Lion and the Fox: Two Rival Spies and the Secret Plot to Build a Confederate Navy

"James Bulloch, a sea captain turned Confederate agent, arrived in Liverpool at a crucial moment during the U.S. Civil War: a Union blockade was preventing Southern cotton exports from reaching Britain, threatening to destroy what was left of the Confederate economy-unless Bulloch could secretly arrange for the construction of a fleet of warships to break the northern grip on the South. Shortly thereafter, Union operative Thomas Dudley, a pious Quaker and radical abolitionist, arrived in Liverpool to stop the Confederate spy. Either man's mission, if successful, would determine the war's outcome and the country's fate. From master of historical espionage Alexander Rose, The Lion and the Fox uncovers an enthralling, unknown story at the core of the Civil War: an intense duel between two international agents who almost single-handedly decided America's war and changed the course of history"--
From the New York Times bestselling author of Washington’s Spies, the thrilling story of the Confederate spy who came to Britain to turn the tide of the Civil War—and the Union agent resolved to stop him.“Entertaining and deeply researched…with a rich cast of spies, crooks, bent businessmen and drunken sailors…Rose relates the tale with gusto.” -The New York Times In 1861, soon after the outbreak of the Civil War, two secret agents—one a Confederate, the other his Union rival—were dispatched to neutral Britain, each entrusted with a vital mission.The South’s James Bulloch, charming and devious, was to acquire a cutting-edge clandestine fleet intended to break President Lincoln’s blockade of Confederate ports, sink Northern merchant vessels, and drown the U.S. Navy’s mightiest ships at sea. The profits from gunrunning and smuggling cotton—Dixie’s notorious “white gold”—would finance the scheme. Opposing him was Thomas Dudley, a resolute Quaker lawyer and abolitionist. He was determined to stop Bulloch by any means necessary in a spy-versus-spy game of move and countermove, gambit and sacrifice, intrigue and betrayal. If Dudley failed, Britain would ally with the South and imperil a Northern victory. The battleground was the Dickensian port of Liverpool, whose dockyards built more ships each year than the rest of the world combined, whose warehouses stored more cotton than anywhere else on earth, and whose merchant princes, said one observer, were “addicted to Southern proclivities, foreign slave trade, and domestic bribery.”From master of historical espionage Alexander Rose, The Lion and the Fox is the astonishing, untold tale of two implacable foes and their twilight struggle for the highest stakes.