TWELVE AMERICANS: THEIR LIVES AND TIMES

Carroll, Howard

Published by Harper & Brothers, New York, 1883

About this Item

xii,[2],473pp., plus twelve portraits (including frontispiece) and six pages of publisher's advertisements. 12mo. Publisher's green cloth, spine gilt. Cloth a bit rubbed and soiled, neatly rebacked with original backstrip laid down. Front and rear free endpapers chipped in edges. Text slightly tanned. Contemporary presentation inscription on front free endpaper [see below]. Very good. A book of biographical sketches and portraits of twelve widely varied but significant men of 19th-century America, presented by Frederick Douglass to Civil Rights activist, journalist, and intellectual renaissance man John Wesley Cromwell. Douglass himself is one of the dozen notable Americans profiled in the book, and the only African American. A note on the front free endpaper of this copy, in Cromwell's hand, reads "A present from Frederick Douglass to J.W. Cromwell." John Wesley Cromwell was born into slavery in 1846, and went on to hold a remarkable variety of influential public positions. He taught at several important African-American schools, became clerk of the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1867 and 1868, practiced as a lawyer and judge, and was founding editor and later owner of THE PEOPLE'S ADVOCATE, one of if not the first African-American owned and operated newspapers in Virginia. He was also one of the founders of an important African-American intellectual hub, the Bethel Literary and Historical Society, where he succeeded Frederick Douglass's grandson Joseph as its fourth president in 1883. Frederick Douglass was also involved with the Society, and was a repeat speaker at their events. The author of this book, Howard Carroll, was a journalist for the NEW YORK TIMES - the biographies in the work are all taken from extended personal interviews with the subjects, and are expanded versions of articles which originally appeared in the paper. The lives described cover a wide range of backgrounds, from important political figures of both parties to actors, intellectuals, and other public figures such as Frederick Douglass. The "Twelve Americans" whose lives are sketched are: Horatio Seymour, Charles Francis Adams, Peter Cooper, Hannibal Hamlin, John Gilbert, Robert C. Schenck, Frederick Douglass, William Allen, Allen G. Thurman, Joseph Jefferson, Elihu B. Washburne, and Alexander H. Stephens. An interesting and varied collection of biographies, presented by one major African- American intellectual luminary to another. Seller Inventory # WRCAM57560

Bibliographic Details

Title: TWELVE AMERICANS: THEIR LIVES AND TIMES

Publisher: Harper & Brothers, New York

Publication Date: 1883