Christopher Newman Hall - Abolition & American Civil War

Abolition & American Civil War

During the 1860s, dissenting from the British government's position, Newman Hall passionately supported the north in the American Civil War. He disapproved of secession by southern states. England should side with the North, he wrote, particularly because emancipation of the slaves is just. He felt so strongly that he published one of his few non-theological books: The American War. A Lecture delivered in London, October 20, 1862. Newman Hall visited the United States during the Civil War, and published a passionate anti-slavery speech co-authored by Abraham Lincoln and Henry Ward Beecher.

At the Great Union and Emancipation Meeting at Exeter Hall, London, on 29 January 1863 in support of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, the crowning speech of the evening was given by Christopher Newman Hall. The meeting was a huge success, showing support for abolition in the United States of America, and reported by Harper's Weekly to have been one of the largest and most enthusiastic meetings ever held in London; its overspill of people who could not get into the packed meeting itself, was formed into three large, ancillary, open-air meetings. Subsequently Newman Hall made extensive tours in the United States. At Washington, he was invited to open Congress with prayer, and in the House of Representatives he delivered an address on international relations.

Read more about this topic:  Christopher Newman Hall

Famous quotes containing the words civil war, abolition, american, civil and/or war:

    He was high and mighty. But the kindest creature to his slaves—and the unfortunate results of his bad ways were not sold, had not to jump over ice blocks. They were kept in full view and provided for handsomely in his will. His wife and daughters in the might of their purity and innocence are supposed never to dream of what is as plain before their eyes as the sunlight, and they play their parts of unsuspecting angels to the letter.
    —Anonymous Antebellum Confederate Women. Previously quoted by Mary Boykin Chesnut in Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, edited by C. Vann Woodward (1981)

    I have no concern with any economic criticisms of the communist system; I cannot enquire into whether the abolition of private property is expedient or advantageous. But I am able to recognize that the psychological premises on which the system is based are an untenable illusion. In abolishing private property we deprive the human love of aggression of one of its instruments ... but we have in no way altered the differences in power and influence which are misused by aggressiveness.
    Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)

    How does it become a man to behave toward this American government to-day? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it. I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as my government which is the slave’s government also.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Just what is the civil law? What neither influence can affect, nor power break, nor money corrupt: were it to be suppressed or even merely ignored or inadequately observed, no one would feel safe about anything, whether his own possessions, the inheritance he expects from his father, or the bequests he makes to his children.
    Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C.)

    To be deeply committed to negotiations, to be opposed to a particular war or military action, is not only considered unpatriotic, it also casts serious doubt on one’s manhood.
    Myriam Miedzian, U.S. author. Boys Will Be Boys, ch. 2 (1991)