(SLAVERY ABOLITION) Views of Slavery

Sale 2631 - Lot 50

Price Realized: $ 2,250

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000

(SLAVERY & ABOLITION.) Views of Slavery. Lithograph, 13 3/4 x 10 1/4; toning and dampstaining, minor edge wear. [New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1836]

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Additional Details

Six lithographic inset views depict the brutality of slavery: two scenes of whippings; a woman being separated from her children; a slave auction; and a port scene with a line of enslaved people being shipped to New Orleans. Advertisements for the print explain the subtle scene at upper left: "Wresting from a colored woman her free papers, in order to reduce her to slavery."

In the upper margin is a short meditation on the Golden Rule: "Does the slaveholder admit the slave to be a human being? If so, we would ask his interpretation of the following sentiment: 'Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them.'" In the lower margin is a quotation from abolitionist William Ellery Channing's 1835 book "Slavery": "Our laws know no higher crime than that of reducing a man to slavery. To steal or to buy an African on his own shores, is piracy."

This lithograph was advertised for sale by the American Anti-Slavery Society in abolitionist newspapers such as the Liberator of 23 July 1836. We trace only 3 examples in institutions (the Smithsonian Institution, the Library Company of Philadelphia, and the Gilder Lehrman Institute), and only one traced at auction since 1966.