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Victor Buckley (1838-1882) was a British Foreign Office official, suspected of being an agent for the Confederate cause during the American Civil War.
He was born at Minstead Lodge in the New Forest on 28 April 1838 - the fifth and youngest son of Captain (later General) Edward Pery Buckley. [1] The General, a Waterloo veteran, was for over twenty years an equerry to Queen Victoria, and appears in her early diary entries. [2] The Queen was Buckley's godmother - the first child to receive this honour after her accession. [3] His grandfather, Lord Radnor, had been a leader of the radical Whigs at the beginning of the century. Buckley was brought up at New Hall, Bodenham, Wiltshire, which his father inherited from a cousin a few years after he was born.
In December 1856, after leaving Eton, Buckley took the examination before the Civil Service Commissioners, and on 12 January 1857 was appointed Junior (4th Class) Clerk. He was the first of the clerks to be appointed under the new system whereby all prospective clerks were required to pass an examination. Buckley was assigned to the department that had responsibility for matters relating to the United States. [4] The American Civil War broke out in the spring of 1861.
In 1911, Henry Brooks Adams, one of Charles Francis Adams's sons, delivered a paper to the Massachusetts Historical Society, titled The Seizure of the Laird Rams. He had acted as his father's unofficial private secretary during his term as the North's minister in London in 1861–68. His father had struggled to get the British government, as a neutral state, to recognise that the building of ships in British dockyards that would be used against the North was against the spirit, if not the letter, of the existing law. In July 1862, his father finally persuaded Lord Russell, the Foreign Secretary, to order the seizure of CSS Alabama, the most powerful warship ever built in British dockyards. However, as the telegram ordering its seizure was on its way, the ship escaped. Adams suspected that its crew had been warned. The Alabama went on to inflict enormous damage on Northern merchant shipping.
Brooks Adams quotes his father's diary for 22 December 1865, "Incidentally he (Mr Moran, Secretary of Legation) told me that he had been able to trace the source of the betrayal of the decision of the Government which prompted the sudden escape of the Alabama. He showed me what purported to be a copy of a short note signed by V. Buckley and addressed to Mr (Caleb) Huse, the rebel agent, warning him that what he called his “protegé” was in danger. This Victor Buckley is a young clerk in the Foreign Office". [5]
C.F. Adams was the American representative at the arbitration commission in Geneva in 1871, when part of the American submission included the claim that 'the departure of the 290 - CSS Alabama - from Birkenhead was probably, it may be said certainly, hastened by the illicit receipt of the intelligence of the decision of the Government to detain her.' Buckley was not named in the submission, but it was clear who the source of the 'illicit receipt' was in Adams' mind. More than half the $15,500,000 that had to be paid by Britain to the US, in reparations related to the damage done by CSS Alabama. [6]
Brooks Adams’ paper, with its accusation, was little noticed until the publication in 1925 of Great Britain and the American Civil War, by Ephraim D. Adams. In it he quoted C.F. Adams’ diary entry, as it was reported in H.B. Adams’ paper, and observed ‘The question of advance warning to Bulloch [the Confederate agent responsible for commissioning the ship] or the Lairds who built the Alabama was not one which was likely to be put forward officially' [7]
In 2004, The Alabama, British Neutrality, and the American Civil War by Frank J.Merli was published posthumously. In the book, Merli wanted to exonerate Lord Palmerston and Lord Russell from the charge of complicity in the Alabama’s escape. He wrote, ‘As he admitted in his memoir, Bulloch had sympathetic Englishmen who were willing to apprise him of governmental intentions. To date, their identities remain shrouded in mystery…. But before Queen Victoria's prime minister or foreign secretary is condemned for connivance in the 1862 escape of a Confederate cruiser, more convincing evidence than we now have is needed. As of the time that I write, no one has produced any solid evidence to support these allegations.' [8]
In 2015, Mrs Renata Eley Long published In the Shadow of the Alabama: The British Foreign Office and the American Civil War. Mrs Long is an English scholar, who worked with Frank Merli. She looked more closely at the accusation against Victor Buckley and unearthed some of the 'solid evidence' that Merli was looking for. From this, she believes that C.F. Adams’ suspicions could have been well founded. It seems to her possible that Buckley was indeed a Confederate agent, that he had been since near the beginning of the war, and that he was paid for his work. She also believes that an aristocratic cloak – even a masonic cloak – was thrown over him, and that his betrayal was covered up by a still powerful aristocratic establishment who had no desire for one of their own to be exposed. [9]
Mrs Long found nothing to link Buckley's possible activity with the Foreign Office, let alone with Lord Russell or Lord Palmerston, which is why she suggests that Buckley was working on his own. There remains however the possibility that Buckley was working on behalf of the government - a possibility which, as E.D. Adams suggested, would be difficult to prove.
At the time of the Alabama crisis, Buckley was a Junior Clerk (1st class) and he continued his rise through the various levels of seniority in the Foreign Office. In February 1872, he was promoted Acting Assistant Clerk. In June 1873, he was appointed to a Commission of Enquiry into Consular Establishments at the Ports of North Germany and the Baltic. The various F.O.postings needed reorganisation after the defeat of Austria in 1866 and the move towards German unification under Prussian leadership. When he returned, he was confirmed in his position as Assistant Clerk. In December 1875, he was appointed Acting Secretary of Legation on Stephen Cave's Special Mission to Egypt. Cave was a barrister, Paymaster General in Disraeli's administration. The result of the report that Cave signed off on his return was the establishment of an Anglo-French oversight of the Egyptian government. [10] As Acting Secretary of Legation, Buckley was the senior Foreign Office representative on the Mission.
Shortly before his early death in June 1882 of rheumatic fever, Buckley was appointed Senior Clerk and Head of the Consular Department at the Foreign Office - the youngest Head of department at that time. [11]
Before the end of 1863, Buckley was engaged to Mary Stirling, eldest daughter of Admiral Sir James Stirling, founder and first governor of Western Australia. An uncle was William Stirling, whose firm, Stirling & Beckton, was one of the largest cotton manufacturing businesses in Manchester. It suffered badly during the war and Mary's cousin, Thomas Mayne Stirling, sold up in 1865. Thomas' mother and Mary's great-grandmother were both members of the prominent Willing family of Philadelphia, in the U.S.A. Victor and Mary were married in London in 1866 and had four children. [12]
Kathleen Mary, Mother Magdalen of Jesus, b. 1867, entered the Carmelite Community in Notting Hill in 1896, and in 1907 became the founding prioress of the community in Liverpool. She died there in 1951.
Wilfred Stirling, b. 1868, was interned in the Ruhleben Camp in Germany in 1914. He was repatriated in 1917, having suffered a breakdown, and spent the rest of his life at New Saughton Hall (Mavisbank House), near Loanhead, Midlothian. He died in 1944.
Dorothy Mildmay, b. 1869, m. 1892 Ernest Raleigh King, of Chadshunt, Warwickshire and died of meningitis in 1915 while nursing at an officers' hospital in Winchester, leaving an only son.
Basil Thorold, Brig.Gen., C.B., C.M.G., C.V.O., Northumberland Fusiliers, b. 1874, m. 1904, Emmeline Edwards and d. in 1954, leaving an only son. He was a member of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen at Arms and its Standard Bearer in 1942–44. He was also one of the founders of British Military Intelligence in Section C of MO2. In 1916, he was appointed head of MI2, which was responsible for intelligence concerning Germany and Austria-Hungary. In early 1918, he was appointed head of Middle Eastern Intelligence. [13]
The Alabama Claims were a series of demands for damages sought by the government of the United States from the United Kingdom in 1869, for the attacks upon Union merchant ships by Confederate Navy commerce raiders built in British shipyards during the American Civil War. The claims focused chiefly on the most famous of these raiders, the CSS Alabama, which took more than sixty prizes before she was sunk off the French coast in 1864.
Granville George Leveson-Gower, 2nd Earl Granville,, styled Lord Leveson until 1846, was a British Liberal statesman and diplomat from the Leveson-Gower family. He is best remembered for his service as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
Charles Francis Adams Sr. was an American historical editor, writer, politician, and diplomat. As United States Minister to the United Kingdom during the American Civil War, Adams was crucial to Union efforts to prevent British recognition of the Confederate States of America and maintain European neutrality to the utmost extent. Adams also featured in national and state politics before and after the Civil War.
The Trent Affair was a diplomatic incident in 1861 during the American Civil War that threatened a war between the United States and the United Kingdom. The U.S. Navy captured two Confederate envoys from a British Royal Mail steamer; the British government protested vigorously. American public and elite opinion strongly supported the seizure, but it worsened the economy and was ruining relations with the world's strongest economy and strongest navy. President Abraham Lincoln ended the crisis by releasing the envoys.
CSS Alabama was a screw sloop-of-war built in 1862 for the Confederate States Navy. The vessel was built in Birkenhead on the River Mersey opposite Liverpool, England, by John Laird Sons and Company. Launched as Enrica, she was fitted out as a cruiser and commissioned as CSS Alabama on August 24, 1862. Under Captain Raphael Semmes, Alabama served as a successful commerce raider, attacking, capturing, and burning Union merchant and naval ships in the North Atlantic, as well as intercepting American grain ships bound for Europe. The Alabama continued through the West Indies and further into the East Indies, destroying over seven ships before returning to Europe. On June 11, 1864, the Alabama arrived at Cherbourg, France, where she was overhauled. Shortly after, a Union sloop-of-war, USS Kearsarge, arrived; and on June 19, the Battle of Cherbourg commenced outside the port of Cherbourg, France, whereby the Kearsarge sank the Alabama in approximately one hour after the Alabama's opening shot.
Zachariah Chandler was an American businessman, politician, and one of the founders of the Republican Party, whose radical wing he dominated as a lifelong abolitionist. He was mayor of Detroit, a four-term senator from the state of Michigan, and Secretary of the Interior under President Ulysses S. Grant.
USS Hornet was the fifth United States Navy ship to bear the name Hornet. She was originally CSS Lady Stirling, a blockade runner built by James Ash at Cubitt Town, London in 1864 for the Confederate States Navy. She was badly damaged and captured by the United States Navy on 28 October 1864 off Wilmington, North Carolina.
Henry Hotze was a Swiss American advocate for the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. He acted as a Confederate agent in Great Britain, attempting to build support for the Southern cause there. Hotze attempted to use liberal arguments of self-determination in favor of national independence, echoing the failed European revolutions of 1848. He also promised that the Confederacy would be a low-tariff nation in contrast to the high-tariff United States, and he emphasized the consequences of cotton shortages for the industrial workers in Britain, as caused by the Union blockade of Southern ports.
Samuel Barron was an American naval officer who served in the U.S. Navy and later for the Confederate States Navy. He also served in politics by acting as a representative in Europe for the Confederacy during the American Civil War.
Military leadership in the American Civil War was vested in both the political and the military structures of the belligerent powers. The overall military leadership of the United States during the Civil War was ultimately vested in the President of the United States as constitutional commander-in-chief, and in the political heads of the military departments he appointed. Most of the major Union wartime commanders had, however, previous regular army experience. A smaller number of military leaders originated from the United States Volunteers. Some of them derived from nations other than the United States.
Irvine Stephens Bulloch was an officer in the Confederate Navy and the youngest officer on the famed warship CSS Alabama. He fired its last shot before it was sunk off the coast of France at the end of the American Civil War. He was a half-brother of James Dunwoody Bulloch, who served as a foreign agent in Great Britain on behalf of the Confederacy, in part to arrange blockade runners.
Thomas "Tom" Green was an American soldier and lawyer, who took part in the Texan Revolution of 1835–36, serving under Sam Houston, who rewarded him with a land grant. Green was clerk of the Texas Supreme Court until the outbreak of the Civil War, when he became a Confederate cavalry leader. After winning several victories, including the Battle of Valverde and the recapture of Galveston, he was promoted brigadier and assigned command of the cavalry division of the Trans-Mississippi Department. In the Red River Campaign, he was mortally wounded while charging a fleet of Federal gunboats. The Union naval commander David Dixon Porter paid tribute to Green as a serious loss to the Confederacy.
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland remained officially neutral throughout the American Civil War (1861–1865). It legally recognized the belligerent status of the Confederate States of America (CSA) but never recognized 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.
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. The American Consulate in Liverpool was situated on the third floor of the Cunard building on the Pierhead and permanently closed in 1975.
Sir George Russell Clerk was a British diplomat and Privy Counsellor who ended his career as Ambassador to France from 1934 to 1937, after seven years as Ambassador to Turkey, one as Ambassador to Belgium and seven as Ambassador to The Czechoslovak Republic. His name is pronounced as if spelt Clark.
During the American Civil War, blockade runners were used to get supplies through the Union blockade of the Confederate States of America that extended some 3,500 miles (5,600 km) along the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coastlines and the lower Mississippi River. The Confederacy had little industrial capability and could not produce the quantity of arms and other supplies needed to fight against the Union. To meet this need, British investors financed numerous blockade runners that were constructed in the British Isles and were used to import the guns, ordnance and other supplies, in exchange for cotton that the British textile industry needed greatly. To penetrate the blockade, these relatively lightweight shallow draft ships, mostly built in British shipyards and specially designed for speed, but not suited for transporting large quantities of cotton, had to cruise undetected, usually at night, through the Union blockade. The typical blockade runners were privately owned vessels often operating with a letter of marque issued by the Confederate government. If spotted, the blockade runners would attempt to outmaneuver or simply outrun any Union Navy warships on blockade patrol, often successfully.
The 1924 Birthday Honours were appointments by King George V to various orders and honours to reward and highlight good works by citizens of the British Empire. The appointments were made to celebrate the official birthday of The King, and were published in The London Gazette on 3 June 1924.
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.
Charles Kuhn Prioleau (1827–1887) was an American cotton merchant who became the senior partner of Fraser, Trenholm & Company in Liverpool, England, a firm that functioned as the European banker of the Confederacy and was its major supplier for arms and military ware during the American Civil War. As a firm that frequently acted as the European banker of the Confederacy it often extended it credit, and was sometimes referred to as "the Confederate Embassy in England".
CSS Alexandra, a prospective cruiser, was a barque-rigged, very strong, wooden steamer with "rakish masts, round stern, very straight stem." Built in the United Kingdom by William C. Miller & Sons, Liverpool, to the order of Charles K. Prioleau of Fraser, Trenholm & Co., the Liverpool firm with Charleston roots whose partner, George A. Trenholm, was the able Confederate Secretary of the Treasury, Alexandra was built through the agency of Fawcett, Preston & Co. She quickly became a cause celebre in testing British policy toward Confederate building in British shipyards to fight the United States at sea.