I know I sound like a broken record, but I am thoroughly convinced of the evil of the conspiracy theory and its destructive effect both on the leaders and the general public of a society. Look at the Terror during the French Revolution, in which faction after faction was sent to the guillotine, accused of treason. Or the stab in the back theory of why Germany lost the Great War, which combined with always latent European anti-Semitism (itself, of course, the most murderous conspiracy theory of all time) added up to produce the Third Reich, World War II, and the Holocaust. Or, closer to home, the Communist accusation that the POUM and the Anarchists were conspiring with Franco in the Spanish Civil War. Or such disgraceful episodes in American history as the Catholic-bashing of the pre-Civil War era, the Red Scare of 1919, and the McCarthy smear campaign of the early Fifties.

Anyway, through the Internet Public Library I found a book called The Day of the Confederacy: A Chronicle of the Embattled South by one Nathaniel Wright Stephenson. It's about the internal political and economic history of the Confederacy and is highly interesting, at least to me. So, in 1864 it's obvious that the South is going to lose because the North has bigger and better-supplied armies. Jeff Davis, who had authoritarian tendencies and a number of blind spots, blamed...you guessed it...

Davis urged Congress to revive the statute
permitting martial law and the suspension of the writ of habeas
corpus. The President told Congress that in parts of the
Confederacy "public meetings have been held, in some of which a
treasonable design is masked by a pretense of devotion of state
sovereignty, and in others is openly avowed...a strong
suspicion is entertained that secret leagues and associations are
being formed. In certain localities men of no mean position do
not hesitate to avow their disloyalty and hostility to our cause,
and their advocacy of peace on the terms of submission and the
abolition of slavery."

This suspicion on the part of the Confederate Government that it
was being opposed by organized secret societies takes us back to
debatable land and to the previous year. The Bureau of
Conscription submitted to the Secretary of War a report from its
Alabama branch relative to "a sworn secret organization known to
exist and believed to have for its object the encouragement of
desertion, the protection of deserters from arrest, resistance to
conscription, and perhaps other designs of a still more dangerous
character." To the operations of this insidious foe were
attributed the shifting of the vote in the Alabama elections, the
defeat of certain candidates favored by the Government, and the
return in their stead of new men "not publicly known." The
suspicions of the Government were destined to further
verification in the course of 1864 by the unearthing of a
treasonable secret society in southwestern Virginia, the members
of which were "bound to each other for the prosecution of their
nefarious designs by the most solemn oaths. They were under
obligation to encourage desertions from the army, and to pass and
harbor all deserters, escaped prisoners, or spies; to give
information to the enemy of the movements of our troops, of
exposed or weakened positions, of inviting opportunities of
attack, and to guide and assist the enemy either in advance or
retreat." This society bore the grandiloquent name "Heroes of
America" and had extended its operations into Tennessee and North
Carolina.

In the course of the year further evidence was collected which
satisfied the secret service of the existence of a mysterious and
nameless society which had ramifications throughout Tennessee,
Alabama, and Georgia. A detective who joined this "Peace
Society," as it was called, for the purpose of betraying its
secrets, had marvelous tales to tell of confidential information
given to him by members, of how Missionary Ridge had been lost
and Vicksburg had surrendered through the machinations of this
society.*

* What classes were represented in these organizations it is
difficult if not impossible to determine. They seem to have been
involved in the singular "peace movement" which is yet to be
considered. This fact gives a possible clue to the problem of
their membership. A suspiciously large number of the "peace" men
were original anti-secessionists, and though many, perhaps most,
of these who opposed secession became loyal servants of the
Confederacy, historians may have jumped too quickly to the
assumption that the sincerity of all of these men was above
reproach.