City's leading role in civil war.

ALTHOUGH government agreements meant British citizens should remain neutral during the US Civil War, Liverpool openly supported the rebel Confederate southern states.

At this time 60% of the Confederate States' cotton was imported into Liverpool and the Northern ships' blockade of this trade had a deeply detrimental effect upon Liverpool.

Liverpool also made fortunes directly from the slave trade, which was supported by the Confederates.

Agents Charles Prioleau and George Trenholm, at Fraser Trenholme Co, who handled the Confederates' financial affairs in Liverpool worked from offices at 10 Rumford Place, which survives.

The Confederacy's Lt James Dunwoody Bulloch was stationed here to obtain warships and arms.

He masterminded the building of 33 ships on Merseyside during the Civil War.

With the North manning the US Consulate in Paradise Street, Liverpool, its spies kept its Washington government informed about Merseyside's anti-Union activities.

The US consul Thomas Dudley fumed: "No other city in Britain could with so much cause be accused of unofficially fighting on the side of the South during the War."

The first shot of the civil war was fired by a gun made by Fawcett's, in Duke Street, Liverpool, and the last surrender was made in the Mersey when the CSS Shenandoah's commander Lt Waddell surrendered to the British Government, rather than the American Government, on November 6, 1865.

Bulloch stayed in Liverpool and was visited at his home in Waterloo by his nephew Teddy Roosevelt, later President.

Bulloch is buried in Toxteth cemetery.

Remember, too, that President Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth in l865.

Booth's actor father, Junius Booth, was Liverpudlian.