Editing Daniel O'Connell (section)

==Opposition to slavery in the United States==
[[File:Frederick Douglas, 1840s.jpg|250px|thumb|left|Frederick Douglass, 1840s]]

O'Connell championed the "civil and religious liberties" of people throughout the world including those of peasants in India (subject, under the [[East India Company]], to  “a system of monstrous and perfect oppression”)<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Collombier-Lakeman|first=Pauline|date=2013-07-30|title=Daniel O'Connell and India|url=https://journals.openedition.org/etudesirlandaises/3274|journal=Études irlandaises|language=en|issue=38–1|doi=10.4000/etudesirlandaises.3274|issn=0183-973X|doi-access=free}}</ref> [[Māori people|Maoris]] in [[Colony of New Zealand|New Zealand]], [[Aboriginal Australians|Aborigines]] in [[Australia]] and Jews in Europe.<ref name="Bew and Maune" /><ref>{{cite book |last1=Hyman |first1=Louis |title=The Jews of Ireland: From Earliest Times to the Year 1910 |date=1972 |publisher=Irish University Press |page=114}}</ref> It was, however, his unbending [[abolitionism]], and in particular, his opposition to [[slavery in the United States]], that demonstrated commitments that transcended Catholic and national interests in Ireland.<ref name="Kinealy 2011">{{cite book |last1=Kinealy |first1=Christine |title=Daniel O'Connell and the Anti-Slavery Movement |date=2011 |publisher=Pickering and Chatto |location=London |isbn=9781851966332 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AmZECgAAQBAJ&q=Christine+Kinealy,+Daniel+O%E2%80%99Connell+and+the+Anti-Slavery+Movement+(London,+2011. |access-date=8 September 2020 |archive-date=25 August 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210825080205/https://books.google.com/books?id=AmZECgAAQBAJ&q=Christine+Kinealy,+Daniel+O%E2%80%99Connell+and+the+Anti-Slavery+Movement+(London,+2011. |url-status=live }}</ref>

For his Repeal campaign, O'Connell relied heavily on money from the United States, but he insisted that none should be accepted from those engaged in slavery (a ban extended from 1843 to all those emigrants to the [[Southern United States|American South]] who in daring to "countenance the system of slavery" he could "recognise as Irish no longer").<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Gleeson|first=D.|date=1999|title=Parallel Struggles: Irish Republicanism in the American South, 1798–1876|journal=Eire-Ireland|volume=34|issue=2 |pages=(97–116) 108|doi=10.1353/EIR.1999.0005|s2cid=164365735 }}</ref> In 1829 he had told a large [[Abolitionism|abolitionist]] meeting in London that "of all men living, an American citizen, who is the owner of slaves, is the most despicable". In the same Emancipation year, addressing the Cork [[Anti-Slavery Society (1823–1838)|Anti-Slavery Society]], he declared that, much as he longed to go to America, so long as it was "tarnished by slavery", he would never "pollute" his foot "by treading on its shores".<ref name="History Ireland">{{cite web |last=Geohegan |first=Patrick |date=5 March 2013 |title=Daniel O'Connell and the campaign against slavery |url=https://www.historyireland.com/daniel-oconnell-and-the-campaign-against-slavery/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200908023926/https://www.historyireland.com/18th-19th-century-history/a-consistent-advocate-of-nigger-emancipationdaniel-oconnell-and-the-campaign-against-slavery/ |archive-date=8 September 2020 |access-date=23 August 2020 |website=historyireland.com |publisher=History Ireland}}</ref><ref name="Kinealy" />

In 1838, in a call for a new crusade against "the vile union" in the United States "of republicanism and slavery", O'Connell denounced the hypocrisy of [[George Washington]] and characterised the American ambassador, the Virginian [[Andrew Stevenson]], as a "slave-breeder".<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Jenkins|first=Lee|date=Autumn 1999|title=Beyond the Pale: Frederick Douglass in Cork|url=https://www.ucc.ie/en/media/academic/schoolofenglish/worddocuments/IrishReviewpdfJenkins.pdf|journal=The Irish Review|issue=24|page=92|access-date=17 February 2018|archive-date=17 February 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180217143448/https://www.ucc.ie/en/media/academic/schoolofenglish/worddocuments/IrishReviewpdfJenkins.pdf|url-status=live}}</ref> When Stevenson challenged O'Connell to a duel, a sensation was created in the United States. On the floor of the [[United States House of Representatives|House of Representatives]] the former U.S. president, [[John Quincy Adams]] spoke of a "conspiracy against the life of Daniel O'Connell".<ref name="History Ireland" />

In both Ireland and America, the furore exasperated supporters. [[Young Ireland]]ers took issue. [[Charles Gavan Duffy (Australian politician)|Gavan Duffy]] believed the time was not right "for gratuitous interference in American affairs". This was a common view. Attacks on slavery in the United States were considered "wanton and intolerable provocation". In 1845 [[John Blake Dillon]] reported to [[Thomas Osborne Davis (Irish politician)|Thomas Davis]] "everybody was indignant at O'Connell meddling in the business": "Such talk" was "supremely disgusting to the Americans, and to every man of honour and spirit".<ref name="History Ireland" /> Mitchel took this dissent a step further: to Duffy's disgust, Mitchel positively applauded black slavery.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Duffy |first1=Charles Gavan |title=My Life in Two Hemispheres |date=1898 |publisher=Macmillan |location=London |page=70 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6fE9AQAAMAAJ&q=mouthpiece+for+Irish+rights |access-date=28 December 2020 |archive-date=9 June 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210609164218/https://books.google.com/books?id=6fE9AQAAMAAJ&q=mouthpiece+for+Irish+rights |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>See also {{cite book |last1=Duffy |first1=Charles Gavan |title=Four Years of Irish History, 1845–1849 |date=1883 |publisher=Cassell, Petter, Galpin |location=Dublin |pages=500–501 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WLWeAQAACAAJ |access-date=4 September 2020 |archive-date=9 June 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210609164307/https://books.google.com/books?id=WLWeAQAACAAJ |url-status=live }}</ref>  In the United States, fearful that it would further inflame anti-Irish [[Nativism (politics)|nativist]] sentiment, [[John Hughes (archbishop)|Bishop John Hughes of New York]] urged Irish Americans not to sign O'Connell's abolitionist petition ("An Address of the People of Ireland to their Countrymen and Countrywomen in America").<ref name=":10">{{cite web |last1=Kinealy |first1=Christine |title=The Irish Abolitionist: Daniel O'Connell |url=https://irishamerica.com/2011/08/the-irish-abolitionist-daniel-oconnell/ |website=irishamerica.com |date=August 2011 |publisher=Irish America |access-date=24 August 2020 |archive-date=14 August 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200814132842/https://irishamerica.com/2011/08/the-irish-abolitionist-daniel-oconnell/ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name="Kinealy 2011" />

O'Connell was entirely undaunted: crowds gathered to hear him on Repeal were regularly treated to excursions on the evils of human traffic and bondage. When in 1845, [[Frederick Douglass]], touring Britain and Ireland following the publication of his [[Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave|''Life of an American Slave'']], attended unannounced a meeting in [[Conciliation Hall]], Dublin, he heard O'Connell explain to a roused audience:<ref name="Dowd">{{cite web |last1=O'Dowd |first1=Naill |title=Frederick Douglass was quickly captivated by Daniel O'Connell in 1845 Ireland |url=https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/frederick-douglass-daniel-oconnell |website=Irish Central |access-date=23 August 2020 |archive-date=22 August 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200822164245/https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/frederick-douglass-daniel-oconnell |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>Frederick Douglass letter to [[William Lloyd Garrison]] quoted in Christine Kinealy ed. (2018), ''Frederick Douglass and Ireland: In His Own Words, Volume II''. Routledge, New York. {{ISBN|9780429505058}}. pp. 67, 72.</ref>
<blockquote>I have been assailed for attacking the American institution, as it is called,{{snd}}Negro slavery. I am not ashamed of that attack. I do not shrink from it. I am the advocate of civil and religious liberty, all over the globe, and wherever tyranny exists, I am the foe of the tyrant; wherever oppression shows itself, I am the foe of the oppressor; wherever slavery rears its head, I am the enemy of the system, or the institution, call it by what name you will.

I am the friend of liberty in every clime, class and colour. My sympathy with distress is not confined within the narrow bounds of my own green island. No{{snd}}it extends itself to every corner of the earth. My heart walks abroad, and wherever the miserable are to be succored, or the slave to be set free, there my spirit is at home, and I delight to dwell.</blockquote>

The black abolitionist, [[Charles Lenox Remond]] said that it was only on hearing O'Connell speak in London (the first international Anti-Slavery Convention, 1840) that he realised what being an abolitionist really meant: "every fibre of my heart contracted [when I] listened to the scorching rebukes of the fearless O'Connell". In the United States [[William Lloyd Garrison]] published a selection of O'Connell's anti-slavery speeches, no man having "spoken so strongly against the soul-drivers of this land as O'Connell".<ref name="History Ireland" /> In the 1846,  [[Margaret Fuller]] compared O'Connell in ''[[The Liberty Bell (annual)|The Liberty Bell]]'' to the biblical Daniel, able "to brave the fiery furnace, and the lion's den, and the silken lures of a court, and speak always with a poet's power."<ref>{{Cite book |title=The Liberty Bell |publisher=Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Fair |year=1846 |location=Boston |page=85}}</ref>

It was as an abolitionist that O'Connell was honoured by his favourite author, [[Charles Dickens]]. In ''[[Martin Chuzzlewit]]'', O'Connell is the "certain Public Man", revealed as an abolitionist, whom otherwise enthusiastic friends of Ireland (the "Sons of Freedom") in the United States decide they would have "pistolled, stabbed{{snd}}in some way slain".<ref>{{cite web |last1=Dickens |first1=Charles |title=Charles Dickens: Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit 21. Chapter Twenty-one (continued) |url=http://www.literaturepage.com/read/dickens-martin-chuzzlewit-420.html |website=literaturepage.com |publisher=The Literature Page |access-date=23 August 2020 |archive-date=25 November 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201125013117/http://www.literaturepage.com/read/dickens-martin-chuzzlewit-420.html |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name="History Ireland" />