Gibson Mill in Calderdale, a few miles northeast of Manchester. Lincoln was deeply moved by cotton workers’ gesture, as was Carl Shurz, Union major-general and subsequently a Republican Party senator. “Do you remember the touching address of the workingmen of Manchester?” he asked in a speech in Brooklyn, New York, on October 7th, 1864. “The English laborer stretched his hard hand across the Atlantic to grasp that of our President, and he said: ‘Although want and misery may knock at my doors, mind it not. I may suffer, but be you firm! Let the slave be free. All hail, American people! we are your brothers!’”
I KNOW and deeply deplore the sufferings which the working men at 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 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.
* For an extract from the cotton workers’ letter, see A Letter to the President.
Précis
Replying to a letter from Manchester’s cotton workers, who had backed the Union in the American Civil War of 1961-65, President Lincoln acknowledged that the fight against slavery was costing British industry dear. But the support of England’s working men moved him deeply, and he declared that never had any nation set a better example of Christian heroism. (58 / 60 words)
