ation of acknowledging
its dependency on the infant Confederacy of the South, and
the subserviency of its empire, its political interests and
its pride, to a single article of trade that was grown in
America[665]!"

But irrespective of the extremes to which Southern confidence in cotton
extended the actual hardships of England were in all truth serious
enough to cause grave anxiety and to supply an argument to Southern
sympathizers. The facts of the "Lancashire Cotton Famine" have
frequently been treated by historians at much length[666] and need here
but a general review. More needed is an examination of some of the
erroneous deductions drawn from the facts and especially an examination
of the extent to which the question of cotton supply affected or
determined British governmental policy toward America.

English cotton manufacturing in 1861 held a position of importance
equalled by no other one industry. Estimates based on varying statistics
diverge as to exact proportions, but all agree in emphasizing the
pre-eminent place of Lancashire in determining the general prosperity of
the nation. Surveying the English, not the whole British, situation it
is estimated that there were 2,650 factories of which 2,195 were in
Lancashire and two adjacent counties. These employed 500,000 operatives
and consumed a thousand million pounds of cotton each year[667]. An
editorial in the _Times_, September 19, 1861, stated that one-fifth of
the entire English population was held to be dependent, either directly
or indirectly, on the prosperity of the cotton districts[668], and
therefore also dependent on the source of supply, the Confederate South,
since statistics, though varying, showed that the raw cotton supplied
from America constituted anywhere from 78 to 84 per cent. of the total
English importation[669].

The American crop of 1860 was the largest on record, nearly 4,000,000
bales, and the foreign shipments, without question hurried because of
the storm-cloud rising at home, had been practically completed by April,
1861. Of the 3,500,000 bales sent abroad, Liverpool, as usual, received
the larger portion[670]. There was, then, no immediate shortage of
supply when war came in America, rather an unusual accumulation of raw
stocks, even permitting some reshipment to the Northern manufacturing
centres of America where the scarcity then brought high prices. In
addition, from December, 1860, to at least April, 186