Not Taking Sides: Australia & the American Civil War

Introduction:

While Australia was geographically quite removed from the theatre of the American Civil War, its ripples did carry across the Pacific Ocean to the continent. The Civil war - which lasted from 1861 to 1865 - was a brutal one, arguably the first industrial war, permanently scarring both the political landscape of the US and its people.[1] It’s effects were legion and long lasting; in fact the very last Civil War widow was to pass away as recently as 2020.[2] Australia in 1861 was not even a nation but instead a conglomerate of independent British colonies—all in their separate forms of development on the road to self-government and a sense of individual political identity. In that sense there was no ‘Australia’ yet, the nation had yet to be born. However, the British subjects that populated our handful of colonies looked on with a degree of interest and shared horror as their ‘cousins’ waged war on themselves essentially over the issue of slavery.[3] It’s not the purpose of this essay to present a potted history of the American Civil War and thereby provide a description and analysis of the causal factors involved or the political and/or social outcomes of the conflict.[4] Rather it is my intention to establish how and to what extent the American Civil War affected the Australian colonies on different levels and particularly how it was received and responded to by them.

 

The specific research questions I have formulated therefore are: What was the ‘Australian’ attitude to the issue of slavery? Did the Australian colonies support the Union or the Confederacy? How specifically, if at all, were the Australian colonies affected by the American Civil War?

 

The Battle of Gettysburg, Nathaniel Currier and James Merritt Ives, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Australian colonial attitudes to the issue of slavery:

One of the precursors to the conflict had been the attempt by farmer, tanner, surveyor, and later abolitionist John Brown to instigate a slave rebellion at Harper’s Ferry, Jefferson County in West Virginia and his subsequent trial and execution in 1858. Brown’s actions were born directly of his Puritan faith combined with an insistence on the righteousness of the American constitution that noted the equality of all men.[5] There was a large degree of sympathy for John Brown and his cause in the colonies. A South Australian editorial declared in 1860:

We have already deprecated the wild attempt of Old John Brown with his score of followers to liberate the slaves of Southern America, and we repeat our conviction that the Harper’s Ferry scheme was the offspring of literal insanity. But the fate of that brave old man, whose worst acts sprang from the holiest of motives, and the impetuous inhuman mode in which that fate was inflicted by Virginian slaveholders, redeem his memory from disgrace and elevate him to the dignity of a martyr.[6]

The shared sense of Christian values between the states and the Australian colonies made Brown a common sympathetic figure.

 

It was possible to be an inherently racist society yet still be largely opposed to the economic policy of slavery. The passage of the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 and the subsequent Emancipation Act of 1834 had sought to abolish slavery throughout the British Empire by 1840. Despite this ‘enlightened’ development which was already ‘history’ by 1861, newfound freedom did not translate into equality.[7] The battle for the abolishing of slavery in the British Empire had been a long and bitter one. Many had ruminated during the transition on the economic impacts of the reform including scarcity of labour in the West Indies and lower productivity in sugar plantations.[8] But these were largely economic arguments and they eventually floundered when pitched against ethical ones. Abolition in the British Empire marked the end of an economic practice and not, by any scale of measurement, the end of racism. Henry Melville, in his observations on Mauritus in 1828, argued that freedom could even be seen as ‘valueless’ as slaves were often happier there at least, before they were freed. Their disadvantages in an overtly racist colonial society made their subsequent lives challenging and a law was passed mandating that slaves had to be awarded land or at least 500 piastres before being granted their liberty. Tellingly, Melville also concluded that life as a slave anywhere in the British Empire – as appalling brutal and exploitative as it may have been - was eminently more desirable than life as an indigenous Aboriginal of Van Diemen’s Land![9]

 

Slaves working on a cotton plantation, James Richard Barfoot, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Racism was, of course, transplanted to the Australian continent as a byproduct of British colonialisation. Aside from the violence and discrimination perpetuated against the indigenous population, one of the most obvious early examples of it being inflicted on another immigrant population, was that perpetuated against Chinese miners during the gold rush period. Certainly, the reaction to the employ of ‘Kanakas’ in Northern Queensland was arguably another plank in the emergence of a white Australian policy. [10] After Australia became a nation, one of the first pieces of legislation passed by its new Commonwealth Parliament was the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901. Increasingly Australia was seen as rightfully a place for Europeans only and Asian or anyone of colour was to be discouraged. Yet even though racist prejudice was clearly evident, and exclusion of the ‘other’ was increasingly seen as justified, abolitionism by contrast represented the ‘holiest of motives’.[11]

 

Australian colonial neutrality in during the American Civil War:

Perhaps the best measure of colonial neutrality or otherwise to the American Civil War was the visit of the USS Shenandoah in 1865. The ship, a clipper-built screw steamer of 709 tons, arrived in Australian waters in January r to arrange repairs. The crew included a nephew of General Robert E. Lee.[12] While it was built for mercantile service, it had been outfitted with ‘four smooth-bore sixty-eight pounders, and two thirty-two-pounder rifled Whitworths, together with two smooth-bore eighteen pounders, used principally as signal guns’. On Wednesday, 25 January 1865, the Shenandoah arrived at Hobson’s Bay, Victoria. The ship had previously suffered damage to its shaft in the South Atlantic.[13] After a two-hour emergency meeting between the Governor Charles Darling and the Executive Council, they were somewhat cautiously allowed to dock. Specifically, the confederate ship was granted permission by the government to ‘…coal, provision, and effect the necessary repairs to her machinery’. But clearly the subsequent interaction was more complex and lively than anticipated. The crew and the ship proved a popular social curiosity during their stay with thousands visiting to take tours of the ship. In fact, the Sydney Mail reported that visitors ‘showed their Southern sympathies by cheering the Shenandoah heartily as they took their departure from her’.[14]

 

C.S.S. Shenandoah destroying whale ships, B. Russell, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The reason for the initial delay in processing the arrival was without doubt concerns over the official British government policy of neutrality particularly following the instigation of the ‘Alabama claims’ by the United States against the United Kingdom from 1862.[15] Soon after its arrival in Hobson’s Bay, the Adelaide Observer related an edict from Lord Russell which had been gazetted a few days earlier, openly insisting that no vessel of war or privateer should be allowed when at port in British territory to take on any more than subsistence rations or coal that was what was necessary for them to their own country or some near destination.[16] There may have been a more negative attitude towards the presence of the ship due in part to the fact that the Shenandoah boarded another ship named the Nimrod off the coast of South Australia on arrival in British waters before allowing it to go on its way unmolested only after it was satisfied that it was English and not associated in any way with the Union.[17] A second reason may have been that Adelaide was missing out on all the fun![18] Any negative reaction to their presence in Melbourne was attributed by John Thomson Mason to the American Consul and a small group of American shipping merchants who ‘…tried in every way to involve us in a dispute of some kind with the authorities, with a hope of some kind that the ship might thus be detained or seized…’.[19] Regardless, it is likely that international tensions were the reason for a collective sigh of relief amongst the colonial media on the Shenandoah’s prompt departure rather than any personal objections to the crew.[20]

 

Indeed, there proved to be an unequal exchange of men during the Shenandoah’s time in Melbourne. By some accounts, the ship had a crew of only 23 men although it was augmented by several prisoners. At least eighteen of its own crew were rumoured to have deserted![21] However, when the Shenandoah departed from Williamstown on 16 February 1865 it had in turn gained an unspecified number of crewmen. Indeed, four men who were believed to have been concealed on the ship were caught escaping soon before its departure. However, Captain James Waddell refused permission for Victorian authorities to search his ship on departure from Williamstown noting that to allow such a search was ‘contrary to the dignity of the Confederate flag’.[22] Its new recruits were officially enlisted just outside of British territorial waters. The ship was the last of the Confederate fleet to surrender in November at Liverpool, England and there it was found to contain forty-two colonials aboard![23] At least 100 Australian and New Zealand colonists were known to have served on both sides in the American Civil War.[24] There appears to be no discernable bias to either the Confederate or Union sides of the conflict among these colonial recruits—it’s likely that that other factors such as poverty and perhaps even the call to adventure were responsible for their engagement in the war, rather than any kind of coherent abolitionist political philosophy.

 

When President Lincoln was assassinated on 14 April 1865, there was certainly an outpouring of genuine official and public regret throughout the Australian colonies. The emphasis appears to have been on his personal tragedy and perhaps some fascination with the nature of the conspiracy rather than his leadership of the Union or his advocation of a policy of emancipation. ‘Honest Abe’ was variously described in editorials as a ‘revered’ President, America’s ‘Cromwell’ whose death had thrown a ‘gloom’ across the world. His record of suspending habeus corpus and suppressing the press were now virtually forgotten – perhaps with some admission that his motivations in maintaining the union had been as much economic as it had been abolitionist or emancipist.[25] The platitudes were more reflective of the loss of a man in his political prime and a leader during testing times rather than a deeper collective preoccupation with his ‘cause’.

 

The effects of the American Civil War on the Australian colonies:

There proved to be two direct effects on the Australian colonies resulting from the American Civil War. Once war was declared in the United States, Australia became the subject of heightened international strategic machinations. Geo-political alliances were evident even in 1861 and as a result Russia threatened to attack the Australian colonies if Britain politically recognised the Confederacy. The Russian Empire was after all an ally of the Union and despite the Tsar abolishing serfdom in 1861, the support was pragmatic rather than ideological.[26] In December 1864 the news broke that Russian Admiral Andrey Popov who had visited Melbourne aboard the Bogatyr in 1863, had received orders in the middle of that year to institute an attack on British ships stationed in the territorial waters around the Australian colonies. This secret was revealed by a former officer of the Bogatyr, Lieutenant Zbyszewski. Although there was clearly some skepticism over his motivations and the delay in his release of the information, the revelation clearly concerned both the colonies and the British authorities.[27]

 

There had been consistent concerns over the threat the Russian Empire posed to British interests in the region since the Russian sloop Neva wandered into Port Jackson in June 1807. The alliance between the United States and Russia presented the distinct possibility of Australia being drawn into an international conflict if the British government had chosen to support the Confederacy on an official level. These concerns were heightened by the neglect of the colonies’ military defences. In 1862 the Russian ship Svenlana arrived in Port Philip Bay and fired a ceremonial salute which could not be returned as there was a shortage of gunpowder! Even in May 1870, the arrival of the Russian Imperial corvette Boyarin in the Derwent River caused panic in Hobart when it was feared it was the head of an invasion armada. [28]

 

Newspaper illustration of people waiting in line for welfare at a Provident Society office in Manchester, Uncredited, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

 

The Lancashire Cotton Famine occurred as a direct consequence of the American Civil War. A blockade of southern ports by the Union navy led to a shortage of cotton supplies to Europe. Production ceased from October 1861 and mill closures and widespread unemployment became endemic in the Lancashire economy. The war proved, despite initial hopes, to be a sustained one and there were subsequent riots in Stalybride, Dukinfield and Ashton. The British Government were characteristically slow and incompetent in their response to alleviate poverty and distress.[29] As a direct result of the shortage, cotton became the young colony of Queensland’s biggest crop between 1861-3. However, in addition to cool resistance from British ‘cotton lords’ at the time who doubted the feasibility of the industry on the Australian continent, the climate proved very unsuitable, and the project was a failure.[30]

 

Another inadvertent effect of the war was an upsurge in Irish migration to the antipodes in preference to the United States or North America more generally. There was an increase in the percentage of the total share of Irish global emigration to Australia from 3.8% of total between 1846 and 1855 to a sustained 11.5% between the 1856 and 1880. This fell away abruptly to 5.7% between 1881 and 1900. While some could be attributed to family reunions as a result of sustained transportation from Ireland to the Australian colonies until 1853, as well as the US recession of 1858, the increase was also very likely a reflection of a widespread aversion to the conflict on the North American continent.[31]

 

Conclusion:

Despite obvious xenophobic and racist sentiments evident throughout the British colonies established on the Australian continent during the period of the American Civil War, there was strong mainstream sympathy for the abolitionist cause. After all, slavery had been officially abolished throughout the British Empire by 1840 and perhaps to the British Subjects resident in the Australian colonies, the practice seemed antiquated and cruel. John Brown was perhaps a sympathetic character because his actions were strongly rooted in Christian beliefs although a Puritan brand and the Australian colonies naturally enjoyed a shared Judeo-Christian heritage with a large cultural section of the United States. While apartheid by any name was acceptable to the Christian conscience in the colonies, slavery was not.

 

While most Australian colonists would have likely argued for the cause of the Union for reasons previously discussed, the reception for the crew of the Shenandoah in 1865 indicates that Australian colonists felt no widespread animosity towards the Confederate side. The civility with which the crew were treated, at least by the public, would have convinced them at least of their hosts neutrality. Similarly, the grief exhibited over the death of President Lincoln was as much a result of his loss as a leader and the unfair nature of his death as the cause he championed. The war was seen by these proto-Australians as a tragic but remote internal conflict of another Empire in relation to which, they were if nothing else, pragmatically neutral.

 

There were two main effects of the conflict on the Australian colonies. The onset of the American Civil War raised alarm in Australia over the increased probability of a Russian invasion. Whether there was any danger or not, it was obvious that the general public and perhaps the governments of the age believed there was a real pre-existing threat that was exacerbated by the conflict. However, the war also inadvertently created economic opportunities by triggering the Lancashire Cotton Famine which in turn provided an interim boon to the nascent Queensland economy and increasing Irish immigration to the antipodes generally in preference to North America.

Plaque commemorating C.S.S. Shenandoah, Rumford Place, Phil Nash, CC BY-SA 4.0 & GFDLViews, via Wikimedia Commons

- Dr. Colin Woollcott Mallett, 20 November 2022.

 

References

 

Primary Sources:

 

Newspapers:

 

Adelaide Observer

Age

Argus

Australian News for Home Readers

Ballarat Star

Bendigo Advertiser

Empire

Freeman’s Journal

Kepunda Herald and Northern Intelligencer

Launceston Examiner

Morning Bulletin

South Australian Register

Sydney Mail

 

 

Secondary Sources:

 

Books:

 

Hinton, R. J. John Brown and his Men, Funk and Wagnells, New York, Revised Edition, 1894.

 

McCall H. & Stewart, A. T. The Cotton Famine of 1862-3: with some sketch of the proceedings that took place in connection with the Lisburn Relief Committee, William McMillan and Son, London and Belfast, 1881, Revised Edition.

 

Melville, H. Observations Respecting the Islands of Mauritis Written During a Short Sojourn There in 1828, James Dally, Adelaide, 2004, Facsimile Edition.

 

Thomsen, B. Blue and Gray at Sea: Naval Memoirs of the Civil War, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 2004.

 

Van Doren Stern, P. The Confederate Navy: A Pictorial History, Da Capo Press, New York, 1992.

 

 

Magazines:

 

Mason, J. T. ‘The Last of the Confederate Cruisers’, Century Magazine, August 1898, p. 600-10.

 

Journals:

 

Doyle, David Noel. ‘The Irish in Australia and the United States: Some Comparisons, 1800-1939’ in Economic and Social History vo. 16 (1989), pp. 73–94.

 

Farnfield, J. ‘Cotton and the Search for an Agricultural Staple in Early Queensland’, Queensland Heritage, Vol. 2, No. 4, 1971, pp. 20-5.

 

Online Materials:

 

Crompton, C. ‘Civil War Participants Born in Australia and New Zealand’, Archer Memorial and Civil War Library & ACWRTA inc., September 2008. See: https://web.archive.org/web/20090217060350/http:/users.bigpond.com/bcrompton/Ausborn.htm accessed on 27 September 2022.

 

Editors (The) of the Encyclopedia Britannica, ‘Causes and Effects of the American Civil War’ in Britannica Online. See: https://www.britannica.com/summary/Causes-and-Effects-of-the-American-Civil-War accessed on 27 September 2022.

 

Elizdale, E. ‘Helen Viola Jackson, America’s Last Civil War Widow dead at 101’ in New York Post on 06 January 2021. See: https://nypost.com/2021/01/06/helen-viola-jackson-last-known-civil-war-widow-dead-at-101/ accessed on 27 September 2022.

 

Ishmael, O. ‘Emancipation – The End of Slavery in British Colonies, August 1 1834’ in Guyanese Online, 08 January 2020. See: https://guyaneseonline.net/2020/08/01/emancipation-the-end-of-slavery-in-british-colonies-august-1-1834/ accessed on 27 September 2022. 

 

Johnson, B. ‘The Lancashire Cotton Famine’ in Historic UK. See: https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/Lancashire-Cotton-Famine/ accessed on 27 September 2022.

 

Lassler, W. W. & Webber, J. L. ‘The Cost and Significance of the Civil War’ in Britannica Online. See: https://www.britannica.com/event/American-Civil-War/The-cost-and-significance-of-the-Civil-War accessed 27 September 2022.

 

Georgy Manaev, ‘How Australia prepared for war with Russia’ in Russia Beyond, 29 April 2019. See: https://www.rbth.com/history/330300-how-australia-prepared-for-war-with-russia accessed on 27 September 2022.

 

Unattributed, ‘Abraham Lincoln to Thomas Greely’ in Digital History. See: https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=393 accessed 27 September 2022.

 

Unattributed, ‘The Alabama Claims, 1862-72’ in Office of the Historian. See: https://history.state.gov/milestones/1861-1865/alabama accessed on 30 September 2022.

 

Unattributed, ‘Fact Sheet 8 – Abolition of the ‘White Australia Policy’,  https://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2009_2014/documents/danz/dv/0220_13_1/0220_13_1en.pdf accessed 27 September 2022

Yegorov, O. ‘What Role did Russia play in the American Civil War?’ in Russia Beyond, 16 August 2017. See: https://www.rbth.com/politics_and_society/2017/08/16/what-role-did-russia-play-in-the-us-civil-war_823252 accessed on 27 September 2022.

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[1] The mortality rate was approximately 2% of the population of the nation in 1860. It is perhaps more correctly considered a transitional war in the sense that it was the last traditional war, but it encompassed various technological innovations which were to fully culminate with intensity on the battlefields of the First World War. Warren W. Lassler & Jennifer L. Webber, ‘The Cost and Significance of the Civil War’ in Britannica Online. Accessed on 27 September 2022.

[2] Elizabeth Elizdale, ‘Helen Viola Jackson, America’s Last Civil War Widow dead at 101’ in New York Post on 06 January 2021. Accessed on 27 September 2022.

[3] President Lincoln was elected on an abolitionist platform in 1861 and on his assumption of power, no less than 11 states succeeded from the union. The Editors of the Encyclopedia Britannica, ‘Causes and Effects of the American Civil War’ in Britannica Online. Accessed on 27 September 2022.

[4] On this point I am not a ‘revisionist’: two of the main causes appear to have been the size of the slave population and the fear of rebellion this engendered in addition to the profitability of the system. Whatever the reasons, it is clear then that the Southern States during the 1850s were threatened by abolitionist policies in the North and felt that the Federal government did not have the right to decide where or how it was practiced on the state level. There have been more books written about the American Civil War than any other: approximately 60, 000! Warren W. Lassler & Jennifer L. Webber, ‘The Cost and Significance of the Civil War’ in Britannica Online. Accessed on 27 September 2022.

[5] It could and has been argued that there was something of the charismatic zealot about Brown. His approach to resisting slavery contrasts with the non-violent one shared by the Quakers. Although antiquated one of the best biographies of him is: Richard J. Hinton, John Brown and his Men, Funk and Wagnells, New York, Revised Edition, 1894, pp. 14, 22-38. Accessed on 27 September 2022.

[6] ‘The Latest Martyr’, Adelaide Observer, 11 April 1860, p.6. Accessed on 27 September 2022.

[7] Odeen Ishmael, ‘Emancipation – The End of Slavery in British Colonies, August 1 1834’ in Guyanese Online, 08 January 2020. Accessed on 27 September 2022. 

[8] ‘Slavery – Story of Abolition’, Morning Bulletin, 3 January 1933, p. 1. Accessed on 27 September 2022.

[9] Henry Melville, Observations Respecting the Islands of Mauritis Written During a Short Sojourn There in 1828, James Dally, Adelaide, 2004, Facsimile Edition, pp. 67-9.

[10] Fact Sheet 8 – Abolition of the ‘White Australia Policy’. Accessed on 27 September 2022.

[11] ‘The Latest Martyr’, op.cit. Accessed on 27 September 2022.

[12] ‘The Confederate War Steam Shenandoah’, The Australian News for Home Readers 23 February 1865, p. 3. Accessed on 27 September 2022.

[13] John Thomas Mason, ‘The Last of the Confederate Cruisers’, Century Magazine, August 1898, p. 606. Accessed on 27 September 2022.

[14] ‘The Confederate War Steamer Shenandoah’, Sydney Mail, 04 February 1865, p. 8. Accessed on 27 September 2022. In fact, two of the officers were inducted into honorary membership of the prestigious or at least elite ‘Melbourne Club’ and two visited the Legislative Assembly in person. Refer again: ‘The Confederate War Steam Shenandoah’, The Australian News for Home Readers 23 February 1865, p. 3

[15] Several confederate ships were slyly ordered and constructed in British ports disguised as merchant vessels, the most successful in combat being the Alabama. This initially led to the United States claiming damages but ultimately to improved diplomatic relations after the case was settled in 1872. Unattributed, ‘The Alabama Claims, 1862-72’ in Office of the Historian. Accessed on 30 September 2022.

[16] ‘The Shenandoah’, Adelaide Observer, 04 February 1865, p. 6. Accessed on 27 September 2022.

[17] Brian Thomsen, Blue and Gray at Sea: Naval Memoirs of the Civil War, (St. Martin’s Press, New York) 2004, pp. 282-283.

[18] Four of the officers (minus their Captain) even attended at ball held at Craig’s Royal Hotel in Ballarat on and were described as ‘all quite young men’ with a ‘quiet gentlemanly demeanor’. Ballarat Star, 11 February 1865, p. 2. Accessed on 30 September 2022.

[19] John Thomas Mason, op.cit. Accessed on 27 September 2022.

[20] ‘The Shenandoah’, Launceston Examiner 28 February 1865, p. 2. Accessed on 27 September 2022.

[21] Philip Van Doren Stern, The Confederate Navy: A Pictorial History (Da Capo Press, New York) 1992. If this is true then the ship may have contained more prisoners than crew and Waddell may have deemed it necessary to accept these new recruits, however ‘illegal’ his actions. This was despite there being some concern that some Union sympathisers might try to infiltrate the crew and ultimately seek to take the ship! Indeed, Mason mentions in his account that due to the desertions they were ‘deplorably short-handed’.  

[22] ‘The Shenandoah Affair’, Bendigo Advertiser 18 February 1865, p. 1. Accessed on 27 September 2022.

[23] John Thomson Mason, op.cit. Accessed on 27 September 2022.

[24] Barry Crompton, ‘Civil War Participants Born in Australia and New Zealand’, Archer Memorial and Civil War Library & ACWRTA inc., September 2008. Accessed on 27 September 2022.

[25] Refer to: The Age 26 June 1865, p. 5; Kepunda Herald and Northern Intelligencer 28 July 1865, p. 4; South Australian Register 28 June 1865, p. 2; Freeman’s Journal 1 July 1865, p. 409; Empire 25 July 1865, p.2. All accessed on 27 September 2022. In fact, Lincoln once stated in August 1862 that: ‘If I could save the union without freeing any slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.’ ‘Abraham Lincoln to Thomas Greely’ in Digital History. Accessed 27 September 2022.

[26] Oleg Yegorov, ‘What Role did Russia play in the American Civil War?’ in Russia Beyond, 16 August 2017. Accessed on 27 September 2022.

[27] ‘The Russians are Coming! By Fairplay’, The Argus 27 December 1864, p. 7. Accessed on 27 September 2022.

[28] Georgy Manaev, ‘How Australia prepared for war with Russia’ in Russia Beyond, 29 April 2019. Accessed on 27 September 2022.

[29] Ben Johnson, ‘The Lancashire Cotton Famine’ in Historic UK. Accessed on 27 September 2022. There is evidence of a proposal to relocated perhaps 100 families or more affected by the famine in the region to the Australian colonies, a policy that would have mutually beneficial although it appears to have been rejected on the basis of cost. Hugh McCall & Alexander Turney Stewart, The Cotton Famine of 1862-3: with some sketch of the proceedings that took place in connection with the Lisburn Relief Committee, William McMillan and Son, London and Belfast, 1881, Revised Edition, pp. 96-103. Accessed on 30 September 2022.

[30] Jean Farnfield, ‘Cotton and the Search for an Agricultural Staple in Early Queensland’, Queensland Heritage, Vol. 2, No. 4, 1971, pp. 20-5. Accessed on 30 September 2022.  In fact, aside from the distance from markets, the unreliable climate as well as lack of local expertise, the experiment highlighted the demand for cheap ‘coolie’ labour in the agriculture industry and may have helped pave the way for further examples of exploitation in the colony. This is ironic as overall the enterprise was seen by reformer Rev. Dunmore Lang as a way to build a better (Protestant) society free of both popery and slavery!

[31] David Noel Doyle, ‘The Irish in Australia and the United States: Some Comparisons, 1800-1939’, Irish Economic and Social History Vol. 16 (1989), pp. 79–80. Accessed on 27 September 2022.