The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1902-04-05
MY STORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
BY JAMES E. HOLDEN.
From The Outlook.

It was like this: I was born in
Burnley, Lancashire, England, dur
ing the Civil War in America. My
native town and all the large towns
around it were dependent on Ameri-
can cotton for their existence. Lam
cashire was the cotton weaving coun-
ty. When the war began, the cotton
stopped coming from the States and
what you know as the Civil War was
known to my people as "The Cotton
Famine. And what famine that
was no one will ever know except
those who took part in it. Sitting by
the fireplace on winter evenings,
have heard the story so often that, as
now recall it, it seems almost too
horrible to relate. My father says
that when I was born there was but
half loaf in the house, and many of
his neighbors had gone south to beg
their bread from door to door. Some
emigrated to the Northwestern States,
and found the pinch was not felt there
as much as in their native town.
First the news came that the war
could not last, and that Lincoln would
settle it quickly. The mills and
weaving sheds were put on short time.
three days week, and SO they held
for four months. Then came two
days then they closed altogether.
Many firms crippled themselves to
keep their employees at work. Hun
dreds of half-famished men an women
gathered around the one or two daily
newspapers hoping against hope and
expecting every morning that the
Federals had taken Richmond, but it
was long delayed. Mills closed, stores
closed, mines closed. Men who were
in comfortable circumstances before
that war had to make over their bus
mess houses to their creditors.
The wealthier classes, the cotton
broker and large manufacturer, fav-
ored the South, because they could
not understand how the North, Sup
posing it was victorious, was going
to give them any cotton. 1t is no
doubt true that Union soldiers found
English-made arms on the battlefield
after routing men of the South, but 1
tell you the poor starved cotton oper-
atives in Lancashire had nothing to
do with it. Men I have worked with
told me about the terrible change that
came to them in those dark days.
Families in afluence were brought
to poverty. l have often wondered
how much that half loaf-and it was
the last one in the street of forty
homes-had to do with my mothers S
death soon after I was born. l won
der how many poor wretches there
were in the crowd that agreed one
night, after what they called starva-
ton meeting, to go and end their
lives in the canal. Father said they
had wholesale burial next day, and
starvation meetings were prohibited
after that. One man had a business
worth bIoo, 900, but when l left Eng
land he and his family were working
for thirty shillings a week in the
great firm he owned before those
times. The question in every home,
on every street corner, on every pa1lid
lip, from the old man to the child
that could not understand it all, was,
"Has Lee surrendered yet?''
Do you want to know which side
they were on? Let me tell you. 1t
was in Glosup, near Manchester, that
a cotton salesman, or broker, got up
and made speech in one of the re-
lief meetings. He hoped "that the
South would smash Lincoln and the
North into cooked hats" He never
finished that speech. I have met him
on the cotton exchange many time,
and he bears a mark on his face that
even the children call "the Lincoln
mark"
It was of no use for an aristocrat to
attempt to argue with these hungry,
desperate men. They had been too
long already under the power of the
lord and landlord, which is a syno-
nym for oppression in that country.
They had worked too long at poor
house wages not to feel thrill of
pride and fellowship that they were
counted worthy to suffer with you
for liberty sake. Hundreds of chill