Lord Hartington on the war in America in 1863

Comments of the Marquis of Hartington after returning from the United States in 1863.

Lord Hartington was one of the M.P.’s for Lancastershire, a section of England with many textile workers who suffered greatly from the “cotton famine” after the outbreak of the Civil War. Hoping to pressure England into recognizing the Confederate States as an independent nation, the Confederate government refused to sell their cotton. Historians have pointed to this as one of the initial mistakes of the Confederacy, since the millions that the cotton sales would have brought in were lost, and much cotton had to be destroyed to keep it from falling into Yankee hands. By 1862, import of cotton from America had fallen by 96%. Early in 1863, more than 500,000 people, one-fourth of the population of Lancashire, was receiving government assistance.

Lord Hartington refers to getting cotton from India, and this was obtained and replaced much of the cotton from the South. Egypt, Turkey, and Brazil also began supplying cotton. In the South, cotton would never again be king.

Lord Hartington visited in Baltimore with Confederate sympathizers, very possibly with the Carrolls and the Hulls. Eleanor Thompson’s letter to Jefferson Davis (see archives) tells us that Harper was appointed to escort Lord Hartington through the Confederacy. He may have had to escort the British peer into the Confederacy, as well, because Lord Hartington had to “run the blockade” across the Potomac to get into Virginia since he was unable to secure a pass from the Federal government. Lord Hartington’s assessment of the southern determination to win the war is eloquent and represents much of the British thinking at the time; that is, that the Union was forever severed.

Source: The Times (London), March 26, 1863, p. 7.

“It has been said that, in the few remarks which I made at Preston the other day, I took a rather gloomy view of the state of things I have seen in America. I am afraid that I do take a rather gloomy view of those events; but I am also afraid that facts justify me in doing so. I do know where to look for peace in America. I cannot look for peace to come from the Southern Confederacy. I spent a short time in the Southern Confederacy, and the result of my observation—not the result of a conversation with a few politicians, nor what I had read in violent articles in interested political papers, but in information gathered in the calm conviction of the people of that country, as expressed in their daily conversation, lives, and conduct—led me to suppose that they will never, under any circumstances, return to that Union they have learned so cordially to detest. I have seen men who have spent their whole lives in affluent circumstances and in rural pursuits, men who have led quiet and peaceable lives,--I have seen them serving as privates in regiments of their States, serving badly clothed, badly fed, perhaps hardly with shoes upon their feet; but, in spite of their previous education and peaceable habits, these men are as savage and as bloodthirsty as if they had been trained up from their very youth to delight in war. I have seen men who have lived all their lives in poverty, who you would say had nothing to lose and nothing to gain, who had no interest in slavery, but who have joined with as much readiness as those who had the ranks of the army—I have seen these men in their camps as cheerful as possible, and asking for nothing but again to be led to battle with the enemy. This is not confined alone to the men, but the women in the Confederate States appear to have changed their very nature. They scarcely stop to mourn their relations and friends deceased; but they urge on the survivors, and would refuse to own them if they should hesitate for a moment to follow the footsteps of those who had gone before them. I say such a people, animated with such feeling—call it, if you like, patriotism or bloodthirsty ferocity—I say this is not a people who are going to give in. They will fight and bleed, and will accept no compromise; they will fight to the very last. Their terms are clear and simple enough—they ask that every Northern man shall withdraw from Southern soil, and until that object is gained, they will continue to fight. They may be exterminated, driven from their cities; the enemy may occupy their strongest positions, and have possession of their rivers; but they will not come back into the Union. It is possible that they may be exterminated, but I do not think the circumstances of war give us any reason to suppose the North will be so far successful. It is not impossible that North America will fight almost to prevent the dissolution of such a magnificent future as they had hoped for, because they have not yet realized the fact that they are beaten. They have not felt as the Southerners the horrors of war at home. The war has been conducted upon Southern, and not upon Northern soil. In the great cities of the United States trade is as flourishing as ever; they have as much money and as many luxuries. The men who join the war are not so much missed as in the South. The defeats they have suffered they attribute to want of capacity in their Generals, or the maladministration of their Government. There is a party in the North favourable to the success of the South, and who have co-operated cordially with them, and now, in the reverses of the North, are beginning to speak more openly for peace. There is such a party, but I do not fall back upon it. There is, too, a party for whom I have the highest respect in the United States, who love and revere the Union, but who love and revere more the constitution under which that Union formerly existed, and who are much more attached to their own States than to the Union generally. They wish to carry on the war for the restoration of the Union, and to carry it on under the constitution; but they do not wish to see the privileges of their separate States swallowed up by the great central Government at Washington. But I do not believe that if this party were in power they would be able to carry on efficiently a war so gigantic as that now being waged. I believe the only chance is by putting an almost despotic authority in the Government. The question is whether the Democratic party will yield up their Sates rights, or whether the other party will give up their centralizing efforts. That question, I think, will soon be ended. There is the conscript law which was passed, which affects all States rights and all State privileges. If the States and the constitutional party in the States will stand by the law, the war will be indefinitely prolonged; but if they think the time has now come to make a stand for constitutional principles, I think the Government will not be able to raise the men required for the war much longer, and that issue will be within a reasonable time. I will say, in conclusion, to you, as a Lancashire man, that however long this unfortunate war my last, and however long it may be before we again receive those supplies of cotton which we need, I still have faith that Lancashire and Lancashire men will get through this crisis. (Applause.) England has proved to the world, and I think also to America, that Cotton is not King, and I think that Lancashire will have cotton from America or from Indian, and if she cannot have cotton she will have something else. Her capital is still here; her wealth and her power, buried in her coal mines, are still here; her labouring population, with strong arms and honest hearts, are still here. She has passed through other crises and trials before, and has come out stronger; and I have faith that she will come out of this, poorer indeed in gold, but I believe stronger in the confidence she has in her people, and richer in lessons of wisdom and experience. (Loud applause.)