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margot
, May 26, 2012
First, the Bad:
This is a perfect-bound paperback, costing you somewhere between $55.00 and $75.00, which I find absolutely disgraceful. For that kind of sum I expect dozens of illustrations (including, perhaps, a tipped-in color print of the CSS Alabama, fighting its last battle in the English Channel in 1864). The actual illustrations, mainly photo-reproductions, are scanty, reproduced inline with the letterpress, as is so often the case with modern book production.
I suspect the pricing of the book was based upon the expectation that it would have little popular appeal, and had to rely on accession by university libraries. If you estimate 200 libraries buying the book at $50, you get a round figure of $10,000, which is about what it must have cost to buy the paper and print up the (computer-typeset) pages. Perhaps the publisher printed 1000 books, in which case the additional purchases by Confederate Navy enthusiasts (most of whom are elderly, well-heeled, and more than happy to spend up to $100 on yet another book) would be just so much gravy for the publishers and authors.
There are some very odd typos in the book, suggesting that the editors did not extend themselves to the services of an outside proofreader, preferring instead to use the hideous "spellcheck" utility found in so many wordprocessing and layout programs. Thus, we find the word "imminent" used at one point when "eminent" is intended. This is the sort of error no human could make. Only a machine could be that blind.
And now the Good:
This book is a first, a landmark history in an area too long ignored or glossed over with glib generalizations. It is scholarly and readable, and you should all run out and buy a copy. The paper stock is excellent, a kind of ultra-light cream that is easy on the eyes. Perfect-bound paperback or not, this was designed to last.
The type is well chosen, and the image-area, though wide (wide as a standard clothbound book), does not tire the eyes. The coated paper on the cover is standard library-paperback stuff, containing a photo of Bulloch on the front and informative blurb on the back. There is nothing experimental or eccentric in the layout, nothing to try your patience at all.
Likewise with the narrative. It was a brave man who took on the task of doing Bulloch's biography; Bulloch himself had already produced two volumes on the most intriguing years of his career (you can read the book for free online, with very little searching!), telling of his efforts as head of the "Confederate Secret Service in Europe," and that is a primary source of this book. Bulloch's nephew, Theodore Roosevelt Jr., had written about Uncle Jimmie, too, in his autobiographical essays and speeches.
The main story is a humdinger. James Bulloch--ex-USN officer, shipping tycoon, and Southern blueblood--was basically the head of naval procurement for the Confederate States of America, 1861-1865. At war's outbreak, the Confederacy had no navy to speak of, nor could it hope to build one to compete with that of the Federals. The only possible avenue of success was to build specialized warships abroad, to harry and destroy Federal shipping, and to evade the Federal blockade on the Confederate coast. And so the Confederate Secretary of the Navy, Stephen Mallory (formerly senator from Florida), sent Bulloch abroad to see if he could build these ships in the yards of England and France.
Bulloch had been in commercial shipping business for ten years, and was an ex-Navy officer. He knew commerce, and he knew shipbuilding. He also knew how to deal slyly and diplomatically with foreign governments. While the British and French governments were officially very friendly to the Confederate cause, they were hesitant to recognize the Confederacy before it settled the war on its own terms with the Federals. So the only way Bulloch could produce ships was to pretend that these new hulls in the shipyards at Liverpool or Brest were being produced for a non-belligerent country: Italy, say, or Portugal, or even Egypt!
The Federal ambassadors and consuls were perfectly aware of what was up. They spotted the Confederate ships as soon as the hulls were laid and hectored the British government to seize them. But Bulloch was cleverer than any of them, and got the first two out to sea without any mishap. These were the famous "commerce raiders," the CSS Florida and CSS Alabama, long fast ships that sailed under both steam and wind. Together these two took out about 120 Union ships in the space of two years--whalers, merchant steamers, and US Navy vessels. As a rule these gentleman-raiders would seize the goods, burn the ship, and briefly take the crew as prisoners before dropping them off at a neutral port. These raiders so ruined Federal commerce that the US Merchant Marine, the largest in the world in 1860, did not recover its preeminence till the 20th century.
These gentleman "pirates" were popular heroes, feted and cheered around the globe, but particularly in England. Of course they were not pirates at all, merely belligerents, but there was a romantic fascination about them that lingered, and influenced popular literature over the next twenty years. Surely they must have been the originals of W. S. Gilbert's Pirates of Penzance (runaway aristocrats who would never harm a captive; and who brilliantly elude an army of blundering bluecoat cops), as well inspiring the piratical-adventure books of Robert Louis Stevenson. (These comments are entirely my own contribution and have nothing to do with the book being reviewed or its author.)
Even Better, What's New:
The problem with writing about Bulloch is that Bulloch himself was intentionally cagey when he wrote his memoirs in the 1880s. He knew far more than he could say, even at that late date. Friends in the British Foreign Office had kept Bulloch apprised of Federal maneuvers to seize the Confederate boats, but Bulloch never spilled their names. Likewise he made a point of not keeping a paper trail of his riskier activities. We have long known that he sent money to Montreal, to fund an abortive conspiracy to kidnap President Lincoln (the original John Wilkes Booth plan, before it mutated into the assassination); but Bulloch never spoke of this or wrote of it. Nevertheless the author does a pretty job of filling in the glaring blanks of the Bulloch saga, making reasonable guesses at who his contacts were in London and Paris.
The author is particularly good at Bulloch's life in the ten years after the War. For nearly a century and a half, we've been told that Teddy Roosevelt's uncles, Jimmie and Irvine (who also worked for the Confederate Navy and settled in Liverpool) could never return to America unless they did so in disguise. Actually the Bullochs visited often, going back to see the Roosevelt-Bulloch for family weddings or business matters every few years. After 1869 they had no fear of prosecution; they had taken British citizenship, which the Crown was most happy to grant. Bulloch settled into the life of a prosperous and sociable English merchant.
There came a strange point in 1874 when Bulloch imagined that he could, in fact should, become US Consul in Liverpool. He actively sought favor in Washington DC by asking Jefferson Davis (of all people!) to intercede for him with a friendly senator. No doubt his judgment was swayed by the warmth of his own connections in America, as well as by the immense popularity of Jefferson Davis on his visits to England. The way had not been over ten years, yet Bulloch was already thinking that ex-Confederates were about to become the new hot items on the diplomatic circuit. This delusional episode was very uncharacteristic of Bulloch, and he soon realized his mistake and asked Davis and the others to forget the whole thing.
Much of the latter story is thus a warm and cozy family saga, sometimes dull but frequently punctuated with touching soap-opera. Uncle Jimmie Bulloch helps Teddy Roosevelt with a clandestine London wedding, a few months after Teddy's first wife dies. Uncle Jimmie takes care of Teddy Roosevelt's mad, dipsomaniac brother Elliott (father of Eleanor), and shepherds him back across the water from England to an insane asylum in New York.
Barring a secret trove of Bulloch letters somewhere, I can't see how anyone could substantially improve on this .
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