Addresses of praise and sympathy
"began to pour into the Legation of the United States in a steady
and ever swelling stream." An immense popular demonstration took
place at Exeter Hall. Cobden, writing to Sumner, described the
new situation in British politics, in a letter amounting to an
assurance that the Government never again would attempt to resist
the popular pressure in favor of the North.
On the last day of 1862 a meeting of workingmen at Manchester,
where the cotton famine was causing untold misery, adopted one of
those New Year greetings to Lincoln. Lincoln's reply expressed
with his usual directness his own view of the sympathetic
relation that had been established between the democratic classes
of the two countries:
"I know and deeply deplore the sufferings which the workingmen at
Manchester, and in all Europe, are called to endure in this
crisis. It has been often and studiously represented that the
attempt to overthrow this Government, which was built upon the
foundation of human rights, and to substitute for it one which
should rest exclusively on the basis of human slavery, was likely
to obtain the favor of Europe. Through the action of our
disloyal citizens, the workingmen of Europe have been subjected
to severe trials, for the purpose of forcing their sanction to
that attempt.
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