 Among those who served the United States as consul in Liverpool were the writer Nathaniel Hawthorne, the spy Thomas Haines Dudley, and John S. Service, who was driven out of the United States Foreign Service by McCarthyite persecution.After World War II, as Liverpool declined in importance as an international port, the consulate was eventually closed down.The first consul was James Maury, who held the office from 1790 to 1829, and whose portrait still hangs today in Liverpool Town Hall.