Robert Smalls: The Slave Who Stole the Rebel Codes — and a Confederate Warship

From my article in The Daily Beast:

We don’t know precisely why the three white officers on board a Confederate transport and gunboat called the CSS Planter decided to go ashore in Charleston, South Carolina, the night of May 12, 1862.

Maybe they went to see their families. Maybe they went drinking or whoring. Certainly they were acting against orders, but they seemed to think the slave they left in charge of the Planter, a skilled 23-year-old harbor pilot named Robert Smalls, would take good care of the ship for them.

On board were pieces of naval artillery, including a 32-pounder on a pivot, a 24-pounder howitzer, and a gun that had been at Fort Sumter. There were 200 rounds of ammunition, and according to several accounts there was a book of codes and signals that were currently in use by the Confederate Navy. Perhaps most importantly, there was Smalls himself, a true fount of information about Confederate defenses around Charleston harbor.

A couple of hours before dawn, the Planter started its engines and its paddle wheel began to turn. It pulled away from the wharf in plain site of the Confederate commanding general’s headquarters, but nobody moved to stop it.... MORE

Civil War History and Contemporary Events: Essays by Christopher Dickey

After the publication in July 2015 of Our Man in Charleston, which, by pure coincidence, came just after the tragic murders at Emanuel A.M.E. Church, I wrote several essays drawing on the research for the book and suggesting what it might tell us about current events.

ARTICLE

Confederate Madness Then and Now

Jul 14, 2015 1:10 AM EDT

A British consul witnessed the cynical process that plunged the United States into civil war in the...MORE

ARTICLE

Confederates in the Blood

Jul 21, 2015 1:00 AM EDT

My new book looks at the raw truths of Southern history, but my family has been living that... MORE

ARTICLE

Cuba’s Star-Spangled Slavery

Aug 15, 2015 12:13 AM EDT

The Stars and Stripes, not the Confederate flag, once represented the sordid system of human...MORE

ARTICLE

Ken Burns’ ‘Civil War’ After Dylann Roof

Sep 6, 2015 12:01 AM EDT

The PBS documentary turns 25 this year, just as the Charleston murders and the Confederate flag... MORE

ARTICLE

America’s History of Guns and Slavery

Dec 6, 2015 8:31 AM EST

The grim history of gun violence in the United States goes way back, aided and abetted by the same... MORE

0 New

Coming Up - "Our Man in Charleston" Events in South Carolina

SOUTH CAROLINA

Thursday, September 17th Charleston, SC - 12:00pm Blue Bicycle Luncheon Talk, Q&A, Signing Hall’s Chophouse

2:00pm Preservation Society of Charleston, Stock Signing Book & Gift Shop

6:00pm Barnes & Noble, Talk, Q&A, Signing 1812 Rittenberg Blvd 

Friday, September 18th Pawleys Island, SC 

11:00am – Discussion Moveable Feast Luncheon, Pawleys Plantation, book signing after.

2:00pm – 3:00pm Litchfield Books – Signing Only 

Saturday, September 19th Little River, SC 

11:00am – Discussion Moveable Feast Luncheon, 12:00pm - The Parson’s Table 

"Our Man" Now Officially a New York Times Best Seller in the Espionage Category

Published This Week, Moving Up the Amazon Best-Seller Lists

Your local independent bookstore should have Our Man in Charleston: Britain's Secret Agent in the Civil War South

prominently displayed. (And if not, ask why not!) It's also all over Amazon, with a fantastic price for the moment of $14.01 for the beautifully produced hardcover edition, plus a Kindle edition, and an Audible audio version read elegantly and appropriately by a Briton, Antony Ferguson. 

The hardcover book also is available at Barnes and Noble stores and B&N online.

This month I have written two essays for The Daily Beast that put "Our Man" in the context of recent events and my own background as a Southerner. The first, "Confederate Madness Then and Now," many of you have seen already. (It's had well over 100,000 readers.) The second was just published Tuesday and includes the full length 1974 documentary I made about my uncle and his passion for Civil War artillery projectiles. Don't miss the last ten minutes when he defuses a 100-pound explosive shell with a sponge, a screwdriver and a hammer ... :

Confederates in the Blood

My new book looks at the raw truths of Southern history, but my family has been living that complicated heritage for generations.

This week I have been talking about the book and about the Confederate legacy on NPR's "Here and Now," the BBC and MSNBC. There will be more.

I am happy and, yes, more than a little proud to say the early reviews and comments have ranged from good to great, and this week the New York Times Book Review will list Our Man as an "Editor's Choice":

"Our Man in Charleston is a joy to discover. It is a perfect book about an imperfect spy."
—Joan Didion

"Thoroughly researched and deftly crafted. [Our Man in Charleston will] introduce people to a man who should be better known, one who cannily fought the good fight at a fateful moment in history."
—Wall Street Journal

"One heck of a good read."
—The Charlotte Observer

"[Bunch is] a brilliant find…Dickey, the foreign editor of The Daily Beast and a former longtime Newsweek correspondent, uses his research well: in a story like this one, point of view is everything, and Bunch's is razor sharp."
—American Scholar
"Dickey has written a book that is as much suspense and spy adventure as it is a history book... A story as compelling as this one does not come around very often. With so much already written about the Civil War, and more coming every year, originality is a rare thing these days. The story of Robert Bunch is that and more."
—The Carolina Chronicles

"A fascinating tale of compromise, political maneuvering, and espionage."
—Publishers Weekly
"Dickey's comprehension of the mindset of the area, coupled with the enlightening missives from Bunch, provides a rich background to understanding the time period….A great book explaining the workings of what Dickey calls an erratic, cobbled-together coalition of ferociously independent states. It should be in the library of any student of diplomacy, as well as Civil War buffs." 
—Kirkus Reviews (starred)

"A fine examination of a superbly skilled diplomat."
—Booklist 

"Britain's consul in Charleston before and during the first two years of the Civil War was outwardly pro-Southern and earned notoriety in the North. But in secret correspondence with the British Foreign Office he made clear his hostility to slavery and the Confederacy. His dispatches helped prevent British recognition of the Confederacy. Christopher Dickey has skillfully unraveled the threads of this story in an engrossing account of diplomatic derring-do." 
—James M. McPherson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Battle Cry of Freedom

"Did Robert Bunch, Her Majesty's consul in Charleston, keep Britain out of the Confederacy's war? Drawing on Bunch's clandestine correspondence, Christopher Dickey makes a compelling case that this dazzlingly duplicitous, ardent anti-slaver played a key role. A fascinating, little-known shard of vital Civil War history, brought glitteringly alive with all the verve and panache of a master story teller."
 —Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of March

"In his extraordinary new history Our Man in Charleston, Christopher Dickey has written a book you can't put down. This is a well-researched history with the immense power and sheer element of surprise we find in the finest spy novels. It's like reading a book by Graham Greene, written while he was staying at the house of John le Carré, discussing the fate of nations over drinks. With Charleston consul Robert Bunch, Dickey has introduced a new great man in the great war that haunts America still. I adored this book."
—Pat Conroy, author of The Great Santini and South of Broad

"Our Man in Charleston is a superlative and entertaining  history of the grey area where diplomacy ends and spy craft begins. British Consul Robert Bunch played a secret role in the anti-slavery fight in Charleston, which would remain secret to this day were it not for Christopher Dickey's extraordinary detective skills."
—Amanda Foreman, author of A World on Fire and Georgiana

"Wonderfully written and researched, Our Man in Charleston is the best espionage book I've read. I couldn't put it down."
 —Robert Baer, former CIA case officer and author of See No Evil

"Robert Bunch is an unlikely spy, but his bravery and moral sensibility make him an intriguing hero for Christopher Dickey's Civil War history. Dickey knows his stuff, from spying to the slave trade, and he's a master at telling a fast-paced, gripping yarn." 
—Evan Thomas, author of John Paul Jones and The Very Best Men

"Christopher Dickey has accomplished the near-impossible—exhuming a forgotten but irresistible character from the dustbin of Civil War history, and bringing him back to life with painstaking research and bravura literary flair. This irresistible book opens new windows onto the complicated worlds of wartime diplomacy, intelligence-gathering and outright intrigue, and the result is fresh history and page-turning excitement." 
—Harold Holzer, author of Lincoln and the Power of the Press and winner of the 2015 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize

"A long-needed study of Robert Bunch, British consul in Charleston—a secret agent for the Crown in the Civil War era who outwardly praised the city and its people while privately loathing both, and who discouraged diplomatic recognition of the Confederacy by keeping his superiors abreast of its determination to continue importing slaves. Elegantly written, well researched, an engrossing story."
—Howard Jones, author of Blue and Grey Diplomacy

From my essay "Confederate Madness Then and Now"

The essay explains recent events through the lens provided by Our Man in Charleston: Britain's Secret Agent in the Civil War South, to be published Tuesday, July 21:

The debate this last month about Confederate symbols—and about the whole damned history of the Confederacy, if truth be known—has raised questions that need to be asked, and not only about the Civil War: How do you honor brave men and women who fought to defend an evil institution? How do you dignify the memory of those who were killed, and who killed, in a war without a legitimate cause? Should they be honored at all? And if so, how?


If we’re going to answer that question—and as a Southerner, the father of a soldier, and a correspondent who has covered many wars, I think we should— then the first step toward honoring the fallen should be to tell the truth as best we can about the war in which they fell and the people who started it.


One of the most shameful aspects of the American Civil War is that hundreds of thousands of men and many women in the Confederacy gave their lives in a fight to defend the interests of a small slave-holding elite that had used its money, its control of politics and the press, the exploitation of racism and fear, and a shrewd if sickening appeal to status to mobilize the masses and then lead them to destruction. ... MORE

July 19, 1861 - The secret mission to Jefferson Davis in Richmond begins

Our Man in Charleston: Britain's Secret Agent in the Civil War South will be published July 21. As it happens, that is also the 154th anniversary of the Battle of Bull Run or, if you will, First Manassas. While William Howard Russell, the great war correspondent for the Times of London, was in Washington D.C. examining preparations for the battle everyone knew would be coming soon in northern Virginia, his friend Consul Bunch in Charleston began laying the groundwork for secret talks with the Confederate government (which he loathed).

The time had come for the mission to Richmond. Bunch made his way along Meeting Street, then

William Henry Trescot

down through the covered market, which was packed with people on a Friday after­noon. His old friend William Henry Trescot had an office nearby on East Bay Street. After the usual exchange of pleasantries and the offered drink, Bunch asked, “How well do you know Jefferson Davis?”

“Why, we have very cordial relations.”

So Bunch went to the heart of the matter. He said that he and Monsieur de Belligny, the acting French consul in Charleston who had replaced the Count de Choiseul, had received dispatches that morning from their respective governments that were “of the most delicate and important character.”

“We’re instructed to make contact with the government in Richmond—but to do so through an intermediary,” Bunch said. “I cannot explain more fully except in the presence of my French col­league, but we have agreed to meet you, to give you the instructions, and ask you to become the channel of communication between us and Richmond.” According to Trescot’s notes on the conversation, Bunch said this was a step of “great significance and importance.”

That night, Trescot met with Bunch and de Belligny. Bunch read aloud the initial dispatch from Lord Russell sent in May, an official letter Lyons had sent him in early July, and a long private letter from Lyons, as well, outlining the need to have the Confederate govern­ment sign on to the three key provisions in the Declaration of Paris.

“And now you know all that I know myself,” he said.

Trescot tested the consuls to see just how far they might go. “Are you prepared for the Confederate government to make an of­ficial declaration based on your request, thus giving it implied rec­ognition in the eyes of the world?”

“No, no,” said the consuls, almost in unison. “This has to be a spontaneous declaration,” said Bunch.

“I don’t see how you can ask that,” replied Trescot. He also failed to see how the supposedly spontaneous commitment to the terms of an international treaty by an as yet unrecognized state would be binding. But the consuls were adamant about secrecy.

“If this becomes public, the United States government will revoke our exequaturs and will dismiss Lyons and Mercier from Washington,” Bunch warned. The consuls might, as private citi­zens, say this was an important step toward recognition, but even assuming the aim of the British and French governments was to reach recognition, they wanted to do it so as not to provoke a break with Washington. Lyons had been perfectly explicit about that. “This indirect way is the only way,” said Bunch.

Trescot didn’t like the sound of it. “All this secrecy that you say is essential to the negotiations takes away from the Confederate government the very same incentive you say you’re giving it.”

“We can’t make any commitments in that respect,” said Bunch. “You will find the consequences most agreeable and beneficial to the Confederate government,” de Belligny assured Trescot.

Finally Trescot agreed to accept the mission but with an explicit understanding that when he met with Davis, he would be free to advise him to accept the proposal or reject it, “as I think right.”

The ball was now in play.

June 21, 1860 - W.H. Russell on the South Sucking Up to Great Britain

The great British war correspondent William Howard Russell, a key contact for Our Man in Charleston, has finally made it up the Mississippi and out of the South to Cairo, Illinois. Meanwhile, Harper's Weekly has put him on its front page.


June 21—The people of the seceding States, aware in their consciences that they have been most active in their hostility to Great Britain, and whilst they were in power were mainly responsible for the defiant, irritating, and insulting tone commonly used to us by American statement, are anxious at the present moment when so much depends on the action of foreign countries, to remove all unfavorable impressions from our minds by declarations of good will, respect and admiration, not quite compatible with the language of their leaders in times not long gone by.

The North, as yet unconscious of the loss of power, and reared in a school of menace and violent assertion of their rights, regarding themselves as the whole of the United States, and animated by their own feeling of commercial and political opposition to Great Britain, maintain the high tone of a people who have never known let or hindrance in their passions, and consider it an outrage that the whole world does not join an active sympathy for a government which in its brief career has contrived to affront every nation in Europe with which it had any dealings.

Excerpt is from W. H. Russell's My Diary North and South.

"Harper's Weekly" courtesy of The American Library in Paris

June 20, 1861 - Southern elite dreams of return to British monarchy

A version of this Sully portrait of Victoria gazed
down on the men drafting the ordinance of secession
in Charleston's St. Andrew's Hall in 1860 

The South's Anglophile aristocrats loved to talk about returning to "The Mother Country," a theme picked up on by W. H. Russell in one of his dispatches from South Carolina and supported in this letter to Lord Lyons from Our Man in Charleston Robert Bunch.  Clearly they didn't think this through, since slavery had been abolished throughout the Empire almost 30 years earlier.

June 20 - The Letters of Mr. W. H. Russell, the special correspondent of the "Times" newspaper have been looked for in this Community with an anxiety which to a stranger might almost appear ludicrous—But to one who, like myself, has resided for several years in South Carolina, the desire on the part of the people to learn the judgment which would be pronounced upon them by an intelligent observer and writer, especially by one who commands the attention of the world to so great a degree as does Mr. Russell, appears both natural and proper. It has always been a subject of complaint at the South that the only knowledge of its social system possessed by the European public is derived from Northern sources by which it has been misrepresented and consistently vilified. … I can, therefore, fully appreciate the solicitude with which the criticisms of Mr. Russell were expected. He was to see and judge for himself, not to take at second-hand the interested or prejudiced opinions (as they are considered) of the North, or even of Great Britain on the subject of Slavery.

     Four of Mr. Russell’s letters from the Southern States have now appeared, and have, on the whole, given satisfaction. Altho’ it is asserted that on several points of detail he has not proved himself entirely correct (an opinion from which I altogether differ) there exists an universal disposition to admire his fairness and be flattered by his accounts of the people and the government. But I have found within the last few days some inclination to deny, and even to resent, the statements of his second letter from Charleston, dated April 30, to the effect that the people of South Carolina, or rather its upper classes, which in this State, at least, have the entire control of the “people,” and are the only portion of the population whose wishes are consulted, would not object to see the connection with the Mother Country revived, and themselves either the subjects of Her Majesty or of a Constitutional Monarchy under an English Prince. I have, therefore, thought it not inexpedient to assure Your Lordship that, in my humble judgment, Mr. Russell is entirely correct in the views he expresses. Language such as he describes has been told to me on numberless occasions by the very best and most influential persons in South Carolina, not only during the exciting scenes of the last few months, but from the day of my arrival here in 1853. My Predecessor, Mr. Matthew, informed me before I came of the existence of the same sentiment to a very great extent, and it is now infinitely stronger than ever. I affirm most deliberately that the governing classes of South Carolina would most gladly become the subjects of a Constitutional Monarchy based upon the principles of British Law. ...