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Immediate Emancipation.
New York: Published by W. E. Whiting, 61 John St., [ca. 1861]. Mezzotint and engraving, 12.25” x 9”, sheet size 16.625” x 11.625”. CONDITION: Very good, slight rubbing to margins of sheet, a few spots of foxing to verso. An apparently otherwise unknown edition of this celebratory print, originally published in England and America to mark the abolition of slavery in the British colonies, and re-published here some twenty-five years later for an American audience during the Civil War by an important member of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. This print shows a formerly enslaved man with a cloth wrapped around his waist and his arms upraised in celebration. A smiling woman on the left joyously raises her baby, while on the right two boys and a girl—perhaps the couple’s older children—bury their broken shackles. In the background a group of the formerly enslaved can be seen dancing and celebrating by the harbor. A version of this print, engraved by David Lucas and published by Francis Graham Moon, was first published in Britain to mark the Slavery Abolition Act in 1834, which immediately emancipated all enslaved children in the British Colonies under the age of six. An American edition, engraved by Stephen Henry Gimber, was issued by the American Anti-Slavery Society, probably the same year. That version was then republished in 1838, when the period of forced apprenticeship for those over the age of six was abolished, and for the first time appeared with the words “Immediate Emancipation” (the full title was “Immediate Emancipation in the West Indies, Aug. 1st, 1838”). The print offered here, issued more than two decades later, celebrates West Indian emancipation in a new and highly-charged atmosphere—or perhaps repurposes the imagery altogether—either shortly prior to Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation or in celebration of it: the publisher, William E. Whiting, does not appear at 61 John St. until 1861, and by 1867 is listed at 58 John St., a few doors down. Whiting (d. 1882) was “the treasurer and an executive committee member of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. A committed political abolitionist, Whiting joined the American Abolition Society in 1855, was treasurer of its auxiliary the New York City Abolition Society, and was a manager of the religious antislavery American Missionary Association” (“William E. Whiting”). He published several works by fellow abolitionists, including “The War—Its Cause and Remedy” (1865) by Lewis Tappan, and “Universal Suffrage : An argument by Rev. Henry Ward Beecher” (1865). He is known to have re-issued at least one American Antislavery Society publication—Tappan’s “Caste : A letter to a teacher among the freedmen” (1867?)—and evidently sourced this print from the Antislavery Society as well, since faint traces of its imprint can be seen below his own. We have found no other examples of this edition in OCLC or online. A rare edition of this print originally published to celebrate emancipation in the West Indies and repurposed by an American abolitionist during the Civil War. REFERENCES: “William E. Whiting to Frederick Douglass, November 23, 1855” at The Frederick Douglass Papers online; Trow’s New York City Directory, 1859–65, 1867–71.
Item #9272
Price: $5,500.00
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