Sep 29, 2022 - Sale 2615

Sale 2615 - Lot 219

Price Realized: $ 938
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
(POLITICS.) "Constitution of the New York State Council" issued by a state chapter of the secretive Know Nothing Party. 20 pages. 24mo, original plain wrappers, minor wear; inked revisions on pages 4 and 5; inscriptions and inked stamp of original owner Theodore Bourne on front wrapper and title page. In the original owner's envelope inscribed "This is very rare . . . . Keep this safe." Albany, NY: "Printed for the Order," 1855
Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

This slender pamphlet begins with a virulently nativist "Bill of Rights": "Whereas the civil and religious education, and consequent sentiments, of the Roman Catholic foreigners who are imported into this country, are directly and radically at variance with our institutions, and always at war with the cause of freedom, and whereas the mass of such foreign population . . . cannot appreciate the worth of American institutions . . . for the purpose of counteracting, in a lawful manner, the direful effects of foreign influence upon the institutions of our country. . . . Whatever shall be done, shall be kept a profound secret from those that have not been initiated as members thereof." The constitution limits membership to "a citizen of the United States of America, born of protestant parents, himself as Protestant, and not married to a Roman Catholic wife." The presidents of the subsidiary county and town councils are given the authority to "select the passwords to be used by the members thereof." The final page is signed in type by secretary B.F. Romaine--the only name to appear in the volume.

Provenance: found among the papers of Theodore Bourne of Bloomfield, NJ, along with three anti-Catholic tracts (see lot 231). One traced in OCLC (New York Public Library) and none traced at auction.

With--a pamphlet printing of "The Constitution of the United States" in the same 24mo format. 32 pages, worn wrappers. Issued by New York patent medicine manufacturer John R. Surbrug, 1861. In a similar envelope inscribed by Theodore Bourne.