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The Grievances of the South Victorian MP Richard Cobden believed British politicians supporting the slave-owning American South had been led a merry dance.
1863
Queen Victoria 1837-1901
Music: Gustav Holst

From the US National Archives and Records Administration, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain. (Note: this is Richard Cobden, not ‘Richard Corden’ as given by NARA.) Source

About this picture …

Richard Cobden MP, photographed in the early 1860s. Cobden believed passionately in free trade as a means to eradicate war and racism, and bitterly resented the attempt to justify a war, and safeguard an economy based on institutionalised slavery, in the name of free trade.

The Grievances of the South
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.
Abridged

THE members from the Southern States, the representatives of the Slave States, were invited by the representatives of the Free States to state candidly and frankly what were the terms they required, in order that they might continue peaceable in the Union; but from beginning to end there is not one syllable said about tariff or taxation. From the beginning to end there is not a grievance alleged but that which was connected with the maintenance of slavery.

This is a war to perpetuate and extend human slavery. It is a war not to defend slavery as it was left by their ancestors — I mean, a thing to be retained and to be apologised for, — it is a war to establish a slave empire, — a war in which slavery shall be made the cornerstone of the social system.

Well, I say, God pardon the men, who, in this year of grace 1863, should think that such a project as that could be crowned with success.

Précis

Richard Cobden, a veteran campaigner for free trade, objected to the way that British supporters of the Confederacy in America’s Civil War made out that the issue was freedom to trade, citing an American report showing that the Southern States themselves seemed concerned only with their right to legalise and extend slavery. (52 / 60 words)

Source

Abridged from a Speech in Rochdale on 24th November, 1863.

Suggested Music

A Winter Idyll

Gustav Holst (1874-1934)

Performed by the Ulster Orchestra directed by JoAnn Falletta.

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