Mar 25, 2021 - Sale 2562

Sale 2562 - Lot 200

Price Realized: $ 4,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 6,000 - $ 9,000
(FREDERICK DOUGLASS.) The North Star, volume II, issue 13. 4 pages, 25 x 18 1/4 inches, on one folding sheet; moderate dampstaining, hole on second leaf less than a inch round. Rochester, NY, 23 March 1849

Additional Details

An issue of the abolitionist newspaper co-edited by Frederick Douglass and Martin Delany. The masthead reads "Right is of no sex--Truth is of no color--God is the father of us all, and all we are brethren." This issue includes the text of a long anti-slavery letter by Senator Henry Clay, along with a detailed analysis by Douglass which takes up 3 columns. Also published are letters by Gerrit Smith and the well-known fugitive from slavery Henry Bibb, and an essay on "Domestic Economy" by Delany.

Also of interest is a long letter to editor Douglass from "M.A. Shadd," believed to be the first published work by the important editor and activist Mary Ann Shadd of Wilmington, Delaware. Then 25 years old, she would soon become the first Black woman publisher in North America. Her letter includes what would be a continuous thread in her writings over the years--a pointed critique of the Black clergy. She also dismissed the increasing number of abolitionist conventions: "I, as one of the people, see no need for our distinctive meetings, if we do not do something. we should do more, and talk less." This letter is discisussed at length in Siemerling, The Black Atlantic Reconsidered, page 100.