Anti-Slavery Reporter. A Periodical, Containing Justice and Expediency; or, Slavery considered with a view to its rightful and effectual remedy, Abolition [.] Vol. I, No. 4 September, 1833

WHITTIER, John G. [Greenleaf]

Published by Anti-Slavery Reporter, New York, 1833

About this Item

Octavo, pp. [49]-63 [blank]. Mis-paginated on the first few leaves, as in other known copies, but complete. In the publisher's side-sewn string-bound self-wrappers, very good, with a faint, if evident dampstain throughout, but with only negligible foxing; quite well-preserved. Recruited by William Lloyd Garrison, Whittier took up the cause of abolition in 1833 with the publication of Justice and Expediency, "a closely reasoned and carefully documented attack on the Colonization Society. Widely supported by Northern and Southern churches, the Colonization Society was a conservative reform group that proposed to resolve the issue of slavery by sending American blacks, both slave and free, back to Africa." Henry Clay was one of the leaders of the Society. On the strength of Whittier's pamphlet, he was chosen to be a delegate at the Philadelphia Convention of 1833 which founded the American Anti-Slavery Society. He would later state: "I set a higher value on my name as appended to the Anti-Slavery Declaration of 1833 than on the title-page of any book." (Poetry Foundation). Whittier devoted himself to the cause of abolition for the next twenty years. Justice and Expediency, however, destroyed Whittier's political ambitions, his call for immediate emancipation alienating both Northern businessmen and Southern slaveholders. Whittier was a founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society and signed the Anti-Slavery Declaration in 1833. Initially published by Whittier in his hometown of Haverhill, MA a few months earlier for private circulation, this is the first appearance of his withering attack on slavery which would have been available to the wider public, representing one of the earliest explicit calls for abolition by a mainstrean white writer. See BAL 21681 for the Haverhill edition.

Seller Inventory # 11564

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Anti-Slavery Reporter. A Periodical, Containing Justice and Expediency; or, Slavery considered with a view to its rightful and effectual remedy, Abolition [.] Vol. I, No. 4 September, 1833
• Publisher: Anti-Slavery Reporter, New York
• Publication Date: 1833
• Binding: Sewn binding
• Edition: First Edition thus.
• Condition: Very good
• Seller catalogs:
  • African-American history