Robert Bunch

Last updated

Robert Bunch

KCMG
Born(1820-09-11)September 11, 1820
United States
DiedMarch 21, 1881(1881-03-21) (aged 60)
NationalityBritish
EducationOxford University
OccupationDiplomat
Known forSecret agent present in the United States South during the American Civil War
Spouse(s)Charlotte Amelia Craig

Robert Bunch KCMG (born September 11, 1820, died March 21, 1881) was a British diplomat, who was a secret agent present in the United States South during the American Civil War. [1] [2] Before the outbreak of Civil War, he had served as a diplomatic representative, first in the North, and then replacing George Buckley-Mathew in Charleston, who was causing diplomatic problems. [3] In particular, Mathew was vocally against South Carolina's recent rule of incarcerating British African sailors while in port. [3]

Contents

Life

Robert Bunch was from 1841 to 1845 attaché and private secretary of William Pitt Adams in Bogotá and Lima. In September 1844 he was sent together with Captain Sir Thomas Thompson as Joint Commissioner to the Supreme Junta of Government of Peru to Arequipa. On December 16, 1845, he was appointed Consular Agent in Lima. On February 6, 1846, he was appointed acting consul in Callao (Peru). Robert Bunch was vice-consul in New York City from October 25, 1848, to 1853. From 1853 to 1864, Bunch was consul in Charleston, South Carolina. In 1864 he became Consul General in Havana.[3] From 1866 to 1878 he served as Minister Resident and Consul General in Colombia. He then took on diplomatic posts in Venezuela and Peru. Robert Bunch had been married to Charlotte Amelia Craig since 1853. [4]

Family and early life

Though Bunch was a diplomat and a spy for the British, he and his sister were actually born in America. The two were even baptized in New York's Trinity Church. However, he did all of his schooling in England and attended Oxford University. His mother's side was very well-connected, and respected as a prominent family who had close ties to the Roosevelt and Van Cortlandt families. In addition to this, his mother's lineage also includes Tories who spied for the British in the American Revolution and the War of 1812. [1]His first foreign service related job was as a secretary for the British envoy in Columbia, then in Peru. In 1848, he moved to New York City and began working his way up to diplomatic positions. He married Emma Craig, his first cousin, in 1853, just before coming to Charleston. [1]

Diplomacy in Charleston

In 1853, Bunch worked at the office of British council in Charleston, then he served as the deputy consul in New York City, and then, the Foreign Office placed him in Philadelphia. Finally after much moving around, London had him trade positions with the consul in Charleston. In Charleston, the previous diplomat, George Buckley-Mathew, created disarray and confusion regarding the treatment of Negro-British sailors.[1] As a result, Bunch's main issue during his time as a diplomat was to fix Mathew's mess. At the time, most of the black seamen were free men. The law denied them from even entering the harbor because these seamen had so much influence on local slaves. If the seamen were caught, they were to be incarcerated, and sometimes killed. The white Southern slave owners feared that their slaves would be inspired to run away to freedom. The Southerners also despised Britain's policies regarding abolishing slavery, and Bunch strongly disagreed with the Southerners. From Charleston, Bunch was to supply the London Slave Trade Department with meticulous and detailed letters about any American's attempting to oppose Britain's policies in the Caribbean as well as the Atlantic.To do this, he became very close with the people from South Carolina so he was able to keep track of anything from cotton trade to quarantines. However, there was much more to his job.[1]

Secrecy in Charleston

To the eyes of the Carolinians, Bunch only took reports of various items going out or coming into the port on ships, however, the main aspect of his diplomacy was a secret. Britain had consuls in most of the states in the United States. Bunch was included in the select few that worked in slave states. The overall purpose of his job was to keep Britain informed about the matters and affairs in the United States that would only be known by an insider.[1] Bunch had to find out about confidential information regarding politics and the military. However, the most important part was every detail they could find about slavery. Though Bunch was unsuccessful in modifying the Negro Slave Act, he was an asset to the British. Since he befriended many influential Southerners, like William Henry Trescot, he was able to provide the British with information about where slaves were being traded, if and where illegal slave trade was occurring, and the number of people being traded, sold, and much more. [1]

Related Research Articles

Espionage, spying or intelligence gathering is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information (intelligence) from non-disclosed sources or divulging of the same without the permission of the holder of the information for a tangible benefit. A person who commits espionage is called an espionage agent or spy. Any individual or spy ring, in the service of a government, company, criminal organization, or independent operation, can commit espionage. The practice is clandestine, as it is by definition unwelcome. In some circumstances, it may be a legal tool of law enforcement and in others, it may be illegal and punishable by law.

John Slidell 19th-century American businessman, politician, and diplomat

John Slidell was an American politician, lawyer, and businessman. A native of New York, Slidell moved to Louisiana as a young man and became a Representative and Senator. He was one of two Confederate diplomats captured by the United States Navy from the British ship RMS Trent in 1861 and later released. He was the older brother of Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, a US naval officer.

William Nassau de Zuylestein, 4th Earl of Rochford Anglo-Dutch courtier and statesman

William Henry Nassau de Zuylestein, 4th Earl of Rochford, KG, PC was a British courtier, diplomat and statesman of Anglo-Dutch descent. He occupied senior ambassadorial posts at Madrid and Paris, and served as Secretary of State in both the Northern and Southern Departments. He is credited with the earliest-known introduction of the Lombardy poplar to England in 1754.

Joel Roberts Poinsett American politician and diplomat

Joel Roberts Poinsett was an American physician, diplomat and slave owner. He was the first U.S. agent in South America, a member of the South Carolina legislature and the United States House of Representatives, the first United States Minister to Mexico, a Unionist leader in South Carolina during the Nullification Crisis, Secretary of War under Martin Van Buren, and a co-founder of the National Institute for the Promotion of Science and the Useful Arts.

Fritz Kolbe German diplomat and resistance member

Fritz Kolbe was a German diplomat who became a spy against the Nazis in World War II.

Robert Daniel Murphy American diplomat

Robert Daniel Murphy was an American diplomat. He served as the first United States Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs when the position was established during the Eisenhower administration.

Diplomatic Security Service Security and law enforcement arm of the U.S. State Department

The Diplomatic Security Service is a security and law enforcement agency that acts as the operational division of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, which is a branch of the United States Department of State. Its primary mission is to protect diplomatic assets, personnel and information, as well as combat visa and passport fraud. The agency also undertakes counterterrorism, counterintelligence, cybersecurity and criminal investigations, both domestically and abroad.

Blockade of Africa Royal Navy suppression of the slave trade

The Blockade of Africa began in 1808 after the United Kingdom outlawed the Atlantic slave trade, making it illegal for British ships to transport slaves. The Royal Navy immediately established a presence off Africa to enforce the ban, called the West Africa Squadron. Although the ban initially applied only to British ships, Britain negotiated treaties with other countries to give the Royal Navy the right to intercept and search their ships for slaves. The 1807 Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves abolished the intercontinental slave trade in the United States but the ban was not widely enforced.

Diplomatic rank is a system of professional and social rank used in the world of diplomacy and international relations. A diplomat's rank determines many ceremonial details, such as the order of precedence at official processions, table seatings at state dinners, the person to whom diplomatic credentials should be presented, and the title by which the diplomat should be addressed.

The Creole case was a slave revolt aboard the American slave ship Creole in November 1841, when the brig was seized by the enslaved persons onboard the ship, freeing 128 slaves who were aboard the ship when it reached Nassau in the British colony of the Bahamas where slavery was abolished. The brig was transporting enslaved people as part of the coastwise slave trade in the American South. It has been described as the "most successful slave revolt in US history". Two died in the revolt, an enslaved person and a member of the crew.

Pierre Soulé American politician

Pierre Soulé was a Franco-American attorney, politician, and diplomat during the mid-19th century. Serving as a United States senator from Louisiana from 1849 to 1853, he was nominated that year as U.S. Minister to Spain, a post he held until 1855.

Anglo-Zanzibar War Military conflict in 1896, lasting between 38 and 45 minutes

The Anglo-Zanzibar War was a military conflict fought between the United Kingdom and the Zanzibar Sultanate on 27 August 1896. The conflict lasted between 38 and 45 minutes, marking it as the shortest recorded war in history. The immediate cause of the war was the death of the pro-British Sultan Hamad bin Thuwaini on 25 August 1896 and the subsequent succession of Sultan Khalid bin Barghash. The British authorities preferred Hamoud bin Mohammed, who was more favourable to British interests, as sultan. In the agreement of 14 June 1890 instituting a British protectorate over Zanzibar, a candidate for accession to the sultanate should obtain the permission of the British consul, and Khalid had not fulfilled this requirement. The British considered this a casus belli and sent an ultimatum to Khalid demanding that he order his forces to stand down and leave the palace. In response, Khalid called up his palace guard and barricaded himself inside the palace.

James Murray Mason American politician

James Murray Mason, a grandson of George Mason, was a lawyer and politician. He served as senator from Virginia, having previously represented Frederick County, Virginia, in the Virginia House of Delegates.

James Leander Cathcart was a diplomat, slave, and sailor. He is notable for his narrative as a slave in Algiers for eleven years.

Christopher Dickey American journalist

Christopher Swift Dickey was an American journalist, author, and news editor. He was the Paris-based world news editor for The Daily Beast. He authored seven books, including Our Man in Charleston: Britain's Secret Agent in the Civil War South (2015); Securing the City: Inside America's Best Counterterror Force – the NYPD (2009), and a memoir, Summer of Deliverance (1998), about his father, the poet/novelist James Dickey.

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland remained officially neutral throughout the American Civil War (1861–1865). It legally recognised the belligerent status of the Confederate States of America (CSA) but never recognised it as a nation and neither signed a treaty with it nor ever exchanged ambassadors. Over 90 percent of Confederate trade with Britain ended, causing a severe shortage of cotton by 1862. Private British blockade runners sent munitions and luxuries to Confederate ports in return for cotton and tobacco. In Manchester, the massive reduction of available American cotton caused an economic disaster referred to as the Lancashire Cotton Famine. Despite the high unemployment, some Manchester cotton workers refused out of principle to process any cotton from America, leading to direct praise from President Lincoln, whose statue in Manchester bears a plaque which quotes his appreciation for the textile workers in "helping abolish slavery". Top British officials debated offering to mediate in the first 18 months, which the Confederacy wanted but the United States strongly rejected.

Consulate of the United States, Liverpool First American consulate overseas

The United States Consulate in Liverpool, England, was established in 1790, and was the first overseas consulate founded by the then fledgling United States of America. Liverpool was at the time an important center for transatlantic commerce and a vital trading partner for the former Thirteen Colonies. Among those who served the United States as consul in Liverpool were the writer Nathaniel Hawthorne, the spy Thomas Haines Dudley, and John S. Service, who was driven out of the United States Foreign Service by McCarthyite persecution. After World War II, as Liverpool declined in importance as an international port, the consulate was eventually closed down.

Consulate General of Russia, San Francisco

The Consulate-General of Russia in San Francisco was a diplomatic mission in the 2790 Green Street building in Pacific Heights, San Francisco. It was operated by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The building of the former consulate remains government property of Russia.

Nathaniel Penistone Davis American diplomat

Nathaniel Penistone Davis was an American career diplomat.

The diplomacy of the American Civil War involved the relations of the United States and the Confederate States of America with the major world powers during the American Civil War of 1861–1865. The United States prevented other powers from recognizing the Confederacy, which counted heavily on Britain and France to enter the war on its side to maintain their supply of cotton and to weaken a growing opponent. Every nation was officially neutral throughout the war, and none formally recognized the Confederacy.

References

  1. Grandin, Greg (14 July 2015). "'Our Man in Charleston,' by Christopher Dickey" via NYTimes.com.
  2. "Robert Bunch, Britain's Unlikely Spy in the American Civil War". 30 July 2015.
  3. 1 2 Dickey, Christopher (2015). Our Man in Charleston:Britain's Secret Agent in the Civil War South. p. 10 of 316.