Lancashire Cotton Famine
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The Lancashire Cotton Famine, also known as The Cotton Famine (1861 – 1865) was a depression in the textile industry in northwest England, brought about by the American Civil War. It was estimated at the time to have cost the Lancashire mill-owners about £30 m.[citation needed]
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[edit] History
When the Union blockaded the Confederacy in 1861, it was originally thought that United Kingdom cotton stocks would be adequate to see through the anticipated brief conflict. All early Union advances on Richmond, Virginia were driven back with varying degrees of ignominy, however, and it was clear to European observers that the Union would not win the war quickly (if at all). By the beginning of 1862, mills were closing and workers were being laid off; one-third of the families in one Lancashire cotton town were in receipt of relief.[1]
It was hoped by the Confederacy that distress in the European cotton manufacturing areas (similar hardships occurred in France), together with distaste in European ruling circles for Yankee democracy would lead to European intervention to force the Union to make peace on the basis of accepting secession on the Confederacy. However, after Union forces had repulsed a Confederate incursion at the Battle of Antietam in September 1862, Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation. After that, to the British public, to intervene in any way that helped the South would be to support slavery.
On December 31, 1862, a meeting of cotton workers at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, despite their increasing hardship, resolved to support the Union in their fight against slavery. On January 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln sent an address thanking the cotton workers of Lancashire for their support. A monument in Lincoln Square, Manchester, commemorates the events and reproduces portions of both documents.[2]
[edit] Quotations
Extract of the Address from the Working People of Manchester to His Excellency Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America. Public Meeting, Free Trade Hall, Manchester, 31 December 1862.
"...the vast progress which you have made in the short space of twenty months fills us with hope that every stain on your freedom will shortly be removed, and that the erasure of that foul blot on civilisation and Christianity - chattel slavery - during your presidency, will cause the name of Abraham Lincoln to be honoured and revered by posterity. We are certain that such a glorious consummation will cement Great Britain and the United States in close and enduring regards."
Extract of the President Abraham Lincoln's letter in respone to the Working People of Manchester
19th January, 1863
"...I know and deeply deplore the sufferings which the working people of Manchester and in all Europe are called to endure in this crisis. It has been often and studiously represented that the attempt to overthrow this Government which was built on the foundation of human rights, and to substitute for it one which should rest exclusively on the basis of slavery, was likely to obtain the favour of Europe.
"Through the action of disloyal citizens, the working people of Europe have been subjected to a severe trial for the purpose of forcing their sanction to that attempt. Under the circumstances I cannot but regard your decisive utterances on the question as an instance of sublime Christian heroism which has not been surpassed in any age or in any country. It is indeed an energetic and re-inspiring assurance of the inherent truth and of the ultimate and universal triumph of justice, humanity and freedom.
"I hail this interchange of sentiments, therefore, as an augury that, whatever else may happen, whatever misfortune may befall your country or my own, the peace and friendship which now exists between the two nations will be, as it shall be my desire to make them, perpetual."
Abraham Lincoln statue - Lincoln Square, Brazenose Street, by George Grey Barnard, 1919. Formerly located in the gardens at Platt Hall in Rusholme.
[edit] Effects in other parts of the world
In order to moderate the effects of the cotton famine, Great Britain also tried to diversify its sourcing of cotton by making former subsistence farmers in British India, Egypt and elsewhere grow cotton for export instead of staple food. With the ending of the American Civil War, these new cotton farmers became useless and their cotton was hardly demanded. This led to their impoverishment and aggravated various famines in these countries in the second half of the 19th century.[3]
