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The Address of the Southern and Western Liberty Convention Held at Cincinnati, June 11 & 12, 1845, to the People of the United States. With Notes by a Citizen of Pennsylvania.
[Philadelphia: Office of the American Citizen, 1845]. 8vo (8.875” x 5.6250, self wrappers. 16 pp. CONDITION: First leaf detached, foxed, otherwise good. An address given by future Lincoln cabinet-member and Supreme Court chief justice Salmon P. Chase at a national anti-slavery convention held in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1845. Chase, the leader of the Ohio Liberty Party, argues that the abolition of slavery can be accomplished “peacefully, constitutionally, without real injury to any, with the greatest benefit to all.” Unlike Garrison and his branch of the anti-slavery movement, which believed the constitution to be “a covenant with death” and “an agreement with Hell,” Chase hoped to chart a moderate course, abolishing slavery within the constitution through collaboration with sympathetically-minded Southerners. The Southern and Western Liberty Convention was not an event exclusively for delegates of the Liberty Party, and delegates and spectators numbered between 2500 and 4000. This address by Chase discusses the historical relationship of slavery to the constitution (“It was expected that all states…would, at no distant day, put an end to slavery within their respective limits…”) and, of course, promotes the Liberty Party. The final page lists all abolitionist newspapers in the U.S., “according to the best information we have been able to obtain,” as well as religious papers “that are decidedly anti-slavery, or friendly to the Anti-Slavery cause.” Samuel P. Chase (1808–1873) was born in Cornish, New Hampshire and settled in Ohio as a young lawyer, where he rubbed elbows with Harriet Beecher Stowe at the Semi-Colon Club and worked actively for the anti-slavery cause, frequently defending escaped slaves in court. He led Ohio’s Liberty Party in the early 1840s, established the Free Soil Party in 1848, and became a senator in 1849, in which capacity he opposed the Kansas–Nebraska act and helped found the Republican Party. Chase served as Secretary of the Treasury under Lincoln, and in 1864 was appointed to the Supreme Court, serving as Chief Justice until his death. REFERENCES: Sabin 88294.
Item #8860
Price: $2,500.00
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