The Deep Roots Of Racial Conflict (Bahamas)
By LARRY SMITH
... Charleston was the epicentre of secession in the US over the preservation of slavery. And it is worth noting that the city – which was the largest port on the south Atlantic coast in those days – had a long association with the Bahamas. In fact, William Sayle, who had earlier led the Eleutherian Adventurers to settle our islands – was also the first governor of South Carolina.
#Now, a book has been published which tells the story of the Civil War from the point of view of the resident British consul in Charleston – a man named Robert Bunch, whose father was a Bahamian adventurer. In “Our Man in Charleston: Britain’s Secret Agent in the Civil War South”, journalist Christopher Dickey says Bunch, an ardent abolitionist, played a major role in persuading Britain not to recognise the Confederacy.
#Soon after his arrival in Charleston, Bunch told his superiors in the Foreign Office that even “sensible and well-informed” people would hear nothing about slavery’s “inconveniences, its injustice, or its atrocities”. Rather, he said, slavery was “the very blood of their veins”. Everything they produced or owned depended upon it, and “they would go to any length” to protect it.
#As the southern states seceded from the Union, Bunch wrote that “this new Confederacy is based upon the preservation and extension of Negro slavery … (and) it is founded upon the possession of what may be called a monopoly of one single production – cotton” ...
http://www.tribune242.com/news/2015/aug/26/tough-call-deep-roots-racial-conflict/
