The misconception has persistently lingered on that during the Civil War which tore America apart between the springs of 1861 and 1865 cotton-starved Lancashire refused to support the slave-holding Confederacy. Few have questioned the assumption that even those who were destitute asked only for a continuation of neutrality. Hitherto unscanned press sources reveal the falsity of this assumption. The desire for neutrality existed but was insignificant when compared with the massive preference for giving aid to the South. Huge meetings in the cotton towns and numerous petitions to Parliament pleaded for British recognition of the South or mediation on her behalf so that the war would quickly be ended and the mills reopen. Editorials pounded out the same requests. But the government only listened to voices they wanted to hear, voices such as those of Richard Cobden and John Bright sagely advising non-involvement and mistakenly taken as typical of Lancashire. Contrary to belief, the majority in Lancashire did not sympathise with Abraham Lincoln and glory in his Emancipation Proclamation. The President was dismissed as a nonentity and his Proclamation as a calculated strategic gesture. Only the non cotton regions supported Lincoln and the North. Elsewhere mistrust of the North and determination to aid the South were supreme, correlating in strength to the intensity of the distress. The unique efforts of Liverpool secured some cotton by breaking the blockade imposed by the North on Southern ports. Pressure from Lancashire for an official denial of the legality of the blockade was ignored as completely as that for any kind of intervention on behalf of the South. This indifference only caused Lancashire to increase demands for British interposition during the final year of the war. The supposed passive silence of Lancashire was no more than a myth.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:295220 |
| Date | January 1968 |
| Creators | Ellison, Mary Louise |
| Publisher | University of London |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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