July 8, 1861 - "Wicked designs of the South"; arrests in the North

From Our Man in Charleston: Britain's Secret Agent in the Civil War South, to be published July 21.

Purcell M’Quillan was an Irishman who’d been working as a clerk in a Charleston carpet warehouse, and asked for a passport from Bunch so he could go visit his father in Baltimore. When he was arrested, manacled and sent to the infamous prison at Fort Lafayette in New York harbor, M’Quillan was, like many other suspected Southern agents and sympathizers, denied habeas corpus. The

ostensible charges were spying for the rebels and trying to buy weapons, but M’Quillan was released after a few weeks following protests by Lord Lyons. He may never have been involved in anything, and it is plausible that the main reason the clerk was picked up was so Seward’s men could gather more information on Bunch.

The Charleston consul pretended to be unperturbed by all this. After all, M’Quillan was just one of so many messengers he’d sent northward. “I had some conversation with him when I gave him his passport (which I did after full inquiry, an examination on oath, etc.),” Bunch wrote to Lyons. “I asked him if he were going to Washington on his return to Charleston, and on his replying in the affirmative gave him a line to Your Lordship stating that he was a respectable young man and might be trusted with anything you might have for me. Of course he may have been buying arms for the Southern Confederacy, but I really do not believe it.” The last two pages of that letter are in code, which has not been deciphered and, from context, appear to deal with Southern plans for retribution against Britain if it does not recognize and support the Confederacy. They are summed up on the back of the document by the phrase “wicked designs of South.”

Engraving of "the political prison at Washington, corner First and A Streets" from "Harper's Weekly," courtesy of The American Library of Paris.

July 6, 1861 - Seward's spies go after Consul Bunch

From Our Man in Charleston: Britain's Secret Agent in the Civil War South, to be published July 21:

Seward saw spies everywhere, and his spies were everywhere. His police, informants, and private detectives kept a constant flow of information and allegations piling onto his desk. Legal guarantees

for suspected traitors and spies were thrown out.  When William Howard Russell met with Seward in July he accused him of running what amounted to a police state, and Seward was unapologetic. “The government will not shrink from using all the means which they consider necessary to restore the Union.” But as word got back to London of Seward’s activities, Palmerston raged against the effrontery of it all. “These North Americans,” he said, “are following fast the example of the Spanish Americans and the Continental despots. They commit all sorts of violence without regard to law, take up men and women and imprison them on mere suspicion, and rule the land by spies and police and martial law.” …

Lyons was worried. The secret mission to Richmond was approaching, but his man was already under scrutiny. “Her Majesty’s Government does not wish for an éclat here, so be particularly careful to avoid bringing one on, either as respects yourself or me,” Lyons warned Bunch on July 6.  “They have already got stories about you and the persons to whom you have given passports to the North, which I shall do all I can to put straight. They make it necessary for you to be particularly cautious.”At about the same time, Lyons wrote to Russell that he saw “symptoms of a determination here to make [Bunch] an object of attack. To withdraw his exequator would be just the sort of half-violent measure which would, I am afraid, be to Mr. Seward’s taste. It would not be an absolutely brutem fulmen [empty threat], for his recognized official character is necessary to enable him to communicate with the U.S. Blockading Squadron, and to obtain respect for messengers sent to and from him with dispatches.” Lyons concluded by saying, “I have no doubt he will manage the negotiations about the Declaration of Paris as well and as prudently as any man.” But the secrecy around the mission to Richmond was compromised before it ever started.

Seward on the cover of "Harper's Weekly" soon after he took office, courtesy of The American Library of Paris