IV. ANTISLAVERY LECTURES IN CONCORD
IV.D. George Thompson:
George Thompson (1804-1878)—Scottish antislavery activist, reformer, lecturer, and member of Parliament—worked toward the abolition of slavery in the British colonies. In 1834, he came to the United States, where he collaborated with William Lloyd Garrison (who had visited Britain not long before) and other American abolitionists to advance the antislavery cause.
The controversial Thompson drew considerable publicity and reaction on his first trip to America. He spoke in Concord at the first quarterly meeting of the Middlesex County Antislavery Society on January 27, 1835, and later that evening at a public meeting in the Trinitarian Congregational Church. The local newspapers engaged in debate over Thompson's upcoming visit in the weeks leading up to it, the Yeoman's Gazette taking an anti-Thompson stand, urging boycott of his lecture, and holding up slave rebellion and civil war as possible consequences of abolitionist activity, the Concord Freeman supporting Thompson's appearance. Later in the year, on October 9th, Thompson spoke at the annual meeting of the Middlesex County Antislavery Society in Acton and in the Congregational meetinghouse there.
On October 10, 1835, through an invitation extended by Mary Moody Emerson, newlyweds Waldo and Lidian Emerson had George Thompson and Samuel Joseph May to breakfast. In his journal entry for that day, Emerson revealed his reservations about the motives of reformers: "Thompson the Abolitionist is incontrovertible; what you say or what might be said make no impression on him. He belongs I fear to that great class of Vanity-stricken."
In Boston shortly after his visit to the Emersons, Thompson was unable to deliver an address that the American Antislavery Society had invited him to give. William Lloyd Garrison agreed to speak in his stead. An angry mob looking for Thompson surrounded the hall, and, in his absence, pursued and nearly lynched Garrison. Thompson fled from Boston for safety in New Brunswick, and from New Brunswick sailed back to England.
Thompson later returned to America. He spoke before the Concord Lyceum on "British Politics" on January 15, 1851. The manuscript "Skeleton of a Lecture by George Thompson M.P. of England" here shown reveals that his 1851 Concord lecture touched upon a range of social reforms, foremost the abolition of slavery.
On his last trip to America during the Civil War, Thompson was honored by a public reception attended by President Lincoln in the House of Representatives in Washington.
 |
|---|
 |
|---|