The amazing reason Manchester has an Abraham Lincoln statue and square in the city centre

Located just off Albert Square in the smaller, more easily missed location of Lincoln Square, there stands a statue of the late US President Abraham Lincoln.

But why?

You’d be forgiven for being a little puzzled at the presence of an American politician who seemingly has no connection or place in our city, especially in a location as quiet and hidden away as Lincoln Square is.

But, as it turns out, the statue stands tall today as a poignant reminder for the role Victorian Manchester played in the US Civil War and the eventual abolishment of slavery.

David Dixon / Geograph

Let’s start from the beginning: As the largest processor of cotton in the world at the time, Manchester took a strong moral and political stance by supporting President Lincoln, despite his blockade of the Confederate states and the cotton supply beginning in April 1861.

Even though Manchester and its surrounding areas found a huge proportion (an estimated 60%) of its mills were struggling to stay afloat, largely as a result of the blockade, in a meeting at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in 1862 workers agreed to maintain their support for Lincoln – who was aiming to out-manoeuvre the Confederate states, win the civil war and ultimately abolish the US slave trade.

In supporting Lincoln and the Union the working people of Manchester had selflessly put their principles ahead of their own economic self-interest, leading to unemployment and hardship for the workers.

Thomas Hawk / Flickr

President Lincoln wrote a letter in 1863 to thank the people of Manchester for their support – the letter, currently held by Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, reads: “When I came, on the 4th of March, 1861, through a free and constitutional election to preside in the Government of the United States, the country was found at the verge of civil war.

“Whatever might have been the cause, or whosesoever the fault, one duty, paramount to all others, was, before me, namely, to maintain and preserve at once the Constitution and the integrity of the Federal Republic.”

Just two years later and months after the US Congress passed the Thirteenth Amendment which officially abolished slavery, Lincoln was assassinated. 

Despite his death, however, Lincoln continued to be regarded as somewhat of a Mancunian legend so, shortly after the First World War, a statue in his memory was sculpted by George Grey Bernard. The original statue was completed in 1916 and exhibited in New York before its sponsor, wealthy businessman Charles Taft from Cincinatti, said he would pay for a replica to be erected in England.

The statue was actually intended to stand outside the Houses of Parliament, in a tribute from the United States marking 100 years of peace between the two countries. However, the American sculptors’ depiction of a ‘vigorous pose’ was far too controversial for London’s tastes at the time, so the statue subsequently came to Manchester where it remains today.

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The monument was initially unveiled at Platt Fields Park, where it remained until the late 1980s before being moved and mounted on a new pedestal in its home today, Lincoln Square. 

And, in 2013, after years of enduring pollution and dirt build-up, the plaque was eventually cleaned and the message to the people of Manchester was revealed at long last.

It reads: “The support that the working people of Manchester gave in their fight for the abolition of slavery during the American Civil War… By supporting the union under President Lincoln at a time when there was an economic blockade of the southern states the Lancashire cotton workers were denied access to raw cotton which caused considerable unemployment throughout the cotton industry.”