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Picture of Slavery in the United States of America.
Middletown, Conn.: Edwin Hunt, 1834. 16mo (6.125” x 3.75”). Brown cloth with paper title at spine. 11 plates, 227–[1] pp. Early ownership inscription in ink on recto of ffep: “Joseph S. Ware Worcester Mass” and on verso of rear free endpaper in pencil: “Jos. S. Ware Worcester Ms. Left for France April 10. 1837[.] Expected to sail from NY April 16. [?] 17 April.” CONDITION: Very good, light wear to upper cover, upper and lower spine slightly chipped with .25” tear to upper spine; contents very good, occasional light foxing throughout. First edition of this vividly and controversially illustrated condemnation of slavery by one of America’s “first radical abolitionists.” George Bourne’s Picture of Slavery was radical, even among abolitionists, not only for referring to enslaved people of color as “fellow citizens” and for demanding “immediate, unconditional, and universal emancipation,” but for doing so with the understanding that “no compensation should be given to the planters.” This work significantly expands Bourne’s controversial 1816 The Book and Slavery Irreconcilable, which was “the first sustained examination of the relationship between slavery and the Bible in the United States” and “one of the most important works of the early antislavery movement” (Yacovone). Arguing that slavery, as a form of theft, is a sin, the Picture of Slavery shocked readers by illustrating its already graphic accounts of slaveowners’ cruel treatment of their fellow citizens. Captioned to arouse a sense of equality and fellow-feeling with enslaved persons and a sense of estrangement from white “man-stealers,” the plates depict scenes of “Selling Females by the pound,” “Torturing American Citizens,” “Flogging American Women,” “Exchanging Citizens for Horses,” and “Ladies Whipping Girls,” as well as a “Family Amalgamation among the men-stealers,” among others. George Bourne (1780–1845) was born in England and trained for the Church, but as a young man immigrated Baltimore, Maryland, where he exhibited “a flair for controversial journalism” (Murray) and started his own newspaper. Ultimately unable to stay afloat in journalism, in 1810 he relocated to Virginia, returned to his early training in the ministry, and founded a congregation. While preparing for his ordination, Bourne discovered and amassed biblical prohibitions and censures of “man-stealing,” which, along with his own horrified observations of slavery, convinced him that “every man who holds slaves and who pretends to be a Christian or a Republican, is either an incurable idiot who cannot distinguish good from evil, or an obdurate sinner who resolutely defies every social, moral and divine requisition. Evangelical charity induces the hope that he is an ignoramus” (Christie and Dumond). Expelled from the Lexington Presbytery in 1815 for his verbal attacks on slave-owning ministers and parishioners, Bourne eventually settled in New York City, where he became friends with the reformer Arthur Tappan, contributed regularly to William Lloyd Garrison’s famous Liberator, and was a founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Though “Frequently overlooked,” Bourne paved the way for biblical arguments in favor of abolition and is “a crucial figure in the history of the antislavery movement” (Yacovone). An illustrated, Christian argument against the sin of slavery by an understudied but influential abolitionist. REFERENCES: Christie, John, and Dwight L. Dumond, George Bourne and The Book and Slavery Irreconcilable (1969), p. 71; Murray, Andrew. Presbyterians and the Negro: A History (Philadelphia, 1966), p. 20; Yacovone, Donald. “Bourne, George,” American National Biography online; Afro-Americana 1414; Sabin 6921; Dumond, p. 30.
Item #7715
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