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Our Man in Charleston

Audiobook
Nonfiction: History, Civil War
Unabridged   10.75 hour(s)
Publication date: 07/21/2015

Our Man in Charleston

Britain's Secret Agent in the Civil War South

Available from major retailers or BUY FROM AMAZON
Audio CD ISBN:9781622317691
Digital Download ISBN:9781622317707

Summary

As tension over slavery and western expansion threatened to break the US into civil war, the Southern states found themselves squeezed between two nearly irreconcilable realities: the survival of the Confederate economy would require the importation of more slaves, a practice banned in America since 1807, but the existence of the Confederacy itself could not be secured without official recognition from Great Britain, who would never countenance reopening the Atlantic slave trade. How, then, could the first be achieved without dooming the possibility of the second?

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Product Description

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.

Author Bio

Christopher Dickey is a remarkably accomplished journalist and foreign correspondent, currently foreign editor for the Daily Beast and based in France. Previously he was the Paris bureau chief and Middle East editor for Newsweek. He has also served as Cairo bureau chief for the Washington Post and, before that, as the paper's Central America bureau chief. His books include the acclaimed memoir Summer of Deliverance as well as Securing the City, With the Contras, and two novels. http://www.christopherdickey.com/