That. Im going to tell you a little bit about the book and how i came to write it and then move as quickly as possible to questions and answers are or at least questions and attempted answers about the book and about the south and the Confederate Flag and all kinds of things like that. If you are not tired of talking about that already. Wheres that southern accent. I can hear creeping back in again. We will start the questions and answers before the talk. Actually i was born in nashville tennessee and my fathers family is from north georgia and from atlanta and my mothers family is from west tennessee around union city to and i went to Elementary School in atlanta, and that my move to oregon when i was about 11 years old. I did my best with my southern accent as quickly as i possibly could because everybody made fun of me for that southern accent. Its that kind of thing in the lunch line where somebody comes up to you and say, Say Something and you say what you want me to say and they crack up and you lose it. It does come back and if i go into a filling station in South Carolina immediately im speaking with a southern accent. Otherwise you get that, you wait from around here are you . [laughter] so 25 years ago i was reading a biography by a famous british explorer riches Richard Francis burton who visited the United States in 1860 and disappeared for several weeks somewhere between washington d. C. And new orleans. I dont know what he was doing and i dont think anybody does thought i had a hunch that there might be a compelling story to be told about british spies in the American South on the eve of the American Civil War and if you played with those elements fiction or nonfiction baby could sort of have John Locke Arabi the confederacy. It seemed like a good idea. This was a project i picked up and put down and picked up and put down. The one day that i said im just going to do nothing but work on this book was early in september of 2001. I close the doors, i turned off the tv and thank god the super the building came in and knocked on the door and said did you see the planes that just hit the World Trade Center . So that was the beginning of the period when i was not working on the book. Americans changed as they develop them books evolve and so does the history we live in. It took me about 15 years before i came across a private in palm palm British Council robert bunch who was Queen Victorias man in charleston South Carolina around 1853 to 1863. He had been a footnote in countless books about the civil war. Nobody had ever looked closely however at who he was and what he was doing. In fact all interpretations of what he was doing were almost completely wrong. Indeed to this day and i just checked, there is not even a wikipedia entry for robert bunch actually there is one. Its in german. German wikipedia, why did they doing it . Because the germans were methodical and they got them in there somehow. Theres no englishlanguage entry for robert bunch so far. Eventually i was able to find a lot of his private correspondence and i read through his dispatches and letters that were scattered and archive celebrate england. I realized he was a critical player in what Amanda Foreman has called the gray area where diplomacy and espionage meet and without him and his reporting great written might well back the secession of the slaveowning cotton growing south. This minor diplomat is incredibly duplicitous spy who is thought of by the slaveowners is a great friend and ally has helped mightily to defeat the confederacy and to determine the fate of these United States. So i knew i had my man in the book is no longer going to be a work of fiction. This was a history that might change the way we think about the civil war and growing up in the south i thought a lot about the civil war. But in the meantime a great deal of new history is being made. The United States set out to occupy foreign lands, the far right movement claiming the name of the tea party developed a powerful following even as a black man who loves at the lincoln was elected to be president of the United States. And then just a month before this book was to be published news broke of a horrific massacre the menu while ame church in charleston and once again a furious debate began about the confederate battle flag and the civil war and what it is that we should or should not remember about all that. The coincidence was appalling but it wasnt completely surprising. One of the things i have learned over a quartercentury quarter century researching one Little Corner of American History while covering as a Foreign Correspondent the succession of American Military actions abroad most of which have been forgotten is that the one war that never ends for many people in the United States is a war between the states and one of the most important lessons i learned about that war is how badly we have failed to understand this most obvious lessons. Needs to be remembered that the history of wars is largely a history of delusions, the streams of rapid victories based on simple strategies that lead to long nightmares of slaughter. The french write about what they call a pathology that takes over politics and the press and eventually a whole people discouraging all debate and dissension. Costs are not calculated. Benefits are fabricated. The rhetoric of glory disguises the grotesque realities of combat until armed confrontation not only seems inevitable, it is inevitable. I will leave it to you to ponder the problem with this today. Certainly the first lesson we should learn from the war between the states should be that it was based on delusions, which our which our man in charleston understood and reported on with uncanny accuracy. The reasons that the fighting began in 1861 and the reasons that it turned out as they did seem simple to me when i was young and enormously confiscated when i studied the conflict more closely. States rights yes and free trade, the insult of abolitionists the south loss of his dominance over the federal government and the economys addiction to slavery all drove the southerners toward secession. Amid the turmoil the extremists played off each other so effectively that the voice of the moderation the voices of the majority on each side were lost and to an amazing extent have remained obscure to Many Americans ever since. And yet as counsel bunch saw a perfect way clearly because it was stated perfectly clearly by the powerful people he knew both privately and publicly and indeed was stated in the ordinance of secession for almost every one of the Confederate States ultimately there was no question that the south seceded to defend slavery and the north went to war to stop secession. This is a simple concept. You can reduce it to 140 characters. The next time you see anybody or hear anybody say the war was not about slavery you can tweak that out. The south seceded to defend slavery in the north went to war to stop secession. Thats what the civil war was about. There should be no debate about that today and yet there is, because people claim to delusions with greater faith and conviction than they devote to. So lets not debate why it was the south seceded, why was the north went to war but heres an aspect of history that is not denied so much as it is ignored. Lets understand when secession family seems inevitable the strategic notion that made it actually seemed possible was based on a single stunningly simple and stunningly wrong calculation. The secession is assumed that britain, the most powerful nation on earth, had no choice but to support the cotton growing confederacy with official recognition and support they came to a fight the secessionists believe the british would supply the money, the arms and enable power to guarantee the south separation from the union. They would sweep away what was it worst the paper blockade. They would all up but was in fact a tiny federal army at the beginning of the war and that would be checkmate, game over. Why would the british to that . Why would the secessionists believe that . Because raw cotton was the most Important International commodity of the 19th century. We could say it was in 1950 when oil was to the 20th and 21st without it britain and france would shut down and hundreds of thousands of people would lose their jobs overnight. Britain got 80 of its raw cotton from the slaveowning south. So the secessionists figured their britain really would have no choice but to back them. The confederate tail would wag the british bulldog. I think i will say that again. What they did not count on was that the british might hold their noses and accept the fact that slaves grew cotton for british mills but london, in london could say that was an internal problem for the United States but there were limits. Where the british judah line on this whole question of slave grown cotton was on the question of the slave trade with africa which republican politicians in britain and indeed in the United States had recognized for more than 50 years as essentially a holocaust in which successive reduce governments fight against relentlessly deploying navels godman suffolk coast of africa cuba and south america and eventually spending an estimated 2 of the gdp of Great Britain in the struggle to shut down the middle passage. What counsel bunch did in a secret dispatches was to take the rhetoric of the southern extremists and turn it against them. The fireeaters as they were called argued that slavery was not a Necessary Evil in their world which was a popular view, but positive good for the interior lack grace which got in fact had created to be enslaved and this being the case they said the slave trade with africa must be reopened it in fact how could he say it was a bad thing because that would be denying slavery was a good thing. Bunch used that extensively. He reported on it in enormous detail. It also escaped nobodys noticed that the south was running low on slave labor and the price of slaves and risen astronomically. When the things that people dont understand was there was this bubble market in humans before the civil war. To keep expanding its cotton growing economy the south needed more land and they could conquer that. It was a big part of what manifest destiny was about. Thats what texas and the war with mexico is about and that was what the efforts to take over Central America and cuba were about. But once it conquered the land it would need more slaves to work the land. The land wouldnt work that much unless you could open it up and grow within the cottonwood eat it up and you would move on. A great thing about slaves is that there were portable. As you expanded west you could keep taking your labor force with you. They didnt have to think about it. They didnt get a chance to think about it. So all of this played into bunches and so convincing was he that with his arguments the Southern States would have no choice but to reopen the slave trade even when the confederate constitution bandit officially in 1851 the british envoy to washington broke back to the Foreign Office saying dont pay any attention to that. Thats just something they are saying for now and they will change course immediately when they are in attendance at that happens. Every time that the crown came close to backing the confederacy and there were those times certainly in 1861 and 1862 the question of the slave trade came up and every time the south gave the wrong answer to the british cabinet. So what was it that drove lunch to do all this . Ultimately although he was no master spy would have to say and some key respects he was a little like george smiley. He was at rational representing the interests of his government as best he could, a provost job involved i love this phrase excursions into the mystery of Human Behavior disciplined by the Practical Application of its own deductions. Which i think some of my colleagues from the Washington Post will find similar to the job. Thanks to our man in charleston United States remained united even if in the minds of some the war between the states goes on. [applause] now questions and answers. Oh come on, please. Yes. Actually i have two questions for you. The first one is a simple fact. I grew up in trust and i was curious if you know where he was living when he was in charleston. C he started out on which tragically then its not such a tragedy now but its a couple of doors away. And then he moved to and he was just two blocks. C largely south the bronx. Area much. My real question is in South Carolina and the revolutionary war we basically said the war was very ugly. A lot of hard feelings. There were a was lost and a lot of the independent were in charleston. So i can see why there are economic reasons to potentially cooperate on both sides but did those old hard feelings still influence some of those politics between the confederacy and britain . Actually it was kind of confused in charleston as a result of those emotions. Some correspondents in fact that hes sending back are saying they have made me the head of the society and they are doing all of this and in fact it was this whole thing going on in 1860 or 61 where the secessionists were saying to the british we really would like to be part of the empire again. Maybe we could answer to the clean again. Maybe this is really our destiny because after all we are aristocrats and what we want to do. At the same time he would know that they were celebrating of actuation day which was the day that the british pulled out of charleston. They were mixed messages not only in the same community but from the same people. You mentioned he you mentioned he said son many dispatchers to report to london etc. So sometimes washington apparently otherwise some british ships. Apparently he was some kind of code because i find it very odd that the messages were not intercepted and read. How did he get away with that . Some of the more but not the ones i would have revealed what he was doing. In fact he was at the center of the huge diplomatic incident in 1861 because seward had spies everywhere and was doing his damnedest to intercept all the correspondence he could but he we thank was not opening diplomatic but what happened was bunch in order to get his correspondence out after the war had begun often had to employ carriers who were kind of hitandmiss. A lot of them were naturalized americans who would come to britain and one of them got caught by sewards people and one of them had a note saying that bunch had been involved with an effort to talk to confederate government about observing british neutrality. Sewer demanded that bunch be removed from his office in the british refused to do it because they knew, they knew what bunch had been reporting and where his actual analysis was and where his loyalties were. And they refuse to take them out but they wouldnt tell seward that. Because of its infusion they created an enormous amount of tension or what is called the trent affair where the british and the americans almost went to war. All that happened within the space of about three months. He used to code. A lot of the letters, not a lot but quite a few of the letters that i got word and code and i fear that it was a one time tax. In fact there is uncoated correspondence where he keeps telling lord lions for them since it was the british minister to washington, you know i think im going to master this code thing. Im doing a best on it but its so time consuming and he would break out of code frequently so there are some letters that her little bed in code in a little bit handwritten. And then there are couple in the collection of correspondence that its not a one time pad my devout cryptographers to veto. The code is like this and the d. Code is written across it. Thank you for this and i come to all of this from a different perspective than those people who were enslaved. So i certainly take the whole issue of slavery, its causes, its ramifications, the way in which we see it still reflected in certainly in charleston very seriously. Im sure you are probably aware that rahm emanuel was a founder of that church and im glad that you mentioned him several times in your book. Im curious as to when you were last in charleston, the time you spent there and what your thoughts are about contemporary charleston and if you have seen the statue that is now in hampden park . At the magnificat statue. Santa last summers in charleston was emanuel ame. I havent been back there since and im looking forward to going there in a couple of weeks as a matter of fact. I only talk about my book blitz to get a better sense for the way things are. I have a lot of friends in charleston who have been talking to me about the situation down there. And of course my father lived in South Carolina and carolina for 25 years. I was horrified obviously by what happened but gratified by the reaction to it finally by the powers that be in state government. Nikki haley comes out and says we have got to take that flag down. Thats good if you have republicans state senator. Saying its time for it to come down and i think thats good and the debate is good. Its good for people to remember that the battle flag of the army of Northern Virginia is a the flag was blown bye bye robert e. Lee and he rolled it up when he surrendered and he put it away. It wasnt flying over Washington College when he was the president there. It started flying again as a response to the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s. That