In 1854, a physician with ambiguous qualifications, George WL Bickley, founded the Knights of the Golden Circle. Based in Cincinnati, Ohio, the Golden Circle was full of passwords, quasi-Masonic rituals, and secret signs and symbols. The Knights of the Golden Circle (later called the Order of American Knights and, in February 1864, the Sons of Liberty) (Bruce Tap, Over Lincoln Shoulder, 73) quickly built lodges throughout Kentucky, Missouri , Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. To identify themselves, members wore the head of Liberty cut out of old-fashioned copper coins. (Tap, 74) Affectionately, their enemies called them Copperheads, a reference to the venomous snake. Although they were numerous, it can be argued that the anti-war Copperheads rallied the most passionate around one leader, Clement Vallandigham. Born July 29, 1820, in New Lisbon, Ohio, Vallandigham was a brilliant individual, whose young mind knew the alphabet by the age of two, spoke Greek and Latin by the age of twelve, and who entered Jefferson College in Philadelphia at the age of age seventeen. At nineteen, Clement Vallandigham became principal of Union Academy in Maryland, and at twenty he became editor of an extremist Democratic newspaper. (Tap, 6) Later in life, Vallandigham gained a reputation in Ohio as an unbeatable and eccentric defense attorney. After a term as governor of Ohio, Vallandigham was elected to Congress on the anti-abolitionist Democratic platform, advocating Confederate independence and denouncing emancipation, but was defeated in 1862. (Chandra Manning, What This Cruel War Was Over , 99). In his final speech to Congress, Vallandigham urged his countrymen to stop the fighting. (Roger L. Ranson, The Confederate States of America: What Mi...... middle of paper ......nited States. (Ranson, 160) Lincoln's reputation, however, won by more than 400,000 votes popular and easily confirmed an electoral majority Several states now allowed their citizen soldiers to vote, a first in U.S. history Army soldiers gave Lincoln more than 70% of their votes (. Manning, 148) hit the Northern newspapers, Vallandigham returned from Canadian exile to attend a congress condemning this "useless war" and adopting resolutions in favor of an "immediate cessation of hostilities" and a negotiated peace (Manning, 149) Once again up to his old tricks, Vallandigham would later disguise himself by putting a pillow under his shirt and donning a fake mustache just in time to publicly denounce Lincoln during the presidential election of 1864, during which Lincoln will ignore it (Dickson., 316)