Our Man in Charleston

[Wild Bill]

I have really read to page 31, so far. But by reading backwards, I have deduced so far this:

Dickey's basic thesis (page 311, one can write the whole review from this page and those preceding and following it) is that Britain would never join the Southern side in our Civil War without a guarantee that the international slave trade was abolished. Judah P. Benjamin pointed out that is was banned in the Confederate Constitution. Britain's response was that that was not good enough because of the ability of the various states in such a loose confederation would allow each state it decide the matter for themselves. It was a close call. Cotton from Egypt and India were not yet in the pipeline.

At the same time Britain would not stick with the Yankees unless they won a convincing victory, especially over Gen Robt E Lee. The English cotton mills were being shut down an the workers and their families starving. British troops were being sent to Canada to ready for war. Then along comes the Trent affair, where a US warship pulls over the MS Trent, a British mail ship in mid-Atlantic, and forcibly seized and removed the Confederate ministers to Britain and France. Lincoln could not let them go without losing face with the Northern voter and Congress.

The key to solving the whole thing was Prince Albert (you know, the guy on the can of tobacco) who softened the British reply to Lincoln and Seward allowing them to put the blame on Capt Wilkes for acting without orders. Lincoln only asked that he and Seward be allowed to look like it was their idea. Prince Albert died in a matter of days.

But the end of the Trent affair allowed the British to act to stay out of the war. Lincoln maneuvered the Trent affair into an American victory by thank the British for admitting to the American position of Freedom of the seas, over which the way of 1812 had been fought.

The British consul to Charleston, Robt Bunch, was a man who endured the arrogance of Southern slaveholders in South Carolina to lull them into believing he was on their side. This is displayed in the theme of the book on the page right after the Table of Contents. Through great restraint and diplomacy on his part he managed to get the SC law, requiring that black British sailor be jailed while their ships were in port, repealed. There is obviously more to the whole Bunch story, but I have not got into that yet.

Once the Rebs found out his various subterfuges they asked him to leave before the mob could hang him. Bunch later wound up as Britain's man in Bogota Columbia, his goal all along, as his family had land holdings there.

The Brazilian Rebel refugees are called Confederadoes, I believe. They are still a unique, isolated part of Brazilian culture, do reenactments, intermarry, and speak English, y'all.