MANCHESTER
AND
Abraham Lincoln
A side-lig"ht on an earlier
Fight for Freedom
By
F. Hourani, B.A
Price Sixpence
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THE STATUE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
In Piatt Fields Park
Manchester
INTRODUCTION
In the course of preparing a scries of talks for broadcasting in
Arabic on the history and development of the United States of
America, I came across the report of an incident which took place
during the American Civil War of 1861/5. I was so struck with its
aptness to present-day events that I decided to include a summary
of it in the Arabic broadcast and to issue it in the present form
for the benefit of my fellow-citizens in Manchester and surrounding
districts. I am hopeful that it may appeal also to a wider British
and American public who share many characteristics and a
common heritage.
A word of explanation may serve to illustrate the significance
of the incident in question. The city of Manchester had become the
centre of the cotton industry and the Southern States of America
were then the chief source of supply for the spindles and looms of
Lancashire. Soon after the outbreak of the Civil War the supply of
cotton was cut off and thousands of operatives were thrown out of
employment. This continued all through the four years of conflict
and the distress of the working classes became more acute as time
went on.
It was in the midst of this unprecedented crisis in the history
of the cotton trade, when men with their families faced misery and
starvation, and also in the face of sympathy in high places in the
Government of the time towards the Southern States, that the
working men of Manchester rose in their thousands to uphold what
they considered to be the right. Little wonder then that President
Lincoln called their action "an instance of sublime Christian
heroism which has not been surpassed in any age or in any
country."
No words of mine can add to the lustre shed by the sentiments
expressed in the text on the great President who fills the centre of
the picture. As for the land of my adoption whose hospitality
I have enjoyed these fifty-one years, I can find no better words to
express my love and admiration for her at this juncture than those
used in the course of a speech delivered in the Manchester Free
Trade Hall on the 18th November, 1847, by Ralph Waldo Emerson:
"I see her not dispirited, not weak, but well remembering
that she has seen dark days before — indeed with a kind of
instinct that she sees a little better in a cloudy day, and that in
storm and battle and calamity she has a secret vigour and a
pulse like cannon. I see her in her old age, not decrepit, but
young, and still daring to believe in her power of endurance
and expansion. Seeing this I say, 'All hail, Mother of Nations,
Mother of Heroes, with strength still equal to the time/"
F. HOURANI.
Reform Club, Manchester,
ADDRESS FROM WORKING MEN
TO PRESIDENT LINCOLN.
(Reprinted from the Manchester Guardian, January ist, 1863.)
Last evening a public meeting was held in the Free Trade Hall,
which was crowded, in order to pass resolutions in favour of the
cause of the United States, and to adopt an address to President
Lincoln. The meeting had been called by an advertisement signed
by J. C. Edwards and E. Hooson, two working men. Amongst those
on the platform were:— Mr- T- Bazley, M.P., Professor Greenbank,
Messrs J. R. Cooper, R. Cooper, James Edwards, Thomas Evans,
S. Pope. W. J. Williams, Charles Thompson, J. R. Raper, J. C.
Edwards, E. Hooson, Dr. J. Watts, and Jackson. President Davis's
escaped coachman.
J. C. Edwards said that the promoters of the meeting were not
prepared with a chairman but he saw that the Mayor of Manchester
was in the room, and considering His Worship's connection with
the working classes in the past, and their esteem for him, he
thought the Mayor was entitled to the position of chairman of the
meeting. He made a motion to that effect.
E. Hooson said he was not aware whether the Mayor would feel
backward in taking the chair, but it was a matter in which the
Mayor himself must be the judge. If the vote was adopted
unanimously, he had no doubt that the Mayor would acquiesce.
The vote was adopted with acclamation and the Mayor (Abel Hey-
wood, Esq.) took the chair.
The Mayor said : " Before I take the chair, I wish you to
understand that I do not take it as the Mayor of Manchester, but
simply as Abel Heywood (hear, hear). I will not compromise any
member of the Council by the course which I will take to-night.
I feel an interest in the proceedings of working men. I have felt
an interest in their behalf during the whole of my life (hear, hear)
and whether 1 hold the position of Chief Magistrate, or any other
position, you may depend upon it that such feelings will animate
me as long as I live (hear, hear). Upon the resolutions which are to
be submitted to you to-night I have nothing to say, because I have
not seen them. I come here for the purpose of preserving order and
decorum at the meeting. I have come here because I believe that
the interests of the working men — that the interest, in fact, of this
great country are intimately bound up with the question which is to
be laid before you to-night (hear, hear). Believing that the interests
of this country are in a great measure at stake, and involved in the
questions to be submitted to-night, I should be wanting in my
duty, and not acting the part of a patriot if I shrank from the
performance of that which I believe to be right (hear, hear). I there-
fore, accept the chair which you have been kind enough to put me
in, and shall now call on the speakers to propose the various resolu-
tions (applause).
J. C. Edwards, the secretary, read the following extract from a
letter from Mr. J- Stuart Mill : —
Bleakheath Park, Dcember 24th, 1862.
Dear Sir, — I thank you very sincerely for your two letters, and for the
very important and most gratifying information which they contain.
Hardly anything could do more good at present than such a demonstra-
tion from the suffering operatives of Lancashire, while there is the fact in
itself, and in the state of mind which prompts it, a moral greatness which
is at once a just rebuke to the mean feeling of so great a portion of the
public, and a source of unqualified happiness to those whose hopes and
fears for the great interests of humanity are, as mine are, inseparably
bound up in the moral and intellectual prospects of the working classes.
A letter was also read from Mr. Hugh Mason, in which that gentle-
man said : —
" I have no doubt whatever that the rebellion was planned, and has
to this moment been prompted, for the sole object of perpetrating slavery,
and my prayer is that it will fail of its diabolical purpose. I hope your
meeting will be the first of many similar ones throughout our free
country."
J. C. Edwards moved the following resolution: —
" That this meeting, recognising the common brotherhood of man-
kind, and the sacred and inalienable right of every human being to per-
sonal freedom and equal protection, records its detestation of negro
slavery in America, and of the attempt of the rebellious Southern slave-
holders to organise on the great American continent a nation having
slavery as its basis."
He said that an effort had been made in a leading article of the
Manchester Guardian to deter the working men from assembling
together for such a purpose as that for which they were met. The
editor of that paper differed very materially from Mr. Stuart Mill,
one of the greatest of English thinkers. They were, however, at last
met to give expression to their sympathy for those who were the
champions of free labour on the great American continent
(applause). In discussing the question they should join issue with
many of their Manchester friends. It might suit certain classes in
this country to laud the conduct of the Southern slaveholders in
their secession movement, and to disguise the fact that the South
rebelled to conserve, perpetuate, and extend slavery, and that in
fact slavery was the sole cause of the present Civil War (cheers, and
cries of " No, no," and "Tariff "). President Lincoln determined to
circumscribe the limits of slavery, and the Southern men saw that
the day of unholy compromise had ceased and hence the rebellion
(applause). Attempts had been made to excite the people of this
country to a recognition of the South. Tow rapscallions were em-
ployed by Mason and Sidell and paid by Confederate money.
They called upon a manufacturer, now on the platform, thinking
that he had Southern proclivities. They made men drunk, and held
what were called representative meetings of the cotton workers of
Lancashire- Yet, as Mr. Bright said the other day, with all the
money and malice they could use to excite the people to recognise
the South, they had not been able to succeed ; but that night they
had a great meeting, the funds for which were guaranteed by a
working men's organisation before the room was engaged (applause)-
The ill-advised expressions of Lord Russell that the North was
fighting for empire and the South for freedom was calculated to be
a source of bitterness to America. The North was fighting for the
reconquest of that which had been attempted to be stolen from
them by a company of traders, and the South violated the most
solemn obligations because they were beaten at an election
(applause). Would it be right for them to have seceded and rebelled
when at a general election their present Mayor was worsted when he
was put forward as the candidate of the working man? (cheers).
It was not freedom to sell mankind as chattels, to treat men as
pigs and dogs, and to violate with impunity the chastity of women
and ruthlessly to sever the tenderest ties of affection? (applause).
He was happy to find them assembled on a spot consecrated to
liberty by the blood of their forefathers. That blood lifted up its
voice and cried " Liberty " and should not their children in many
tones re-echo back "Liberty " (applause).
Thomas Evans in seconding the resolution said he hoped that
when the history of this calamity should be penned, one bright
chapter would tell that on a New Year's Eve there was a great
meeting in Manchester in which the voice of thousands of artisans
were heard saying, "Onward, ye freemen of the North," and
" Downward, ye Southern men who want slavery " (applause).
Hitherto the people of the cotton districts had been drawing their
livelihood in a co-operative system of slavery. He hoped they w)uid
draw out of it that night (hear, hear). The resolution was adopted
unanimously with acclamation.
Edward Hoosen moved : —
" That this meeting composed mainly of the industrial classes of
Manchester, desires to record its profound sympathy with the efforts of
President Lincoln and his colleagues to maintain the American Union in
its integrity and also its high sense of the justice of his proclamation of
emancipation, and other measures tending at once to give freedom to the
slaves and restore peace to the American Nation."
He said he and others had been goaded to the calling of that
meeting by the remarks made from time to time by the Manchester
Guardian, as the working men of this district desired to set them-
selves right with the world. He believed Abraham Lincoln to be
one of the greatest constitutional monarchs of the present age
(hear, hear). Thev who maligned him would do well to compare
him with the Monarchs of Prussia and Austria and with the ex-
King of Naples. Lincoln was a noble spectacle in the history of the
world, for no monarch had ever stuck so tenaciously to the consti-
tution of his country. Those who now found fault with the North
were the same who formerly blamed the democracy of the United
States for maintaining slavery. They were afraid that if America
continued to rise as it had in the past and become one consolidated
power over a vast continent with its affairs regulated as they had
not been regulated in Europe, it would be too powerful an example
for them to be able to resist manhood suffrage (hear, hear)- The
fact was that the power of the South was waning and in a few years
the united power of the North and West would have put an end
to slavery. The South saw that and therefore they seceded. Some
people wished to see America divided because they thought that
country was becoming too powerful. If English statesmen would
cease to bully and would act uprightly, if the press of England
would exhibit a little more morality we should have no need to
fear a more powerful America (hear, hear).
James McMasters seconded the resolution which was carried
with one or two dissentients.
Robert Golding read the following address which it was pro-
posed to send to the President of the United States : —
"To His Excellency, Abraham Lincoln,
President of the United States of America.
"As the citizens of Manchester assembled at the Free
Trade Hall, we beg to express our fraternal sentiments towards
you and your country. We rejoice in your greatness as an out-
growth of England whose blood and language you share and
whose orderly and legal freedom you have applied to new
circumstances over a region immeasurably greater than our
own. We honour your Free States as a particularly happy
abode for the working millions, where industry is honoured.
One thing alone has, in the past, lessened our sympathy with
your country and our confidence in it, we mean the ascendency
of politicians who not merely maintained negro slavery but
desired to extend and root it more firmly. Since we have dis-
cerned, however, that the victory of the Free States in the war
which has so sorely distressed us as well as afflicted you, will
strike off the fetters of the slave, you have attracted our warm
and earnest sympathy. We joyfully honour you as the Presi-
dent, and the Congress with you, for many decisive steps
towards practically exemplifying your belief in the words of
your great founders, "all men are created free and equal."
You have procured the liberation of the slaves in the district
around Washington and thereby made the centre of your
Federation visibly free. You have enforced the laws against
the slave and kept up your fleet against it even while every ship
was wanted for service in your terrible war. You have nobly
decided to receive Ambassadors from the negro Republics of
Hayti and Liberia, thus for ever renouncing that unworthy
prejudice which refuses the rights of humanity to men and
women on account of their colour. In order more effectually
to stop the slave trade you have made with our Queen a treaty,
which your Senate has ratified, for the right of mutual search.
" Your Congress has decreed freedom, as the law for ever,
in the vast occupied and half-settled territories which are
directly subject to its legislative power- It has offered pecuniary
aid to all states which will enact emancipation locally, and has
forbidden your generals to restore fugitive slaves who seek their
protection. You have entreated slave masters to accept these
moderate offers and after long and patient waiting, you, as
Commander-in-Chief of the Army, have appointed to-morrow,
the i st of January, 1863, tne day of unconditional freedom for
the slaves of the rebel states. Heartily do we congratulate you
and your country on this humane and righteous course. We
assume that you cannot now stop short of a complete uprooting
of slavery. It would not become us to dictate any details, but
there are broad principles of humanity which must guide you.
If complete emancipation in some states be deferred, though
only to a predetermined day, still in the interval, human
beings should not be counted as chattels. Women must have
the right of chastity and of maternity, men the rights of
husbands, masters the liberty of manumission. Justice
demands for the black no less than for the white the protec-
tion of laws — that his voice be heard in your courts. Nor must
any such abomination be tolerated as slave breeding states and
a slave market if you are to earn the high reward of all your
sacrifices in the approval of the universal brotherhood and of
the Divine Father.
" It is for your free courts to decide whether anything but
immediate and total emancipation can secure the most indis-
pensable rights of humanity against the inveterate wickedness
of local laws and local executives. We implore you for your
own honour and welfare not to faint in your Providential
Mission. While your enthusiasm is aflame and the tide of
events runs high let the work be finished effectually. Leave no
root of bitterness to spring up and work fresh misery to your
children. It is a mighty task indeed to reorganise the industry
not only of four millions of the enslaved races but of five
millions of whites. Nevertheless, 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
8
revered by posterity. We are certain that such a glorious con-
summation will cement Great Britain and the United States in
close and enduring regards. Our interests, moreover, are
identified with you. And if you have any ill-wishers here, be
assured that they are chiefly those who oppose liberty at home,
and that they will be powerless to stir up quarrel between us
from the very day in which your country becomes, undeniably,
and without exception, the home of the free. Accept our high
admiration of your firmness in upholding the proclamation of
freedom."
The reading of the address was frequently applauded.
Joseph Barlow moved the adoption of the address and that it
should be signed by the Chairman on behalf of the meeting.
Mr. Bazley, M.P., supported the resolution and said it was not
the Northern policy which immediately deprived us of supplies of
cotton but an attempt at coercion on the part of the Southern States
in order to compel a recognition of their independence (hear, hear).
There had been no meetings in the South to assist the unemployed
operatives in Lancashire but there had been enthusiastic meetings
with that object in New York (hear, hear). It was the free who
sympathised with the free. He referred at some length to our
neglect with respect to the cultivation of cotton in the colonies and
to the effort made by Mr. Bright and others to prove the capa-
bilities of India, and said the promoters of the meeting had his
best wishes for the success of this great and good cause in which
they were embarked and they should have his assistance also
(applause).
Mr. S. Pope also supported the resolution and charged the
Manchester Guardian with having pro-slavery proclivities and
desiring the maintenance of the institution of slavery.
The resolution was passed with cheers.
Dr. J. Watts moved : —
" That the Mayor be requested to transmit the foregoing resolution
and address to His Excellency President Lincoln with the hearty saluta-
tions of this meeting and with an expression of its earnest hope that
England and America may ever remain knit together in the most intimate
fraternal bonds."
Richard Wilson seconded the resolution, which was adopted.
There were cries for Jackson, formerly President Davis's negro
coachman, who addressed the meeting and thanked the audience
for their sympathy with the negro-
A vote of thanks to the Mayor brought the meeting to a close.
LETTER FROM PRESIDENT LINCOLN TO
THE WORKING MEN OF MANCHESTER.
(Reprinted from the Manchester Guardian, February n///, 1863.)
The following letter and enclosure were received yesterday by
the Mayor of Manchester (Abel Heywood, Esq.): —
Legation of the United States,
London.
9th February, 1863.
Sir,
I have the honour to transmit to you by the hand of Mr.
Moran, the Assistant Secretary of this Legation, a letter of the
President of the United States addressed to you as Chairman
of the meeting of Working Men held in Manchester on the
31st December and in acknowledgment of the address which
I had the pleasure to forward from that meeting.
I am. Sir, Your obedient servant,
Charles Francis Adams.
Abel Heywood, Esq.,
Chairman, etc., Manchester.
Executive Mansion,
Washington.
January 19th, 1863.
To the Working Men of Manchester,
I have the honour to acknowledge receipt of the address
and resolutions sent to me on the eve of the New Year.
When I came on the 4th day of March, 1861, through a
free and constitutional election to preside in the Government
of the United States the country was found at the verge of
Civil War. Whatever might have been the cause or whosoever
the fault, one duty, paramount to all others, was before me,
namely, to maintain and preserve at once the constitution and
the integrity of the Federal Republic. A conscientious purpose
to perform this duty is the key to all the measures of adminis-
tration which have been, and to all which will hereafter be
pursued, under our frame of Government, and my official oath.
I could not depart from this purpose if I would. It is not
always in the power of governments to enlarge or restrict the
scope of moral results which follow the policies that they may
deem necessary for the public safety from time to time to
adopt.
I have well understood that the duty of self-preservation rests
solely with the American people. But I have at the same time
been aware that favour or disfavour of foreign nations might
have a material influence in enlarging or prolonging the
struggle with disloyal men in which the country is engaged.
10
A fair examination of history has seemed to authorise a belief
that the past actions and influences of the United States are
generally regarded as being beneficial towards mankind. I have
therefore reckoned upon the forbearance of nations. Circum-
stances, to some of which you allude, induced me specially to
expect that if justice and good faith be practised by the United
States they would encounter no hostile influence on the part
of Great Britain. It is now a pleasant duty to acknowledge the
demonstration you have given of your desire that a spirit of
peace and amity towards this country may prevail in the
councils of your Queen, who is respected and esteemed in your
own country only more than she is by the kindred nation
which has its home on this side of the Atlantic.
I know and deeply deplore the sufferings which the working
men at Manchester and in ail 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 men of Europe have been subjected to a
severe trial for the purpose of forcing their sanction to that
attempt. Under these circumstances I cannot but regard your
decisive utterances upon 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 assur-
ance of the inherent truth and of the ultimate and universal
triumph of justice, humanity and freedom. I do not doubt that
the sentiments you have expressed will be sustained by your
great nation and on the other hand, I have no hesitation in
assuring you that they will excite admiration and esteem and
the most reciprocal feelings of friendship among the American
people. 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.
I have to express my thanks to the "Manchester Guardian"
for permission to reprint; and to Mr. A. E. Dillon, of the Manches-
ter Central Library, for his valued help. F. H.
ii
Manchkster
R. Airman & Son, Shudehill
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