Abraham Lincoln and John Bright
Article by Bill Cash, author of John Bright: Statesman, Orator, Agitator, in the The New Statesman magazine, March 13, 2013.

During the course of the American Civil War, Bright had devoted all his energies to protecting his beloved American democracy – a key influence on his own campaigns for parliamentary reform – centering his arguments on the moral repugnance of slavery. In this, he had the support of the workers at his own cotton mill in Rochdale who, even when impoverished during the cotton famine caused by the war, refused to accept Southern slave-grown cotton. Yet, the relationship between Bright and Lincoln was not merely a real influence on Lincoln himself but on the history of the civil war.

In 1863, Bright defeated a resolution in the House of Commons for an alliance between Britain, the Emperor Napoleon II of France, and the southern Confederate states against the North, as well as ditching the £16 million support raised in England to support the South – the equivalent today of $1.7 billion (estimated by reference to the UK retail price index) – with the British Navy ruling the waves, this undoubtedly would have tipped the balance against the North, particularly given the support of Prime Minister Palmerston, Gladstone and Russell for the South at that time.

Shuyler Colfax and Henry Janney – both of whom were confidants of Lincoln – wrote to Bright after the assassination telling him that his portrait and only his portrait was in President Lincoln’s reception room. Lincoln had sent two portraits of himself to Bright.

Henry Janney (dated 24 April, 1865, immediately after the assassination), wrote to Bright relating how he “told the President I had a letter from thee and he requested me to bring it up and let him see it, saying, ‘I love to read the letters of Mr Bright.’ I complied, when he read carefully every word, then remarked to those around him, ‘my friend has shown me a letter from Mr Bright. I believe he is the only British statesman who has been unfaltering in his confidence in our ultimate success – look there.’ I stepped up to the wall and seeing a familiar face read beneath it, John Bright MP. It was the only portrait in the room.”

Vice-President Shuyler Colfax, then Speaker of the House of Representatives, wrote to Bright in 1866, requesting a likeness of Bright, saying, “Your face is quite familiar to me already, as your portrait hung up in President Lincoln’s Reception room, and often, in the many evenings I spent with him there, he referred to you with sincere regard & even affection. Every loyal man & woman in the land knows you, knows you and esteems you. But your correspondence with Senator Sumner, whom I often meet (& we often talk about you, you may be assured) has informed you of all this.”

It is perhaps, then, no surprise that a long-standing testimonial from Bright calling for Lincoln’s re-election was found in Lincoln’s pocket when they were emptied immediately after his assassination.

I located a book at the San Francisco Public Library titled “The Diaries of John Bright.” The following is the entry for April 29, 1865:

“While at Dolgelly on the 27th heard of the shocking tragedy in Washington, the murder of President Lincoln. For an hour or near it, I felt stunned and ill. . . .

In him I have observed a singular resolution honestly to do his duty, a great courage, shown in the fact that in his speeches and writings no word of passion or of panic, or of ill-will, has ever escaped him; a great gentleness of temper and nobleness of soul proved by the absence of irritation and menace under circumstances of the most desperate provocation, and a pity and mercifulness to his enemies which seemed drawn as from the very fount of Christian charity and love. His simplicity for a time did much to hide his greatness, but all good men everywhere will mourn for him and history will place him high among the best and noblest of men.”

The words of Tolstoy sound familiar.

(05-15-2022 12:22 AM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  I located a book at the San Francisco Public Library titled “The Diaries of John Bright.” The following is the entry for April 29, 1865:

“While at Dolgelly on the 27th heard of the shocking tragedy in Washington, the murder of President Lincoln. For an hour or near it, I felt stunned and ill. . . .

In him I have observed a singular resolution honestly to do his duty, a great courage, shown in the fact that in his speeches and writings no word of passion or of panic, or of ill-will, has ever escaped him; a great gentleness of temper and nobleness of soul proved by the absence of irritation and menace under circumstances of the most desperate provocation, and a pity and mercifulness to his enemies which seemed drawn as from the very fount of Christian charity and love. His simplicity for a time did much to hide his greatness, but all good men everywhere will mourn for him and history will place him high among the best and noblest of men.”

The words of Tolstoy sound familiar.

John Bright's diary entry of April 29, 1865 continued and ended as follows:

"I have had no direct communication with the late President, but my letters to Chas. Sumner as well as those from Cobden were frequently read by him, and he sent me, thro' Mr. Sumner, in his own handwriting, a draft resolution which he suggested as likely to be useful if adopted at public meetings held in this country in favour of the North. It referred to the question of Slavery, and the impossibility of our recognizing a new State based on the foundation of human bondage." (Emphasis added.)

An editor footnote to this paragraph notes: "Lincoln sometimes read Bright's letters aloud in the meetings of the Cabinet at Washington."

And, the words of the draft resolution that President Lincoln wrote to Mr. John Bright of England are:

"Whereas while heretofore States and Nations have tolerated slavery, recently for the first time in the world an attempt has been made to construct a new nation upon the basis of and with the fundamental object to maintain, enlarge and perpetuate human slavery, therefore

"Resolved, that no such embryo State should ever be recognized by or admitted into the family of Christian and civilized nations; and that all Christian and civilized men everywhere should, by all lawful means, resist to the utmost such recognition or admission."