Mar 29, 2018 - Sale 2471

Sale 2471 - Lot 9

Price Realized: $ 585
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 400 - $ 600
(SLAVERY AND ABOLITION.) Hall, Prince. Petition against the kidnapping of African-American seamen, as published in the newspaper The Independent Gazetteer. 4 pages, 11 1/4 x 9 1/4 inches, on one folding sheet; disbound, minor foxing. Philadelphia, 12 April 1788

Additional Details

Prince Hall, a free African-American of Boston, wrote this petition to protest "the inhuman and cruel treatment that three of our brethren, free citizens of the town of Boston, lately received." A ship captain "put them in irons, and carried them off from their wives and children, to be sold for slaves. . . . Hence it is, that many of us, who are good seamen, are obliged to stay at home through fear." He also protests the slave-trading ships operating out of Boston, "cleared out from this harbour for Africa, and there they either steal, or cause others to steal, our brothers and sisters, and fill their holds full of unhappy men and women, crouded together . . . and then return here like honest men after having sported with the lives and liberty of their fellow men."