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Lincoln's Man in Liverpool: Consul Dudley and the Legal Battle to Stop Confederate Warships. By Coy F. Cross II. (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, c. 2007. Pp. x, 180. $28.95, ISBN 978-0-87580-373-9.)
Coy F. Cross II examines the efforts of Thomas Haines Dudley, U.S. consul in Liverpool, to marshal evidence that the construction of Confederate warships in British yards violated British neutrality under the Foreign Enlistment Act. These efforts, Cross suggests, did not cease with the launching of the Confederate cruisers Florida and Alabama or with the end of the war. Rather, Dudley, whom Cross argues "was more than a spy," continued to build his case after the war in the fashion of a determined prosecutor (p. ix). Cross promises to tell the "larger story" of Dudley's work-a story that places Dudley in a commanding role,...