You may wish to read Albert Castel's 1968 "General Sterling Price and the Civil War in the West" which is well-indexed regarding Price and the Order of American Knights (the derivative name in 1864 for the Knights of the Golden Circle). The OAK was supposed to have 40,000 members in Missouri and Price, who commanded Confederate troops in Arkansas and was not physically in Missouri at the time until September) supposed that to be true. However, the OAK was a shadowy organization when Price was named as its chief and the numbers have never been verified. Price wished that was true so that the OAK could muster and join his forces when he invaded MO in September 1864 and be a force multiplier. However, as his army of about 11,000 entered the state from the south and spent weeks campaigning across the state the OAK as such did not materialize in any numbers to assist him. The 1864 organization of the OAK was so heavily infiltrated by Union detectives and agents that it was in reality a shadow organization that was a fraction of earlier numbers it had before that year. The antecedent of the OAK had origins long before the Civil War in order to spread southern society and its agrarian base into Central America and the Caribbean mostly by filibuster. I got much of this from the brief Knights of the Golden Circle entry in the "Historical Times Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Civil War," which should be in the reference section of your local library.

I saw and enjoyed that TV episode, too, but you need to take some of that stuff about Jesse James being the postwar front man of the OAK with a large grain of salt. It sells books and makes interesting TV shows, but it is conjecture and held together with little fact. Sorry. It makes a good story, doesn't it?

Bruce Nichols