Appearances notwithstanding part 3

 From San Francisco, young Asbury and his comrades engaged in piracy and guerrilla warfare.  Their intent was to disrupt the US government and lend aid to the rebel war effort by marauding for gold in California and through piracy on the pacific ocean, then sending the money on to Jeff Davis.  

But young Asbury learned more than a few sympathetic ears were willing to give a dollar or two for the cause, to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

At the end of the war, a similar secret society would pop up, and they adopted the identical tactics of terror and piracy which began in the Asbury Harpending SF chapter of the AGC, and they called this new secret society the KKK.  

Yes, that's right.  

The earliest progenitor to the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan developed its tactics and tested their skills in San Francisco with rebel spies and saboteurs during the war, and that's a fact jack.  

Ultimately Lil Asbury proved to be a traitor to the United States and in 1864, he was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for treason.

President Abraham Lincoln, who actually turned out to b a bit of a southern sympathizer himself, decided to pardon all the political prisoners the government obtained during the civil war even though he probably shouldn't have.  

In 1864, after only four months locked up for the crime of treason against the United States of America, Asbury Harpending was released from the old Broadway Jail in San Francisco and became a free man once again.

FYI: The old Broadway jail was destroyed by an earthquake in 1906.    

So where does any 0 and 2, multi-millionaire, Frisco traitor go after catching a presidential pardon for treason?  

You guessed it, Kern County.  Only it wasn't called Kern yet, but it would be soon if Lil Asbury had anything to do with it.  Back then it was only part of Tulare and Los Angeles Counties and it was known as Indian Country.  

To be continued.......