I have published my first attempt at an interpretation of the US Consular Service’s operations:
“One Service, Three Systems, Many Empires: The US Consular Service and the Growth of US Global Power, 1789-1924,” in Crossing Empires: Taking U.S. History into Transimperial Terrain, ed. Kristin Hoganson and Jay Sexton (Durham: Duke University Press, 2020), 135-58.
Please visit the publisher’s website for more information about the book, including where to purchase it.
Since the chapter went to press, I have found new information about consular agents in the 1850s and ’60s, which I anticipate will alter my interpretation of the Civil War, making the war itself a period of less radical change. That said, the 1850s through the 1870s were still a period of significant changes for the USCS, and it looks as though one of those changes would be an increase in publicly available information about who was working for the service.