SLAVERY AND ABOLITION RECONSTRUCTION) The Freedmens Journal

Sale 2271 - Lot 76

Price Realized: $ 720

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Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200

SLAVERY AND ABOLITION--RECONSTRUCTION.) The Freedmen's Journal. Volume 1, No 1. for January, 1865. 16 pages. 8vo, original self-wrappers; a small spot at the top of the masthead, otherwise a remarkably fresh copy. Boston: Freedmen's Aid Society, 1865

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the rare first issue of the first publication of its kind, preceding the National Freedman and the American Freedman by a year or more. "This month closes the third year of the New England Freedmen's Aid Society. It was called into being early in 1862 by the sharp cry of misery which came from the Port-Royal Islands, where eight thousand emancipated Negroes, ready to perish, seemed about to give a startling proof to the slave-holder's maxim that freedom 'would be ruin to the slave' (from the lead article). This issue also prints a number of letters from teachers, most of which had bravely traveled from New England to the deep South while the war was still raging. Their letters provide a first hand look at the enormous problem that apparently no-one in Washington had foreseen: what to do with 3.1 million home-less, jobless people? One letter in particular refers to Edmonia Lewis, "a young colored woman of mixed African and Indian descent." Ms. Lewis had modeled a bust of Robert Gould Shaw, working from a photograph only. Edmonia Lewis (1845-1907) was the first African American [and Native American] woman to gain fame and recognition as a sculptor in the international fine arts world. She was twenty years old at this time.