Mar 28, 2019 - Sale 2503

Sale 2503 - Lot 64

Price Realized: $ 1,690
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 500 - $ 750
(SLAVERY AND ABOLITION.) Hopkinson, Joseph. The son of a Founding Father argues that extension of slavery was contrary to their intent. Autograph Letter Signed as "Jos. Hopkinson" to William Tudor of Boston. 3 pages, 10 x 7 3/4 inches, on one folding sheet, with postmarked address panel and docketing on final blank; folds, minimal wear. Bordentown, NJ, 20 November 1819
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Joseph Hopkinson (1770-1842) was the son of a Declaration of Independence signer, author of the lyrics to "Hail Columbia," and had just finished a four-year stint in the United States Congress when he wrote this letter. Pressure was mounting on Congress to admit Missouri as a slave-holding state, which Hopkinson saw as both a humanitarian and a political crisis. 'I am glad to see Boston, the earliest and most faithful nurse of the principles of liberty in this country, in motion on the subject of slavery in the new states. . . . The territory acquired with Louisiana . . . is equal in extent to the rest of the United States . . . and if the territory is to be carved up into slaveholding states, with the same rights of voting for officers of the general government as are enjoyed by the original states holding slaves, which were conceded to them, and only to them, by the framers of the Constitution with great reluctance, and in the spirit of conciliation, the balance of the Union will be destroyed; the federal compact essentially changed, and the weight of the government thrown into the hands of a black population, or rather the owners of that population. . . . If the Members of Congress from the States opposed to Slavery will vote firmly together on this question, they now hold it and will continue to hold it in their hands, as there is a clear majority, & a considerable one too, of such members; but if they now give way, that power is gone forever.' This crisis would be temporarily averted the next year by the admission of Maine as a free state to balance the admission of Missouri as a slave state.