ABSTRACT
The 1860s, which saw the growth of an organised women’s movement in Britain, was also the period when anti-slavery activism wound down as reformers increasingly focused on other causes, as new forms of virulent racism gained hold, and as popular support for abolition waned. The period was marked by two dramatic events abroad to which anti-slavery campaigners and the British public as a whole responded: the American Civil War of 1861-65, and the Jamaica Insurrection and Governor Eyre controversy of 1865-68. It was also the period of the Freedmen’s Aid movement, the final large-scale effort by anti-slavery campaigners.1
