The Untold History of Confederate Support in Manchester: The Manchester Southern Club
Guest post by Harry Wheatley, Second Year Student, BA History and American Studies at the University of Manchester
Manchester, despite being a key part of the nineteenth-century’s cotton industry, is today a city celebrated for its dedication to the anti-slavery movement and transatlantic abolition. When thinking of Manchester’s connection to the American Civil War of 1861–1865, it is the city’s petitions and movements calling for the abolition of American slavery and victory over the southern Confederacy that first come to mind. Take, for example, the letter that Abraham Lincoln sent to the “workingmen” of Manchester in January 1863, thanking them for their “sublime Christian heroism” in supporting the Union’s campaign — a gesture commemorated since 1919 by the statue of the 16th US President that now stands in Lincoln Grove.
Yet these abolitionist sentiments were not the only ones expressed by the people of Manchester towards the American Civil War. In fact in the early 1860s the city was site of an uneven and complex political landscape, and included a number who supported the Confederacy. One of the most pressing debates of British politics at the time was whether or not the country should intervene in the conflict — with those sympathetic to the Union tending to argue against intervention, and those who supported the Confederacy advocating for the opposite. Among the most prominent groups of Confederate supporters was the Manchester Southern Club, or the Southern Independence Association as it became known after October 1863. The group was created in response to the famous meeting of the pro-Union Manchester Union and Emancipation Society, whose base was energized by Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.
Newspaper articles from May 1863 suggest that the Manchester Southern Club drew from the support of workingmen and tradesmen negatively impacted by the national cotton shortage — a direct consequence of the Union’s blockading of southern ports. Many of these men felt they had to take a stand to protect their livelihoods — and believed that convincing the British government to recognise the Confederacy as an independent nation would end the cotton shortage and restore their livelihoods. Within the first year of its formation, the Manchester Southern Club boasted 1,072 members, most spread across the country. A similar 1863 membership form for the Club showed that the subscription cost of joining was one guinea, equivalent to £106.90 in 2022 value. The headquarters of the Manchester Southern Club was situated in the middle of Manchester city centre, on 26 Market Street, in an area that is today one of the city’s retail spaces. A map from 1886 highlights where the offices were located when the Club was active.
The Club’s manifesto is the best way to understand exactly what they were looking to achieve, and it claimed that the Confederacy was already a self-sufficient nation and thus deserving of independence, and extolled the economic opportunities that such recognition of the new country could bring for Great Britain.
The materials that this research was based on were found entirely in the city of Manchester, in the special collections of the John Rylands Library and the University of Manchester’s Main Library. Few scholars and students have previously worked with these sources, and the history of the Manchester Southern Club largely remains to be written. It is important to conduct such research, and to recover the outlook of groups such as the MSC to capture the depth of division that existed among the people of Great Britain around this major global event. Even in a city like Manchester, positions were not as clear cut as has sometimes been imagined.
Additional Reading
Goldwin Smith, A letter to a Whig member of the Southern independent association (London, 1864). Ref R151423.
Goldwin Smith, The Civil War in America: an address… (1866) Ref. R31415.
Southern Independence Association, List of President and Vice-Presidents, (c1863). Ref. R107337.17.31.
