American Civil War

Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘American Civil War’

7
The Grievances of the South Richard Cobden

Victorian MP Richard Cobden believed British politicians supporting the slave-owning American South had been led a merry dance.

Richard Cobden MP had considerable sympathy with the Confederate States in the American Civil War of 1861-1865, as he regarded Washington as arrogantly meddlesome and corrupted by big business. But in 1863 he held up a report from the US Congress and told his Rochdale constituents that the South’s politicians had forfeited any right to an Englishman’s goodwill.

Read

8
Dixie on Thames Richard Cobden

Victorian MP Richard Cobden offered a startling analogy for the American Civil War.

Abraham Lincoln’s anti-slavery Republicans won the US general election in 1860, prompting eleven slave-owning southern States to declare independence. Some in Westminster sympathised, saying the national result did not reflect the majority of southern voters – but Richard Cobden was scornful.

Read