The Guardian confronts and apologizes for its role in the slave trade

[David Lockmiller]

There’s a house in St. Ann’s Square in the city, which is where Frederick Douglass lived in the 1840s and his freedom was bought by Northern England people, mainly Greater Manchester.

[D]uring the U.S. Civil War, a group of mill laborers gathered at a place called Free Trade Hall to draft a letter to President Abraham Lincoln, saying, in essence, we stand with you, even though the blockade imposed on goods from the Confederacy had caused mills in the city to shut down, inducing what became known here as the cotton famine.

The president was touched enough to write back:

“Under the circumstances,” he said, “I cannot but regard your decisive utterances upon the question as an instance of sublime Christian heroism which has not been surpassed in any age or in any country.”

There is a statue of Lincoln in the middle of Manchester today, with words of the letter on a plaque on the pedestal.

Contrast this with the story of the Quarry Bank Mill owner, which opened in 1784 by an Irish immigrant, Samuel Greg. It was staffed largely by children who worked 12-hour shifts, six days a week, and were not paid, unless they put in overtime. Among the many disturbing displays here is a one-page inventory from Mr. Greg’s plantation in the West Indies, which itemizes 146 “Negroes” above a list of livestock, including mules, cows and oxen.

There appears to me to have been more than one kind of slavery at the time.