“They clearly understood that they were fighting for the same kind of freedom for their peoples,” explained Mary Ann Matthews of the Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition at Yale University in a 2003 Irish Echo interview.
“Douglass came to Ireland and spoke several times there as a slavery abolitionist and an endorser of Irish Home Rule,” she said. “And O’Connell was a member of the British anti-slavery movement.”
In her work for the Tangled Roots project at Yale, Matthews says she’s learned that there’s a much richer history between the two communities than most people are aware of.
Renowned historian Christine Kinnealy says Daniel O’Connell’s opposition to slavery was steadfast and made him a hero of the Abolitionists in the U.S.
His bloc of votes in the Westminster Parliament were crucial in the 1833 vote to end slavery in the British Empire. Slaves, he said, were “the saddest people the sun sees”.
Writes Kinealy, professor of history at Drew University, “In 1875 Centenary Celebrations for The Liberator (who died in 1847) took place throughout the world. Some of the largest were located in the United States . . . O’Connell was remembered as the most important Abolitionist of the age. In Ireland and Britain, Daniel O’Connell is remembered as the Liberator of Irish Catholics, but he also played a significant role in liberating slaves in the British Empire and in North America. It is in this largely unrecognized role as the champion of slaves that O’Connell’s true greatness lies.”