May 07, 2020 - Sale 2534

Sale 2534 - Lot 367

Price Realized: $ 2,750
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 700 - $ 1,000
(POLITICS.) [Purvis, Robert.] Appeal of Forty Thousand Citizens Threatened with Disenfranchisement, to the People of Pennsylvania. 18 pages. 8vo, disbound, lacking wrappers; minor foxing. Philadelphia: Merrihew and Gunn, 1838
Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

During a Pennsylvania constitutional convention in 1838, a simple five-letter word was slipped into the state's new voting requirements: "white." This eloquent response was issued by the abolitionist Robert Purvis (1810-1889), a free man of mixed race; his grandmother had been enslaved in South Carolina. 'His well-phrased, well-argued plea against racial limitation was, considering the provocation, moderate in tone. . . . The appeal fell on deaf ears'--Negro History exhibition catalogue at the Library Company, 104. Afro-Americana 8557. We know of no other examples at auction.