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The American Anti-Slavery Almanac for 1840, being bissextile or leap-year, and the 64th of American Independence, calculated for Boston…

15 Monday Jan 2018

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

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Tags

almanac, America, American Anti-Slavery Society, Boston, branding, burning, charts, Congress, constitutions, dogs, eclipses, freedom, governments, guns, high tides, hunting, laws, liberty, lynching, New York, population, postage rates, republics, selling, slaves, statistics, tables, United States

E449-A516-1840-cover
“He is a traitor to his race, who does not feel that all within the circle of humanity are his brothers and sisters — that their wrongs are his wrongs, and that his cup is dashed with the bitterness which overflows from theirs. While a single human being, round the wide world, drags the chain or drops the tear of a slave, every other human being, whose heart has not turned to stone, will cry out against the wretch who riveted the one or wrings out the other.”

…

“This language of Congress is memorable, as it shows that the dignified and enlightened body, under whose auspices the liberties of America were achieved, still retained an undiminished respect for the great and eternal principles of FREEDOM….’For extending the fundamental principles of civil and religious liberty, which form the basis on which these republics, their laws, and the constitutions are erected, to fix and establish those principles as the basis of all laws, constitutions, and governments…'”

The American Anti-Slavery Almanac for 1840…
New York, NY & Boston, MA, 1839

This almanac presents the expected charts and tables, including lists of eclipses, high tides, population statistics of the United States, and postage rates. This practical matter is interspersed with texts detailing accounts of branding, hunting escaped slaves with dogs and and guns, selling a mother from her child, women being whipped in fields, lynching, burning alive and other atrocities perpetuated against the enslaved. The stories are illustrated with strikingly graphic images, one for each month plus one for the cover. Almanacs were read and used by a majority of literate American adults. The American Anti-Slavery Society began publishing these almanacs, in 1835, as a way of publicizing the horrors of slavery.

E449-A516-1840-pg11E449-A516-1840-pg13E449-A516-1840-pg15

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On Jon’s Desk: Annals of the American Revolution, celebrating Patriots’ Day

17 Monday Apr 2017

Posted by Jonathan Bingham in On Jon's Desk

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Academy of Woodstock, Annals of the American Revolution, Battle of Concord, Battle of Lexington, Battle of Saratoga, Boston Marathon, Boston Tea Party, Calvinist Congregational Church, geography, George Washington, Jedidiah Morse, Jon Bingham, liberty, Maine, Massachussettes, Patriots' Day, Revolutionary War, University of Edinburgh, Yale University

Title page of the Annals of the American Revolution.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Immediately upon the arrival of the tea-ships in the harbor of Boston, the first step taken was to request the consignees to refuse the commission. The inhabitants warmly remonstrated against the teas being landed in any of their ports, and urged the return of the ships without permitting them to break bulk. Resolved not to yield to the smallest vestige of parliamentary taxation, however disguised, a numerous assembly of the most respectable people of Boston and its neighborhood, repaired to the public hall, and drew up a remonstrance to the governor, urging the necessity of his order, to send back the ships without suffering any part of their cargoes to be landed. His answer confirmed the opinion, that he was the instigator of the measure.

…

Within an hour after this was known abroad, there appeared a great number of persons, clad like the aborigines of the wilderness, with tomahawks in their hands and clubs on their shoulders, who, without the least molestation, marched through the streets with silent solemnity, and amidst innumerable spectators, proceeded to the wharves, boarded the ships, demanded the keys, and without much deliberation knocked open the chests, and emptied several thousand weight of the finest teas into the ocean. No opposition was made, though surrounded by the king’s ships; all was silence and dismay.”

– Jedidiah Morse, Annals of the American Revolution, pages 176 & 177

Illustration (frontis piece engraving) of the Annals of the American Revolution, showing a depiction of the Boston Tea Party.

 

 

 

 

 

Title: Annals of the American Revolution; or a Record of the Causes and Events which Produced, and Terminated in the Establishment and Independence of the American Republic

Author: Jedidiah Morse, D.D.

Printed: Hartford, CT: 1824

First Edition

Call Number: E208 M88

Fold out plate (engraving) of the Battle of Saratoga from the Annals of the American Revolution.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Patriots’ Day! Unless you are from the New England area, you may not know what Patriots’ Day is. It is the commemoration of the first battles of the American Revolution (Lexington and Concord) and is observed on the third Monday of April in some states (Maine and Massachusetts, for example). Each year the Boston Marathon is run on Patriots’ Day, linking the Athenian and American struggles for liberty (the twenty-six mile race being so named after the Greek Battle of Marathon). For those of us who want a link to the past that does not involve the pain of running twenty-six miles, a book about the American Revolution provides just such an opportunity. So while some people may show their Patriot-ism in Boston via running shoes, let’s take a look at Jedidiah Morse’s Annals of the American Revolution.

Preface to the Annals of the American Revolution.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Morse’s Annals of the American Revolution is a compilation of accounts relating events leading up to and through the Revolutionary War. The book also includes an index with descriptions of the notable military leaders of the time. The accounts begin with the establishment of the British colonies in North America in the 16th century and end with General George Washington’s resignation of his commission as the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army in front of Congress on December 23rd, 1783.

Jedidiah Morse was a geographer and pastor. Born August 23, 1761 in Woodstock, Connecticut, Morse attended the Academy of Woodstock and then Yale University (M.A., 1786), and later graduated with a Doctor of Divinity from the University of Edinburgh (D.D., 1795). His writing career began after starting and teaching at a school for young women. He saw the need for a geography text book and wrote Geography Made Easy (1784), followed by American Geography (1789). Morse was a pastor in the Calvinist Congregational Church, but remained active in education and geography throughout his life (died June 9, 1826, age 64, New Haven, Connecticut). He published sixty-three works during his career, most of them religious.

~Contributed by Jon Bingham, Rare Books Curator

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Book of the Week – Notes on the State of Virginia

19 Tuesday Aug 2014

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

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Comte de Buffon, deportation, education, emancipation, Enlightenment, geography, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Indian tribes, liberty, map, Mathew Carey, nature, New World, patriotism, Philadelphia, Samuel Lewis, slavery, slaves, Thomas Jefferson, United States of America, Virginia


Notes on the State of Virginia
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
Philadelphia: Printed for Mathew Carey, 1794
Second American edition

The second American edition of Notes included a large folding map of Virginia made by Samuel Lewis not in the first edition and a folding chart listing Indian tribes. Written in the form of answers to questions about Virginia, Notes contains information about the geography and social and political life of Virginia. Jefferson also used it as a forum for patriotism, expressing great optimism in regard to the future of the fledgling United States of America.

He supported this argument with a dissertation about the nature of the good society as reflected in his home state of Virginia. He discussed constitutional principles such as the separation of church and state, the importance of the system of checks and balances in a constitutional government and the need and right for individual liberty.

Jefferson passionately refuted a theory posited by the contemporary French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707-1788), who stated that nature – plant life, animal life and human life – degenerated in the New World.

In two different chapters, Jefferson discussed slavery, with tortuous attempts to explain and justify American slavery. Jefferson, in fact, held sway with contemporary Enlightenment belief that blacks were inferior to whites (whites were more beautiful and more intelligent). He argued for the mass deportation of slaves toward the common good of whites and blacks, slavery being demoralizing to both races. He suggested education and emancipation for slaves, and then colonization of emancipated slave children outside of the United States. Very outside, in fact. He did not suggest that they colonize any part of the North American continent.

 

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