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Audiobook editionPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if the gaming table is not a test of luck, but someone else’s trade?
In Secret Band of Brothers, J. H. Green writes as a reformed gambler who wants to warn others. He presents himself as someone who knows the trade from within. His subject is the world of professional cheats: how they work, how they find partners, and why ordinary people lose their money.
The danger reaches beyond the table. Green presents gambling as an organized trade linked to drink, theft, cheating, and corruption, with families and young men exposed to its harm. Read as American reform writing, his account offers both a warning about vice and a glimpse of how nineteenth-century exposés seek to alarm and teach.
What you’ll discover
- An insider’s claim Meet a writer who bases his warning on his own claimed experience of gambling.
- The trade behind chance Explore Green’s picture of gambling as a business with rules, skills, and partners.
- More than lost money Consider the damage these warnings describe for young men and the families around them.
- A wider world of vice Follow the connections this exposé draws between the gaming table, drink, theft, and corruption.
- A warning of its time Encounter the bold promises and urgent lessons that shape nineteenth-century American reform writing.
Who will love it
Readers who love true crime, frontier history and secret societies will enjoy this account, along with anyone drawn to riverboat gamblers, ciphers and dramatic firsthand pursuits.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Green puts his past on trial
- The brothers choose a scapegoat
- Curiosity draws Green into danger
- Respectable leaders direct the crimes
- Blank parchments promise hidden evidence
- Secret rules hide behind honest business
- Violence shadows Green's witness accounts
- Public argument meets checkable arithmetic
- Different claims carry different weight
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Secret Band of Brothers
by J. H. Green · 1848
A reformed gambler guards a small oak box of blank parchments that, when heated, name a secret criminal order.
Medium level5–10 hours to read20 languages
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In short
What would you do if a stranger pressed a small oak box into your hands and forbade you to open it until he gave permission? In 1832, in New Orleans, a young man named J. H. Green does exactly that, and he keeps it shut for years.
Secret Band of Brothers at a glance
- Reading time
- About 5 h 30 min4 h 20 min fast, 6 h 35 min slow
- Length
- 78,500 words
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
- First published
- 1848by J. H. Green
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A reformed gambler explains why he now speaks
Green opens by saying who he is and why you should listen. In August 1842 he gave up a trade that, he says, wasted twelve years of his youth. He destroyed his card plates and returned financial obligations that could have made him a fortune. His old friends laughed, and his credit vanished.
In 1843 he began to lecture against gambling, hoping to shield young men from its tricks. He met fierce opposition from gamblers, from greedy men who disliked any reform, and from wealthy churchgoers who said their sons would never gamble.
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Details
- First published
- 1848
- Language
- English
- Level
- Medium level
Cite this edition
Green, J. H. Secret Band of Brothers. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/secret-band-of-brothers.
Green, J. H. (2026). Secret band of brothers. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/secret-band-of-brothers (Original work published 1848)
Green, J. H. Secret Band of Brothers. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/secret-band-of-brothers.
@book{green2026secret,
author = {Green, J. H.},
title = {Secret Band of Brothers},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/secret-band-of-brothers},
note = {First published 1848}
}
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What is Secret Band of Brothers about?
It is a reformed gambler's account of a secret order he says ran theft, counterfeiting and murder across the American South and West. It follows a stolen package of letters, the order's constitution, and Green's later fight against gambling and lotteries.
Is Secret Band of Brothers a true story?
Green insists there is not a line of fiction in it, and he builds it from his own memories, letters and papers. It was written in the late 1840s, and its claims about the order rest on his word and the documents he presents.
Who are the Grand Masters in the book?
In Green's account they are about two hundred wealthy, respectable leaders of the order. They plan crimes, keep the money, hold the secret ink and cipher, and use poorer members as agents, while arranging bail and sometimes help from lawyers, jurors and judges.
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