Liverpool and the American Civil War The ringing of hammers and the buzzing of saws, the usual sounds of the orderly and businesslike atmosphere of John Robinsons shipyard, were silent on the evening of July 9th, 1863, replaced by a hum of activity and an air of excitement more akin to a carnival than to the waterfront of a working seaport. Instead of the usual gangs of workmen, a crowd of well-attired spectators milled along the quay, and small boats and steamers filled the river, each vying to provide its occupants with the best view of the festivities. On the slipway stood the hull of a newly completed barque; at a little past 6 p.m., a young woman stepped onto the platform. Breaking a bottle across its bow, she christened the new vessel the Virginia. On cue, the hand, stationed strategically on a vessel anchored nearby, filled the air with the strains of Dixie. The launch successfully completed, Robinson, the builder, and about one hundred dignitaries adjourned to nearby assembly rooms to celebrate the occasion. In spite of the festive air, reminders of the plight of the Southern Confederacy, then beginning the third year of its fight for independence, tinged the occasion. Robinson took the podium to explain that the Virginia, named after the oldest and proudest of the Southern states and in many ways the spiritual leader of the Confederacy, would soon take up service with its sister ships of the Dixie line. The first, the Richmond, named to honour the capital of the Confederacy, had been launched a few months before; the next would be the Jefferson Davis, named after the president of the Confederacy. The master of ceremonies offered a toast to the success of both the venture and the Confederate cause, rousing the crowd to cries of Bravo. Ironic as it may seem, the Virginia was not launched at Charleston or Wilmington or Mobile or any other of the ports of the Southern Confederacy. Instead, it was launched at Liverpool, the great seaport of north-west England. In fact, unlike many of the ships built on the Mersey at that time, it was not even intended for Confederate service. Indeed, the Virginia and her sister ships in the Dixie line spent their careers not as commerce raiders or in running the blockade but rather in the mundane service of carrying cargoes between Spain and Britain. Their names, their designation as the Dixie line, and the use of and reaction to the song Dixie, however, were all quite legitimate manifestations of an affinity between the Liverpool business community for the Confederacy and the Southern cause. This support provided the foundation for a commercial alliance between the seaport of Liverpool and the Southern Confederacy that reflected far more than the self-interest of a few men who worked directly for the Southern cause. During the four bloody years of the American Civil War, the government of Great Britain remained officially neutral. In fact, the British government never recognised the existence of the Confederate government. Yet if the Confederacy failed to secure the assistance of the British government, it nonetheless found enthusiastic and faithful allies among British merchants. A number of factors nurtured this alliance. Monetary interest, of course, was a major factor. Those commercial ties between British merchants and the American South, the dependence of the British textile industry upon Southern-grown cotton, and the prospect of a large open market for British manufactures should the South succeed in obtaining its independence also prompted British merchants to champion the Southern cause. Yet an examination of this alliance suggests a philosophical foundation as well. Certainly the free-trade philosophy of nineteenth-century capitalism contributed to the opposition of British merchants to the Northern blockade. Nowhere can these factors be better illustrated than in the commercial ties between Liverpool and the Confederacy. To a large extent, the alliance between the Confederacy and the import-export merchants of Liverpool grew from the traditional trade of the port. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the manufacture of cotton textiles was the most important single item of British foreign trade. In the year 1859, for instance, manufactured cotton textiles accounted for one-third of Britains total exports, and the industry employed nearly four million people, approximately one-sixth of Britains total population. The importation of raw cotton to maintain this thriving industry provided Liverpool with its most important trade and the primary source of its prosperity. Ship after ship arrived in the broad estuary of the River Mersey laden with cotton bales to feed the ever-hungry mills of Lancashire. The American South was the source of nearly all this cotton. Between 1851 and 1860, the South supplied 77.5 per rent of the raw cotton imported into Britain, and for the single year of 1860, no less than 80 per cent of Britains supply of cotton cleared from American ports. The people of the textile districts certainly appreciated the extent of their dependence upon the South. On January 30th, 1861, the Liverpool Courier reported: Legitimate trade had been sacrificed to speculation. Mansions luxuriously furnished, picture galleries, horses, and carriages had to be sold, and in a few instances, their owners, having lost both their legitimate business and their habits of industry, were reduced to penury and want, and were never to recover. In the end, however, the changes which overtook the cotton trade proved to be inevitable. The war and the cotton shortage only provided the catalyst for what proved to he a revolutionary modernisation of the trade. The speculative methods, such as futures dealing, were soon joined by changes in the trade caused by the laying of the transatlantic cable and the increased use of the steamship, which revolutionise the trade. While the strict rules of the pre-war trade were the methods of the eighteenth century, the war forced upon the cotton trade the methods of the twentieth.
Posted on: Thu, 20 Mar 2014 21:20:57 +0000
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