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Tag Archives: slavery

On Jon’s Desk: Uncle Tom’s Cabin — not just some backwoods book

24 Wednesday Aug 2016

Posted by Jonathan Bingham in On Jon's Desk

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Abraham Lincoln, American Frontier, Civil War, Clarke & Co., Early Great Britain Edition, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Jewett Proctor & Worthington, John P. Jewett & Company, Jon Bingham, slavery, U.S. First Edition, Uncle Tom's Cabin

PS2954-U5-E52a- title_page

Title Page, U.S. First Edition, March 1852

PS2954-U5-1852-title_page

Title Page, Early Great Britain Edition, May 1852

Title: Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly (United States) / Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Negro Life in the Slave States of America (Great Britain)

Author: Harriet Beecher Stowe

First Edition (U.S.) / Early Edition (G.B.)

Published: Boston: John P. Jewett & Company, 1852; Cleveland, Ohio: Jewett, Proctor & Worthington, 1852 (U.S.) / London: Clarke & Co., 1852 (G.B.)

Pages: U.S. edition comprised of two volumes; volume one with 312 pages and volume two with 322 pages. G.B. edition is single volume containing 380 pages. U.S. edition contains six full page illustrations; G.B. edition contains fifty full page illustrations.

Call Number: PS2954 U5 E52a (U.S.) / PS2954 U5 1852 (G.B.)

PS2954-U5-E52a-page_62_plate

U.S. First Edition, Illustration, Page 62

PS2954-U5-1852-page_125_plate

Early Great Britain Edition, Illustration, Page 125

When Harriet Beecher Stowe conceived Uncle Tom’s Cabin during the early 1850’s she was living in Cincinnati, Ohio, at the time part of the western frontier. Living in Cincinnati, directly across the Ohio River from the slave state of Kentucky, Stowe was exposed to fugitive slaves and often heard firsthand accounts of the horrors experienced by formerly enslaved people. Sympathetic to their suffering, she wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin to expose the tragedies she was hearing about and included many aspects of the firsthand accounts she had heard into the story.

In her concluding remarks Stowe assures us the story is based on true events. She wrote,

“The writer has often been inquired of, by correspondents from different parts of the country, whether this narrative is a true one; and to the inquiries she will give one general answer.

The separate incidents that compose the narrative are to a very great extent authentic, occurring, many of them, either under her own observation or that of her personal friends. She or her friends have         observed characters and the counterparts of almost all that are here introduced; and many of the sayings are word for word as heard herself, or reported to her.”

Stowe’s story from the backwoods of the western frontier became immediately successful throughout the country and quickly thereafter throughout the Western Hemisphere. Initially released as a weekly serial in a newspaper called The National Era from June 1851 to April 1852, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was then printed by John P. Jewett and released March 20, 1852. It sold 3,000 copies the first day, 10,000 copies in the first week, and in the United States 300,000 copies the first year. In Great Britain 200,000 copies were sold the first year, with sales there reaching 1.5 million copies after only a few years. Many of these were infringing, or pirated, editions, having been printed and sold without permission by the copyright owner.

In today’s terms we would say Uncle Tom’s Cabin went viral overnight. Stowe ignited a spark with her writing that caused flames to rise on multiple continents. Her novel brought compassion to the heated economic debate already centuries old, an emotion many had worked hard to suppress. The pen and paper Stowe put to incredible use in a city on the edge of the American frontier played an unquestionable role in history. Ten years after the novel’s publication, when U.S. President Abraham Lincoln met Stowe in 1862, he remarked, “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!”

Stowe’s concluding admonition in the novel’s final comments is a strong rebuke on the nation and, as seen by the popularity of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in Great Britain, was found completely fitting for application on the world at the time as a whole. She wrote,

“Not by combining together to protect injustice and cruelty, and making a common capital of sin, is this Union to be saved – but by repentance, justice, and mercy; for not surer is the eternal law by which the millstone sinks in the ocean, than that stronger law by which injustice and cruelty shall bring on nations the wrath of Almighty God!”

Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a critique on the most divisive topic of her time more than one hundred and sixty years ago. Holding these historic editions and reading these words helps us to realize that even after all this time there is a great deal left to accomplish in protecting justice and mercy. Little wonder millions of copies of Uncle Tom’s Cabin have been sold; perhaps a few million more need to be.

Contributed by Jon Bingham, Rare Books Curator

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Book of the Week – A Letter on the Abolition of the Slave Trade…

18 Monday Jan 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

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abolition, Abolition Bill, armorial, bookplate, British Empire, British Parliament, De La Cherois Crommelin, endpaper, gilt, House of Lords, letter, morocco, pamphlet, planters, printing press, religious, slave trade, slavery, slaves, The University of Utah, Thomas Clarkson, tree calf, West Indian, William Wilberforce

Letter on the Abolition of the Slave Trade

A LETTER ON THE ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE TRADE…
William Wilberforce (1759-1833)
London: Printed by Luke Hansard & Sons for T. Cadell and W. Davis, 1807
First edition

“Old concessions are retracted; exploded errors are revived; and we find we have the greater part of our work to do over again.”

William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846) began their mutual battle against the British Parliament toward the abolition of slavery in 1787. In 1791, they were defeated by the interests of West Indian planters. In 1806, Wilberforce and Clarkson began the fight again. In A Letter, Wilberforce described the evidence and arguments against the slave trade that he had accumulated over the course of two decades. It was published on January 31, 1807. On 25 March 1807 royal assent was given to a bill abolishing slave trade with the introduction of the Abolition Bill in the House of Lords. It was the first major victory for the abolition movement. The bill was carried by 267 votes. According to an account by Clarkson, the house rose to its feet and cheered. The victory represented a battle carried on through word of mouth and the printing press. But the war to abolish slavery was far from over. Wilberforce continued to work to abolish slavery throughout the British Empire. The fight did not conclude until July 26, 1833, when Parliament voted to abolish slavery. Wilberforce died three days later. University of Utah copy has armorial bookplate of “Sam. De La Cherois Crommelin” and family signature on endpaper. Bound in contemporary tree calf, gilt flat spine with black morocco label.

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“Contentment is analogous with a man and his books” — Anonymous gives again!

23 Wednesday Sep 2015

Posted by rarebooks in Donations

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"Public Sentiment: A 19th Century War of Words", book collecting, donation, Marriott Library, rare books, slavery, The Amateur Book Collector, Uncle Tom's Cabin, W. B. Thorsen

 

Ever wondered about book collecting? “Anonymous” recently donated copies of The Amateur Book Collector to Rare Books.

The first issue was published in September 1950 by W.B. Thorsen. “We are a magazine in embryo, staffed by young people and guided by men and women with years of experience in the world of books…Whittier said that contentment is ‘the harvest of song of inward joy’ and contentment is analogous with a man and his books.”

With these humble beginnings, the magazine published issues for the next 25 years.

While the Marriott Library already holds issues from 1959 to 1975, it is with great pleasure that we add these earlier issues (1951 through 1955) to our collection.

Vol. 1, no. 10, June, 1951 celebrates the 100th anniversary of the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a book we featured in our 2010 exhibition, “Public Sentiment: A Nineteenth-Century War of Words,” where you can read about the impact of Uncle Tom’s Cabin on 19th century attitudes regarding slavery and see an image from our first edition.

The Amateur Book Collector

Thank you, Anonymous!

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We recommend – Black, White and Mormon

10 Thursday Sep 2015

Posted by rarebooks in Recommended Exhibition

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

J. Willard Marriott Library, Mormon, Oxford University Press, political cartoons, polygamy, rare books, slavery, The University of Utah, W. Paul Reeve

Black, White and Mormon
Tuesday, September 8 – Thursday, October 29
J. Willard Marriott Library, Level 1, The University of Utah

From W. Paul Reeve’s Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness (Oxford University Press, 2015), illustrations from political cartoons of the late 19th and early 20th centuries highlighting two themes: polygamy as the racial corruption of the white family and polygamy as slavery.

Dr. Reeve’s thesis is that outsiders projected their own fears of race mixing onto the Mormons. In their minds, polygamy was not merely destroying the traditional family, it was destroying the white race.

Several illustrations used by Dr. Reeve come from the Rare Books holdings.


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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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Memorial Day 2014

26 Monday May 2014

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

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1st South Carolina Volunteers, abolition, American Civil War, Arlington, Decoration Day, Harvard Divinity School, Kaleidograph Press, labor rights, Luise Putcamp jr, Massachusetts, Memorial Day, Newburyport, Reed Smoot, Republican, slavery, Sonnets for Survivors, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Union, Unitarian, Utah, Washington, women's suffrage

Memorial Day

If sudden statues rose for all who fell
They would not inundate the parks with stone
Where the forgotten heroes ride alone
To slow tongue of an abandoned bell.
Flaunting the remnants of their final hell
They would regain the streets their feet had known
Under the skies where their first words were sown
And stand as an alien citadel.

So rooted they would still with carven ear
The threadbare speech, the momentary tear,
With carven eye transfix the mocking flowers,
Wilt token flags above forgetful towers.
Who then would dare to go the usual way
Crowding the dead into a single day?

Luise Putcamp jr.
from Sonnets for the Survivors, Kaleidograph Press, 1952
“Memorial Day” published here with permission of the poet

 


Address on Decoration Day
Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823-1911)
s.l.: s.n., 1904
E642 H53

“Without distinction of nationality, of color, of race, of religion, those men gave their lives to their country. Without distinction of religion, of color, of race, of nationality, their graves are being garlanded today….the war gave peace to the nation; it gave union, freedom, equal rights…”

Thomas Wentworth Higginson was graduated from Harvard Divinity School in 1847. He accepted the appointment of ministry of a Unitarian church in Newburyport, Massachusetts. His support for women’s suffrage, labor rights, and the abolition of slavery was too radical for the conservative community. He was asked to resign two years after his appointment. As a Union colonel in the American Civil War, Higginson commanded the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, the first federally authorized regiment of African-American soldiers.


Memorial Day Address at Arlington, VA.
Reed Smoot (1862-1941)
Washington: Govt. Printing Office, 1914
E642 S66 1914

“In all we say about the soldier, let us not forget the part taken and willingly assumed by the American women in time of war. What shall we say of the wives and the mothers who gave their husbands and their sons for their country? No woman who has not passed through this terrible ordeal can describe or measure the sacrifice our women made, or the horrors and hardships and sorrows they endured. What say you of the loving sisters who gave their brothers, yes, and their lovers too?”

Reed Smoot was a Republican senator from Utah, serving from 1903 to 1933.

 

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Book of the Week – Vue de la Colonie Espagnole du Mississipi, ou des…

24 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

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Tags

abolition, colonist, commerce, cotton, Florida, French, government, Haiti, Haitian Revolution, indigo, law, Louisiana, Mississippi, Mississippi River, New Orleans, rice, slavery, slaves, sugar, tobacco, trade, wood

Berquin-Duvallon, Vue de la Colonie…, 1803, Title Page
Berquin-Duvallon, Vue de la Colonie…, 1803, Chapter 11
Berquin-Duvallon, Vue de la Colonie…, 1803, Map

Vue de la Colonie Espagnole du Mississipi, ou des…
Pierre Louis Berquin-Duvallon (1769 – aft 1804))
Paris : Imprimerie Expeditive, 1803
First edition
F373 B53

This work on Louisiana and the western part of Florida gives a general survey of the area, with special attention paid to the Mississippi River and New Orleans. The author writes of the climate; soil; flora and fauna; production of sugar, cotton, indigo, tobacco, rice and wood ; as well as trade, commerce, law and government. Berquin-Duvallon was a planter who lived in Louisiana from 1799 until 1802. A French colonist, he fled San Domingo in 1803, after slaves successfully revolted. The Haitian Revolution resulted in the abolition of slavery on Haiti.

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