt decisions impacting that group should be made with it’s approval. Their most notorious western chapter was connected to Santa Cruz. Whatever its modern intent, the signal may be more deeply imbedded in our history, dating back to the 1850s as part of the Golden Circle Conspiracy. So is it a deliberate racist dog whistle, or is the president a Know-Nothing about racial undertones? The American Civil Liberties Union traced this usage to February 2017, when “4chan” launched “Operation O-KKK” to claim this meaning. But he and his followers keep flashing the “OK” hand sign which the Proud Boys associate with White Power. Trump publicly declared his love for the insurrectionists he gathered, although saying on other occasions he knows nothing specifically about the Proud Boys, Boogaloo, and QAnon, of whom his crowd was partly composed.