Our Man in Charleston: Britain's Secret Agent in the Civil War South

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.