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Lincoln's great debt to Manchester

In 1863, The US President wrote to the 'working men of
Manchester' thanking them for their anti-slavery stance
Jason Rodrigues
theguardian.com, Monday 4 February 2013 11.15 GMT

Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln. The US president's cotton embargo found support in Lancashire in 1862.
Photograph: c.20thC.Fox/Everett / Rex Features

When cotton was king, Manchester's busy textile mills dressed the world. Because of
this, great fortunes were made and ordinary families were fed. But in 1862, Lancashire
mill workers, at great personal sacrifice, took a principled stand by refusing to touch raw
cotton picked by US slaves.
On the other side of the Atlantic, President Lincoln's Northern Union was waging war
against a breakaway of southern states. Having already linked the south with the
institution of slavery, Lincoln persuaded European importers that his blockade of slave
picked cotton was a legitimate tool in defeating the Confederacy and restoring the
union.

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A year into the civil war, the effects of the cotton embargo really began to bite.
Lancashire, which had imported three quarters of all cotton grown on southern
plantations (1.3 billion lbs), found that 60% of it spindles and looms lay idle, leaving
many out of work, thanks mainly to the blockade.
Whilst the British government loosely supported Lincoln, many mill and shipping
companies wanted the Royal Navy to smash the blockade, allowing the precious cotton
back into Europe. In Liverpool, a city made wealthy by cotton imports, it was said that
there were more Confederate flags flying along the banks of the Mersey than in Virginia.
With the 'cotton famine' now taking a firm grip even the Manchester Guardian
instructed the mill hands that they were better off dropping their support for the
embargo. However, at a noisy meeting at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in 1862, in a
historic show of solidarity against slavery, the workers agreed to keep supporting
Lincoln's embargo.

Although an extraordinary gesture, the vote would be costly to the mill workers as more
of them faced starvation and destitution. Disorder had already broken out in some
northern towns, with the army having to read out the Riot Act.
With the cotton industry on its knees, Lincoln acknowledged the self-sacrifice of the

31/05/2015 22:07

From the archive: 1863, Lincoln's great debt to Manchester | From the...

http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/from-the-archive-blog/2013/f...

'working men of Manchester' in a letter he sent them in 1863. Lincoln's words - later
inscribed on the pedestal of his statue that can still be found in Lincoln Square,
Manchester - praised the workers for their selfless act of "sublime Christian heroism,
which has not been surpassed in any age or in any country."
These words were followed by the arrival of US relief ships packed with provisions sent
by grateful Americans as an act of brotherhood between the Union states and
Lancashire.
In January 1865 - only a matter of months before Lincoln was assassinated by John
Wilkes Booth - Congress passed the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery
throughout the United States. Just as the US Constitution was being rewritten, the
Confederate states, already stricken by the embargo, were being defeated by Union
forces. By the time the South surrendered, Manchester had dusted down its disused
mills and workshops so it could begin the difficult task of recapturing its lost industrial
might.

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Manchester Guardian,
21 April 1865

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