Great Britain and the American Civil War

by Ephraim Douglass Adams

In early November, Lincoln was triumphantly re-elected receiving 212 electoral votes to 21 cast for McClellan. No disturbances such as the Gazette had gloomily foretold attended the event, and the tremendous majority gained by the President somewhat stunned the press. Having prophesied disorders, the Gazette now patted America on the back for her behaviour, but took occasion to renew old "professions of faith" against reunion:

"Abraham Lincoln II reigns in succession to Abraham Lincoln I, the first Republican monarch of the Federal States, and so far as we are concerned we are very glad of it, because the measure of the man is taken and known.... It is most creditable to the law-abiding habits of the people that the elections ... passed off as they have done.... Mr. Lincoln has four long years of strife before him; and as he seems little inclined to change his advisers, his course of action, or his generals, we do not believe that the termination of his second period of government will find him President of the United States[1239]."

The Times was disinclined, for once, to moralize, and was cautious in comment:

"Ever since he found himself firmly established in his office, and the first effervescence of national feeling had begun to subside, we have had no great reason to complain of the conduct of Mr. Lincoln towards England. His tone has been less exacting, his language has been less offensive and, due allowance being made for the immense difficulties of his situation, we could have parted with Mr. Lincoln, had such been the pleasure of the American people, without any vestige of ill-will or ill-feeling. He has done as regards this country what the necessities of his situation demanded from him, and he has done no more[1240]."

This was to tread gently; but more exactly and more boldly the real reaction of the press was indicated by Punch's cartoon of a phoenix, bearing the grim and forceful face of Lincoln, rising from the ashes where lay the embers of all that of old time had gone to make up the liberties of America[1241].

During the months immediately preceding Lincoln's re-election English friends of the South had largely remained inactive. Constantly twitted that at the chief stronghold of the Southern Independence Association, Manchester, they did not dare to hold a meeting in the great Free Trade Hall[1242], they tried ticket meetings in smaller halls, but even there met with opposition from those who attended. At three other places, Oldham, Ashton, and Stockport, efforts to break the Northern hold on the manufacturing districts met with little success[1243], and even, as reported in the Index, were attended mainly by "magistrates, clergy, leading local gentry, manufacturers, tradesmen, and cotton operatives," the last named being also, evidently, the last considered, and presumably the least represented[1244]. The Rev. Mr. Massie conducted "follow up" Northern meetings wherever the Southern friends ventured an appearance[1245]. At one town only, Oldham, described by The Index as "the most 'Southern' town in Lancashire," was a meeting held at all comparable with the great demonstrations easily staged by pro-Northern friends. Set for October 31, great efforts were made to picture this meeting as an outburst of indignation from the unemployed. Summoned by handbills headed "The Crisis! The Crisis! The Crisis!" there gathered, according to The Index correspondent, a meeting "of between 5,000 and 6,000 wretched paupers, many of whom were women with children in their arms, who, starved apparently in body and spirit as in raiment, had met together to exchange miseries, and ask one another what was to be done." Desperate speeches were made, the people "almost threatening violence," but finally adopting a resolution now become so hackneyed as to seem ridiculous after a description intended to portray the misery and the revolutionary character of the meeting:

"That in consequence of the widespread distress that now prevails in the cotton districts by the continuance of the war in America, this meeting is desirous that Her Majesty's Government should use their influence, together with France and other European powers, to bring both belligerents together in order to put a stop to the vast destruction of life and property that is now going on in that unhappy country[1246]."

No doubt this spectacular meeting was organized for effect, but in truth it must have overshot the mark, for by October, 1864, the distress in Lancashire was largely alleviated and the public knew it, while elsewhere in the cotton districts the mass of operative feeling was with the North. Even in Ireland petitions were being circulated for signature among the working men, appealing to Irishmen in America to stand by the administration of Lincoln and to enlist in the Northern armies on the ground of emancipation[1247]. Here, indeed, was the insuperable barrier, in the fall of 1864, to public support of the South. Deny as he might the presence of the "foul blot" in Southern society, Hotze, of The Index, could not counteract that phrase. When the Confederate Congress at Richmond began, in the autumn of 1864, seriously to discuss a plan of transforming slaves into soldiers, putting guns in their hands, and thus replenishing the waning man-power of Southern armies, Hotze was hard put to it to explain to his English readers that this was in fact no evidence of lowered strength, but rather a noble determination on the part of the South to permit the negro to win his freedom by bearing arms in defence of his country[1248].