REBEL HOARD? William Birney Civil War Origin Theories Link California Gold?
March 20, 2014
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Maj. Gen. William Birney sketch drawn while he was a federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C.
California gold cache is being evaluated by numismatic experts.
A long undiscovered hoard of an estimated $10 million in gold coins in California has awakened an outpouring of theories about its origins.
Black Bart, Jesse James, Gold Rush miners -- all are being talked of in the feeding frenzy over the possible source of the gold.
In 1901, Chief Cashier of the San Francisco Mint, Walter Dimmick is believed to have spirited six sealed bags -- each filled with 250 $20 gold pieces -- out of the mint. The incident won the awkward moniker The Dimmick Defalcation.
The hoard was found recently by a couple, identified only as John and Mary, while walking their dog on Saddle Ridge near their home in San Francisco.
One of the more outrageous ideas is that the hoard of gold was buried by the Knights of the Golden Circle (KGC). The Knights were a pro-slavery fantasy of South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun revealed in an 1890 book by Union Army Maj. Gen. William Birney, second son of Bay City pioneer James Gillespie Birney.
William Birney, 1819-1907, born in Alabama, was a student at Miami University in Ohio and visited his family in Bay City often after the Birneys came here in 1841.
The Knights, according to William Birney, sprang from the Southern campaign that elected President Andrew Jackson in 1828. Calhoun, the vice president, according to Birney "was secretly engaged in undermining the Union!"
Remember, this was 32 years before the Civil War, while few historians trace the roots of the war any earlier than the 1850s. Birney contended that Calhoun was "earnestly in favor of the acquisition of Texas and the extension of slavery westward," and "the creation of a slave-holding empire, including the Southern states, Texas, Mexico and Central America."
Questions have come to this columnist from several curious conspiracy theorists because of a mention of William Birney's theory about the Knights of the Golden Circle in my 2011 book, "Apostles of Equality: The Birneys, the Republicans and the Civil War," published by Michigan State University Press.
The "Apostles" book, building on William Birney's ideas, documents the genesis of the workingman's egalitarian Republican Party, under its original incarnation, as the ideological foil of the racist, anti-humanitarian, repressive Confederates.
According to the "Apostles" book, Maj. Gen. Birney was stopped by a pro-slavery general from ending the Civil War on April 8, 1865, when his black troops had trapped the remnants of Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia near Farmville. The result was that Lee was free to attack the next day, causing an additional 600 needless deaths before finally surrendering to U.S. Grant on April 9 at Appomattox.
The final Rebel attack was led by troops under Gen. Fitzhugh Lee, ironically a distant cousin of the Birneys through James G. Birney's marriage to Elizabeth Fitzhugh.
Besides the idea that the Knights were a Southern/Calhoun plot, William Birney also connected the Knights of the Golden Circle to a Northern secessionist source -- Clement Vallandigham, an Ohio pro-slavery firebrand.
The Saddle Ridge Hoard is a startling find: 1,400 $20 gold pieces, 50 $10 gold pieces and four $5 gold pieces, with dates ranging from 1847 to 1894.
Even if the mint had coins on hand covering a span of 47 years, which is unlikely, those in the hoard include some so badly worn that they wouldn't have been there, David McCarthy, a San Francisco numismatist, told the news media.
Another coin, dated 1876, was in such pristine condition that it couldn't have been part of the original cache.
The linkages of the cache to Black Bart, Jesse James and other theories have been disproved by a variety of experts, according to the San Francisco Chronicle which has been bombarded by contacts asserting ideas about the source. Dates of the outlaws life and activities do not match up with the dates on the coins, the newspaper reported.
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