Browse Items (31 total)

This report in the Boston Daily Advertiser used the Manchester Cotton Report to estimate the amount of cotton that had evaded the Union blockade.

Major General Samuel Curtis flatly denied any speculation, profiteering, or abuse of power in his letter to Commissary of Subsistence Richard McAllister. Curtis attributes the charges to "an infernal conspiracy" and is adamant that he never sold any…

Excerpts from a speech delivered in the senate before the civil war, South Carolina senator James Henry Hammond warned of dire consequences if the south was unable to deliver cotton to the world.

38th Congress Committee on Commerce Investigative Report to accompany Bill H. R. No. 805; Investigating Trade with Confederate States.

Abraham Lincoln to William Kellogg, rejecting his attempts to secure a cotton permit for former Illinois legislator, Amos Babcock. Lincoln scolded Kellogg for his single-minded pursuit of a permit and observed the corruption already associated with…

The Crisis, an Ohio newspaper sympathetic to the Confederacy, published this editorial excoriating Major General Curtis for using his authority to confiscate and sell cotton. The editorial is followed by a transcript of Major General Steele's…

This permit authorized Fergus Peniston, a Louisiana cotton merchant, to transport and sell the cotton he possesses. In order to obtain this permit, Peniston wrote several petitions to Lincoln and enlisted friends of the administration to write on his…

In this leaflet, Pennsylvania philanthropists solicited charitable donations for unemployed British textile workers. The sudden decline in the cotton supply created by the Civil War led to widespread reports of "actual or impending starvation" in…

Editorial written in 1864 by Edward Atkinson, a cotton mill executive and abolition activist. He argued that the current cotton trading system is inefficient and rife with corruption. Since it did not prevent money and goods from getting back to the…

Newspaper editorial published in the Liverpool Mercury raising the specter of potentially siding with the Confederacy if the Union didn't end its war with the South.