Thomas Haines Dudley (1819-1893) was consul of the United States of America in Liverpool during the American Civil War. He was instrumental in leading efforts by the Federal Government to prevent British involvement in the war, and in particular in preventing blockade runners from Liverpool, such as the CSS Alabama, from assisting the Confederate war effort.
Thomas Haines Dudley was born in Burlington County New Jersey on October 9, 1819, to Evan and Ann Dudley. [1] Evan Dudley died when Haines Dudley was two years old. He was raised as a quaker by his mother. [2] Dudley was the youngest of four children. [3]
On March 4, 1846, Dudley married Emaline Matlack. [4] They had four children together named Edward, Mary, Ellen and Henry. The youngest, named after Dudley's idol, Henry Clay, died at the age of two. [5]
Dudley began his career as a school teacher and later began to study law under William N. Jeffers in Camden, New Jersey. [6] He was admitted to the bar in 1845. [7] As a lawyer he was active in anti-slavery affairs. [8] His first case found him disguising himself as a slave trader to retrieve a free black mother and her children from southern slaveholders. [9] Dudley was successful in his rescue attempt and was assisted by funds amassed by The Society of Friends, a Quaker organization located in Camden. [10] By 1850, Dudley had held more prominent local positions like the city treasurer of Camden, the city solicitor, and chairman of the New Jersey executive committee for the Republican Party. [11]
In March 1856, when he was 37 years old, Dudley was involved in an accident involving a fire aboard the Steamboat New Jersey. [12] As a result of this fire, fifty people died. [13] When Dudley was pulled from the steamboat, he was near death. While he did ultimately recover, he was plagued by health and nervous system issues for the duration of his life. [14] These health issues ultimately contributed to his decision to be stationed in Liverpool for his tenure as consul. [15]
In 1852 Dudley was appointed as a member of the Whig State Executive Committee and contributed to Winfield Scott’s campaign. [16] By 1860 he had become chairman of the Republican State Executive Committee of New Jersey. [17] Dudley was eventually chosen as delegate-at-large for New Jersey at the Republican Convention in 1860. [18] Dudley campaigned for Abraham Lincoln and worked to persuade the delegates from New Jersey to vote for Lincoln. [19] Dudley, a Republican who fought for the protective tariff plank and was against slavery, was pivotal in the election of Abraham Lincoln and according to David Davis, another member of the Republican State Executive Committee stated, “Few men … deserve more at the hands of the administration.” [20] Another New Jersey delegate, Charles P. Smith, also stated that, “as a fact beyond contradiction, that had it not been for [Dudley’s] services, Mr. Lincoln would not have been nominated.” [21]
After Abraham Lincoln’s election as president he offered Dudley the choice between an official appointment as Minister of Japan or Consul at Liverpool. [22] Lincoln hoped that Dudley would take the post as Minister of Japan because he planned to appoint Gustave Koerner to the Consulship at Liverpool. [23] Ultimately, Dudley chose the Consul at Liverpool because of the availability of superior medical advice that he needed for the duration of his life as a result of the steamboat accident in 1856. [24] Dudley and his family traveled to Liverpool on the steamer Africa and arrived on November 19, 1861. [25] He assumed his duties on November 20, 1861. [26] He appointed Henry Wilding as his Vice Consul. [27]
During the American Civil War (1861–65), consul Dudley made strenuous efforts to prevent ships from Liverpool from breaking the United States Navy blockade of Confederate ports. [28] [29] Upon his arrival to Liverpool, the steamship Oreto was the first ship he noticed that had Confederate ties. He sent proof that the Oreto was owned by the Confederates to William H. Seward and Charles Francis Adams. [30]
Great Britain remained officially neutral throughout the war but there were many Confederate sympathizers in Liverpool. [31] The commerce raider CSS Alabama was a screw sloop-of-war built for the Confederate States Navy at Birkenhead in Merseyside in 1862 by John Laird Sons and Company. [32] She was eventually sunk by the USS Kearsarge in 1864. [33] [34] British merchants in Liverpool financed blockade runners that sent munitions and luxuries through the Union blockade to Confederate ports in return for cotton and tobacco. [35]
As Consul Dudley was responsible for reporting over 120 suspicious steamers to the United States in addition to a large number of sailing vessels. [36]
The British required proof of Dudley’s allegations that there were blockade runners and warships being built to aid the Confederates. One of Dudley's tasks, as Consul, was to provide this proof and prepare the legal case. [37] He used affidavits as his primary source of evidence. These affidavits specified the features of the questionable ships to determine if they were made for war, and confirmed that James D. Bulloch had a connection with the Confederate government and played a role in the materials that were used on the boats in the shipyards. [38] Dudley also hired a private investigator, Matthew Maguire. [39] In his role, Maguire would locate citizens like Clarence Randolph Yonge, the paymaster on the USS Alabama, to testify as witnesses in the legal cases. [40] Through Dudley’s legal work, he was responsible for the detainment of many prominent Confederate ships housed in the Liverpool shipyards like the U.S.S. Alabama and the gunboat Alexandria. [41]
Dudley wished to retire after the war and return to his law practice in New Jersey, but such was his knowledge of Confederate assets in Liverpool that he stayed on as consul, seizing Confederate ships and returning the proceeds of sale to the victorious United States Government. [42] Relations between Britain and the United States were tense after the war, in part because of the role of Liverpool blockade runners and commerce raiders and the widespread perception in America that Britain had been sympathetic to the defeated Confederacy. The claims arising out of these disputes, especially the Alabama Claims, would not be settled until the 1871 Treaty of Washington. [43]
Thomas Haines Dudley submitted his resignation to the state department in the fall of 1872. [44] Upon his return to the United States he opened a law practice with his son Edward and also served as president of multiple companies including the Pittsburgh, Titusville, and Buffalo Railroads as well as the New Jersey Mining Company and the Bar Association of Camden. Dudley served on the boards of the Camden, Atlantic, and West Jersey Railroad as well as the Camden and Philadelphia Ferry Company and was the first vice president of the American Protective Tariff League. [45] In 1880, he was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society. [46]
Thomas Haines Dudley died at the age of 73 on April 15, 1893, of a massive heart attack in Broad Street Station in Philadelphia. [47] Upon his death his eulogy, published by the Camden Post stated:
Deeply religious in the Quaker sense, which makes each man alone responsible to his Maker and not to conventional ceremony, he was more spiritual minded than a practical prosaic lawyer and man of affairs would be taken to be, but never wore his heart upon his sleeve save to familiars. Hated by many through the prejudice and misconception engendered in political strife (as strong characters often are), misunderstood by many more because he would not stoop to conquer, he pursued the even tenor of his way in the respect and love of his confidants. Rarely heading public subscriptions, he was instant in good ways and works, and most of his generous benefactions were only known to the needy recipients. [48]
The American Civil War was a civil war in the United States between the Union and the Confederacy, which had been formed by states that had seceded from the Union. The central cause of the war was the dispute over whether slavery would be permitted to expand into the western territories, leading to more slave states, or be prevented from doing so, which many believed would place slavery on a course of ultimate extinction.
The Confederate States of America (CSA), commonly referred to as the Confederate States (C.S.), the Confederacy, or the South, was an unrecognized breakaway republic in the Southern United States that existed from February 8, 1861, to May 9, 1865. The Confederacy comprised eleven U.S. states that declared secession and warred against the United States during the American Civil War. The states were South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina.
The 1864 United States presidential election was the 20th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 8, 1864. Near the end of the American Civil War, incumbent President Abraham Lincoln of the National Union Party easily defeated the Democratic nominee, former General George B. McClellan, by a wide margin of 212–21 in the electoral college, with 55% of the popular vote. For the election, the Republican Party and some Democrats created the National Union Party, especially to attract War Democrats.
The Confederate States Navy (CSN) was the naval branch of the Confederate States Armed Forces, established by an act of the Confederate States Congress on February 21, 1861. It was responsible for Confederate naval operations during the American Civil War against the United States's Union Navy.
In the 1860s, the Copperheads, also known as Peace Democrats, were a faction of the Democratic Party in the Union who opposed the American Civil War and wanted an immediate peace settlement with the Confederates.
Brigadier-General Alexander Travis Hawthorn was a senior officer of the Confederate States Army who commanded infantry in the Western and Trans-Mississippi theaters of the American Civil War.
John Slidell was an American politician, lawyer, and businessman. A native of New York, Slidell moved to Louisiana as a young man and became a Representative and Senator. He was one of two Confederate diplomats captured by the United States Navy from the British ship RMS Trent in 1861 and later released. He was the older brother of Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, a US naval officer.
CSS Sumter, converted from the 1859-built merchant steamer Habana, was the first steam cruiser of the Confederate States Navy during the American Civil War. She operated as a commerce raider in the Caribbean and in the Atlantic Ocean against Union merchant shipping between July and December 1861, taking eighteen prizes, but was trapped in Gibraltar by Union Navy warships. Decommissioned, she was sold in 1862 to the British office of a Confederate merchant and renamed Gibraltar, successfully running the Union blockade in 1863 and surviving the war.
The Union blockade in the American Civil War was a naval strategy by the United States to prevent the Confederacy from trading.
George Alfred Trenholm was a South Carolina businessman, financier, politician, and slaveholding planter who owned several plantations and strongly supported the Confederate States of America. He was appointed as its Secretary of the Treasury during the final year of the American Civil War.
James Dunwoody Bulloch was the Confederacy's chief foreign agent in Great Britain during the American Civil War. Based in Liverpool, he operated blockade runners and 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, including CSS Florida, CSS Alabama, CSS Stonewall, and CSS 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.
The Denbigh was a paddle steamer built in 1860 by John Laird, Son, and Company at Birkenhead. She initially sailed between Liverpool and Rhyl, north Wales but was later sold an used as a blockade runner before being destroyed in 1865.
The Georgiana was a brig-rigged, iron hulled, propeller steamer belonging to the Confederate States Navy during the American Civil War. Reputedly intended to become the "most powerful" cruiser in the Confederate fleet once her guns were mounted, she was never used in battle. On her maiden voyage from Scotland, where she was built, she encountered Union Navy ships engaged in a blockade of Charleston, South Carolina, and was heavily damaged before being scuttled by her captain. The wreck was discovered in 1965 and lies in the shallow waters of Charleston's harbor.
USS Vanderbilt was a heavy (3,360-ton) passenger steamship obtained by the Union Navy during the second year of the American Civil War and utilized as a cruiser.
The first USS Adirondack was a large and powerful screw-assisted sloop of war with heavy guns, contracted by the Union Navy early in the American Civil War. She was intended for use by the Union Navy as a warship in support of the Union Navy blockade of Confederate waterways. Her career with the Navy proved to be short, yet active and historically important. USS Adirondack was one of four sister ships which included the Housatonic, Ossipee and Juniata.
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland remained officially neutral throughout the American Civil War (1861–1865). It legally recognized the belligerent status of the Confederate States of America (CSA) but never recognized it as a nation and neither signed a treaty with it nor ever exchanged ambassadors. Over 90 percent of Confederate trade with Britain ended, causing a severe shortage of cotton by 1862. Private British blockade runners sent munitions and luxuries to Confederate ports in return for cotton and tobacco. In Manchester, the massive reduction of available American cotton caused an economic disaster referred to as the Lancashire Cotton Famine. Despite the high unemployment, some Manchester cotton workers refused out of principle to process any cotton from America, leading to direct praise from President Lincoln, whose statue in Manchester bears a plaque which quotes his appreciation for the textile workers in "helping abolish slavery". Top British officials debated offering to mediate in the first 18 months, which the Confederacy wanted but the United States strongly rejected.
The United States Consulate in Liverpool, England, was established in 1790, and was the first overseas consulate founded by the then fledgling United States of America. Liverpool was at the time an important center for transatlantic commerce and a vital trading partner for the former Thirteen Colonies. Among those who served the United States as consul in Liverpool were the writer Nathaniel Hawthorne, the spy Thomas Haines Dudley, and John S. Service, who was driven out of the United States Foreign Service by McCarthyite persecution. After World War II, as Liverpool declined in importance as an international port, the consulate was eventually closed down. The American Consulate in Liverpool was situated on the third floor of the Cunard building on the Pierhead and permanently closed in 1975.
During the American Civil War, blockade runners were used to get supplies through the Union blockade of the Confederate States of America that extended some 3,500 miles (5,600 km) along the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coastlines and the lower Mississippi River. The Confederacy had little industrial capability and could not indigenously produce the quantity of arms and other supplies needed to fight against the Union. To meet this need, numerous blockade runners were constructed in the British Isles and were used to import the guns, ordnance and other supplies that the Confederacy desperately needed, in exchange for cotton that the British textile industry needed greatly. To penetrate the blockade, these relatively lightweight shallow draft ships, mostly built in British shipyards and specially designed for speed, but not suited for transporting large quantities of cotton, had to cruise undetected, usually at night, through the Union blockade. The typical blockade runners were privately owned vessels often operating with a letter of marque issued by the Confederate government. If spotted, the blockade runners would attempt to outmaneuver or simply outrun any Union Navy warships on blockade patrol, often successfully.
The diplomacy of the American Civil War involved the relations of the United States and the Confederate States of America with the major world powers during the American Civil War of 1861–1865. The United States prevented other powers from recognizing the Confederacy, which counted heavily on Britain and France to enter the war on its side to maintain their supply of cotton and to weaken a growing opponent. Every nation was officially neutral throughout the war, and none formally recognized the Confederacy.
Charles Kuhn Prioleau (1827–1887) was an American cotton merchant who became the senior partner of Fraser, Trenholm & Company in Liverpool, England, a firm that functioned as the European banker of the Confederacy and was its major supplier for arms and military ware during the American Civil War. As a firm that frequently acted as the European banker of the Confederacy it often extended it credit, and was sometimes referred to as "the Confederate Embassy in England".
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