Nov 21 at 10:30 AM - Sale 2687 -

Sale 2687 - Lot 182

Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
(NEW YORK.) Volume of the New-York Organ, with coverage of Seneca Falls, Poe's death, the Mormon settlement, and more. 97 [of 109] weekly issues, each 8 pages. Folio, 15¼ x 10 inches, contemporary ½ calf, minor wear; moderate foxing, 11 small items clipped out, 8 other leaves more or less defective; early owner's inscription on front flyleaf. New York, 18 March 1848 to 6 April 1850
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The weekly New-York Organ and Temperance Safeguard made opposition to alcohol its main mission, but also favored women's rights and covered general news stories.

The 5 August 1848 issue includes tongue-in-cheek coverage of the historic Seneca Falls women's rights convention (page 45): "Woman's Rights.--- A Convention has recently been held in the village of Seneca Falls, at which the present civil, social, and religious condition of woman was the subject of consideration. A declaration of independence, amended from that of revolutionary memory, was presented and adopted. Its fundamental position was improved so as to read: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal.' Women equal to us! Prepos-terious! Verily some men have long imagined that they owned the women; but now these are going to rebel against our government and set up equality! What is the world coming to!" The awarding of the first medical degree to an American woman, Elizabeth Blackwell of Geneva Medical College in New York, is described with enthusiasm on 3 February 1849, page 244.

Other highlights include good columns on the early days of the California Gold Rush (9 December 1848, page 187; 23 December 1848, page 205; and 27 January 1849, page 238); the inauguration of Zachary Taylor (10 March 1849, page 274, with jugate portraits); the new Mormon temple at Salt Lake (17 March 1849, page 275) and another report from Salt Lake: "There is something quite remarkable about this people" (13 October 1849, page 133); the "Death of a Poet," regarding Edgar Allen Poe, who "had he not . . . yielded to the snare of intemperance, he might have trodden a luminous pathway to immortality" (13 October 1849, page 133).

The Organ contains numerous small illustrations on both news and temperance subjects, none surpassing a nearly full-page nightmare scene to illustrate a story titled "The Rumseller's Dream" (6 October 1849, page 124). Original temperance songs with music occupy the final page of many issues.

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