Free Our Man In Charleston: Britain's Secret Agent In The Civil War South Ebooks To Download

                
              
Free 
Our Man In Charleston: Britain's Secret Agent In The Civil War South Ebooks To Download
The unlikely man at the roiling center of this intrigue was Robert Bunch, an American-born Englishman who had maneuvered his way to the position of British consul in Charleston, South Carolina, and grew to loathe slavery and the righteousness of its practitioners. Bunch used his unique perch and boundless ambition to become a key player, sending reams of dispatches to the home government and eventually becoming the Crown's best secret source on the Confederacy. But doing so required living a double life. To his Charleston neighbors, Bunch was increasingly a pillar of Southern society. But to the British government, he was a strident abolitionist, eviscerating Southern dissembling on plans regarding the slave trade. Our Man in Charleston is a masterfully told story of an unknown crusader. Award-winning author Christopher Dickey locates Consul Bunch as the key figure among Englishmen in America. Determined to ensure the triumph of morality in the inevitable march to civil war, he helped determine the fate of a nation. Featuring a cast of remarkable characters, Our Man in Charleston also captures a decisive moment in Anglo-American history: the pitched battle between those who wished to reopen the floodgates of bondage and misery and those who wished to dam the tide forever.
Audible Audio Edition
Listening Length: 10 hours and 49 minutes
Program Type: Audiobook
Version: Unabridged
Publisher: HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
Audible.com Release Date: July 21, 2015
Whispersync for Voice: Ready
Language: English
ASIN: B011AJ3SI0
Best Sellers Rank:   #209 in Books > Audible Audiobooks > Politics & Current Events > International Relations   #624 in Books > Audible Audiobooks > History > Europe   #625 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > International & World Politics > Diplomacy
Well-written, well-said, well-done, Mr. Dickey. A year or so ago, I started reading books written by British authors who wrote about America from a British point of view. It is a totally refreshing way to look at history that you KNOW already. As a history buff, my love of ALL history just grows as the years go by. Mr. Dickey’s story is told after he unearthed tons of primary sources in numerous data digs. The main character, Robert Bunch, slowly evolved out of the author’s searching of American and British sources. Mr. Dickey seems to be as surprised as I was that Robert Bunch accomplished as much as he did for the British.The main setting for the story is Charleston, South Carolina. In the decade before the American Civil War, Charleston is captured in great and loving detail. As Robert Bunch, the British consul assigned to Charleston, learns more and more about the very horrible evils of slavery, he commits himself to helping Britian figure a way to eliminate slavery in the Americas. To add a twist to the story, Mr. Bunch must pretend to endorse slavery to help defeat it. In other words, Robert Bunch was a spy for a foreign government. He was not actually against the Union as the Confederacy grew, but since he was a spy he actually was thought by the Union to be against America. The author, Mr. Dickey, tells his story in a way that reads like a spy novel. I kept saying to myself that this is not a Ludlum, or Clancy book of fiction, this was real.We all know that the Union prevailed, the Confederacy lost and that slavery was banished. But do you understand how close other countries came to recognizing the Confederacy or starting a war with the Union? Mr. Dickey shows quite clearly that there were numerous opportunities for things to go horribly wrong.
In "Our Man in Charleston: Britain's Secret Agent in the Civil War South", Christopher Dickey tells the riveting tale of a largely forgotten figure in British - American diplomatic history during the period immediately before and during the American Civil War, one Robert Bunch, who could truly be viewed as someone whose complex family history stretched across two continents. Born in New York City in the 1820s, Bunch's mother was descended from prominent New York families, while his father was a wealthy English arms smuggler who supported Simon Bolivar's revolutionary wars in South America, eventually receiving as a present from Bolivar himself, a vast Colombian estate. An ambitious young member of Victorian Great Britain's diplomatic corps, Bunch arrived in Charleston with the aim of repairing damage done by his predecessor as consul, while seeking to amend or to end a harsh South Carolina law, the Negro Seaman Law, which was an ever present danger to Black British seamen serving aboard ships visiting Charleston harbor. After years of effort Bunch would succeed in having the law overturned, earning the trust and loyalties of many of Charleston's notable citizenry, while detesting in private, the abomination that was American slavery. As Dickey depicts in gripping, often compelling prose, Bunch was a secret agent of the British Empire, seeking to end the clandestine African slave trade that sent scores of new slaves to Cuba and the South, despite the best efforts of a decades-long Royal Navy blockade off the coasts of Africa and South America.
Our Man In Charleston, by Christopher Dickey4 of 5 StarsA British Diplomat Spying In the Pre-Civil War SouthChristopher Dickey’s new book “Our Man In Charleston” tells the story of Robert Bunch, the British consul in Charleston, SC in the years prior to and during the Civil War. The book is well-researched and provides an amazing level of detail concerning Bunch’s official duties, personal relationships, and covert activities on behalf of Great Britain.Bunch begins as nothing more than an ambitious official in the British diplomatic service. However, he soon finds himself in a unique position to report on Southern political events, attitudes, and motivations in the years leading up to the Civil War. While personally opposed to slavery, Bunch is able to feign sympathy for Southern concerns and maintain friendships with many leading secessionists, reporting on their activities as the crisis develops.The book provides fascinating insights into the intricate political and social factors leading up to secession and war. It explains the many competing and sometimes conflicting attitudes prevalent in the North, the South, and Britain, and how they interacted to produce a tragic conflict. It decsribes how many Northerners opposed slavery, but some actually financed slave trading expeditions for profit. Many Southerners, despite their support for slavery in America, actually opposed the re- opening of the African slave trade (which had been outlawed decades previously) due to the horrors of the “Middle Passage” slave transports. Others opposed the African slave trade simply because an influx of new slaves would reduce prices and devalue their existing stocks of domestic slaves.
Our Man in Charleston: Britain's Secret Agent in the Civil War South Sons of Privilege: The Charleston Light Dragoons in the Civil War (Civil War Sesquicentennial Edition) (Civil War Sesquicentennial Edition (University of South Carolina Press)) Top Secret Files: The Civil War: Spies, Secret Missions, and Hidden Facts from the Civil War (Top Secret Files of History) Confederate Charleston: An Illustrated History of the City and the People During the Civil War Britain by Britrail 2012/13: Touring Britain by Train Hindus in Britain (Communities in Britain) The Innovative Agent: The Insurance Agent's Roadmap for Success The Hunters: A Presidential Agent Novel (Presidential Agent Series) The Hostage: A Presidential Agent Novel (Presidential Agent Series) The Honest Real Estate Agent: A Training Guide for a Successful First Year and Beyond as a Real Estate Agent The Ultimate Guide to Success for the New or Struggling Real Estate Agent: PRINCIPLES of a SUCCESSFUL REAL ESTATE AGENT War upon the Land: Military Strategy and the Transformation of Southern Landscapes during the American Civil War (Environmental History and the American South Ser.) John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (Vintage Civil War Library) The Civil War (True Books: Civil War (Paperback)) The Heart of Confederate Appalachia: Western North Carolina in the Civil War (Civil War America) The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume 3: Red River to Appomattox (Vintage Civil War Library) Photographic History of The Civil War: Vicksburg to Appomattox (Civil War Times Illustrated) (v. 2) The Battle of First Bull Run: The Civil War Begins (Graphic Battles of the Civil War) The First Republican Army: The Army of Virginia and the Radicalization of the Civil War (A Nation Divided: Studies in the Civil War Era) 