Manchester England and its Role in the ACW

Scott1967

Sergeant Major
Joined
Jul 11, 2016
Location
England
Hello Everyone I thought this would be the place to post as I'm not a regular poster I thought this would be very interesting.

I live in Manchester England and until recently I had no clue how involved my own town was in the ACW , Having recently read the letter that Mr Lincoln wrote to the people of Manchester and having visited his statue in Lincoln Square and then finding out the sacrifices the cotton workers made for the Union cause have prompted me to become a bit of civil war bookworm.

On further reading I also found out that nearly 2% of Civil war soldiers were British which I found astonishing and had no clue about , We even have a Medal of Honour winner in Philip James Baybutt who is from Manchester and is buried in ironically Southern Cemetery not one mile from where I live.

Going to his Grave and placing flowers gave me a great feeling as the grave itself looked like it had never been cared for , I think I will do this on a regular basis.

Thx for reading my very small first post honouring some very brave men and workers.
 
Hi Scott welcome!

You may know this already, but ex-President Grant visited Manchester on his World Tour May 30 1877.

At the Town Hall reception in May 1877 Grant said:

"I was very well aware during the war...of the sentiments of the great mass of the people of Manchester towards the country to which I have the honour to belong, and of your sentiments with regard to the struggle in which it fell to my lot to take a humble part. For that, and for further expressions of the kind which took place during our great trial, there has been on the part of my countrymen a feeling of friendship towards the people of Manchester, distinct and separate from that which they feel for all the rest of England."


https://confidentials.com/manchester/moments-ulysses-s-grant-the-town-halls-first-guest
 
Thankyou Si , Yes I was aware that Grant visited Manchester in his speech I'm pretty sure he was referring too and having a bit of a dig at the city's of Liverpool and Birmingham who of course supplied ships and the Enfield Rifle to the south and also flew the stars and bars above there respective town halls.

We all know in Britain that Liverpool and Manchester have a rivalry I wonder if it started with the ACW and not the Manchester Ship Canal ?.
 
Hello Everyone I thought this would be the place to post as I'm not a regular poster I thought this would be very interesting.

I live in Manchester England and until recently I had no clue how involved my own town was in the ACW , Having recently read the letter that Mr Lincoln wrote to the people of Manchester and having visited his statue in Lincoln Square and then finding out the sacrifices the cotton workers made for the Union cause have prompted me to become a bit of civil war bookworm.

On further reading I also found out that nearly 2% of Civil war soldiers were British which I found astonishing and had no clue about , We even have a Medal of Honour winner in Philip James Baybutt who is from Manchester and is buried in ironically Southern Cemetery not one mile from where I live.

Going to his Grave and placing flowers gave me a great feeling as the grave itself looked like it had never been cared for , I think I will do this on a regular basis.

Thx for reading my very small first post honouring some very brave men and workers.
@Bee had a thread or cited some sources of private American aid to assist the laid off cotton workers of Manchester.
Leftyhunter
 
You know not to turn this into a WI thread but the discussion of the British going to war with the Americans is always a popular CWAH detail covered well in CanadianCanuck's Wrapped in Flames: The Great American War and Beyond timeline.
 
Thx Lefty would be great if I could find some more info that maybe we don't have in the UK about the Manchester cotton workers from an American perspective.
We had a thread a while ago about the role of Clyde,Scotland building ships for the Confederacy. Yes the British certainly sold weaponry to the Confederacy. On the other hand the UK sold plenty of Enfields to the Union and @Saphroneth in past threads had some good sources about the British selling vital parts used in the manufacturing of Union Small arms up until late 1862.
Leftyhunter
 
@Saphroneth in past threads had some good sources about the British selling vital parts used in the manufacturing of Union Small arms up until late 1862.
If anything that understates it somewhat - the British sold small arms entire throughout 1862, including over a hunded thousand gun barrels, and even when the Union could produce domestic iron they found it subpar (in 1864 Springfield was saying, basically, "either we stop using this iron or we reduce the rigour of the inspections" and British files for finishing gun barrels were being imported right up to the end of the war.)
 
If anything that understates it somewhat - the British sold small arms entire throughout 1862, including over a hunded thousand gun barrels, and even when the Union could produce domestic iron they found it subpar (in 1864 Springfield was saying, basically, "either we stop using this iron or we reduce the rigour of the inspections" and British files for finishing gun barrels were being imported right up to the end of the war.)

That's interesting Saphroneth , I know Sheffield in Yorkshire was the major Iron producer in Britain at the time did the USA also import Iron as well as tools?
 
The Cotton Supply Association rented offices at 1 Newall’s Buildings on
Market Street in downtown Manchester and a small staff went to work collecting
cotton intelligence from around the globe. p. 33
https://krex.k-state.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2097/14956/RickyDaleCalhoun2012.pdf?sequence=1

The role of Manchester in promoting the eventual victory of the United States in its Civil War, should not be underestimated.
The role of John Bright and Richard Cobden in repealing the Corn Laws, and creating a market for Midwestern wheat started a series of events that led to an economic boom in Illinois.
 
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That's interesting Saphroneth , I know Sheffield in Yorkshire was the major Iron producer in Britain at the time did the USA also import Iron as well as tools?
Yes, they did, because there was no domestic iron in the Union which was of sufficient quality and quantity to supply anything like the amount needed by Springfield. Pretty much all guns made in the Union for the first two years of the war used either gun barrels imported from the UK or barrels made of iron imported from the UK (specifically from Marshall and Mills iron works); it was only after stealing the Marshall and Mills technical secrets in the second half of 1863 that Union iron was produced of the same type, and it was definitely considered inferior.

The old iron procurement techniques worked to produce hammered barrels, but could not produce iron which could be rolled.

(The CSA got around this because they had an ex Marshall and Mills man who located the appopriate ores in Patrick County Virginia; this has interesting implications for an alternate history timeline in which the Union secures that section of Virginia.)
 
Yes, they did, because there was no domestic iron in the Union which was of sufficient quality and quantity to supply anything like the amount needed by Springfield. Pretty much all guns made in the Union for the first two years of the war used either gun barrels imported from the UK or barrels made of iron imported from the UK (specifically from Marshall and Mills iron works); it was only after stealing the Marshall and Mills technical secrets in the second half of 1863 that Union iron was produced of the same type, and it was definitely considered inferior.

The old iron procurement techniques worked to produce hammered barrels, but could not produce iron which could be rolled.

(The CSA got around this because they had an ex Marshall and Mills man who located the appopriate ores in Patrick County Virginia; this has interesting implications for an alternate history timeline in which the Union secures that section of Virginia.)
What's a little industrial espionage between friends?
 
The Cotton Supply Association rented offices at 1 Newall’s Buildings on
Market Street in downtown Manchester and a small staff went to work collecting
cotton intelligence from around the globe. p. 33
https://krex.k-state.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2097/14956/RickyDaleCalhoun2012.pdf?sequence=1

The role of Manchester in promoting the eventual victory of the United States in its Civil War, should not be underestimated.
The role of John Bright and Richard Cobden in repealing the Corn Laws, and creating a market for Midwestern wheat started a series of events that led to an economic boom in Illinois.

Thankyou that was a great read , well I'm still reading it.
 
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