Robert Bunch Quotes
I do not exaggerate in designating the present state of affairs in the Southern country as a reign of terror. Persons are torn away from their residences and pursuits…letters are opened at the Post Offices; discussion upon slavery is entirely prohibited under penalty of expulsion…The Northern merchants and travelers are leaving in great numbers.
What oven gets overlooked in the history leading up to the Civil War was the terribly repressive atmosphere that developed in the South itself over the issue of slavery. There were some abolitionists in the South, and most of the slaves were held by a relatively few wealthy men. Many with no slaves or only one or two, might go either way on the slavery issue and the various fugitive slave laws. And Northern abolitionists sometimes would come South to investigate and report on the conditions of the slaves of the South. While still in the Union, many Southern areas made a mockery of the Constitutional protections of freedom of speech, freedom of the press. Censorship and repressive activities invaded privacy, and the South, for both Northerners and English travelers, no longer had the charm of the past. Note the use of the term “reign of terror”. Bunch was a seasoned diplomat experienced at reporting on conditions.
Robert Bunch, *, British Consul to Charleston, South Carolina, New York and Philadelphia, Report on conditions in the South, December 9, 1859
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This is the kind of search and seizure to determine who was practicing which religion with which out Founding Fathers were very much aware and which were eliminated in the Bill of Rights.
James was a Catholic King and did not like Protestants but positively detested Puritans. He made good his and “harried them out of the land” much to the benefit of the American colonies to which they immigrated and the detriment of England. Many of the immigrants to America came for the religious freedom, but in the early days, no sooner did they arrive and become the majority, than they began to discriminate against other religions.
The “burning” is a reference to the range of murders from the burning of heretics in the Middle Ages to the crematorium ovens of the German Concentration Camps in the Holocaust of WWII.
Robert Bunch KCMG was a British diplomat, who was a secret agent present in the United States South during the American Civil War. Before the outbreak of Civil War, he had served as a diplomatic representative, first in the North, and then replacing George Buckley-Mathew in Charleston, who was causing diplomatic problems. In particular, Mathew was vocally against South Carolina's recent rule of incarcerating British African sailors while in port.
