Our Man in Charleston

[L Verge]

This is the title of a new book that mixes diplomacy and espionage in South Carolina when the British send a new consul to Charleston in 1853. Robert Bunch would serve into the Civil War period, faced with straddling the anti-slavery position of British politics with the economic interests of England's textile companies.

The book's subtitle is Britain's Secret Agent in the Civil War South. The research conducted by author Christopher Dickey hints that Bunch may have played a large role in keeping Britain from supporting the Confederacy.

My copy just arrived today, and I have added it to the "to be read" pile on my sofa that is growing progressively higher. Don't wait for a further review from me.

[Wild Bill]

I'll get to it as soon as I finish "Hitler Moves East" by Paul Carrell

[L Verge]

Busy, six-day week at work, so I have only gotten about thirty pages read of Our Man in Charleston. However, I found an online interview with the author, Christopher Dickey, that is quite interesting. Here's one snippet:

"BIOG: Just before the Civil War, the British are vehemently anti-slavery but are benefitting quite a bit from it in the form of cheap cotton. Was that a contradiction that they recognized?

CD: It was a contradiction that they rationalized. They emancipated all the slaves in the British Empire in 1833 and in 1807 had banned the slave trade with Africa. But they needed to get the best cotton they could at the lowest prices, and that cotton was being raised in the southern United States by slaves. They decided it was in their national interest to concede that slavery was an internal matter in the United States and bought that cotton even though they opposed the institution that was vital to its cultivation.

If you think about it, what does the United States have in common with the great oil producing states in the Middle East today? Almost nothing, but we buy a lot of oil. We let things slide with Saudi Arabia and we’re finding ways to work with Iran now -- all because they are producing the commodity that is most important to the modern world. Well, cotton was the most important commodity in the middle of the 19th century, so the British made their peace with it."

Good example of how history repeats itself! The full interview can be found at http://www.biographile.com (key word Robert Bunch). I should mention that Mr. Dickey has conversed with one of our forum members here, Don Doyle, whose Cause of All Nations deals with the foreign affairs issue during our Civil War. Mr. Dickey comments that it is very good to see new books coming out on the American relations with Europe at that time. He states that we need to understand that our Civil War was so much more than just military strategy and battle results.

I also did not realize that the slave trade continued to be so prolific into Brazil and Cuba well into the 1840s. The triangular trade route began in New York at that time. The last slave ship known to land in Brazil was in 1850, when a young captain known as Nathaniel "Lucky Nat" Gordon was chased by a British man-of-war and forced to unload his cargo on the Brazilian coast and destroy his ship. Mr. Gordon (a native of Portland, Maine) was said to have escaped dressed as a woman.

[L Verge]

I followed a little bit more on the slave trade in Brazil and found that it was in even higher numbers than the US. Over 4 million slaves were imported from Africa beginning in the mid-1400s with the Portuguese. This did not include the native slave trade between tribes that had gone on previously. Slave trade was abolished in 1850 - largely due to the naval power of the British - but the institution of slavery continued until 1888. Brazil was the last nation in the Western world to abolish slavery.

Much of the early slave trade was encouraged by the Jesuit missionaries who went to the area to convert the natives. This reminded me of that Order's influence in the colonies, especially in my home territory of Maryland.

After the Civil War, despite warnings not to by Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee, between 10,000 and 20,000 defeated Confederates emigrated to Brazil because it reminded them of their homes in the Deep South. Once Reconstruction ended, many came back to the U.S., but there is still an active "American" citizenry in that country. First Lady Rosalyn Carter had a great-uncle who was one of the first Confederados to head to Brazil. Several years ago, we had a family visit Surratt House from Brazil, and they were descendants of those Confederates also - and very proud of it.

[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.

[L Verge]

"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."

With perfect timing, the current issue of Civil War Monitor has a very good article on "Confederates in the Jungle," I did not realize that South American countries actually enticed defeated Rebels to leave the U.S. in 1865 on because those countries wanted the expertise of agriculture that the Southerners would bring. Mexico, Honduras, and Venezuela competed, but Brazil won out with an impressive infrastructure plan for improvements put together by their emperor (and the fact that they had been a strong ally to the CSA during the war).

The entire article is very interesting - especially the information about how the English language has survived for 150 years surrounded by a Spanish-speaking society. Linguists have actually studied the language of the Confederados to determine what the pre-Civil War English of the Deep South would have sounded like. When Jimmy Carter visited in 1972, he was amazed, "The most remarkable thing was, when they spoke, they sounded just like people in South Georgia."

P.S. There is another excellent article in the same issue of Civil War Monitor related to Edwin Stanton. Its title is "Minister of Deceit," if that gives you any clues as to the content.