The Working-Men of Manchester, England, sent President Lincoln a letter of anti-slavery solidarity.

PREAMBLE

In Great Britain, the efforts of Christian humanitarians such as William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson, as well as an economy that pivoted from a mercantile system to industrial capitalism, eventually led to the cessation of the British slave trade in 1807. The Abolition Act of 1833 brought the total elimination of the institution throughout the Empire. Eager to show their support for President Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation, which would become effective on 1 January 1863, a group of English laborers crafted the entreaty. Their efforts were not without need. Lincoln, who had long favored a system of gradual emancipation to be carried out voluntarily by the states, came slowly to the idea of emancipation by executive order.              — by Laura M. Miller, Vanderbilt University.

Primarily viewing the Civil War as necessary to preserve the Union, President Lincoln once told Horace Greeley, founder and editor of the New-York Tribune, "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that." 

Abraham Lincoln Monument, by George Grey Barnard in Bronze at Lincoln Square, Manchester, England, Great Britain. 1919

The Civil War (1861-1865) disrupted US cotton production causing distress in cotton manufacturing in Europe. Nevertheless, the cotton workers in Manchester, England supported the Union in its fight against slavery, writing a letter to Lincoln in solidarity. The City of Manchester, England, supported Lincoln in his fight against slavery, despite the hardships that his blockade of America’s southern ports were having on the country's cotton industry.

To Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States

December 31, 1862

As citizens of Manchester, assembled at the Free-Trade Hall, we beg to express our fraternal sentiments toward you and your country. We rejoice in your greatness as an outgrowth of England, whose blood and language you share, whose orderly and legal freedom you have applied to new circumstances, over a region immeasurably greater than our own. We honor your Free States, as a singularly happy abode for the working millions where industry is honored. One thing alone has, in the past, lessened our sympathy with your country and our confidence in it—we mean the ascendency of politicians who not merely maintained negro slavery, but desired to extend and root it more firmly. 

Free-Trade Hall in Manchester.

Since we have discerned, however, that the victory of the free North, in the war which has so sorely distressed us as well as afflicted you, will strike off the fetters of the slave, you have attracted our warm and earnest sympathy. We joyfully honor you, as the President, and the Congress with you, for many decisive steps toward practically exemplifying your belief in the words of your great founders: "All men are created free and equal." You have procured the liberation of the slaves in the district around Washington and thereby made the centre of your Federation visibly free. You have enforced the laws against the slave-trade and kept up your fleet against it, even while every ship was wanted for service in your terrible war. You have nobly decided to receive ambassadors from the negro republics of Hayti and Liberia, thus forever renouncing that unworthy prejudice which refuses the rights of humanity to men and women on account of their color. In order more effectually to stop the slave-trade, you have made with our Queen a treaty, which your Senate has ratified, for the right of mutual search. Your Congress has decreed freedom as the law forever in the vast unoccupied or half unsettled Territories which are directly subject to its legislative power. It has offered pecuniary aid to all States which will enact emancipation locally and has forbidden your Generals to restore fugitive slaves who seek their protection. You have entreated the slave-masters to accept these moderate offers; and after long and patient waiting, you, as Commander-in-Chief of the Army, have appointed tomorrow, the first of January, 1863, as the day of unconditional freedom for the slaves of the rebel States. Heartily do we congratulate you and your country on this humane and righteous course. We assume that you cannot now stop short of a complete uprooting of slavery. It would not become us to dictate any details, but there are broad principles of humanity which must guide you. If complete emancipation in some States be deferred, though only to a predetermined day, still in the interval, human beings should not be counted chattels. Women must have the rights of chastity and maternity, men the rights of husbands, masters the liberty of manumission. Justice demands for the black, no less than for the white, the protection of law—that his voice be heard in your courts. Nor must any such abomination be tolerated as slave-breeding States, and a slave market—if you are to earn the high reward of all your sacrifices, in the approval of the universal brotherhood and of the Divine Father. 

It is for your free country to decide whether anything but immediate and total emancipation can secure the most indispensable rights of humanity against the inveterate wickedness of local laws and local executives. We implore you, for your own honor and welfare, not to faint in your providential mission. While your enthusiasm is aflame, and the tide of events runs high, let the work be finished effectually. Leave no root of bitterness to spring up and work fresh misery to your children. It is a mighty task, indeed, to reorganize the industry not only of four million of the colored race but of five million whites. Nevertheless, the vast progress you have made in the short space of twenty months fills us with the hope that every stain on your freedom will shortly be removed, and that the erasure of that foul blot upon civilization and Christianity—chattel slavery—during your Presidency will cause the name of Abraham Lincoln to be honored and revered by posterity. We are certain that such a glorious consummation will cement Great Britain to the United States in close and enduring regards. Our interests, moreover, are identified with yours. We are truly one people, though locally separate. And if you have any ill-wishers here, be assured they are chiefly those who oppose liberty at home, and that they will be powerless to stir up quarrels between us, from the very day in which your country becomes, undeniably and without exception, the home of the free. Accept our high admiration of your firmness in upholding the proclamation of freedom.

In a response from mid-January 1863, the once-reluctant Lincoln thanked the Manchester writers for encouraging him in his difficult decision to expand the aims of the Civil War.

The Abraham Lincoln Monument, by George Grey Barnard in Bronze was installed at Lincoln Square, Manchester, England, Great Britain, in 1919.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Abraham Lincoln's 1858 Almanac Murder Case.

Abraham Lincoln defends an alleged murderer in the 1858 trial of an Illinois man named William “Duff” Armstrong. Armstrong was accused of murdering James Preston Metzker by striking him on the back of the head with a “slung-shot”—a weight tied to a leather thong, sort of an early blackjack—a few minutes before midnight of August 29, 1857. 

Metzger managed to make his way home from the camp the next morning, falling from his horse several times. When a doctor examined the injured Metzker they found that his skull was fractured in two places. Metzger died of his injuries two days later.

Lincoln was a friend of the accused man’s father, Jack Armstrong, who’d just died, and so he offered to help defend Duff Armstrong, a twenty-four-year-old farmer from Menard County. Abe worked Pro Bono, as a favor to Jack Armstrong’s widow.

NOTE: You didn’t need a law degree to practice law in the early 19th century. Abe borrowed legal treatises from a colleague in the Illinois legislature, took an oral exam, and was licensed to practice law in 1836.

The trial was held in Beardstown, Illinois. The principal prosecution witness against Armstrong was a man named Charles Allen, who testified that he’d seen the murder from about 150 feet away. Lincoln asked Allen how he could tell it was Armstrong given that it was the middle of the night and he was a considerable distance away from the murder scene.

Allen replied, “By the light of the Moon.”

Upon hearing Allen’s testimony, Lincoln produced a copy of the 1857 almanac, turned to the two calendar pages for August, and showed the jury that not only was the Moon in the first quarter but it was riding “low” on the horizon, about to set, at the precise time of the murder.

He argued that the witness could not possibly have had enough light to see what he claimed and asked the judge to take “Judicial Notice”[1] of the moon’s low position. The judge agreed and the jury found Armstrong not guilty. Duff Armstrong was acquitted.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D.

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[1] Judicial Notice is a rule in the law of evidence that allows a fact to be introduced into evidence if the truth of that fact is so notorious or well known, or so authoritatively attested, that it cannot reasonably be doubted. This is done upon the request of the party seeking to rely on the fact at issue. 

Lincoln's Attachment to the Wide-Awake Political Club.

The Wide-Awake Political Party was a youth organization cultivated by the Republican Party during the 1860 presidential election.

In 1858, young men from Hartford, Connecticut, organized bodyguards for Republican candidates campaigning through the streets of the Democratic city. They called themselves the Wide-Awakes. Two years later hundreds of thousands of Wide-Awakes in military gear were practicing infantry drills, marching in torchlight parades, and helping to elect Abraham Lincoln. Their drills became so ubiquitous that when a minor earthquake struck Boston, many assumed it was just the Wide-Awakes marching on the Common. They liked military regalia and wore military-style caps and sashes along with shiny oil-cloth capes. The capes protected them from the leaky, six-foot whale oil torches they carried on parade. The spectacle of large, torch-bearing paramilitary units supporting Abraham Lincoln alarmed southerners. To them, the Wide-Awakes represented northern aggression.

In March of 1860, five young Wide-Awakes went to hear Abraham Lincoln speak at Hartford City Hall. He said he opposed slavery and supported workers’ rights to strike. The young men liked what they heard, and after the speech, they escorted him by torchlight to the home of Mayor Tom Allyn. The Lincoln campaign team knew a good thing when they saw it. They started to organize Wide-Awake clubs for young Republican men to register and to get out the vote.

Soon after Lincoln’s speech in Hartford, the Wide-Awakes started receiving unsolicited letters from people wanting to start their own company. Henry Sperry, a 23-year-old aspiring newspaper editor, wrote hundreds of fliers, letters, and editorials. James Chalker, a 28-year-old textile salesman, sold 20,000 Wide-Awake uniforms during the campaign. Oilcloth for shiny capes grew scarce because of such high demand.

Hundreds of thousands of young men throughout the country donned Wide-Awake uniforms and performed military maneuvers in parades. Many were clerks, farmers, and factory workers, and nearly all had a fascination with martial culture. They called their clubs ‘companies,’ and they had ranks, officers, duties, and a drill manual. They adopted the image of a large eyeball as their standard-bearer. And they had mottoes: “Free soil for Freemen,” “The Territories must be free to the people,” “Free Homesteads,” “River and Harbor improvements,” and “Protection to American Industries.”

Republicans bragged that they had Wide-Awake chapters in every county of every free [Northern] state. By the day of Lincoln's election as president, there were said to be over 500,000 Wide-Awake members. Newly registered and young voters were targeted to bring votes to the Republican Party. The group remained active for several decades.

Soon after Lincoln’s speech in Hartford, the Wide-Awakes started receiving unsolicited letters from people wanting to start their own company. Henry Sperry, a 23-year-old aspiring newspaper editor, wrote hundreds of fliers, letters, and editorials. James Chalker, a 28-year-old textile salesman, sold 20,000 Wide-Awake uniforms during the campaign. Oilcloth for shiny capes grew scarce because of such high demand.

The clubs spread through central Connecticut and wherever the contests were close between Democrats and Republicans: New Hampshire, southern New York, southern New Jersey, and central Illinois extending to Wisconsin. In Republican strongholds like Massachusetts and Vermont, the Wide-Awakes didn’t do so well. Sperry wrote a letter explaining why: “Wherever the fight is hottest, there is their post of duty, and there the Wide-Awakes are found.” Each company had about 100 enthusiastic young men. They met several times a week in headquarters, often above a storefront. The clubs provided excitement and camaraderie. A 20-year-old Connecticut carriage maker jotted that he’d “had a very fine time” at a Wide-Awake parade. In May, the Wide-Awakes made a splash in Chicago during the Republican convention with a torchlight parade. Afterward, a company started in Bangor, Maine. A local druggist marketed Dr. Allen’s Balsamic Cough Lozenges to cure the hoarseness caused by shouting at political rallies. On July 26, 1860, the Hartford Wide-Awakes held a banquet for 5,000 fellow members from Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York.

As the election neared in October, 10,000 Wide-Awakes marched in a torchlight procession three miles long. The Chicago Tribune devoted eight columns to the spectacle. The Democrats tried to find an answer for the Wide-Awakes. They formed their own marching clubs, called the "Ever Readys," Douglas Guards, Little Giants, and Invincibles. But none of the Democratic clubs matched the impact of the Wide-Awakes. By November, the club had hundreds of thousands of members. Some estimates put their numbers at 500,000. Contemporary politicians credited them with bringing young voters into the Republican fold. 

After Lincoln won the presidential election, some of the Wide-Awake companies disbanded. Others offered to escort him to Washington. Southerners viewed their persistence with alarm, thinking it a prelude to an invasion of their region. South Carolinians formed Minute Men militias to counteract the Wide-Awakes. Perhaps the southerners weren’t far wrong. When the Civil War broke out, 80% of the original Hartford company volunteered for military service.

Republicans bragged that they had Wide-Awake chapters in every county of every Northern (free) state. By the day of Lincoln's election as president, there were 500,000 Wide-Awake members and new, young voters into the Republican fold. The group remained active for several decades.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.