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American Civil War

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American Civil War

During the American Civil War of 1861-1865, Liverpool found itself at the heart of the Confederate cause in Europe. It was the world's largest port, and when cotton imports into the city ground to a halt because of the Union blockade of the South, many of Liverpool's merchants and traders were more than happy to aid Confederate efforts.


James Dunwoody Bulloch
The main protagonist in Sefton's role in the American Civil War is Commander James Dunwoody Bulloch. A Georgian native, he served in the United States Navy before supporting the Confederacy upon the secession of the states in 1861.

Bulloch was despatched to Liverpool to establish a base of operations, and was arguably the Confederacy's first 'secret service agent'. His main tasks were to arrange the smuggling of cotton through the Union's naval blockade and to commission the building of ships for the nascent Confederate Navy.

Britain was officially neutral in the conflict, and laws forbade the supplying of any means of war. However, with some 60% of the South's cotton coming through Liverpool, there was a level of public and private sentiment supporting the breaking of the Union's blockade.


Bulloch in Waterloo
Bulloch set himself up in Waterloo, at that time an isolated hamlet surrounded by fields, and it is conjectured that he initially stayed at the Liver Inn, which still operates today. A short time later, his wife, Hariott, arrived with their children, and they eventually lived in four different homes around Waterloo, so providing good cover for Bulloch as an apparently legitimate businessman, and thus deflecting any suspicions about his real role.

The first ship commissioned by Bulloch was the CSS Alabama. Built in Birkenhead by John Laird Sons and Company in 1862, she was ostensibly fitted out as a merchant ship named the Enrica, to avoid falling foul of neutrality laws. However, Thomas Dudley, the Northern Union Consul to Liverpool, who had effectively set up a spy network to keep tabs on Bulloch, was wise to this, and Washington put pressure on the British government to seize the ship. A Union ship was even despatched to prevent her from leaving Liverpool.

On 29 July 1862, under the guise of trials between West Kirby and Formby Point, the 'Enrica' sailed on the Mersey, dressed with bunting and carrying ladies and gentlemen in their finest livery. This gave the impression that she would naturally be returning with passengers. However, these passengers were transferred onto a waiting tug, and the ship then sped out of the Mersey, eventually reaching international waters off the Azores, where she was refitted with armaments and received her real crew.

The Alabama, crewed mainly by Liverpudlians, became the most successful ship in the history of naval warfare, capturing 65 Union vessels and taking 2,000 prisoners with no loss of life. She was eventually sunk by the USS Kearsarge off the coast of Cherbourg, France, in 1864.

Bulloch also had the British commercial vessel Sea King refitted as the CSS Shenandoah, assigned to 'seek out and utterly destroy' Union ships. Accordingly, she single-handedly decimated the Union whaling fleet. It was not until after the war on land had ended that the Shenandoah learned of the Confederacy's defeat from a Liverpool ship, Barracouta, sailing out of San Francisco. Wary of the consequences of surrendering in a Union port, she set sail to surrender at Liverpool. A Royal Navy boarding party oversaw the final lowering of the Confederate flag, which transpired to be the last act of the Civil War - some six months after the surrender of all armed forces by Confederate General Robert E. Lee to Ulysses S. Grant.


Later Life and Death
Following the end of the Civil War, Bulloch was unable to return to his native land. As a Confederate agent, he was not included in the general amnesty and would certainly have faced trial. He therefore remained in Liverpool for the rest of his life, operating a successful merchant business. The Census of 1871 lists him as living at 5 Cambridge Road, Waterloo.

He died at 76 Canning Street, Liverpool, on 7 January 1901, aged 77, leaving $30,000 to his nephew Theodore Roosevelt - who would become the 26th President of the United States just 8 months later, following the assassination of President McKinley. Bulloch is buried at Toxeth Cemetery, with his grave bearing the inscription "an American by birth, an Englishman by choice".

ROOSEVELT IN WATERLOO

The 26th President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, once holidayed in Waterloo as a child, even finding time to pick a fight with Jefferson Davis Jnr., the son of the former Confederate President.



James Dunwoody Bulloch was the half-brother of Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, and therefore uncle to her son, and future US President, Theodore Roosevelt.

As was common in the 19th century, the Roosevelts were taking a grand tour of Europe, and landed in Liverpool on 22 May 1869. The ten-and-a-half year old Teddy spent a great amount of time playing with his cousins (the Bullochs' children), who lived in Waterloo, and were educated at a private day and boarding school on Waterloo Road, run by the exotically named Madame de Zastro, a professor of languages.

Following the end of the Civil War, the defeated Confederate President, Jefferson Davis, had come to Liverpool in 1868, seeking business opportunities. His children, Jefferson Davis Jnr. (above, far left, circa 1866) and William (above, second right), were also schooled by Madame de Zastro. In his boyhood diary for May 27th 1869, Teddy recounts: "We went to our cousins [sic] school at Waterloo. We had a nice time but met Jeff Davies [sic] son and some sharp words ensued". Seemingly the influence of his father - an ardent Unionist and prominent supporter of Abraham Lincoln - was clear. However, not everything was so fraught, as his diary entry for two days later affirms: "We all went with our cousins to Southport and had a ride on donkeys. We had great fun for they galloped so funnily and it was so nice. In jumping over a fence I cut my leg a great deal".

DEATH OF THE WYLY SISTERS

In early 1864, Augustine Clayton Wyly, co-owner of the Atlanta Mercantile Wholesale house, came to Liverpool, under the guise of visiting relatives, to seek supplies and ships for both his own business and for the Confederacy.

Together with their children, the Wyly family stayed at the Victoria Hotel in Waterloo. It was here that the eldest daughter, Linda, died on 5 May 1864 from diphtheria - a contagious disease that, at the time, had no effective treatment. The hotel management were understandably keen to remove the Wyly family and fumigate the room.

This necessitated their relocating across the road to the Royal Hotel (see above), owned by the same people. It was here, just ten days later, that the youngest daughter, Mary Troup, took ill with the same disease, and died on 16 May. Both hotels still stand and operate today.

The two little sisters are buried in a single grave at Sefton Parish Church (see below) - having escaped a war at home only to die on a foreign shore, some 4,000 miles from the place of their birth.

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