England) Union and Emancipation Society (Manchester

Founded in Manchester in 1863, the Union and Emancipation Society was a British abolitionist organization created to support the Union and oppose slavery during the American Civil War. Library and catalog records credit it as the author or issuing body for pamphlets, speeches, and reports circulated from Manchester, including works such as Earl Russell and the Slave Power, War Ships for the Southern Confederacy, and The Working Men of Manchester and President Lincoln.

Because this is an organization, not an individual author, there is no personal life story in the usual sense. The society is closely associated with Manchester reform circles and with public campaigning meant to persuade British audiences that the war in America was tied to emancipation as well as union.

Its surviving publications are valuable as historical documents: they show how activists in industrial England argued about slavery, foreign policy, and moral responsibility in the 1860s. Readers interested in transatlantic abolition, Civil War politics, or Manchester’s reform culture will find these works especially revealing.