(RECONSTRUCTION) George L Stearns Circular for creating a na

Sale 2631 - Lot 287

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(RECONSTRUCTION.) George L. Stearns. Circular for creating a national organization to support the freedmen. One printed page, 10 x 7 3/4 inches, with manuscript completions; mailing folds, 1/2-inch closed tear, otherwise minimal wear. Boston, printed January 1865 and addressed 13 March

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George Luther Stearns (1809-1867) was a Massachusetts abolitionist and one of the "Secret Six" who had supported John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry. With the Emancipation Proclamation, he helped convince Lincoln to create the American Freedmen's Inquiry Commission, which was transformed by Congress into the Freedmen's Bureau on 3 March 1865. Having helped create a government infrastructure to support those recently freed from slavery, Stearns also worked to mobilize private support. This circular letter reads, in part:

"I am aiming to form an association of such men as take a deep interest in the settlement of the Freedmen's future condition in the rebel States. . . . This will facilitate the organization of the anti-slavery men of the country, and enable them to act more effectively in regard to all measures that may be brought forward during the process of the reconstruction of our social and political institutions." He hoped to gather up to 10,000 supporters, and proposed to make them known through a published membership list, so it "cannot be used for sinister or secret purposes, because the organization will be known to all members."

The letter is addressed in manuscript to James H. Deputy, with a note that his name had been recommended by Delaware abolitionist newspaper editor John S. Prettyman. None have been traced at auction or in OCLC. A circular with similar language dated 10 June 1865 was cited in the Benjamin Butler Papers at the Library of Congress (see James, The Framing of the Fourteenth Amendment, page 9).