Civil War
The outbreak of the Civil War sharply divided the American community in London.
While reformers stood firmly behind the Union, the majority of the British upper classes were sympathetic to the plight of the South. The emissaries dispatched to England by Abraham Lincoln received George Peabody's help in securing Great Britain's continued support of the Union.
Horrified by the devastation of the South after the American Civil War, he made his single largest benefaction, The Peabody Education Fund, to establish a public education system for the Southern states.
Astonishingly for that era, Peabody insisted on providing educational opportunities for both races. A teachers' training college in Nashville, now part of Vanderbilt University, bears his name.
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