James Dunwoody Bulloch

James Dunwoody Bulloch
Born	June 25, 1823 Savannah, Georgia
Died	January 7, 1901(1901-01-07)(aged 77) Liverpool, England
Allegiance	United States Confederate States of America
Service/branch	United States Navy Confederate States Navy
Years of service	1839–1854 USN 1861–1865 CSN
Rank	Commander(CSN)
Commands held	USS State of Georgia(1853)
Spouse(s)	Elizabeth Euphemia Caskie (1851–1854) Harriott Cross Foster (1857–1901)
Children	5

James Dunwoody Bulloch(June 25, 1823 – January 7, 1901) was theConfederacy's chiefforeign agentinGreat Britainduring theAmerican Civil War.Based inLiverpool,he operatedblockade runnersand commerce raiders that provided the Confederacy with its only source of hard currency. Bulloch arranged for the purchase by British merchants of Confederate cotton, as well as the dispatch of armaments and other war supplies to the South.He also oversaw the construction and purchase of several ships designed at ruining Northern shipping during the Civil War, includingCSS Florida,CSS Alabama,CSS Stonewall, andCSS Shenandoah.Due to him being a Confederate secret agent, Bulloch was not included in the general amnesty that came after the Civil War and therefore decided to stay in Liverpool, becoming the director of the Liverpool Nautical College and the Orphan Boys Asylum.

Bulloch's half-brotherIrvine Bullochwas a Confederate naval officer and his half-sisterMartha Rooseveltwas the mother of U.S. PresidentTheodore Rooseveltand paternal grandmother of First LadyEleanor Roosevelt.

Birth and early years

James D. Bulloch was born in 1823 on his family's plantation nearSavannah, Georgia,to MajorJames Stephens Bulloch(son of Captain James Bulloch and Ann Irvine)and Hester Amarintha Elliott (daughter of SenatorJohn Elliottand Esther Dunwoody). After Hester died, Major Bulloch enrolled his son in a private school inHartford, Connecticut.

The elder Bulloch married again, to the widow Martha Stewart, in May 1832. She had been the second wife and widow of Senator John Elliott. James S. and Martha Bulloch had four children: Anna;Martha;Charles Irvine (who died young); andIrvine Stephens Bulloch.

In 1838, Major Bulloch moved his family from the Low Country toCobb County,in thePiedmont.There he became a partner withRoswell Kingin a newcotton mill.In what would becomeRoswell, Georgia,he had a grand home built, made by the labor of free craftsmen andslave workers.When it was completed in 1839, the family moved intoBulloch Hall.However, Bulloch never lived there as he was in the navy when it finished construction.

James S. Bulloch kept a large amount of land incottoncultivation.He died in 1849; Mrs. Bulloch still held 31 enslaved African-Americans in 1850, according to the censusslave schedules.

Marriage and family

James Dunwoody Bulloch married Elizabeth Caskie in 1851. After her early death, he married Mrs. Hariott Cross Foster, a widow, ofBaton Rouge, Louisiana,in 1857. They had five children together.

Naval service and European agent of Confederacy

James (left) with his younger half-brother,Irvine Bulloch,c. 1865

Bulloch served in theUnited States Navyfor about 15 years before resigning his commission in 1854 to join a private shipping company. When theSouthern statesseceded from theUnionand the Civil War began in 1861, one of the Union's first acts was to create anaval blockadeof Confederate ports to cut off commerce in the South.

In April 1861, while his ship was inNew Orleans,Bulloch offered to assist theConfederate States of America.When he returned to New York, he found a letter from C.S.A. Attorney GeneralJudah P. Benjaminaccepting his offer and ordering him toMontgomery, Alabama,for his assignment. James D. Bulloch soon became a Confederatesecret agentand their "most dangerous man" in Europe, according to UnionState Departmentofficials.

Former offices of Fraser, Trenholm & Co. in Rumford Place, Liverpool (photographed in 2019)

Less than two months after the attack onFort Sumter,Bulloch arrived atLiverpool,England, and established a base of operations there.Britainwas officially neutral in the conflict between North and South, but private and public sentiment was divided between the two belligerents. British merchants were also willing to buy all thecottonthat could be smuggled past theUnion blockade,which provided the South with its only real source of revenue. Bulloch established a relationship with the shipping firm of Fraser, Trenholm, & Company to buy and sell Confederate cotton; the company became, in effect, the Confederacy's international bankers.George Trenholmserved as Treasurer of the Confederacy in the last year of the war.

Bulloch worked closely withCharles K. Prioleauwho handled Confederacy funding in England and arranged for the construction and secret purchase of the commerce raiderCSSAlabama.He arranged for cotton to be converted to hard currency, which he in turn used to purchase badly needed warmateriel,including arms and ammunition, uniforms, and naval supplies. He also arranged for the construction of theCSSFlorida;along with theAlabama,the ship preyed upon the Union's merchant fleet. James' younger half-brother,Irvine S. Bulloch,served in theConfederate States Navyon theAlabama.

Realizing that he needed a steady flow of funds to support the purchasing program as well as a way to ship materiel from England, Bulloch decided to buy asteamship,the SSFingal,which was renamed theCSSAtlanta.He filled it with ordnance which he and an agent of the Southern War Department had accumulated and then sailed to America.

Bulloch later returned to Liverpool and continued his business relationship with Fraser, Trenholm & Co. He was involved in constructing and acquiring a number of other warships andblockade runnersfor the Confederacy, including the purchase of theSea King,which was renamed theCSSShenandoah.Bulloch instructed Confederate Navy CaptainJames Iredell Waddellto sail "into the seas and among the islands frequented by the great Americanwhalingfleet, a source of abundant wealth to our enemies and a nursery for their seamen. It is hoped that you may be able to greatly damage and disperse that fleet. "The CSSShenandoahfired the last shots of the war on June 28, 1865, during a raid on American whalers in theBering Sea.

After the war

As Confederate secret agents, James and Irvine Bulloch were not included in the general amnesty that the federal government approved after the Civil War. They decided to stay in Liverpool, where they became quite successful as cotton importers and brokers.

During the 1880s, a youngTheodore Roosevelt,known as T.R., persuaded his "Uncle Jimmie" Bulloch to write and publish an account of his activities during the Civil War.The Secret Service of the Confederate States in Europewas published in two volumes in 1883. T.R. wrote to his mother telling of his success with the project saying, "I have persuaded him [James Bulloch] to publish a work which only he possesses the materials to write."In return, Uncle Jimmie spent considerable time schooling his energetic nephew on the operations of wind-powered ships in theAge of Sailand explained much about ship-to-ship fighting tactics, as Theodore had no personal experience or training in early 19th-century naval warfare. Roosevelt drew from this tutoring, and his long hours spent in libraries researching the official records of the U.S. Navy, for his bookThe Naval War of 1812.

Theodore Roosevelt on the Bullochs

In 1905, the height of reconciliation between the North and the South,incumbent PresidentTheodore Roosevelttoured the South. After spending October 19 in North Carolina and skipping South Carolina, Roosevelt visitedRoswell, Georgiathe next day. He spoke to the citizens as his "neighbors and friends" and concluded his remarks as follows:

It has been my very great good fortune to have the right to claim my blood is half southern and half northern, and I would deny the right of any man here to feel a greater pride in the deeds of every southerner than I feel. Of all the children, the brothers and sisters of my mother who were born and brought up in that house on the hill there, my two uncles afterward entered the Confederate service and served with the Confederate Navy.

One, the younger man, served on theAlabamaas the youngest officer aboard her. He was captain of one of her broadside 32-pounders in her final fight, and when at the very end theAlabamawas sinking and theKearsargepassed under her stern and came up along the side that had not been engaged hitherto, my uncle, Irvine Bulloch, shifted his gun from one side to the other and fired the two last shots fired from theAlabama.James Dunwoody Bulloch was a commander in the Confederate service.....

Men and women, don't you think I have the ancestral right to claim a proud kinship with those who showed their devotion to duty as they saw the duty, whether they wore the grey or whether they wore the blue? All Americans who are worthy the name feel an equal pride in the valor of those who fought on one side or the other, provided only that each did with all his strength and soul and mind his duty as it was given to him to see his duty.

In Roosevelt's autobiography, he mentions the Bullochs as follows:

My mother's two brothers, James Dunwoody Bulloch and Irvine Bulloch, came to visit us shortly after the close of the war. Both came under assumed names, as they were among the Confederates who were at that time exempted from the amnesty. "Uncle Jimmy" Bulloch was a dear old retired sea-captain, utterly unable to "get on" in the worldly sense of that phrase, as valiant and simple and upright a soul as ever lived, a veritableColonel Newcome.He was a commander in the Confederate navy, and was the builder of the famous Confederate war vesselAlabama.My uncle Irvine Bulloch was a midshipman on theAlabama,and fired the last gun discharged from her batteries in the fight with theKearsarge.Both of these uncles lived in Liverpool after the war. My uncle Jimmy Bulloch was forgiving and just in reference to the Union forces, and could discuss all phases of the Civil War with entire fairness and generosity. But in English politics he promptly became a Tory of the most ultra-conservative school. Lincoln and Grant he could admire, but he would not listen to anything in favor of Mr.Gladstone.The only occasions on which I ever shook his faith in me were when I would venture meekly to suggest that some of the manifestly preposterous falsehoods about Mr. Gladstone could not be true. My uncle was one of the best men I have ever known, and when I have sometimes been tempted to wonder how good people can believe of me the unjust and impossible things they do believe, I have consoled myself by thinking of Uncle Jimmy Bulloch's perfectly sincere conviction that Gladstone was a man of quite exceptional and nameless infamy in both public and private life.

Later years

James died inLiverpoolat the home of his daughter and son-in-law at 76 Canning Street, Liverpool, England, in 1901, at the age of 77. His headstone in Liverpool'sToxteth Park Cemeterybears the inscription: "An American by birth, an Englishman by choice".

See also

• Bulloch Hall,antebellum homeof the Bulloch family in Roswell, Georgia

References

• Bulloch, James D.The Secret Service of the Confederate States in Europe; or, How the Confederate Cruisers Were Equipped.(London, 1883; New York, 1884)
• Wilson, Walter E. and Gary L. Mckay.James D. Bulloch; Secret Agent and Mastermind of the Confederate Navy.(Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2012)ISBN978-0-7864-6659-7.

There are biographical sketches inThe American National Biography(supplementary volume) andThe Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Further reading

• Merli, Frank J. (1970).Great Britain and the Confederate Navy, 1861–1865.Indiana University Press, Indiana. p. 342.ISBN0-253-21735-0.

External links

• Bulloch Hall - Historic Roswell, Georgiaat bullochhall.org (official website)
• Port Cities: - James Dunwoody Bullochat mersey-gateway.org
• New Georgia Encyclopedia: James D. Bulloch (1823-1901) at georgiaencyclopedia.orgArchived2004-08-19 at theWayback Machine