Slavery & Abolition
Means and Ends in American Abolitionism: Garrison and His Critics on Strategy and Tactics, 1834-1850
New York: Pantheon Books, 1969. First Edition. Scholarly work examining the debates within the Abolitionist movement between 1834-1850, principally the debates over the role of women in the American Anti-Slavery Society, over religion, and over political action. First Printing. Octavo (21.75cm); turquoise cloth, with titles and author's initials stamped in..... More
Thaddeus Stevens
New York: International Publishers, 1942. First Edition. Slim octavo (18.75cm); printed card wrappers, stapled; 31,[1]pp. Trivial wear to extremities, subtle toning to rear wrapper, else Near Fine. "A laudatory account of the career of the militant abolitionist, a leader in the fight to abolish slavery, to emancipate and arm the..... More
The Sixteenth Annual Report of the American Society for Colonizing the Free People of Colour of the United States
Washington DC: James C. Dunn, 1833. First Edition. Slim octavo (20.5cm.); disbound; xxii,[2],40pp. Final four leaves partially detached, else fairly sound; occasional spots of foxing, minor creasing to first and final leaves, generally just Very Good. Report by the Society which founded the colony of Liberia with the intention of..... More
Report of the Secretary of State, Communicating the Report of the Rev. R. R. Gurley, Who Was Recently Sent Out by the Government to Obtain Information in Respect to Liberia
Washington DC: [1850]. Octavo (22.5cm). 116pp; folding map, 6 etchings. Disbound, with remnants of leather to spine; foxed throughout; complete and Good. Ralph Randolph Gurley (1797-1872) was a highly active and influential member of the American Colonization Society and is thus considered one of the founders of Liberia. His 1849..... More
The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa. From Eighteen Hundred and Sixty-Five to his Death. Continued by a narrative of his last moments and sufferings, obtained from his faithful servants Chuman and Susi, by Horace Waller
Chicago: Jansen, McClurg, & Company, 1875. Large, thick octavo (23.5cm.); original brown pictorial cloth, upper cover and spine embossed in gilt, brown glazed endpapers; [2],541,[1],4(ads)pp.; engraved portrait frontispiece, 21 plates, including one color facsimile, one color double-page map, and one large color folding map loose in chemise mounted inside rear..... More
House...No. 205. Commonwealth of Massachusetts. House of Representatives, April 4, 1855 [Drop title: Statement Accompanying the Testimony at the Recommitment of the Case of Edward Greeley Loring]
Boston? 1855. First Edition. Resolution regarding the removal from the bench of Judge Edward Greeley Loring with testimony by Richard Henry Dana Jr., Wendell Phillips, and Theodore Parker. Loring gained notoriety following his decision to return Anthony Burns to slavery under the Fugitive Slave Act. Dana, who had represented Burns..... More
Narrative of Privations and Sufferings of United States Officers and Soldiers While Prisoners of War in the Hands of the Rebel Authorities. Being the report of a commission of inquiry, appointed by the United States Sanitary Commission
Boston [New York]: Published at the Office of "Littell's Living Age" [Loyal Publications Society], 1864. The Loyal Publication Society was founded in 1863 to disseminate pro-Union propaganda in order to offset recent military upsets and the "copperhead" material being distributed to the northern troops. The present title described as "A..... More
Louisiana Plantation Homes: A Return to Splendor
Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing Compary, 1986. First Edition. Oblong Quarto (26.5cm x 37cm). Blue cloth boards (hardcover) with titling embossed in gold on cover and spine; pictorial dustjacket; 160pp; illus. Near Fine copy; slight shelf wear to extremities, else clean and tight. Near Fine dustwrapper; slight shelf wear to extremities..... More
The Gambler
New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, [1929]. First Edition. Scarce historical novel, an interracial love story set in the gambling halls of antebellum New Orleans. The protagonist, a riverboat gambler, wins a plantation and two slaves, a mother and her octoroon daughter with whom their new owner falls in love..... More
[Cover title] Report of the Committee to Whom was Referred the Memorial of the Anti-Slavery Society
Boston? 1836. First Edition. Massachusetts senate document no. 57, regarding the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society's denied bid for a full hearing. Report signed in text on p. 8 by Chairman George Lunt, local lawyer who opposed any policy that might estrange the South from the Union. DUMOND, p. 79. Octavo (25cm.);..... More
Elements of Geometry Containing the First Six Books of Euclid with Supplement on Properties of the Circle in Intersections of Planes and the Geometry of Solids [Samuel Joseph May's Copy]
Boston: T.B. Wait and Sons, 1814. Second American Edition, With Improvements. Provenance: Copy of seventeen-year-old Samuel Joseph May (1797-1871), future reformer, abolitionist, and women's rights advocate, with his ownership signature dated November 4, 1814, to title page, front pastedown, p. [1], together with his gift inscription to fellow Harvard student..... More
The Negro in the French West Indies
Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1966. First Edition. First printing. Octavo. Cloth hardcover; dustjacket; 278pp. Light wear and soil; neat ownership signature to front endpaper; text clean, tight and unmarked - a Very Good copy. In original dustwrapper, rubbed and worn, Very Good. More
The Seminole Freedmen: a History
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007. First Edition. Octavo. Cloth boards (hardcover); dustjacket; 446pp; illus. Tight, unmarked, Near Fine copy in crisp, unworn dustwrapper - about as-new. More
Race and Revolution
Madison: Madison House, 1990. First Edition. Octavo (23.5cm.); publisher's cloth in pictorial dust jacket; xi,[1],212pp.; illus. throughout. A hint of wear to jacket extremities, shallow crease to upper rapper, else Fine. A study of race relations in the post-Revolutionary United States. More
The Life and Public Services of Henry Wilson, Late Vice-President of the United States
Boston: B.B. Russell, 1876. Reprint. Octavo (18.75cm.); half brown morocco over gilt-lettered cloth, gilt spine, all edges speckled; 452pp.; engraved portrait frontispiece. Boards rubbed, mostly affecting leather, spine ends rather chipped, early and mid-20th-century newspaper clippings mounted to front free flyleaf and frontispiece verso, else contents near fine and fresh..... More
More Changes More Chances
New York: Harcourt Brace, [1925]. First American Edition. From British sheets. Octavo; cloth boards; xviii, [1]-427pp; portrait frontispiece after William Rothenstein. Tight, straight and unmarked; a Near Fine copy, lacking dustwrapper. Second installment of Nevinson's memoir, following Changes and Chances (1923). Nevinson (1856-1941) a pioneering investigative foreign journalist, known for..... More
We Dissent
New York: St. Martin's Press, 1962. First Edition. First printing. Octavo (22cm). Grey paper over boards, backed in blue cloth, in blue jacket; [xii],211,[1]pp. Inscribed by Norris to Dorothy K. Siegel on half-title. Lightly rubbed, Near Fine. Jacket unclipped (priced $4.95), rubbed at edges with one or two short marginal..... More
Two Peoples, One Community: the African American Experience in Newtown (Stephens City) Virginia, 1850-1870
Stephens City: Stone House Foundation, 2007. First Edition. First printing. Presentation copy, inscribed and signed by the author on title page. Octavo; pictorial wrappers; 81pp. Mild creasing at wrapper edges, else Fine. Privately-published history of African Americans in Frederick County, Virginia in the years directly before and after the Civil..... More
William Lloyd Garrison and the Humanitarian Reformers
Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1955. First Edition. First printing. Octavo (21cm). Blue cloth titled in gilt, in pink dust jacket; [viii],[216]pp. Former owner's name to front free endpaper. Lightly rubbed and bumped, but generally Very Good. Jacket faded at spine, rubbed and chipped with one or two short tears..... More
The Cotton Kingdom: A Traveller's Observations on Cotton and Slavery in the American Slave States
New York: Mason Brothers, 1861. First Edition. First printing. Octavo (19.5cm). Plum cloth, titled in gilt on spines; pale yellow endpapers; I: viii,376pp; II: iv,404pp; folding map in vol. I. 189 gift inscription to Oswald Garrison Villard. Straight and sound, but spines faded, gilt dulled, spine ends heavily chipped, corners..... More
A Sermon of the Public Function of Woman, Preached at the Music Hall, March 27, 1853
Boston: Robert F. Wallcut, 1853. First Edition. Important sermon by the abolitionist Unitarian minister, whose orations converted many of his listeners, among them Julia Ward Howe, to the cause, and Parker numbered among those who secretly funded John Brown (anb.org). From the Preface: "The following Sermon is part of a...... More
The Kidnapped and the Ransomed
[New York]: Negro Publication Society of America, 1941. First Thus. Octavo (21.5cm.); publisher's cloth in tan pictorial dust jacket; 315pp. Jacket extremities chipped and rubbed, small soil spot to upper panel, spine rather toned, boards a bit worn at corners, else Near Very Good and sound. The account, first published..... More
Charles W. Quantrell [sic]. A true history of his guerrilla warfare on the Missouri and Kansas border during the Civil War of 1861 to 1865. As told by Captain Harrison Trow, one who followed Quantrell through his whole course
[Vega, TX: Privately published, 1923]. First Edition. Octavo (20cm). Pictorial red cloth hardcover; 266pp, seven unnumbered leaves of plates. Tight, square copy, gilt slightly faded on spine and cover; solidly VG. A flawed and sensationalized account of the Missouri pro-slavery terrorist and his band of raiders, including much on the..... More
Memoir of James Grahame, LL.D., Author of The History of the United States of North America [Inscribed and Signed]
Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1845. First Separate Edition. Tract issued four years following the death of the Scottish historian James Grahame (1790-1842), whose "History of the United States of America" met with resistance by members of the New England elite, chief among them American historian George Bancroft..... More