Dudley was given the choice of Consul to Liverpool or Ambassador to Japan from his good friend Abe Lincoln, who he helped.to win the 1860 Presidential election. Upon arriving in the city, he was immediately tasked with disrupting a staunch bias towards the Confederacy due to the Union blockade of cotton from Southern ports.
There was a vociferous and active cell of Southern representation in Liverpool in the form of Commander James Dunwoody Bulloch and merchant banker Charles Prioleau, the military and financial brains behind a determined drive to get the South recognised as a state by Britain, to the point of bringing the Empire into the war. Their unofficial garret was at 19 Abercromby Square.
This played out in the de facto building of a Confederate Navy in the shipyards of Liverpool and Birkenhead and even the conspiracy to kidnap Lincoln, which ultimately led to his assassination. Dudley chased down his enemy in the British courts and with a network of detectives, turning the richest port in the world into a Cold War-style battleground.
He appears as a key character in the book Water Street and the forthcoming sequel.
Read or listen to WATER Street here: amzn.to/43yZ3Tr
JP Maxwell 