Richard Cobden

Richard Cobden was a Liberal Member of Parliament for Rochdale, Lancashire, and a strong advocate for the Union cause, largely owing to his ardent anti-slavery attitudes and non-conformist tendencies.  His views, however, were different from John Bright’s on some key issues – Cobden not only was critical of the Union blockade of the Confederate coast due to his advocacies of free trade in times of war and peace, but he had a negative view of Abraham Lincoln for the first half of his presidency, going so far as informing Bright that he favoured Confederate President Jefferson Davis over the US President.

Although entirely against the idea of British intervention on behalf of the South, Cobden tended to remain quiet in Parliament, allowing colleagues John Bright and W. E. Forster to do most of the orating and debating.  His main contributions to the Northern war efforts was giving advice to US Secretary of State William H. Seward and Charles Sumner, Chairman of the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on how to correspond with Lord John Russell and the British Foreign Minister to Washington, Lord Lyons, when Anglo-American relations were particularly strained, such as affairs regarding the Trent crisis, General Butler’s occupation of New Orleans, and the construction of Confederate naval ships in British ports.

Cobden died on 2 April 1865, the day before the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, fell to Union forces.