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George Thompson (1804-78), English abolitionist and politician, was, like Garrison, an advocate of nonresistance. He first came to the United States as an antislavery lecturer in 1834-35, returned in 1850 (arrived October 29), and again was lecturing in this country from 1864-67 (Merrill III 14; V 23; Ruchames IV 44 n).

Once when he was in Boston to speak, some tough pro-slavery teamsters with horse whips attended a meeting. Their purpose was to capture Thompson when he left the building and ship him to South Carolina, where it was believed he might be lynched. After Thompson's speech, a group of twenty-five to thirty abolitionists clustered around him asking questions. While Thompson talked with them, they moved him imperceptibly toward a rear door that was covered by a curtain. He escaped to a back street and to a carriage that was waiting for him while the pro-slavery truckmen had no idea that he had left the hall (Mabee 29).

William Lloyd Garrison first met Thompson in 1833. During Thompson's 1834-35 tour in the United States, Garrison was delighted by the man's radical views; but, like the teamsters mentioned above, many audiences tended to be infuriated. For this reason Thompson was forced to return to England for safety. He remained throughout his life one of Garrison's closest friends (Merrill III 14).

In 1833 Thompson guided through Parliament the bill for emancipation in the British West Indies (V 23).

By the time he returned to the United States in the 1850s and 60s, he was honored. At home he presented the view of the North to British audiences during the Civil War. He had also become prominent both at home and in India as a champion of labor reform and had been elected to Parliament. Thompson was tall and handsome as well as a magnetic speaker. Wendell Phillips said that his "vivacity, brilliance, and variety of accomplishments" charmed everyone (Sterling 269).

On the other hand, his American friends complained that he drank too much tea, used too much snuff, and was often in financial trouble. The latter, however, was frequently blamed on his wife, who was supposed to be extravagant. Some also asserted that he took too much laudanam (269).

It was his financial difficulties that led him to return to the United States in the 1850s. Like Dickens and others, he hoped to lecture for pay. This disappointed the abolitionist leaders, for it meant that he would not concentrate on the antislavery issue. In the end, they persuaded him to tour the Northeast speaking for antislavery and only occasionally giving a lecture on other topics for pay. In return, the abolitionists would solicit contributions for a "Thompson purse." To ensure that there would be large and generous audiences, Abby Kelley Foster was appointed to take charge of Thompson's lecture tour. In January of 1851 she set out to organize a two month tour in New York state. Meanwhile, Thompson went to Springfield, Massachusetts, to lecture. A riot ensued, and he and John Bull were burned in effigy. Writing to Abby from his hotel room in Springfield, Thompson reported that the mob was doing the work of the abolitionists for them, ensuring him an audience. This proved to be true. Newspapers took up the story of the British member of Parliament who was not permitted to speak, and crowds flocked along the roads to see him as he traveled in his carriage. The auditoriums were filled when he gave lectures.

Accompanying him were both Abby and Stephen Foster as well as Sojourner Truth (embarking on her first extended lecture tour) and others. Frederick Douglas took part in the meetings and entertained Thompson at his home. In Peterboro, Gerrit Smith was Thompson's host. The tour was a great success, and the "Thompson purse" held $2200 at the end of it (269-273).

Later in the 1850s George Thompson found himself in very serious financial distress, having had to leave a post in India where he had become very ill and had suffered paralysis of both arms and legs. By January of 1859 he had recovered the use of his limbs to a certain extent but his hands remained partially paralyzed. He was in serious financial trouble, not even having sufficient funds to pay his mother's funeral expenses. On February 15, 1859, William Lloyd Garrison wrote an appeal to American friends of George Thompson to raise a thousand dollars to provide him some relief. The plea was signed by Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and Maria Weston Chapman. Garrison wrote to both Susan B. Anthony and Joseph Dugdale enclosing copies of the circular with the request that they see to raising some of the money among their friends (Ruchames IV 610-613).

Unfortunately, Thompson had lost much of his dynamic speaking ability by the late 1860s and found it difficult to support himself and his family (24).

The following letter from George Thompson poses some dating problems. It was probably written on Wednesday, December 6, 1865. It would appear that he had intended to speak on Thursday, December 7. However, Milo on Tuesday, December 12, stated that he had just returned after hearing George Thompson speak for the first time; and a December 27, 1865, Beaver, Pennsylvania, Argus and Radical story confirmed that date. In the December 15 letter Thompson said that his health had continued to improve, which may indicate that illness had prevented him from arriving in New Brighton on December 7 or that he had become ill after arriving and had not spoken until December 12.

Letter 38

from George Thompson

Pittsburgh

Wednesday Even

Dear Sir.

Your telegram is received. Accept my thinks. I trust to be with you tomorrow afternoon on the arrival of the train leaving here at 2:45.

Very truly yours

Mr. Milo A. Townsend

Geo. Thompson

The next letter was written after Thompson had spoken in New Brighton.

Letter 37

from George Thompson

Salem [Ohio], Friday Afternoon

Dec 15th '65

My dear Sir;

I reached this place in safety after a pleasant ride and last evening met a number of friends in social intercourse. I found no letter however from Levi Coffin, and therefore cannot give you my address there in Cincinnati but any thing sent to W Coffins care will reach me. My health continues to improve. I lecture this evening. I shall limit myself as to time.

Accept my sincere and most grateful thanks for the exceeding kindness and hospitality shown me by yourself and estimable wife. I shall remember with pleasure my brief sojourn in New Brighton and you may be assured shall not neglect an opportunity of revisiting a spot where I have been made so welcome and so happy.

With kindest remembrances to Mrs. Townsend.

Very truly yours,

Mr. Milo A. Townsend

Geo. Thompson

In an 1865 letter to William Lloyd Garrison, Milo reported on the lecture and at the same time took his leave of the Liberator . Portions of the letter, which was published under the headline, "GEORGE THOMPSON AT NEW BRIGHTON," follow:

New Brighton, (Pa.) Dec. 12, 1865

Wm. Lloyd Garrison:

My Honored Friend,-- I have just returned from listening to a lecture by the Hon. GEORGE THOMPSON, given in the Methodist Protestant Church in this place. His subject was, "The Story of my Life from year to year."

It was the first time I had ever had the pleasure of hearing this moral warrior; and to those of us especially, who had been cognizant of some of the most trying events in his reformatory career, it was truly gratifying to see and hear the man, so long the victim of misapprehension and persecution in this country, and to listen to a discourse from his lips so replete with thought, with truth, with incident, and with the experiences of his eventful and heroic life. What a contrast, his present welcome to our shores, with his former visits!.... He was then branded as a meddler and an incendiary, his life imperiled, and to save which, his friends advised him to flee the country. Now , he comes as a triumphal conqueror-- the nation's honored guest-- none the less the unflinching advocate of universal liberty-- none the less unwilling to compromise with oppression; but hailed with blessings instead of curses....

In the course of his lecture, Mr. Thompson paid tribute to the "Clarkson of America," who thirty-five years ago, sent out his little sheet from an obscure garret in Boston, and to which the million voices now heard all over the land, in condemnation of the system, then so strongly fortified in Church and State, are but the echoes of the solemn and earnest utterances of the dauntless Liberator .

And now, as the year wanes to its close, it sounds the parting dirge of that great-hearted journal, whose specific mission having been accomplished, now withdraws from the conflict.... In taking my leave of the Liberator , as an occasional correspondent, and of the friends who have stood by it, through evil and through good report, I can only say, that the good accomplished cannot now be estimated, but will become more and more apparent in the grand working out of results in the far aftertime, when those who were faithful to the cause of the oppressed will be...held in everlasting remembrance by those for whom they toiled.

Though the Liberator now ceases to exist, I know he who has piloted it so heroically and successfully...for thirty-five years will not retire from his labors in the cause of God and Humanity, but will continue faithful in the sphere of action which seems to him most fitting and important....

Adieu, waning year! Adieu, brave Liberator ! Adieu, beloved and noble Garrison!

Thine, "through sunshine, storm and snows,"

Milo A. Townsend

(Scrapbook I 11,12).

The Beaver, Pennsylvania, Argus and Radical for December 27, 1865, printed the following article about Thompson and his speech on the front page. The letter provides insight into Thompson's work.

To Editors of the Argus ,

On the evening of the 12th inst. the citizens of New Brighton and vicinity were favored with a lecture from the distinguished Englishman (orator, traveler, and philanthropist ), George Thompson, who for a period of six years represented one of the largest constituencies of Great Britain in the English Parliament and whose labors for upwards of thirty years in behalf of the down-trodden, despised and friendless African, have been zealous, unrelenting, untiring and eminently successful.

The title of his lecture was "The History of My Life from Year to Year." The title, however, was not indicative of the real subjects discussed by the lecturer; it formed but the background of the canvass on which were portrayed in language chaste, eloquent and forcible, an outline of the mighty revolutions in public sentiment, the vast strides toward a larger liberty that have taken place in the Anglo Saxon world in the space of a single generation, in which he had been an actor.

He was the chosen champion of the Emancipation Society of Great Britain and met in public discussion in nearly every town and city of that country the hired traffickers in human flesh, a professional and accomplished disputant.

He visited the United States, at the invitation of Mr. Garrison, to labor in behalf of the cause to which he had consecrated his life, in the year 1834 or 1835. But such control had the slaveholding sentiment, at that time, of the public mind, that in thirty-six hours after he landed in the city of New York he was ordered to quit the hotel in which he had taken lodging. He then went to New England and attempted to deliver a lecture in the city of Boston, but the puritan city was as deeply infected with the proslavery virus as the Commercial Emporium. The cry was raised that he was an English emissary, seeking to overthrow our institution. A mob assembled to take his life. He concealed himself for several days, and was then conveyed in a closed carriage to the harbor, and put on board a brig which conveyed him back to Albion, and thus in ignominious flight ended his first visit to our country.

But mark the change at his present visit! Boston made him a grand oration at which he was welcomed to the Old Bay State, by her distinguished Governor, and was greeted, not by a mob, but by the elite of the Athens of America. He subsequently visited the Federal Capitol, and by invitation delivered a lecture in the Halls of the House of Representatives before our lamented President, Lincoln, and other distinguished representative men of the nation. What a commentary on the hollowness of popular applause built on any other principle than a strict adherence to right! A quarter of a century ago branded a felon and fugitive!-- today the honored guest! The lecturer, contrary to the self-satisfied, self-sufficient "John Bull" in general, kept himself informed of the nature and progress of American society, and displayed a knowledge of our theory of government, our institutions, parties and politics, which would be creditable to one "to the manner born."

He also spoke of the attitude of the English people in our late struggle-- that the aristocracy, with a few honorable exceptions, and some commercial men, whose primary interests were identified with cotton and slavery, hoped, and so far as they could, worked for Southern independence; but the honest yeomanry, the heart of the nation, beat in unison with Liberty and the Union.

He paid a glowing tribute to the progress and prosperity of our country, and now that we had got rid of slavery, accorded the proud prominence, which has heretofore been the vain boast of Americans--"The best country, the best government, and the largest liberty in the world."

The prejudice against color in America was an excrescence of slavery; it was entirely unknown in England; that it was an insult to three-fourths of the population of the world; that the abodes of the ancient science and art were with men of dark complexions, and it was the duty America owed to herself, in view of her professions, her inspired Declaration of Independence, to place all men on an equality before the law, regardless of color.

The lecturer also gave a rapid and exceedingly interesting account of an overland journey he once made to the fabled waters of the Ganges, the land of Juggernaut and Jungles, of the fiercest and wisest of the animal creation.

As an evidence of the vast changes effected by time, he said that two hundred years ago Queen Elizabeth of England sent an Embassy to the Mogul of that vast country, humbly beseeching His Majesty to allow her subjects to buy (or exchange their manufactures) for the finest articles, the skill and workmanship of his people. The prince graciously granted the privilege, little dreaming that in less than two centuries the successor of that humble petition would be mistress of all his vast dominions.

More fortunate than reformers in general, he has lived to see almost the full fruition of his hopes and labors-- first, the Emancipation Act of the English Parliament which abolished Slavery throughout the British Dominions; and next our late struggle, which culminated in the overthrow of American Slavery.

The above is but a faint outline of the remarks of the accomplished lecturer, who, for two hours and a quarter, in a voice remarkable for learness and distinctness of articulation, and great eloquence of diction, entertained and instructed an attentive and delighted audience.

(Resource and Research Center for Beaver County and Local History, Carnegie Free Library, Beaver Falls, PA).