Autograph Letter Signed ("Thos. Hughes") to "Dear Sir" mentioning his upcoming speech at the Great Emancipation Demonstration, which took place at Exeter Hall on 29 January 1863

1 page with integral black leaf, 113 Park Street, Grosvenor Square, Friday 23 January 1863.

Hughes is best remembered for his semi-autobiographical novel Tom Brown's School Days, but he was also a committed social reformer, supporter of abolition, as well as being a lawyer and politician. Here he is wearing his abolitionist hat: "I am going to speak at the meeting of Thursday next in Exeter Hall & wish to see you about. What time tomorrow afternoon after 3 wd suit you to see me."

The Great Union and Emancipation Meeting at Exeter Hall was organised in support of Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which had passed into law on the 1st January 1863. Hughes opened his speech at Exeter Hall rousingly: "the cause of the South is the most hateful, the most enslaving, the most debasing tyranny that has been on the face of the earth for a thousand years". He went on to decry The Times (who had sided with the South's cause); cited prominent slave owning Southern figures; and the despicable Supreme Court ruling against Dred Scott to highlight and bolster his argument in favour of the North's cause, and the Anti-Slavery movement generally. Hughes closed his speech with Lowell's poem "Jonathan to John; or an address to England". Rev. Christopher Newman Hall was one of the other speakers at the event, which was reported to be a huge success, spilling out of the hall and into the surrounding streets such was the turn out. A book containing Hughes' speech was published by the Emancipation Society that same year.

Lightly marked and age-toned, particularly along the verso folds.

Stock Code: 240947