remained a further 25,000 men receiving aid but not doing any work. To Victorian thinking this was wrong and some means was needed to provide paid work. Local authorities did have work that needed to be done but no legal way to borrow to pay for it. The Public Works Manufacturing Districts Act 1864 became law 2 July 1863. This allowed public authorities to borrow money for public works. Cotton operatives could now be employed on useful projects. The Lancashire area has a legacy of municipal parks that were created in this period such as Alexandra Park, Oldham. More important were the main sewers that were commissioned to replace the collapsing medieval drains and to bring sanitation to the hundreds of mill workers' cottages that supported the mills. Canals were dug, rivers straightened and new roads constructed such as the cobbled road on Rooley Moor above Norden known as the "Cotton Famine Road". The public works commissioned in this period left a major impression on the infrastructure of the towns of Lancashire and the surrounding cotton areas. Cotton starts to flow A trickle of raw cotton reached Lancashire in late 1863 but failed to get to the worst affected regions, being swallowed up in Manchester. The cotton was adulterated with stones but its arrival caused the principal operators to bring in key operators to prepare the mills. The American Civil War ended in April 1865. In August 1864, the first large consignment arrived and Wooley Bridge mill in Glossop reopened, giving all operatives a four and half day week. Employment then returned to normal. Raw cotton prices had risen from 6½d in 1861 to 27½d in 1864. Politics The Confederacy hoped that distress in the European cotton manufacturing areas (similar hardships occurred in France), together with distaste in European ruling circles for democracy would lead to European intervention to force the Union to make peace on the basis of accepting secession of the Confederacy. After Union forces had repulsed a Confederate incursion at the Battle of Antietam in September 1862, Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation. Slavery had been abolished in the British Empire by the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 three decades earlier after a long campaign. The Unionists believed that all the British public would now see this as an antislavery issue rather than an anti-protectionism issue and would pressure its government not to intervene in favour of the South.