Mar 20 at 10:30 AM - Sale 2697 -

Sale 2697 - Lot 152

Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
FREDERICK DOUGLASS. The Anti-Slavery Movement: A Lecture . . . Before the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society. 44 pages plus two final blank leaves. Octavo, 9 x 5½ inches, original printed wrappers, moderate soiling; moderate foxing. Rochester, NY, 1855
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"The country was like a savage drunkard, roused from his slumbers."

First edition (reprinted later that year in Glasgow). Douglass offers a history of opposition to slavery in Europe and America, emphasizing that what seemed to be a modern fad had deep roots. He gives credit to early faith-based opposition from the Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, and especially the Quakers: "It is hardly necessary, in this connection, to refer to the Society of Friends, in these early times. All who know anything of them, know that they were emancipationists. That venerable Society had made Abolitionism a fundamental religious duty, long before the oldest Abolitionist, now living, was on the stage. . . . The broad brim, and the plain dress, were a terror to slaveholders, and a praise to the slave" (page 16).

Douglass writes vividly of the reactionary anti-abolitionist backlash of the 1830s: "The country was like a savage drunkard, roused from his slumbers. Speaking and writing on the subject of slavery became dangerous. Mob violence menaced the persons and property of the Abolitionists, and their very homes became unsafe for themselves and their families. Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and Utica, were under mob law" (pages 19-20). Afro-Americana 3226; not in Blockson. 4 in OCLC; one traced at auction since 1982.

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