George Thompson,transatlantic abolitionism,and Britain in the American Civil War

The British abolitionist George Thompson was an unequalled public face of the Northern states in Britain during the American Civil War. Capitalising on his reputation from decades of anti-slavery activism stretching back to the 1830s, Thompson lectured convincingly to a variety of British audiences on the emancipationist potential of the war, encouraging them to lend their support to the Northern cause. Revealing his continuing intellectual debt and personal connections to the American abolitionists around William Lloyd Garrison, this article uses Thompson’s activism to emphasise the continuing importance of transatlantic Garrisonian ideology and networks in a period that historians have previously characterised as a ‘rupturing’ in the movement.