“That in consequence of the widespread distress that now prevails in the cotton districts by the continuance of the war in America, this meeting is desirous that Her Majesty’s Government should use their influence, together with France and other European powers, to bring both belligerents together in order to put a stop to the vast destruction of life and property that is now going on in that unhappy country[1246].”
No doubt this spectacular meeting was organized for effect, but in truth it must have overshot the mark, for by October, 1864, the distress in Lancashire was largely alleviated and the public knew it, while elsewhere in the cotton districts the mass of operative feeling was with the North. Even in Ireland petitions were being circulated for signature among the working men, appealing to Irishmen in America to stand by the administration of Lincoln and to enlist in the Northern armies on the ground of emancipation[1247]. Here, indeed, was the insuperable barrier, in the fall of 1864, to public support of the South. Deny as he might the presence of the “foul blot” in Southern society, Hotze, of The Index, could not counteract that phrase. When the Confederate Congress at Richmond began, in the autumn of 1864, seriously to discuss a plan of transforming slaves into soldiers, putting guns in their hands, and thus replenishing the waning man-power of Southern armies, Hotze was hard put to it to explain to his English readers that this was in fact no evidence of lowered strength, but rather a noble determination on the part of the South to permit the negro to win his freedom by bearing arms in defence of his country[1248].