Lincoln’s Man in Liverpool

THE TALL, SAD-FACED, New Jersey Quaker carried himself more like a career diplomat than a notorious spymaster. In reality, Thomas Haines Dudley was both.

A passionate abolitionist, successful lawyer, and Republican Party activist, Dudley helped orchestrate Abraham Lincoln’s nomination as the party’s candidate in the 1860s presidential election. As a reward, he had his choice of serving as the American minister in Japan or in a lesser position as consul in Liverpool, England. Dudley chose Liverpool because he wanted to contribute to the Union cause during the war and believed he could get dependable medical treatment there for his chronic irritable bowel. While Dudley fulfilled his diplomatic duties and received the medical treatment he needed, his most important role was organizing and running what became the Union’s most successful spy network on the Civil War’s most hotly contested foreign battlefield.

Dudley would fight his battles mostly in the shipyards lining the banks of the River Mersey and in Liverpool, its port city. That prosperous metropolis was a hotbed of Confederate sympathizers and ground zero for the Confederacy’s all-out