Lincoln's Man in Liverpool: Consul Dudley and the Legal Battle to Stop Confederate Warships

By Coy F. Cross II
Illustrated, cloth, index, bibliography, 180 pp., 2007. Northern Illinois University Press, 2280 Bethany Road, DeKalb, IL 60115, $28.95 plus shipping.

Reviewer: Paul Taylor
Paul Taylor is the author/editor of four books on the Civil War. His most recent is a 100-copy deluxe, fine press collection of unpublished Civil War letters entitled "Give My Love to All Our Folks." Visit www.paulrtaylor.com for details.

Review:
From the opening of the Civil War up through its conclusion, Great Britain's formal policy toward the conflict was one of neutrality. That impartiality was severely tested in November 1861 when a U.S. warship in international waters halted the Trent, a British passenger ship carrying two Confederate emissaries who were forcibly removed and taken to Boston as prisoners. The two men were later released, which helped to diffuse the crisis.

Despite that momentary threat to British neutrality, the centerpiece of that country's official stance was Britain's Foreign Enlistment Act of 1819, which forbade the equipping and arming of ships in British ports for use by belligerents with whom that country was at peace.

Coy F. Cross' thin, though thorough, new volume tells the true cloak and dagger story of Confederate attempts to circumvent that law with British shipbuilders while, concurrently, Thomas H. Dudley, the U.S. Consul in Liverpool, attempted to legally prevent those vessels from ever leaving English docks.

Despite Britain's official neutrality, many, if not most, English citizens sympathized with the Confederacy because the Union's blockade of Rebel ports cut the flow of cotton from Southern fields to English mills. Essentially for this reason, Confederate purchasing agent James Bulloch found British shipbuilders all too willing to build his warships without asking too many questions.

From the moment of his arrival in Liverpool in November 1861, Dudley, a Lincoln political appointee with no diplomatic experience, suspected that Bulloch was commissioning state-of-the-art warships that would be used as commerce raiders.

Starting with the Oreto, which ultimately became the CSS Florida, and then moving on to the CSS Alabama and other ships, the author describes with amazing detail the calculated indifference Dudley faced from his British hosts.

In this engaging tale of espionage and intrigue, Cross outlines the numerous legal hoops Dudley was forced to jump through. As part of his intelligence efforts, Dudley bribed dock workers, hired private detectives, bought "sworn" affidavits, and provided haven for collaborating Confederate seamen able to provide facts that would stand up in a British court.

Perhaps inevitably, Dudley failed to stop these new ships and their crews from sailing and going on to wreak havoc against Yankee shipping in all parts of the Atlantic. So great was the destruction that the author points out how many U.S. ships reluctantly changed their registry from American to British in order to avoid detention by the Alabama.

However, if the Alabama's Capt. Rafael Semmes suspected the switch was merely a ruse to avoid capture, he burned the ship anyway. Cross wryly notes how the British never seemed to protest Semmes acting as his own judge and jury regarding these "British" ships the way they had with Union officers during the Trent affair.

Despite his wartime failure, Dudley's painstaking documentation of what had transpired ultimately brought about vindication for him and a day of reckoning for the British government.

For six years after the war's end, Britain stubbornly refused to admit it had done anything wrong, though in the Alabama Claims Settlement of 1872, an international tribunal awarded the United States $15 million in war reparations for the British government's failure to enforce its own neutrality laws. Though relatively small, this award and its attendant acknowledgement of British culpability were due in large measure to Dudley's efforts.

Drawing heavily on the National Archives' diplomatic correspondence records, the author illuminates both the international political machinations of the era and Dudley's role in them. It casts a new light on a crucial diplomatic front from the American Civil War.

The book contains images of many of the key players as well as prints of the Rebel raiders built at British shipyards. This delightful work shows that good things do indeed come in small packages. Engrossing, enjoyable and highly recommended.