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Anti-Slavery Hymns and Songs, for the Convention at Abington, July 4, 1848.

[Probably Boston, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, 1848]. Broadside, 19.25” x 7.875” (sheet size). CONDITION: Very good, some foxing, old folds.

A rare broadside printed for distribution at the 4th of July gathering of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in Abington, Massachusetts in 1848, an event attended by some 3000 to 5000 (according to The Liberator) and featuring a number of prominent abolitionists, including William Wells Brown and William Lloyd Garrison.

This sheet consists of seven songs, including Spirit of Freemen, Wake; Progress of the Cause; Land of My Sleeping Fathers; Children of the Glorious Dead; We’re Coming, We’re Coming; Come All Who Claim the Freeman’s Name; and Right On. Three of these songs—Spirit of Freemen, Wake; We’re Coming, We’re Coming and Right On—appeared in The Anti-Slavery Harp: a Collection of Songs for Anti-Slavery Meetings, compiled by William Wells Brown and published in the month preceding the convention. Spirit of Freemen, Awake was one of at least two anti-slavery songs sung—with great irony—to the tune of “America,” better known today as “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.”

An announcement of the Abington convention appears in the June 23rd, 1848 issue of The Liberator:

The well-known beautiful Grove, near the Town Hall, has been engaged for this purpose. Every arrangement will be made to contribute to the value of the occasion, and the pleasure of those who attend. Distinguished friends of the cause will be present, and a portion of the time will be given to addresses…We have the pleasure of saying that the Old Colony Railroad Company have engaged to transport passengers to and from the Abington Grove on that day, at a reduction of one half from the regular fares…Tickets for this purpose will be for sale at the Anti-Slavery Office, 21 Cornhill, Boston, and at Bishop's bookstore, Plymouth. For sale, also, at the Depot in Boston, on the morning of the 4th, from 8 to 9 o’clock…Among those who design to be present, we may mention the names of Wm. Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Frederick Douglass, Parker Pillsbury, Charles L. Remond, Wm. W. Brown, and others, who will undoubtedly address the meeting with their accustomed eloquence.

As it turned out, neither Douglass nor Remond were present. A post-convention notice in The Liberator reports that “the speakers on the occasion were William I. Bowditch, W. L. Garrison, G. W. F. Mellen, Edmund Quincey, Wendell Phillips, Wm. P. Atkinson, James N. Buffum, William W. Brown, Parker Pillsbury, Lucy Stone, Dr. Grandin, and Oliver Johnson” (the latter the author of one of the songs printed here, Progress of the Cause). The account of the convention goes on to report that

Special attention was given to the political aspect of the times- the nomination of Gen. Taylor and Lewis Cass for the Presidency, the defection in the Whig and Democratic ranks, the Wilmot Proviso, the Utica Convention of Barnburners, and the Worcester Convention of Free Soil advocates, &c &c.. While much gratification was expressed at the disruption of the old parties, and while all possible credit was awarded to those who are going forward in the new movement, the abolitionists were admonished to maintain their integrity, and to remember that the true issue was, not the non-extension, but the immediate abolition of slavery and, in order to secure that glorious, object, THE DISSOLUTION OF THE UNION.

Abington was a seat of considerable anti-slavery activity, notices of which frequently appear in The Liberator in the 1840s. As was the case most everywhere, this activity met with local resistance. A letter to the editor from one H. H. Brigham of South Abington appearing in the September 17th, 1847 issue complains of the “bigotry and intolerance of the great body of the so called ‘evangelical clergy’” and notes that “anti-slavery notices [are] not suffered to remain posted on the Orthodox Meeting House in this place, as they are, without exception, of late, torn or pulled down.” In the March 30th, 1849 issue another writer provides an account of the attempts of a certain element in town to bar abolitionists from meeting in the town hall. 

OCLC records a single example of this song sheet, at New York Historical Society.

An evocative artifact of a lively anti-slavery meeting.

Item #9628

Price: $3,500.00

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