The American Civil War

2020 ◽  
pp. 246-271
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
American Civil War ◽  
Special Role ◽  
Henry Ward Beecher ◽  
North And South ◽  
Cotton Trade

Because of its position as a port in the cotton trade, Liverpool had a special role in the Civil War. This chapter considers the rival consular activities of North and South, and the secret local commissioning of battle-ships as well as the campaign by both sides to enlist British support. Henry Ward Beecher was one of the key figures in these activities.

Losing the Thread

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jim Powell
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
American Civil War ◽  
Full Length ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Cotton Trade

Losing the Thread is the first full-length study of the effect of the American Civil War on Britain’s raw cotton trade and on the Liverpool cotton market. It details the worst crisis in the British cotton trade in the 19th century. Before the civil war, America supplied 80 per cent of Britain’s cotton. In August 1861, this fell to almost zero, where it remained for four years. Despite increased supplies from elsewhere, Britain’s largest industry received only 36 per cent of the raw material it needed from 1862 to 1864. This book establishes the facts of Britain’s raw cotton supply during the war: how much there was of it, in absolute terms and in relation to the demand, where it came from and why, how much it cost, and what effect the reduced supply had on Britain’s cotton manufacture. It includes an enquiry into the causes of the Lancashire cotton famine, which contradicts the historical consensus on the subject. Examining the impact of the civil war on Liverpool and its cotton market, the book disputes the historic portrayal of Liverpool as a solidly pro-Confederate town. It also demonstrates how reckless speculation infested and distorted the raw cotton market, and lays bare the shadowy world of the Liverpool cotton brokers, who profited hugely from the war while the rest of Lancashire starved.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Jim Powell
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
American Civil War ◽  
Full Length ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Specific Reference ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Cotton Trade

This chapter describes the objectives of the book. No full-length work exists on the crisis in the British cotton trade during the American Civil War, and the only substantial study of the raw cotton market in Liverpool was made by Thomas Ellison 130 years ago. The book remedies these omissions. It has two objectives. First, to establish the factual record of Britain’s raw cotton supply during the civil war. Second, to examine the impact of the civil war on Liverpool, and on the operation of the raw cotton trade there, with specific reference to the role of the cotton brokers. The chapter discusses the existing historiography and its deficiencies, and describes the primary sources that underpin this study. It establishes the crucial, and neglected, importance of price to the trade in raw cotton.

The Return of the "Unnative": The Transnational Politics of Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South

2007 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 449-478 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Sun-Joo Lee
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
American South ◽  
American Civil War ◽  
Slave Narrative ◽  
Transnational Politics ◽  
North And South

This essay offers a new, transnational reading of Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South(1854-55), a novel that has traditionally been read in national terms. As a sailor, Frederick Hale belongs to a profession that connects the cotton-producing American South to the cotton-manufacturing British North. This alternate "North and South" resituates Gaskell's novel in transatlantic terms and offers a new, racialized prism through which to view the novel's central conflict between master and man. By historicizing Frederick's narrative within the nineteenth-century transatlantic antislavery movement, I argue that Frederick's metonymic connection to slavery expresses itself in his narrative's generic proximity to the American slave narrative. I consider the implications of Frederick's cosmopolitanism and suggest that it anticipates Gaskell's agonized feelings about the American Civil War, an internecine conflict that places at its center the problem of slavery.

The War Years

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael R. Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Mississippi River ◽  
Early Years ◽  
The South ◽  
Trade Networks ◽  
Economic Opportunities ◽  
The North ◽  
North And South ◽  
Cotton Trade

Chapter 2 focuses on the Civil War years. In the early years of the war, a Union blockade brought legal trade to a standstill, and for merchants who relied on trade networks between the North and the South, the blockade was catastrophic. But with soaring demand for cotton around the globe, economic opportunities abounded. Some merchants stockpiled cotton, and some wisely avoided Confederate currency, which would turn out to be worthless after the war. But once Ulysses S. Grant’s troops declared victory after the bloody battle of Vicksburg, which opened the Mississippi River for commerce, the landscape changed, and new opportunities emerged. With New Orleans and the Mississippi River in Union hands, legal cotton trade resumed between the North and South, and merchants flocked to the interior towns that facilitated this commerce. They also established or reestablished trade networks that closely resembled those that had emerged in the antebellum years. While the resumption of trade was slowed by a plethora of factors, by the end of the Civil War, firms that had saved capital, reestablished North-South networks, or both, were on sound footing, prepared to face head on the vicissitudes of the postbellum economy.

Feast and Famine

2021 ◽  
pp. 15-30
Author(s):  
Jim Powell
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
American Civil War ◽  
British Trade ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cotton Trade

This chapter presents a picture of the British cotton trade on the eve of the American Civil War, describing both the pre-eminence of that trade and how it had been attained over the previous century and a half. The relative merits of three major recent studies of the history of cotton, notably Sven Beckert’s Empire of Cotton, are discussed. This is followed by a consideration of how the issue of slavery, and the threat to its survival, influenced the British trade before the war. There is a detailed description of how the Liverpool brokerage system controlled the trade in raw cotton and how it was intended to operate.

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