Maryland militias, rather than serve under the flags of other states. On July 20, 1864, he is reported by the "Charleston Mercury" to be "about to cooperate with our forces then near Baltimore, with 15,000 Maryland recruits." On October 8, 1864 he writes again to Davis, offering to recruit Marylanders to form a corps of heavy artillery, a suggestion that was politely declined. In March 1865, he is reported to have been instrumental in acquiring fresh uniforms for Marylanders in the Confederate Army. In the closing days of the war, he is still writing to Jefferson Davis to report on the movement of troops around Danville, Virginia. The book Knights' Gold by Jack Myers links George Kane to the Baltimore chapter of the Knights of the Golden Circle (KGC) and the various plots against President Lincoln. Knights' Gold tells the story of 5,000 gold coins found beneath a Baltimore tenement house, later linked to Baltimore's top secessionists prior to the Civil War. Kane was connected to the Civil War-era owners of the treasure house, as well as to John Wilkes Booth, who lived just 4/10th of a mile from the treasure site. Later life Kane entered the tobacco manufacturing business at Danville, VA in late 1865. Returning to Baltimore he was appointed to the "Jones Falls Commission" and was elected Sheriff of Baltimore City by the state Democratic Party in the 1873 election. On October 27, 1877, Kane was elected Mayor of the City of Baltimore having won the Democratic nomination over Ferdinand C. Latrobe, (1833–1911), (grandson of famed architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe, (1764–1820), son of civic activist, lawyer artist and author John H. B. Latrobe, and nephew of Benjamin Henry Latrobe II, (1806–1878), noted chief engineer and architect, with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad). Kane was Mayor of Baltimore City but a short time (his then two-year term would have ended November 3, 1879). City Council ordinances receiving his signed approval were not numerous. One appropriated money for repairs to the former Old City Hall on Holliday Street near East Saratoga Street, used 1830–1875, (former Peale Museum built and operated 1813–1830 by the famed Rembrandt Peale, [1778–1860]), and transferred this historic building to the City's Board of School Commissioners for the Baltimore City Public Schools system to be used for school purposes. It soon became the site of Baltimore's first African American (then referred to as "Colored"/"Negro") in the