Many of the sources cited here are available online, but with a few exceptions I have left out the Internet addresses because, in my experience, those tend to become obsolete. Most of the extant material can be located quickly using the material from the citations in search engines.
PROLOGUE
“before we will yield to the Yankees!” William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South (Boston: T. O. H. P. Burnham, 1863), p. 185; reprinted on demand in 2011 by Blackwell Books, London. Note that the quotations here are reconstituted from paraphrasing, a technique I will use rarely and with full attribution throughout this book. There is no “imagined” dialogue, and settings are described only on the basis of documentary evidence.
Slaughtered hundreds! Sylviane A. Diouf, Dreams of Africa in Alabama: The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Story of the Last Africans Brought to America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), Kindle loc 141–148. Russell suggested he didn’t think the captain expected to be believed, but the thrust of the story that the Indians were forced out certainly is true. In the 1830s, as Diouf notes, “ ‘Alabama Fever’ had spread throughout the South after the War of 1812 and brought white settlers by the tens of thousands. They entered the Alabama heartland, where they met fierce resistance from the Upper Creeks, who were then defeated during the Creek War of 1813–1814. More Indian land was lost as Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Cherokee (even though they had fought alongside the United States against the British) were also forced to relocate westward to Indian Territory after the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek in 1830.”
“the air stinks of blood” Alan Hankinson, Man of Wars: William Howard Russell of the Times (London: Heinemann, 1982), p. 127. Russell was writing to his wife about the aftermath of the Battle of Balaclava as Russian prisoners died around him.
Russell went out on deck Russell, My Diary, pp. 184–186.
The boat was a pile of kindling Ibid., p. 186; for further color, see T. C. DeLeon, Four Years in Rebel Capitals: An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy, from Birth to Death (Mobile: The Gossip Printing Company, 1890), pp. 26–30.
[Meaher] “kept the rest for himself” Russell, My Diary, p. 187. The original entry in Russell’s personal diary, now at the archives of the Times at News UK in Enfield, England, is partly written in longhand, but the discussion about the boy with the filed teeth is in shorthand.
The truth was well known Diouf, Dreams, Kindle loc 1623.
ritual scars in Africa Ibid., Kindle loc 545: “Many deportees in Mobile had scarifications on the face and/or the body, and those who came from Atakora [a mountainous region of Benin] had gotten them in a particular manner. As they passed from one age class to the other their bodies indicated where they stood in the hierarchy. They received scarifications around the navel, then on the belly, and finally on the Chest. Those on the face, numerous and very fine, barely visible, had been done much earlier, when they were two or three years old. The teenagers also got their upper teeth filed with small stones in the form of spikes.”
[The British] still needed Southern cotton Russell, My Diary, pp. 188–189. The dialogue here was partly written in Russell’s interpretation of dialect. I have taken the liberty of modernizing some of the language to make it more readable.
PART ONE
Chapter 1
enforce British interests In 1848 Her Majesty’s consul in Central America, Frederick Chatfield, had formed a ragtag army backed up by two Royal Navy warships that seized San Juan on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua and renamed it Greytown. See Lester D. Langley, America and the Americas: The United States in the Western Hemisphere (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2010), p. 58. A British consul in Havana was accused of fomenting a slave rebellion, and the consul in Canton played the pivotal role provoking what came to be called the Arrow War, or the Second Opium War, in 1856.
“in a social sense, very unpleasant” FO5/570 George Buckley Mathew letter, February 14, 1853. The small folio pages of the letter are inserted between pp. 148 and 151 of the larger dispatches and correspondence.
“small fry” FO5/579 Mathew to John Bidwell Jr., January 6, 1851.
“a poor Peelite” FO5/579 Mathew to John Bidwell Jr., January 6, 1851. Followers of Conservative leader and former Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel, who was a strong advocate of free trade. The Peelites eventually joined with Whigs and Radicals to form the Liberal Party (liberal being understood in the economic free-trade sense rather than the social sense employed in today’s United States).
insurrectionary plague that must be quarantined Michael Alan Schoeppner, “Navigating the Dangerous Atlantic: Racial Quarantines, Black Sailors and United States Constitutionalism” (Gainesville: University of Florida dissertation, 2010), passim.
“deemed and taken as absolute slaves, and sold” The Statutes at Large of South Carolina, p. 401, No. 2277, “An Act for the Better Regulation and Government of Free Negroes and Persons of Color; and for other purposes,” Article III.
Palmerston denounced the policy Schoeppner, “Navigating,” p. 269, citing FO5/579 Palmerston to Crampton, February 25, 1848, “Correspondence relative to the prohibition against the admission of free persons of colour into certain ports of the United States, 1823–1851.”
a growing sense of futility For a very thorough treatment of the efforts to change South Carolina’s law, see Philip M. Hamer, “British Consuls and the Negro Seamen Acts, 1850–1860,” The Journal of Southern History, vol. 1, no. 2 (May 1935), pp. 138–168, passim; also James J. Barnes and Patience P. Barnes, Private and Confidential: Letters from British Ministers in Washington to the Foreign Secretaries in London, 1844–67 (Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press, 1993), pp. 70–71.
refused to pay for his passage FO5/570 Foreign Office to Mathew, June 13, 1853.
an Englishman of the Americas R. Burnham Moffat, The Barclays of New York: Who They Are and Who They Are Not—and Some Other Barclays (New York: Robert Grier Cooke, 1904).
was then called Nueva Granada José Asunción Suárez Niño, “La Legion Británica en la Época de la Independencia,” published by the Academia Colombiana de Genealogía. What little has been written about Robert Henry Bunch Woodside, the consul’s father, has appeared in Colombia, where he is known as the founder of the country’s first ironworks and the father, with his second wife, of Doña Isabel Bunch Mutis, a well-known nineteenth-century poet who was the consul’s half sister, albeit twenty-five years his junior.
According to this paper by Suárez Niño, Bunch’s ancestors were close to the Stuart line of the British monarchy and departed Britain for the West Indies in the eighteenth century, settling in Jamaica, where they developed extensive banking and business interests with branches in New York, Philadelphia, and London. Consul Bunch’s paternal grandfather supposedly was a baronet, Sir George Henry Bunch, while his grandmother was Charlotte Elizabeth Woodside, born in Nassau.
When Bolívar arrived in Jamaica in 1815, the young revolutionary so impressed R. H. Bunch that he decided to fund Bolívar’s purchase of arms and provisions on his first campaign and afterward.
[would tell people in Charleston] that he went to Oxford This according to a letter from his daughter, Helen Bunch, written to the South Carolina Historical Society long after the consul’s death and still in the society’s files.
several delicate assignments Notes on Bunch’s early adventures are drawn mainly from his correspondence in the Diplomatic Papers of William Henry Lytton Earle Bulwer, Baron Dalling and Bulwer (1801–1872), held at the Norfolk Records Office, Norfolk, UK (not to be confused with the Duke of Norfolk Archives at Arundel Castle).
Not all the assignments went well. In the summer of 1850, Bunch, with his fluent Spanish, escorted the Spanish Countess Alcoy through the hurly-burly of New York City. The British Crown had been meddling in Spanish politics for decades with several ends in mind, among them, importantly, the abolition of the vast slave trade that continued between Africa and the Spanish colony of Cuba. Now the British government was cultivating the countess’s husband, Federico Roncali, who was then the governor-general of Cuba and soon to be, briefly, prime minister of Spain. All went well until the countess was about to leave New York, and her black twelve-year-old page was accompanying her baggage to the steamer. Out of nowhere, it would seem, an ardent abolitionist spirited the boy away, intent on setting him free. Ironically, the page was not a slave, but, in any case, he was never seen again. An American judge, Commissioner George W. Morton, filed a report, which Bunch forwarded to then–Secretary of State Daniel Webster in Washington. Typically, Bunch appended a few deferential lines to Webster of his own. See Bunch to Bulwer, August 29, 1850, Norfolk Record Office.
“zealots and helots” For a detailed history of the Slave Trade Department and its clerks, including the famous James Bandinel, who died in 1849, see Keith Hamilton, “Zealots and Helots: The Slave Trade Department of the Nineteenth-Century Foreign Office,” in Keith Hamilton and Patrick Salmon, eds., Slavery, Diplomacy and Empire: Britain and the Suppression of the Slave Trade, 1807–1975 (Eastbourne, UK: Sussex Academic Press, 2009), pp. 20–42.
“hankerings” Bunch to Crampton, March 26, March 28, April 1, May 24, 1853, Papers of Sir John Crampton, Bodleian Library, Oxford University, Oxford, UK.
Chapter 2
“were it even threatened” FO5/570 Bunch to Clarendon, November 29, 1853.
an average of nearly 2 percent of the national income Chaim D. Kaufman and Robert A. Pape, “Explaining Costly International Moral Action: Britain’s Sixty-Year Campaign Against the Atlantic Slave Trade,” International Organization (August 1999), vol. 53, no. 4, pp. 631–668.
“Lord Cupid” For the notes on Palmerston’s love life, and much else about him, I am indebted to David Brown’s superb Palmerston: A Biography (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), Kindle loc 250, 2125–2168. But this particularly succinct description of Palmerston as an old man comes from Christopher Hibbert writing for the BBC, February 17, 2011: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/victoria_ministers_01.shtml.
“delightful condition” Brown, Palmerston, Kindle loc 3479.
“never experienced before” Richard Huzzey, Freedom Burning: Anti-Slavery and Empire in Victorian Britain (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012), Kindle loc 3346.
“repugnant to the spirit of Christianity” Stanley Weintraub, Uncrowned King: The Life of Prince Albert (New York: The Free Press, 1997), pp. 104–105. Also see auction catalogue record of original notes from the speech:http://www.sophiedupre.com/stock_detail.php?stockid=14307.
“in connection with this diabolical Slave Trade” Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, vol. 93, column 1076, July 16, 1844.
He used Secret Service funds to bribe local politicians Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade: 1440–1870 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), p. 740.
the transatlantic slave trade with Brazil came to an end See FO881/205 “Correspondence relative to the prohibition against the admission of free persons of colour into certain ports of the United States,” Palmerston to Mathew, March 21, 1851. Also note that in February 1864 Palmerston wrote to Sir John Crampton, former chargé and later minister in Washington, that “the achievement which I look back on with the greatest and purest pleasure was forcing the Brazilians to give up their slave trade, by bringing into operation the Aberdeen Act of 1845.” Cited originally in A. E. M. Ashley, Life of Henry John Temple, Viscount Palmerston, 1846–1865 (London, 1876), pp. ii, 263–264, and referenced in “The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade” by Leslie Bethell: http://tinyurl.com/PalmerstonBrazil. The story of the Camargo is recounted in Ron Soodalter, Hanging Captain Gordon: The Life and Trial of an American Slave Trader(New York: Washington Square Press, 2006), pp. 17–18.
“The dates don’t match” David Steele, “Villiers, George William Frederick,” The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edition (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2009). The countess’s remark is quoted in French, “Les dates ne correspondent pas.”
“fiery little State” FO5/570 Bunch to Clarendon, December 29, 1853.
Chapter 3
British vessels in the port Address of consular office was listed under “Matthews” in the Charleston City Directory.
“called on to perform” Eugene H. Berwanger, The British Foreign Service and the American Civil War (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1994), p. 4. Mathew also drew a salary from the Foreign Office and complained that he was only getting half of it over the many months that he was in England instead of Charleston.
“looming in the future” Bunch to Crampton, November 25, 1853, Papers of Sir John Crampton, Bodleian Library, Oxford University, Oxford, UK.
“idle aristocracy” William W. Freehling, Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina 1816–1836 (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1966), p. 12.
one proud matron Mary Boykin Chesnut, Mary Chesnut’s Diary (New York: Penguin Books, 2011), p. 33. Several of the Quinby photographs are available in Martha M. Daniels and Barbara E. McCarthy, Mary Chesnut’s Illustrated Diary(Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing Company, 2011).
“in the back streets you see no one else” George Ranken, Canada and the Crimea, or Sketches of a Soldier’s Life (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts & Green, 1863), p. 108.
“showing what I felt” Ibid., p. 115.
“anxious for a change” Bunch to Crampton, November 25, 1853, Crampton Papers.
“too large for an insane asylum” See, among other sources, Margaret Miner and Hugh Rawson, eds., The Oxford Dictionary of American Quotations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 634. The published quote came out of a conversation with Robert Barnwell Rhett in 1860, but the question of secession had been raised on and off at least since the nullification crisis of 1832.
“emancipation and abolitionism” FO5/570 Bunch to Clarendon, November 29, 1853 (second of two dispatches on that date).
changes to the law FO5/570 Bunch to Clarendon, November 29, 1853.
“a merry Xmas” Bunch to Crampton, December 23, 1853, Crampton Papers.
Chapter 4
“Race Week” For a fascinating and detailed picture of South Carolina society in this period see Maurie D. McInnis, The Politics of Taste in Antebellum Charleston (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2005). The descriptions of Race Week are on pp. 24–25.
“no more to kill a slave than to shoot a dog” FO84/948 Bunch to J. B. Bergue, January 11, 1854. Part of this letter was quoted in Laura White, “The South in the 1850’s as Seen by British Consuls,” The Journal of Southern History,vol. 1, no. 1 (February 1935), pp. 29–48, which has been cited in many other books and papers. But White, perhaps out of prudery, omitted the part about making the slaves strip and touching them.
“indiscreet zeal of Her Majesty’s Consul” FO5/601. The account of the apprentice John Hayes and the wreck of the Charlotte is to be found in Bunch to Clarendon, January 27, 1854; Clarendon to Bunch, February 25, 1854.
Chapter 5
“literary emporium” John Russell’s Book Store had two different locations on King Street in the 1850s according to its advertisements in the Courier. One of them is now occupied by Victoria’s Secret; the other, at 251 King Street, is a women and girls’ clothing store, Palm Avenue, which has maintained the configuration of the old façade from the original building with “its ample entrance and handsome plate-glass windows.”
For further background see Richard J. Calhoun, “The Ante-Bellum Literary Twilight: Russell’s Magazine,” The Southern Literary Journal, vol. 3, no. 1 (Fall 1970), pp. 89–110; and Michael O’Brien, Conjectures of Order: Intellectual Life and the American South, 1810–1860, vol. 2 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), p. 481, which mentions the description of the entrance and windows.
let them buy them! William Grayson, “The Hireling and the Slave” (Charleston: John Russell, 1855), passim.
“to blunt a man’s moral sense” Bunch to Crampton, March 10, 1852, Papers of Sir John Crampton, Bodleian Library, Oxford University, Oxford, UK.
“a little eccentric” Bunch to Lyons, May 26, 1860, Lyons Papers.
[met] Macaulay and interviewed Prince Albert O’Brien, Conject ures, p. 323.
“lone star of disunion” William C. Davis, Rhett: The Turbulent Life and Times of a Fire-Eater (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001), p. 215.
the city’s very existence Ibid., p. 264.
[Spratt] to buy the struggling Charleston Standard William W. Freehling, The Road to Disunion, vol. 2—Secessionists Triumphant, 1854–1861 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 169. Freehling gives a very lively portrait of Spratt in his excellent chapter on the efforts to revive the slave trade, pp. 168–183.
the importation of slaves from Africa See especially Ronald T. Takaki, A Pro-Slavery Crusade: The Agitation to Reopen the African Slave Trade (New York: The Free Press, 1971), passim. Freehling’s note on Takaki in Disunion, p. 554, is spot-on: “The movement to reopen the African slave trade almost always receives short shrift in accounts of the coming of the Civil War. The reason: The radicalism never captured anything close to a southern majority and thus allegedly must be considered an antebellum sideshow. But by that reasoning, secessionism, also never commanding a majority until Lincoln ‘coerced’ the disunionists, also must be considered a sideshow. The point is that a disunionist minority ultimately made majoritarian history (as minorities often do)….Thus the reopening campaign offers the best window into the (minority) mentality that would ultimately make a revolution. Something so analytically valuable deserves central consideration.” Freehling recommends Takaki’s as the best book on the subject. For a very interesting interpretation of the phenomenon in a Marxist context, see Manisha Sinha, The Counter-Revolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South Carolina (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2000).
Spratt’s notoriety began to spread “The African Slave-Trade to Be Revived,” New York Times, July 29, 1854; and “The Slave Trade,” New York Times, August 26, 1854.
“editorially” a jackass Bunch to Crampton, February 14, 1856, Crampton Papers.
Chapter 6
“the most splendid of the season” Kevin Eberle, A History of Charleston’s Hampton Park (Charleston: The History Press, 2012), p. 35.
“disregard my recommendations” FO5/601 Bunch to Clarendon, February 15, 1854. Some of the formal locutions in this quotation have been modernized.
“desire to see the law repealed” FO5/601 Bunch to Clarendon, February 15, 1854.
“in perfect harmony” FO5/601 Bunch to Clarendon, March 22, 1854.
“annoyance of our common enemy” FO5/601 Bunch to Clarendon, March 22, 1854.
“fifty-two pirates too delicious” FO5/601 Bunch to Crampton, August 23, 1851, Papers of Sir John Crampton, Bodleian Library, Oxford University, Oxford, UK.
“acquisition of the Island of Cuba” FO5/601 Bunch to Clarendon, April 19, 1854.
such measures would end the slave trade C. Stanley Urban, “The Africanization of Cuba Scare, 1853–1855,” The Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 37, no. 1 (February 1957), pp. 29–45.
Judah P. Benjamin, introduced similar resolutions Robert Douthat Meade, Judah P. Benjamin: Confederate Statesman (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001), p. 92; reprinted from the original 1943 Oxford University Press edition.
“outrage connected with Slavery” FO5/601 Bunch to Clarendon, June 8, 1854.
“I mean, Public Opinion” FO5/601 Bunch to Clarendon, June 8, 1854.”
“a proposal for change” FO5/601 Bunch to Clarendon, June 18, 1854.
“remonstrances and interventions” FO5/601 Clarendon to Bunch, June 30, 1854.
actually have to comply Urban, “Africanization,” pp. 41–42.
“endeavored to gain” FO5/601 Bunch to Clarendon, November 28, 1854.
“any other section of the civilized world” FO5/601 Bunch to Clarendon, December 22, 1854.
“confer a blessing upon the African Race” FO84/948 Bunch to Clarendon, December 28, 1854, with enclosure. Freehling is very good on the question of the border states drifting away from the South.
Chapter 7
“Muscovite guns” As quoted in Alan Hankinson, Man of Wars William Howard Russell of the Times (London: Heinemann, 1982), pp. 73– 74.
“proven the present system to be futile” Crampton to Bunch, June 25, 1854, enclosure, Papers of Sir John Crampton, Bodleian Library, Oxford University, Oxford, UK.
“the moment of its completion” FO84/948 Crawford to Crampton, October 11, 1854.
“that prostitution of their flag” “The Slave-Trade; Remarks of Lord Palmerston in the House of Commons,” New York Times, August 10, 1861.
lodge diplomatic protests Bunch to Crampton, January 31, 1855, Crampton Papers.
volunteer for service in the Crimea James J. Barnes and Patience P. Barnes, Private and Confidential: Letters from British Ministers in Washington to the Foreign Secretaries in London, 1844–67 (Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press, 1993), p. 118.
“tearing the vitals of the Union” Crampton to Clarendon, January 13, 1856, cited in Barnes and Barnes, Private and Confidential, pp. 145–146.
“the smile of indifference” Bunch to Crampton, December 8, 1855, Crampton Papers.
“shake the Union to its base” Harold Temperley and Lillian M. Penson, Foundations of British Foreign Policy from Pitt (1792) to Salisbury (1902), or Documents, Old and New (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1938), Document 106, p. 295, cited as from the Private Clarendon Papers, in Palmerston’s hand, but unsigned and apparently of the year 1855.
Helen remained an outspoken Unionist William Wyndham Malet, An Errand to the South in the Summer of 1862 (London: Richard Bentley, 1863), p. 243.
“sufficient proof to convict any white person” Bunch to Crampton, November 15, 1855, with enclosure, Crampton Papers. There are many allusions to the works of Charles Dickens, directly and indirectly, in Bunch’s letters. The great British novelist had used the notices for absconded slaves to devastating effect in the closing chapters of his American Notes, about his travels through the United States on a reading tour in 1842. The runaways are described by their owners as wearing iron collars around their necks, iron bars on their legs, suffering from gunshot wounds, identifiable by severed fingers, notched ears, marks of lashings, broken limbs, and burns. “Ran away, a negro woman and two children,” reads one of the items placed in a newspaper by an owner who clearly was as shameless as he was cruel: “A few days before she went off, I burnt her with a hot iron, on the left side of her face. I tried to make the letter M.” Dickens believed this license to torture, maim, and kill corrupted the whole of society with its violence, even in states where slavery was banned. In a country where men “learn to write with pens of red-hot iron on the human face” they grow to be bullies and, “carrying cowards’ weapons, hidden in their breast [that is, concealed weapons], will shoot men down and stab them” when they quarrel.
Manning had approved FO5/601 Bunch to Clarendon, December 28, 1854.
“fully impressed with the importance of the subject” FO5/626 Bunch to Clarendon, February 9, 1855.
“information and guidance” FO5/626 Bunch to Clarendon, June 30, 1855.
a “triumph” FO5/626 Bunch to Clarendon, June 30, 1855.
“impossibility in fact” Bunch to Crampton, January 20, 1856, Crampton Papers.
“Clarendon is pettifogging” Bunch to Crampton, January 20, 1856, Crampton Papers.
“M is a touchy sort of customer” Bunch to Crampton, January 29, 1856, Crampton Papers.
“useless to strive” Bunch to Mure, January 27, 1856, Crampton Papers.
Chapter 8
off the coast of Angola “Slave-Trade Treaties,” New York Times, June 26, 1858, pp. 4–5.
shattered the cane Much has been written about the Sumner-Brooks affair, but few accounts are as sharp and succinct as that on the website of the U.S. Senate itself:http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/The_Crime_Against_Kansas.htm.
“Vive la république!” Bunch concluded Bunch to Crampton, May 29, 1856, Papers of Sir John Crampton, Bodleian Library, Oxford University, Oxford, UK.
“all matters of interest” FO5/649 Foreign Office to Bunch, July 3, 1856.
“anxious to fight” FO5/649 Bunch to Clarendon, June 13, 1856. Typically, Bunch began filing these dispatches updating the Foreign Office on events throughout the United States before he actually received formal permission to do so.
Chapter 9
commodity for speculation Frederic Bancroft, Slave Trading in the Old South (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996), p. 340; originally published by J. H. Furst, 1931.
“the strength and security of it” Ibid., p. 339.
“the disease it seeks to cure” FO5/626 Bunch to Clarendon, November 28, 1855, enclosure of the Adams speech.
“a natural condition of the Negro” FO5/626 Bunch to Clarendon, December 21, 1855, enclosure from the Charleston Standard dated December 3, 1855.
“by re-opening the African slave trade” FO5/649 Bunch to Clarendon, November 29, 1856, enclosure of the Adams speech.
“limits of the state” FO5/649 Bunch to Clarendon, December 26, 1856.
“no veto power in this State” FO5/649 Bunch to Clarendon, December 26, 1856.
PART TWO
Chapter 10
“the evil which is rapidly developing” FO5/677 Bunch to Clarendon, March 4, 1857.
“probably of the West Indies” FO5/677 Bunch to Clarendon, March 4, 1857.
“a bubble market in human beings” Frederic Bancroft, Slave Trading in the Old South, “The ‘Negro Fever,’ ” (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996), pp. 339–364, passim; originally published by J. H. Furst, 1931.
“all our mountain streams” Ronald T. Takaki, A Pro-Slavery Crusade: The Agitation to Reopen the African Slave Trade (New York: The Free Press, 1971), p. 39.
“a set of Red Republicans” William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South (Boston: T. O. H. P. Burnham, 1863), p. 185, p. 211; reprinted on demand in 2011 by Blackwell Books, London.
“comparatively worthless” James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), Kindle loc 4093.
“slave trade shall be attended to” Napier to Clarendon, May 26, 1857, Clarendon Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford University Oxford, UK.
the slightest hint of a provocation Harral E. Landry, “Slavery and the Slave Trade in Atlantic Diplomacy, 1850–1861,” The Journal of Southern History, vol. 27, no. 2 (May 1961), pp. 184–207.
“existing political structure can last long” Napier to Clarendon, March 8, 1858, cited in James J. Barnes and Patience P. Barnes, Private and Confidential: Letters from British Ministers in Washington to the Foreign Secretaries in London, 1844–67 (Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press, 1993), pp. 195–196.
Chapter 11
“stolid Charlestonians” Ronald T. Takaki, A Pro-Slavery Crusade: The Agitation to Reopen the African Slave Trade (New York: The Free Press, 1971), p. 213.
miles east of Havana “The Cruise of the Dolphin,” Charleston Daily Courier, August 31, 1858, p. 3.
twenty years before Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships: http://www.history.navy.mil/danfs/d5/dolphin-iii.htm.
threw them into the sea Douglas A. Levien, The Case of the Slaver Echo: History of the Proceedings (Albany, NY: Weed, Parsons & Company, 1859), pp. 3–5.
“mere skeletons” “The Cruise of the Dolphin,” Charleston Daily Courier, August 31, 1858, p. 2.
was from Boston One of the ironies of this case in retrospect is that the captain of the slaver was from New England, and the commander of the Dolphin, John Maffitt, was a Southerner who resigned his commission when war broke out and later became one of Charleston’s prominent blockade runners. Philip N. Racine, ed., Gentlemen Merchants: A Charleston Family’s Odyssey, 1828–1870 (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 2008), p. 471, note p. 857.
“the shark of the Atlantic” The Liverpool Mercury, reprinted in the Charleston Daily Courier, October 1, 1858.
Federal government would never allow it “A Slaver in the Bay,” Charleston Daily Courier, August 28, 1858, p. 1.
health of the gang has much improved “The Slave Ship and Slave Cargo at Charleston,” from the Charleston Mercury, September 1, 1858, reprinted in the New York Times, September 6, 1858. Also note the discourse on the meaning of such dances in Silviane A. Diouf, Dreams of Africa in Alabama: The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Story of the Last Africans Brought to America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), Kindle loc 1664: “Dancing has never been just entertainment in Africa, where people accompany every event, including the most dreadful, with dance and music. Dance is life, and like life, it is joy and pain. What the passengers observed on the steamboats were Africans and African Americans who had regained possession of their bodies. They used them to express themselves openly, something they were forbidden to do in any other manner and circumstance; and they externalized their feelings, including anger, contempt, and derision for the spectators in ways that were not decipherable by outsiders.”
“sad and distressed condition” “The Niagara and the Africans,” Charleston Daily Courier, November 24, 1858, p. 2.
“the flag of the South” “The Revival of the Slave Trade,” Charleston Daily Courier, September 4, 1858, p. 2.
“I can never forget it” Takaki, Crusade, p. 226.
Chapter 12
under the American flag Ronald T. Takaki, A Pro-Slavery Crusade: The Agitation to Reopen the African Slave Trade (New York: The Free Press, 1971), p. 224.
“bent upon her destruction” Ibid., p. 221. Also see FO5/601 Bunch to Clarendon, June 8, 1854: The cry of self-preservation “is always on the lips of a Carolinian when he is about to justify an outrage connected with slavery.”
“done daily in our streets” “The Captured Slavers,” Charleston Daily Courier, September 1, 1858, p. I.
“respect for the Law” FO84/1059 Bunch to Malmesbury, September 14, 1858.
“swinging them up to the yard-arm” “The Niagara and the Africans,” Charleston Daily Courier, November 24, 1858, p. 2; eventually it was reported that seventy-one Africans had died on the voyage, “The Cruise of theNiagara,”Charleston Daily Courier, December 15, 1858, p. 2.
“allow a trial to take place” FO84/1059, Bunch to Malmesbury, December 13, 1858.
“emboldened to offer a few remarks” FO84/1059, Bunch to Malmesbury, December 16, 1858.
well established as part of Savannah’s elite pare to about ₤500 for Bunch on a government salary. Lyons Letter Book, April 12, 1861.
pestilential heat on the coast Both Molyneux and Bunch’s brother-in-law Daniel Blake had large estates near Asheville, North Carolina, and there is an interesting nexus in the genealogical records: one of Blake’s sons by his first wife was named Edmund Molyneux Blake; one of his sons by his second wife (Bunch’s cousin as well as his sister-in-law) was Robert Bunch Blake. “Blake of South Carolina,” The Southern Historical and Genealogical Magazine, vol. 1, no. 2 (April 1900), pp. 153–166.
“Slave Trading or any other villainy” FO84/1059 Bunch to Malmesbury, December 16, 1858. What Bunch did not say in this dispatch and did not reveal in private to Lord Lyons in Washington until late the following year—and might never have revealed to the Foreign Office—was that he left Charleston on July 1, 1858, when the Wanderer was still in the harbor, and two days later his vice consul, H. Pinckney Walker, at William Corrie’s request, issued travel documents to three members of the Wanderer’s crew: Egbert Farnum, Brent, and Dennis. Technically they were not so much passports as attestations, since the men in question were not British subjects, but Walker recorded them in the consular diary as passports. In a private letter to Lyons on November 19, 1859, Bunch said that he, for one, had never doubted that the Wanderer was a slaver. It had been under suspicion as such since it left New York, even though it had passed customs there and had been visited by Federal officials in Charleston Harbor as well, with no suggestion it would be stopped. (I find no evidence that if Bunch believed this, he bothered to report it before the scandal broke at the end of 1858.) Bunch finally told Lyons about this when the Federal prosecutor who was trying the Wanderer cases in Savannah summoned Walker to testify. The “passports” had been found aboard the Wanderer after it offloaded its slaves. Bunch said the worst that could be said of Walker was that Corrie “humbugged” him like so many others. “It is evident that the infernal blackguard Corrie wished to have evidence of the respectability of his friends (!) in order to blind Her Majesty’s officer on the Coast of Africa.” Bunch followed up with another letter and a brief newspaper clipping about Walker’s testimony in Savannah. Lyons agreed that it was best not to inform the Foreign Office unless it seemed likely the matter would be picked up in the English press. See Bunch-Lyons correspondence, November 1859, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
“a few additional regiments” Takaki, Crusade, p. 209; also see Tom Henderson Wells, The Slave Ship Wanderer (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1967), and Erik Calonius, The Wanderer: The Last American Slave Ship and the Conspiracy That Set Its Sails (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2006), passim.
“prestige and power of Slave holders” FO5/720 Bunch to Russell, January 6, 1859.
“felt so sure with Lord Clarendon” David Steele, “Villiers, George William Frederick,” The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edition (Oxford, UK: Oxford Universtiy Press, 2009).
“claims of public duty” Stuart J. Reid, Lord John Russell (London: Sampson Low, Marston, 1895), Kindle loc 1901.
Chapter 13
“old-fashioned sailing vessels” Napier to Malmesbury, January 10, 1859, cited in James J. Barnes and Patience P. Barnes, Private and Confidential: Letters from British Ministers in Washington to the Foreign Secretaries in London, 1844–67 (Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press, 1993), p. 209.
an isolated incident Robert Ralph Davis Jr., “Buchanan Espionage: A Report on Illegal Slave Trading in the South in 1859,” The Journal of Southern History, vol. 37. no. 2 (May 1971), pp. 271–278.
“nor courteous to me” Lyons Letter Book, to Consul Bunch, October 9, 1859, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
“mortified at the rebuke” Bunch to Lyons, October 10, 1859, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
Lord Lyons in the late spring of 1859 Nicomede Bianchi, Storia documentata della diplomazia europea in Italia, vol. 6, pp. 408–409; Raymond A. Jones, The British Diplomatic Service, 1815–1914 (Waterloo, ON, Canada: Wilfrid Laurier Universtiy Press, 1983), pp. 126–127; Rassegna storica del Risorgimento, “England, Piedmont, and the Cagliari Affair,” 1998, p. 147; Amanda Foreman, A World on Fire: An Epic History of Two Nations Divided (London: Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Books, 2010), published in the United States as A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War, Kindle loc 804; “Lyons, Richard Bickerton Pemell,” The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edition (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2009); Brian Jenkins, Lord Lyons: A Diplomat in an Age of Nationalism and War (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014), passim.
“whose character is known to this country” Brian Jenkins, Britain and the War for the Union, vol. I (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1974). p. 44.
risk upsetting his valet Foreman, Fire, Kindle loc 802.
Or so he said. Bunch to Lyons, October 11, 1859, Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
“independent of the Federal Government” Lyons to Bunch, October 13, 1859, Lyons Letter Book, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
“to say nothing of baggage” Bunch to Lyons, October 16, 1859, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
Chapter 14
“absurd enough” Lyons to Consul Moore (Richmond), October 23, 1859, Lyons Letter Book, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
“trouble brewing for us all” Bunch to Lyons, October 16, 1859, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
“I believe a conspiracy has been formed” William C. Davis, Jefferson Davis: The Man and His Hour (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1991), pp. 276–278; also see Congressional Gazette, 36th Congress, 1st Sess. (1859–1860), I:62.
“what is called ‘an original’ ” George Macaulay Trevelyan, Garibaldi’s Defence of the Roman Republic (London: Longman’s, Green, and Co., 1912), p. 351. Trevelyan was given access to Forbes’s papers by Forbes’s daughter between the first and second editions of his book and thus provides by far the most complete portrait of the soldier of fortune in his Italian years.
“most courageous and honorable soldier.” Ibid., pp. 252–253.
a practical guide to insurgency Hugh Forbes, Manual for the Patriotic Volunteer on Active Service in Regular and Irregular War: Being the Art and Science of Obtaining and Maintaining Liberty and Independence, 2 vols. (New York: W. H. Tinson, 1855). The book may not have made money, but it did have a certain following. The well-known writer, traveler, and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted not only bought arms for free-soil settlers in Kansas, he forwarded them a copy of Forbes’s Manual “with relevant sections underscored in ink,” according to Witold Rybczynski, A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the 19th Century (New York: Scribner, 1999), Kindle loc 2165.
whorehouse on Delancey Street Edward J. Renehan, The Secret Six: The True Tale of the Men Who Conspired with John Brown (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1997).
“the craftiness of partial insanity” “The Life of Osawatomie Brown,” Emporia News, Emporia, Kansas, November 12, 1859, p. 3.
“cannot be constantly depended upon” Forbes, Manual, p. 10.
God knew better Mark A. Lause, Race and Radicalism in the Union Army (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2009), pp. 29–31.
“keen eyes were seeking for an adversary” William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South (Boston: T. O. H. P. Burnham, 1863), pp. 185, p. 50; reprinted on demand in 2011 by Blackwell Books, London.
“getting up military revolutions” Report of the Select Committee of the Senate Appointed to Inquire into the Late Invasion and Seizure of the Public Property at Harper’s Ferry, pp. 253–255.
“the whole matter in all its bearings” Walter Stahr, Seward: Lincoln’s Indispensable Man (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012), p. 180.
“strewn with documents” “More of the Forbes Correspondence: Report to the British Anti-Slavery Society on American Politics Generally and Abolitionism Particularly, Etc.,” New York Herald, October 28, 1859.
“communicate the papers to Your Lordship” Bunch to Lyons, October 31, 1859, Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
the Barbary Coast Richard Huzzey, Freedom Burning: Anti-Slavery and Empire in Victorian Britain (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012), Kindle loc 1268.
PART THREE
Chapter 15
“terror in this community and state” FO5/720 Bunch to Russell, November 24, 1859.
“leaving in great numbers” FO5/720 Bunch to Russell, December 9, 1859.
“revolver pistols” FO5/720 Bunch to Russell, November 24, 1859.
“abolition tendencies” James J. Barnes and Patience P. Barnes, Private and Confidential: Letters from British Ministers in Washington to the Foreign Secretaries in London, 1844–67 (Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press, 1993), pp. 220–221; FO5/716, folio pp. 348–349.
“the [powder] magazine here is guarded.” Bunch to Lyons, December 24, 1859, Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
a riot or an uprising FO5/720 Bunch to Lyons, November 24, 1859.
“Comité de Salut Publique” FO5/720 Bunch to Russell, December 31, 1859. Note that Dickens had just published A Tale of Two Cities in 1859, and it was being serialized in the American press, so references to The Terror were particularly fashionable.
stay in force Barnes and Barnes, Private and Confidential, p. 221; Bunch to Lyons, December 24, 1859, Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
“where will the practice stop?” Bunch to Lyons, December 10, 1859, Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
Chapter 16
“a free-labor nation” Walter Stahr, Seward: Lincoln’s Indispensable Man (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012), p. 174.
The New York crowd, of course, went wild. “Departure of Senator Seward for Europe,” New-York Tribune, May 9, 1859, p. 5, writing about Seward’s departure on Saturday, May 7.
Pembroke Lodge John M. Taylor, William Henry Seward: Lincoln’s Right-Hand Man (New York: HarperCollins), p. 113.
“I could not be a plebeian” Frederick William Seward, Seward: Senator and Secretary of State (Auburn, NY.: Derby and Miller, 1891), p. 390.
“aghast” Amanda Foreman, A World on Fire: An Epic History of Two Nations Divided (London: Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Books, 2010), Kindle loc 1447, published in the United States as A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War, p. 45, citing Deborah Logan, ed., The Collected Letters of Harriet Martineau, 5 vols. (London, 2007), vol. 4, p. 180.
“vaporing, blustering, ignorant man” Foreman, Fire, pp. 45–46, Kindle loc 1447.
“pretty much finished” Stahr, Indispensable, p. 177.
“might have critical ones” Frederick W. Seward, Reminiscences of a War-Time Statesman and Diplomat, 1830–1915 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1916) p. 129.
Chapter 17
“send into those states” Lyons to Russell, March 5, 1860, Lyons Letter Book, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle. The words I have here as “superiority” and “happy” are not clear in the manuscript copy.
supply the Wanderer Tom Henderson Wells, The Slave Ship Wanderer (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1967), p. 13.
the slave deck was laid The Jehossee owner claimed, of course, that it was not in the least equipped to carry slaves. See Bunch to Lyons, June 4, 1860, Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
“Insulted Flag” Ron Soodalter, Hanging Captain Gordon: The Life and Trial of an American Slave Tradeer (New York: Washington Square Press, 2006), p. 40, citing “Squadron Letters” M-89, Roll 111.
“Slave Trading impudence” Bunch to Lyons, April 3, 1860, Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
“amicable settlement” Lyons to Russell, April 10, 1860, cited in James J. Barnes and Patience P. Barnes, Private and Confidential: Letters from British Ministers in Washington to the Foreign Secretaries in London, 1844–67(Selinsgrove, PA; Susquehanna University Press, 1993), p. 231.
payroll as a secret agent FO84/1086 Archibald to Russell, May 7, 1859.
“fabric manufacturing industry” Bunch to Lyons, May 24, 1860 (Queen’s birthday), clipping from Evening News of May 23 enclosed, Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
“killed a man named Bird in cold blood” Bunch to Lyons with enclosure, April 12, 1860, and Lyons Letter Book, to L. T. Wigfall, April 11, 1860. Wigfall subsequently apologized, and Lyons accepted his apology. Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
Chapter 18
“very improperly dressed females” Murat B. Halstead, Caucuses of 1860: A History of the National Political Conventions of the Current Presidential Campaign (Columbus, OH: Follett, Foster and Company, 1860), p. 5.
“battle, murder, and certain death” Bunch to Lyons, March 22, 1860, Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle. The prizefight rhetoric was inspired, no doubt, by the vaulting passions and voluminous press coverage that surrounded the world’s first great international prizefight on April 17, 1860, between Tom Sayers, the English champion, and John Carmel Heenan, “the Benicia Boy” from San Francisco. The fight at Farnborough, England, lasted forty-two blood-soaked rounds over two and a half hours and was declared, in the end, a draw.
“generally and individually” Bunch to Lyons, April 23, 1860, Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
“making night hideous” Halstead, Caucuses, p. 13.
“pluck to make its points” Ibid., pp. 5–6.
“uppermost in their minds” Ibid., p. 13.
“war to the knife” Ibid., p. 7.
“a very pretty quarrel” Bunch to Lyons, April 27, 1860, Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
“feathers are drooping” Halstead, Caucuses, p. 47.
“frightful fiasco” Bunch to Lyons, May 1, 1860, Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
Chapter 19
“there be anything to get, which I doubt” Bunch to Lyons, May 3, 1860, Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
“a free man when he was so kidnapped!” FO84/1112 Bunch to Lord John Russell, May 3, 1860.
vindicate our honor by a war FO5/745 Bunch to Lord John Russell, May 3, 1860.
hoped Lyons agreed with him Bunch to Lyons, May 4, 1860, Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
“all I love and respect” Bunch to Lyons, May 7, 1860, Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
Chapter 20
“appear to be children” FO84/1112 Mure to Lord John Russell, May 18, 1860.
“scarcely space to die in” Craven to Toucey, June 8, 1860, quoted in Warren S. Howard, American Slavers and the Federal Law, 1837–1862 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963), pp. 124–126. Also see the excellent, detailed account of the Wildfire’s history by Ted Maris-Wolf of Washington College in his video lecture “Blood and Treasure”: http://youtube/S2uKjdVKZQM.
Note that Lt. Tunis Augustus MacDonough Craven, who was in the first class of midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy in 1852 went on to command the ironclad Tecumseh in the Union Navy. “Every American would learn that when theTecumseh was torpedoed and sunk by the Confederates at Mobile Bay, Admiral Farragut cried, ‘Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead.’ But we Cravens know that the crew and the pilot escaped while Tunis Augustus went down with the ship, saying, tradition has it, ‘After you, Pilot.’ ” John Piña Craven, The Silent War: The Cold War Battle Beneath the Sea (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), p. 179.
“on the soil for generations” James Buchanan, “Third Annual Message to Congress,” The Works of James Buchanan, ed. John Bassett Moore, vol. 10, 1856–1860 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1910).
“execrable traffic” Republican Party platform of 1860, published on the website of the American Presidency Project: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=29620.
Chapter 21
healthier place than Charleston Bunch’s father’s mother’s family were Woodsides, one of the old families of the Bahamas.
not understood at all “Report of the Committee of the City Council of Charleston upon the Epidemic Yellow Fever of 1858,” Walker, Evans & Co.’s Steam Power Presses, 1859, passim, sent as enclosure in FO5/720 Bunch to Russell, August 28, 1859. Also see Bunch to Lyons, May 29, 1860, Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
smeared by smashed bugs Bunch to Lyons, May 29, 2013, Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle. 160 every feeling of humanity FO84/1112 Lousada to Lord Russell, July 28, 1860, and Russell note on same dated August 23, in folio pp. 46–49.
legend of the Clotilda began to grow Copies of the original accounts of this voyage were shared with me by Sylviane A. Diouf, who used them in her Dreams of Africa in Alabama: The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Story of the Last Africans Brought to America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).
it was just business Ron Soodalter, Hanging Captain Gordon: The Life and Trial of an American Slave Trader (New York: Washington Square Press, 2006), pp. 58–59.
what sort of ship this Storm King was “The Case of the Slaver Storm King,” Richmond Dispatch, February 7, 1861.
Chapter 22
impression of Southern behavior remained “The Falsely Alleged Insult to the Prince of Wales,” Richmond Dispatch, November 13, 1860.
“very great lengths” to remedy them Bunch to Lyons, February 2, 1860. The first couple of sentences in this quotation were paraphrased in the original letter, but most of it is Bunch quoting himself as accurately as he can (or so he says). It is clear that Bunch felt he had to inform Lyons of this incident, since Corcoran, the influential Washington banker, was among the dinner guests and was very “perturbed.” Bunch wanted to make sure Lyons saw his version of the event first, before he heard it from someone else.
“simply the act of lawless ruffians” “Senate Select Committee Report on the Harper’s Ferry Invasion,” 36th Congress, 1st Sess., Senate, Rep. Com. No. 278, June 15, 1860.
“monarch in ancient or modern times” “The Prince in New-York,” dateline October 12, 1860, for the Times of London, reprinted in the , November 8, 1860.
infamous mobs run wild Herbert Asbury, The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1990), pp. 92–107; originally published by Alfred Knopf, 1927.
“clamber into the carriage at once” N. A. Woods, The Prince of Wales in Canada and the United States (London: Bradbury & Evans, 1861), p. 374. Woods was the special correspondent of the Times.
“doing so would be in bad taste” Thomas Butler Gunn, Thomas Butler Gunn Diaries, vol. 14, September 23, 1860, to December 31, 1860 (St. Louis: State Historical Society of Missouri, 2013), p. 40.
“hoarse, undulating roar” Woods, Prince, p. 377.
on its way to Africa “The Slave Trade in New-York: Rearrest of John A. Machado,” New York Times, September 21, 1862; “The Slaver Mary Francis: United States Commissioner’s Office,” New York Times, September 13, 1861.
Chapter 23
“increase day by day in intensity” FO5/745 Bunch to Lord John Russell, November 13, 1860.
“enlightenment of the Free States” FO5/745 Bunch to Lord John Russell, November 29, 1860.
“pledged to their destruction” FO5/745 Bunch to Lord John Russell, November 29, 1860.
“ability, industry, or good conduct” FO5/745 Bunch to Lord John Russell, November 27, 1860, with copy of Governor Gist speech enclosed.
Chapter 24
“a system of labor appointed of God” FO5/745 Bunch to Lord John Russell, December 5, 1860. The dialogue between Bunch and Rhett is paraphrased in the original dispatch.
“the maintenance of slavery within the territory of a state” FO5/745 Note signed “P,” date unclear, but the reference to Rhett means it must refer to the December 5 dispatch, folio p. 207.
Chapter 25
an asylum “full of lunatics” Robert N. Rosen, Confederate Charleston: An Illustrated History of the City and the People During the Civil War (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1994), p. 42.
“I lost my night’s rest” Bunch to Lyons, December 14, 1860, Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
“tea has been thrown overboard” William C. Davis, Rhett: The Turbulent Life and Times of a Fire-Eater (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001), p. 375.
“any event as possible” FO5/745 Bunch to Lord Russell, November 29, 1860.
“too ‘Frenchy’ in some of his anecdotes to me” Martha M. Daniels and Barbara E. McCarthy, Mary Chesnut’s Illustrated Diary (Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing Company, 2011), p. 375.
“let us achieve ours” Michael O’Brien, Conjectures of Order: Intellectual Life and the American South, vol. 2 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), p. 327.
“no Southern Confederacy would venture to propose its renewal” When Bunch put pen to paper the next day, he outlined the conversation with Trescot in a private note to Lyons, but when he wrote about it in a formal dispatch to Lord Russell, he left out altogether Trescot’s doubts about the South reopening the Middle Passage. Bunch thought he knew better, and he was not going to confuse London with conflicting opinions on such a critical issue. See Bunch to Lyons, December 8, 1860, 3:00 p.m., Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
Chapter 26
Rumor had it Jamie Malanowski, “The Government Disintegrates as the Union Dissolves,” New York Times (blog), December 19, 2010:http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/the-government-disintegrates-as-the-union-dissolves/.
“He would come with” Robert N. Rosen, Confederate Charleston: An Illustrated History of the City and the People During the Civil War (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1994), p. 42.
“There has not been time” Bunch to Lyons, December 15, 1860. Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
“the point of the sword” FO5/745 Bunch to Russell, December 19, 1860.
“Owing to the late political” FO84/1112 Bunch to Russell, December 22, 1860; New York Times, December 26, 1860, reprint of Charleston Courier, December 22, 1860. Courier says Bonita arrived on Tuesday, which would have been December 18, 1860.
The Constitution had put “South Carolina Declaration of the Causes of Secession,” in Brooks D. Simpson, Stephen W. Sears, and Aaron Sheehan-Dean, eds., The Civil War: The First Year Told by Those Who Lived It (Washington, D.C.: The Library of America, 2011), pp. 149–155.
Chapter 27
Gunn was taking his life in his hands “The Vault at Pfaff’s: An Archive of Art and Literature by New York City’s Nineteenth-Century Bohemians,” a website that can be found athttp://digital.lib.lehigh.edu/pfaffs/people/individuals/109/.
Her Majesty’s consul in South Carolina Thomas Butler Gunn, Thomas Butler Gunn Diaries, vol. 15, January 1, 1861, to February 28, 1861 (St. Louis: State Historical Society of Missouri, 2013), p. 166. The document countersigned by Bunch is reproduced between pages 152 and 153.
for most of the time Ibid., p. 166.
Buchanan thought at first Bruce Catton, The Coming Fury (New York: Simon & Schuster/Pocket Books, 1961), p. 140.
Chapter 28
communicate with his wife Philip N. Racine, ed., Gentlemen Merchants: A Charleston Family’s Odyssey, 1828–1870 (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 2008), pp. 415–451.
“reasonable counsels are entirely disregarded” FO5/780 Bunch to Lord Russell, January 4, 1861.
Bunch wrote to Lord Russell FO5/780 Bunch to Lord Russell, January 11, 1861.
Britain’s envoy to the new Anthony Barclay to Sir Henry Bulwer, January 26, 1861, Norfolk Records Office, Norfolk, UK.
In an anonymous dispatch Thomas Butler Gunn, Thomas Butler Gunn Diaries, vol. 15, January 1, 1861, to February 28, 1861 (St. Louis: State Historical Society of Missouri, 2013), p. 49.
the treatment he received Ibid., stamped page 183.
Chapter 29
Between heats, while grooms There’s an excellent sketch of the Washington Course, as the race track was called, and its long history on the website of the Preservation Society of Charleston:http://www.halseymap.com/Flash/window.asp?HMID=29; also see John B. Irving, The South Carolina Jockey Club (Charleston: Russell & Jones, 1857).
“I had better go North” Thomas Butler Gunn, Thomas Butler Gunn Diaries, vol. 15, January 1, 1861, to February 28,m 1861 (St. Louis: State Historical Society of Missouri, 2013), pp. 141–142, 185– 186.
Committee caught up Ibid., pp. 56–57.
Bunch concluded with what Bunch to Lyons, April 15, 1861, Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
Chapter 30
they did much of their politicking William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South (Boston: T. O. H. P. Burnham, 1863), p. 165; reprinted on demand in 2011 by Blackwell Books, London.
“What an awful price” Philip N. Racine, ed., Gentlemen Merchants: A Charleston Family’s Odyssey, 1828–1870 (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 2008), p. 442.
Bunch had made sure FO5/780 Bunch to Russell, February 12, 1861.
It has reserved Lyons to Russell, February 26, 1861, cited in James J. Barnes and Patience P. Barnes, The American Civil War Through British Eyes: Dispatches from British Diplomats, vol. 1: November 1860–April 1862 (Kent, OH: The Kent State University Press, 2003), p. 34. In March 1861, as if to confirm British suspicions that the Confederate constitution’s prohibition of the African slave trade was insincere, Confederate secretary of state Robert Toombs instructed his envoys to Europe to offer to assume all obligations in treaties between the United States and Britain—except for those connected with the suppression of the slave trade.
“the sentiments of nature and of civilization” FO5/780, Bunch to Russell, February 28, 1861.
Chapter 31
The night before Charles P. Stone, “Washington on the Eve of War,” Century Magazine, July 1883, pp. 458–466; also see this account, interesting as much for its publisher as for its content, on the Central Intelligence Agency website:https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/additional-publications/civil-war/SML.htm.
Then they walked out into the daylight New York Times, March 5, 1861.
Bunch warned Lord Russell FO5/780 Bunch to Russell, March 8, 1861.
Bunch wrote of this floating Bunch to Lyons, February 16, 1861, Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
“My house is about three miles” Bunch to Lyons, March 9, 1861, Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
atop a dunghill Bunch to Lyons, March 21, 1861, Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
As the British saw things Bunch to Lyons, March 21, 1861, Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle; also see as background “General Telegraphic News: The Slave and Coolie Trade, Official Correspondence with the British Government,” New York Times, August 20, 1860.
Bunch was overjoyed Bunch to Lyons, March 4, 1861, Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
PART FOUR
Chapter 32
“Oh, Lord why did I do it?” Martin Crawford, ed., William Howard Russell’s Civil War: Private Diary and Letters, 1861–1862, (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992), p. 17.
Horace Greeley’s New-York Tribune, March 20, 1861, in Howard Cecil Perkins, ed., Northern Editorials on Secession, 2 vols. (New York: The American Historical Association, 1942), 2:939; also see “Our Own,” Harper’s Weekly, April 13, 1861, p. 227.
The little boy Russell’s personal diary entry, November 9, 1861. Spelling and punctuation changed to modern usage. Crawford, Private Diary, p. 169.
“You must go” Alan Hankinson, Man of Wars: William Howard Russell of the Times (London: Heinemann, 1982), p. 152.
Ward promised to give Russell Ibid., p. 150.
When Russell had been Ibid., p. 158.
He was ready William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South (Boston: T. O. H. P. Burnham, 1863), pp. 60–61; reprinted on demand in 2011 by Blackwell Books, London.
So sensitive was Seward Frederic Bancroft, The Life of William H. Seward (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1900), p. 317; also see pp. 328–330 for a very good discussion of how the North overestimated anti-slavery sentiment in Europe while the South grossly underestimated it.
Chapter 33
And if he was with them Bunch to Lyons, April 5, 1861, Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
Bunch had asked Lyons Lyons Letter Book, to Bunch, April 13, 1861, Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
Bunch said he planned Bunch to Lyons, April 9, 1861; note that “attached peasantry,” often used to describe feudal estates in Europe and in Ireland, was used by Lyons on occasion when discussing the slaves in the United States. See James J. Barnes and Patience P. Barnes, Private and Confidential: Letters from British Ministers in Washington to the Foreign Secretaries in London, 1844–67 (Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press, 1993), p. 220.
Gen. P. G. T. Beauregard had delivered J. Cutler Andrews, The North Reports the Civil War (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985), p. 1.
“We had no lights” Abner Doubleday, Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860–61 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1876), p. 142.
“But we live in curious times” Running account of the battle of Fort Sumter, in Bunch to Lyons, April 13, 1860, Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
Chapter 34
“He will find four dinners” Bunch to Lyons, April 16, 1861, Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
In the aftermath Frederic Bancroft, The Life of William H. Seward (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1900), p. 163.
“Privateers from the Confederacy” Bunch to Lyons, April 24, 1861, Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
“seems a very nice fellow” Martin Crawford, ed., William Howard Russell’s Civil War: Private Diary and Letters, 1861–1862 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992), p. 39.
“impressed by his powers of observation” Bunch to Lyons, April 17, 1861, Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
A stubble of beard William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South (Boston: T. O. H. P. Burnham, 1863), pp. 106–107; reprinted on demand in 2011 by Blackwell Books, London.
Russell came away Ibid., pp. 108–109.
“Only one of the company” Ibid., p. 117.
“You won’t mind it” Ibid., p. 118.
A couple of times Bunch Bunch to Lyons, April 29, 1861, Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
But Bunch wrote directly Copy of Bunch to Lord Russell in Lyons Papers dated June 20, 1861, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
Chapter 35
“The misery and cruelty” William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South (Boston: T. O. H. P. Burnham, 1863), p. 170; reprinted on demand in 2011 by Blackwell Books, London.
He despised the city Ibid., p. 165.
He loathed his hotel Ibid., p. 164.
What ate at him Ibid., p. 169.
a sacred faith which is Ibid., p. 168.
Russell, so furious he Ibid., p. 168.
“If England thinks fit” Ibid., pp. 175–176.
“Of one thing there” Ibid., p. 293.
Chapter 36
In Washington, Lyons and the French minister Charles Francis Adams, Seward and the Declaration of Paris: A Forgotten Diplomatic Episode, April–August 1861 (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1912), p. 31.
PART FIVE
Chapter 37
The more powerful the Confederates See William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South (Boston: T. O. H. P. Burnham, 1863), p. 377 (reprinted on demand in 2011 by Blackwell Books, London), about his conversation with Lyons, much of which echoes Lyons to Russell, May 20, 1861, cited in James J. Barnes and Patience P. Barnes, Private and Confidential: Letters from British Ministers in Washington to the Foreign Secretaries in London, 1844–67(Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press, 1993), pp. 85–88.
On June 6 James J. Barnes and Patience P. Barnes, The American Civil War Through British Eyes: Dispatches from British Diplomats, vol. 1, November 1860–April 1862 (Kent, OH: The Kent State University Press, 2003), p. 110.
there was no proof Robin W. Winks, Civil War Years: Canada and the United States (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999), pp. 47–48.
The Confederate commissioners Frederic Bancroft, The Life of William H. Seward (New Y ork: Harper & Brothers, 1900), p. 184.
Chapter 38
He sent a copy Norman B. Ferris, Desperate Diplomacy: William H. Seward’s Foreign Policy, 1861 (Knoxville: the University of Tennessee Press, 1976), p. 98.
He may never have been involved See detailed correspondence on the case in The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Army, Series II, Vol. II, “Treatment of Suspected and Disloyal Persons North and South,” Case of Purcell M. Quillen (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1891), pp. 415–424. Also see Milledge L. Bonham Jr., The British Consuls in the Confederacy (New York: Columbia University, 1911), p. 26; James J. Barnes and Patience P. Barnes, The American Civil War Through British Eyes: Dispatches from British Diplomats, vol. 1, November 1860–April 1862 (Kent, OH: The Kent State University Press, 2003), p. 216, note 27;Illustrated London News, vol. 39, no. 1103, p. 153, August 17, 1861 (dispatch sent August 3, 1861), and Illustrated London News, vol. 39, no. 1105, pp. 208–209, August 31, 1861 (dispatch sent August 17, 1861): “Purcell M’Quillan, the incarcerated British subject, whom the Commander of Fort Lafayette refused to bring into court on a writ of habeas corpus, has been released by the Secretary of War in consequence of the intervention of Lord Lyons.”
“I really do not believe it” Bunch to Lyons, July 8, 1861, Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
“particularly cautious” Lyons to Bunch, July 6, 1861, Lyons Letter Book, Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
“as prudently as any man.” Lyons Letter Book, to Lord Russell, Private, July 8, 1861, Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
Chapter 39
“as I think right” I have taken some liberties with the dialogue adapted from paraphrasing, including some of the attributions, which were to both consuls together but which I have assigned either to Bunch or to de Belligny. The text of the original Trescot memorandum was published by Edward A. Trescot, William H. Trescot’s son, in “The Confederacy and the Declaration of Paris,” American Historical Review, vol. 23, no. 4 (July 1918).
“the cause of the Union” William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South (Boston: T. O. H. P. Burnham, 1863), p. 440; reprinted on demand in 2011 by Blackwell Books, London.
“muffled drum” Ibid., p. 444.
“might as well have talked to the stones” Ibid., p. 454.
Wicked designs of the South Bunch to Lyons, July 8, 1861, Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle. Also see Phillip E. Myers, Caution and Cooperation: The American Civil War in British-American Relations (Kent, OH: The Kent State University Press, 2008), p. 210; Colin Frank Baxter, Admiralty Problems During the Second Palmerston Administration, 1859–1865 (Athens: University of Georgia, 1965), pp. 166–171; Brian Jenkins, Britain and the War for the Union, vol. I (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1974), p. 249.
free the slaves—no, not at all John Bigelow, “The Confederate Diplomatists and Their Shirt of Nessus,” Century Magazine, May 1891, pp. 122–123; James Spence, The American Union; Its Effect on National Character and Policy, with an Inquiry into Secession as a Constitutional Right and the Causes of Disruption (London: Richard Bentley, 1862), p. 131.
step up their traffic to Cuba FO84/1137 Lyons to Russell, September 10, 1861, Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
“characterized their predecessors” Jenkins, War, pp. 249–250, citing FO84/1137 Lyons to Russell, September 10, 1861.
Chapter 40
“France and England were not to be alluded to” Bunch to Lyons, August 16, 1861, Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
American laws against the slave trade The entire debate is published in Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates: Third Series, 1861, vol. 164, pp. 164–165.
“rightly or wrongly, vital interests” Palmerston note enclosed in Earl Russell’s private letter to Lord Lyons, August 16, 1861, signed “P 15/8-61,” Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
Chapter 41
“possessed the Government cipher.” See “A Scrap of War History: How a Secret Scheme for Securing Recognition of the Southern Confederacy Was Averted,” New York Times, August 9, 1875, p. 3. This account, alluded to by Milledge L. Bonham Jr. in The British Consuls in the Confederacy (New York: Columbia University, 1911), p. 31, was published long after the event and is full of obvious inaccuracies. Most conspicuously, in the actual telegram sent to Seward, Mure’s first name is given, correctly, as Robert, while in the article reprinted by the Times from the Hartford Courant the boastful courier is identified incorrectly as William Mure.
The extent to which the pseudonymous Mr. B. T. Henry turned himself into a spy on the spot that day in Louisville remains an open question, as does his identity. He says in the published account that he wanted to preserve his anonymity even in 1875 because “certain members of his family were on terms of intimate friendship with the Mure family.” There is no indication of what business “B. T. Henry” had in Louisville to begin with, and the speed with which he found not only a telegraph operator but the government code and managed to get a message directly to Seward suggests he was not such an amateur as he professed.
pull everything into focus Extensive correspondence about the case, including the B. T. Henry message, can be found in The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Army, Series II, Vol. II, “Treatment of Suspected and Disloyal Persons North and South,” Case of Robert Mure (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1897), pp. 643–665.
protection of the British seal Norman B. Ferris, Desperate Diplomacy: William H. Seward’s Foreign Policy, 1861 (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1976), p. 98.
new position and a raise in salary Bunch to Lyons, August 17, 1861, Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
Bunch’s conduct Lyons to Bunch, August 17, 1861, Lyons Letter Book, Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
“active business by January 1” This is the extract of the letter contained in the official correspondence between U.S. minister Charles F. Adams and Lord Russell. As Eugene H. Berwanger points out in Berwanger, The British Foreign Service and the American Civil War (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1994), p. 42, the original copy that actually was confiscated left three spaces blank, and when the Tribune published the letter, it filled those in. Those words appear here in brackets. See New-York Tribune, August 21, 1861, and War of the Rebellion documents, p. 651. In that edition “Mr. B” becomes “Mr. Bunch”:
DEPARTMENT OF STATE, Washington, August 17, 1861. CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS, &c.
SIR: Among the letters found on the person of Robert Mure mentioned in my dispatch of this date there are many which more or less directly implicate Mr. Robert Bunch, the British consul at Charleston, as a conspirator against the Government of the United States. The following is an extract from one of them:
Mr. Bunch on oath of secrecy communicated to me also that the first step to recognition was taken. He and Mr. Belligny together sent Mr. Trescot to Richmond yesterday to ask Jeff. Davis, President, to the treaty of to the neutral flag covering neutral goods to be respected. This is the first step of direct treating with our Government. So prepare for active business by January 1.
You will submit this information to the British Government and request that Mr. Bunch may be removed from his office, saying that this Government will grant an exequatur to any person who may be appointed to fill it who will not pervert his functions to hostilities against the United States.
I am, sir, respectfully, your obedient servant,
WILLIAM H. SEWARD.
“anxious to hear from you” The date on this deciphered message, August 31, 1861, appears to be anomalous. Bunch first learned of Mure’s arrest on August 18. He immediately sent an official note saying that the “passport” Mure carried really was only a certificate to help him move through the lines. In a long private note the same day, August 18, Bunch devoted several pages to his recent visit to the Union blockading ship Roanoke and his conversations with the captain, as well as his growing problems finding messengers. He deals with the portentous arrest up North only in passing: “Mr. Mure’s case seems a very hard one and a most arbitrary act.” The New-York Tribune published the infamous anonymous letter about Mr. B and “the first step to recognition” on August 21, and it is certain that Bunch or his friends such as Yeadon at the Courier would have heard about it by telegraph that same day. The desperate note quoted here, found among the Lyons Papers at Arundel Castle, is headed “Decypher Private” without the encrypted text attached, which probably means it was sent as a telegram rather than a letter, and from the tone it would seem to have been sent immediately on August 21, not August 31.
focus was on Bunch Berwanger, British Foreign Service, pp. 48–49.
Chapter 42
“he is not fit for his post” Hammond to Lyons, November 30, 1861, Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
it wasn’t going to help Ephraim Douglass Adams, Great Britain and the American Civil War (Charleston: Bibliobazaar, 2006), p. 176; reprint of the original 1925 Longmans, Green and Co. edition.
“involve the two countries in war” Brian Jenkins, Lord Lyons: A Diplomat in an Age of Nationalism and War (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014), Kindle loc 2944.
“home without his own explanation” Lyons to Admiral Milne, October 28, 1861, Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
“darker and darker every day” Russell to Cowley, the British ambassador in Paris, cited by Norman B. Ferris, Desperate Diplomacy: William H. Seward’s Foreign Policy, 1861 (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1976), p. 102, and Amanda Foreman, A World on Fire: An Epic History of Two Nations Divided (London: Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Books, 2010), published in the United States as A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War, p. 98.
“singular mixture of the bully and coward” Russell to Palmerston, cited by Ferris, Desperate, p. 111; Adams, Great Britain, p. 185, note 383.
“less agreeable” Ferris, Desperate, p. 114. Note that the British consul in Canton, China, one Harry Parkes, ordered the bombardment of that city in 1856 after a perceived insult to the British flag, thus setting into motion the events that led to the Second Opium War.
“must have troops there” Howard Jones, Blue and Gray Diplomacy: A History of Union and Confederate Foreign Relations (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2010), p. 67.
“rest on our oars for the winter” Adams, Great Britain, p. 175, citing Russell to Palmerston, September 19, 1861.
“and unofficially?” This dialogue is reconstructed from the paraphrases of a conversation between Seward and Lyons that took place on October 12, 1861. Lyons to Russell, October 14, 1861, Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
“all-important that I gain time” Continuation of dialogue adapted from Lyons to Russell, October 14, 1861.
“and withdrew” FO5/773 Lyons to Russell, October 28, 1861. 290 “prepared for an attack” FO5/773 Lyons to Russell, October 28, 1861.
“breaking up the blockade” Lyons to Russell, October 28, 1861, Lyons Papers.
“under his official cover” Hammond to Lyons, October 24, 1861, Lyons Papers.
“arrogant in the American character” Martin Duberman, Charles Francis Adams, 1807–1886 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960), p. 267.
Chapter 43
Europeans on the island died Charles Wilkes, Autobiography of Rear Admiral Charles Wilkes, U.S. Navy, 1798–1877, ed. William James Morgan et al. (Washington, D.C.: Naval History Division, Department of the Navy, 1978), p. 907; Mary S. Lovell, A Rage to Live: A Biography of Richard and Isabel Burton (New York: Norton, 2000), p. 390.
sent him to Fernando Po Wilkes, Autobiography, p. 907.
discovered how expensive it was Wilkes’s mother, Mary Seton, was the sister of William Seton, who married Bunch’s mother’s half sister, Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton. Wilkes’s mother died soon after he was born, and for a time he was raised by his aunt, Mrs. Seton, before she went to Italy with her fatally ill husband, converted to Catholicism, and founded a religious order. See Wilkes, Autobiography, p. 2.
The rest, he believed, would obey his orders Wilkes, Autobiography, pp. 767–773.
“best thing that could have happened” J. B. Jones, A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary at the Confederate States Capital, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1866), p. 93. Paraphrases have been turned to full quotations here.
Chapter 44
portrait of the young Queen Victoria Several of the details here were compiled in Brian Hicks, “Charleston at War: Charleston Beaten Down by Great Fire,” The Post and Courier, January 30, 2011.
“ ‘snubbed’ ”—if not worse Bunch to Lyons, December 8, 1861, Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
drafted into the Rebel Army Bunch to Lyons, December 8, 1861, Lyons Papers, Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle.
“stout hearts for defense” J. B. Jones, A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary at the Confederate States Capital, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1866), p. 103.
Chapter 45
crimes in the Middle Passage Ron Soodalter, Hanging Captain Gordon: The Life and Trial of an American Slave Trader (New York: Washington Square Press, 2006), pp. 184–189.
“while he is in the mood” James J. Barnes and Patience P. Barnes, Private and Confidential: Letters from British Ministers in Washington to the Foreign Secretaries in London, 1844–67 (Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press, 1993), p. 280.
“Suppression of the Slave Trade” Ibid., p. 282.
“will be suppressed” “Great Britain,” New York Times, May 21, 1862.
“reducing the South” Ephraim Douglass Adams, Great Britain and the American Civil War (Charleston: Bibliobazaar, 2006), p. 168; reprint of the original 1925 Longmans, Green and Co. edition.
thanks to the pressures of the rebellion “Great Britain,” New York Times, May 21, 1862.
London would bend to their will Frank Lawrence Owsley, King Cotton Diplomacy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959), pp. 24–39.
a war it did not want to fight Adams, Great Britain, p. 329.
that would buy off British opinion Ibid., p. 365.
his government was not Ibid., p. 331.
“to seem to support” Russell Ibid., p. 335.
the African trade would not be reopened John Bigelow, “The Confederate Diplomatists and Their Shirt of Nessus,” Century Magazine, May 1891, pp. 115–116. The dialogue here is reconstructed slightly from paraphrases.
the Confederacy to decide Frederic Bancroft, The Life of William H. Seward (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1900), pp. 331–332.
before the Yankee attack began James J. Barnes and Patience P. Barnes, The American Civil War Through British Eyes: Dispatches from British Diplomats, vol. 2, April 1862–February 1863 (Kent, OH: The Kent State University Press, 2005), p. 312.
Chapter 46
several occasions during this trying time James J. Barnes and Patience P. Barnes, The American Civil War Through British Eyes: Dispatches from British Diplomats, vol. 2, April 1862–February 1863 (Kent, OH: The Kent State University Press, 2005), pp. 304–305.
Every one must judge for himself “Important from the South,” New York Times, February 12, 1863.
EPILOGUE
the last known witness Sylviane A. Diouf, Dreams of Africa in Alabama: The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Story of the Last Africans Brought to America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), Kindle loc 2231 and 3933.
killed three of them with a hatchet “The Schooner S. J. Waring,” Harper’s Weekly, August 3, 1861; Rick Beard, “ ‘The Lion of the Day,’ ” New York Times, August 4, 2011.
endures to the present William C. Davis, ed., A Fire-Eater Remembers: The Confederate Memoir of Robert Barnwell Rhett (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2000), pp. xviii–xx.
“standing like a stone-wall” Patricia G. McNeely, Debra Reddin van Tuyll, and Henry H. Schulte, eds., Knights of the Quill: Confederate Correspondents and Their Civil War Reporting (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2010), p. 20.
“advocated secession most strenuously” “Deaths of the Day,” Los Angeles Herald, October 5, 1903, p. 3.
“We must rely on ourselves alone” Eric H. Walther, William Lowndes Yancey and the Coming of the Civil War (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2006), p. 335.
“Dared sublimely to be true” Cited by Greg Hambrick, “James Petigru Dared to Challenge Confederacy,” Charleston City Paper, April 6, 2011.
“noiseless perfection of training” Cited by Robert N. Rosen in Confederate Charleston: An Illustrated History of the City and the People During the Civil War (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1994), p. 130. Rosen’s book is much more than a handsome decoration for coffee tables; it tells as well as anyone has the story of the city in the war years. I have drawn on it for several details here.
black regiment These events were popularized by Hollywood in the 1989 film Glory.
incendiary shells Rosen, Confederate Charleston, p. 119.
“Ruins!” Ibid., p. 127.
“starve it out” Ibid., p. 132.
“so thick on the ground” Ibid., p. 142.
“a sense of his own dignity” Joseph Smith, Illusions of Conflict: Anglo-American Diplomacy Toward Latin America, 1865–1896 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1979), p. 15.