CATALOG   NUMBER   37 – AMERICANA

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1. Adams, Andrew (1736-1797) [Autograph Letter, Philadelphia, July 17, 1781  to an un-named recipient]

Folio, three pages, inscribed on a four page bifolium, formerly folded in quarters, small break at fold joint on second leaf, not affecting any text. In very good clean, legible condition. Probably a retained copy. Docketed on last leaf “Andrew Adams Letter”

Adams, Connecticut jurist, was elected to the Connecticut General Assembly in 1776, of which he was speaker during four sessions. He was a member of the Council of Safety; major and later colonel in the militia. He served for a short time in the army under Gen. Wooster. In 1777 he was appointed a delegate to the Continental Congress, a position he held for three years. He was a signer of the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. He was nominated to the upper house of the Connecticut General Assembly in 1779, and three years later elected a member, which office he held until 1789.

Adams writes in this letter to an unidentified recipient, undoubtedly from Connecticut, the news from Philadelphia concerning the current state of the War, its finance and of the activities of the Continental Congress:

“I thank you for your letter of last month and your communication of the spirited measures of our Assembly in taxing & of their wisdom in avoiding a further emission of paper, which tho it has wrought wonders, and may do it again… We have letters from Mr. Jay…our affairs then at the Court of Spain remained in status quo – A small loan has been obtained there in money & credit 150,000 dollars – also a present of some prize cloathing – A like present has also been made by the king of France, & also of other stores, & about 1,500,000 in Cash appropriated to the operations of the present campaign – which the Financier is every day drawing for – report says we have a small loan in Holland. – A number of Lord George Germaines dispatches to Clinton & Cornwallis, have been intercepted with other letters & sent to Congress Date February & March – Extracts from which are selecting to be printed which I will send on to you. The Southern States & as far Eastward as this Inclusive was to be reduced this Summer, the Wedge to be entered at Virginia That State and the Carolina’s finished first & then a turn this way – little opposition was apprehended – the Province of Main also to be occupied by the Enemy. Genl. Washington with the little remains of his army would retire eastward of the North river. That the States in general & probably Congress would sue for submission & peace. It seemed to be regretted that the last Proclamations of the Commissn. for peace had made the exceptions for pardon so narrow. The charters or Constitutions of the Colonies were to be altered in Conformity to the Parent State, to secure their dependence in future – Vermont has been tamper’d with or endeavored to be thro the Govr. of Canada & is considered as an important object & nearly Maines, 5000 has been paid to the orders of Genll. Arnold, and vested in the funds by his Agent &c…- these hints are for your present amusement; but not to publish as you will soon have something more particular & authentick…We have pretty full representation in Congress & go on as usual…Wm. Lee writes from Brussles that the King of Prussia is our Friend… A letter just recd. from J. Lawrence in France, informs that the King of France has undertaken to Guarantee a Loan for us in Holland of 10,000,000 livres…”                                                                                  $ 3000.00

Dictionary of American Biography, volume 1, pp. 37-38              

2. (African Americans - Broadside) Union with Freemen - No Union with Slaveholders. ANTI-SLAVERY MEETINGS! Anti-Slavery Meetings will be held in this place, to commence on [blank space] at [blank space] in the [blank space] To be Addressed by Agents of the Western Anti-Slavery Society. Three millions of your fellow beings are in chains - the Church and Government sustains the horrible system of oppression. TURN OUT! And Learn Your Duty to Yourselves, the Slave and God. Emancipation or Dissolution, and a Free Northern Republic!

Salem, OH: Homestead Print, [nd. Circa 1850's] broadside, measuring 10 ½  x 15 ¾  inches, paper somewhat browned, else a very good clean copy. Printed in a variety of different sized type, the largest measuring 2 ¾ inches. A handsome broadside which would make an excellent display piece.                                                                                                            $ 1500.00

3. (African Americans) Bradford, Sarah H., Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman.

Auburn: W. J. Moses, printer, 1869, first edition, 12mo, portrait, 132 pp., original cloth, binding is worn and rubbed, spine ends frayed, front free endpaper missing, former owner’s handstamp on front blank leaf, some pencil scrawls on endpapers and blanks, scattered foxing and spotting to text, else a very good clean copy. First edition of the first biography of Harriet Tubman. This book which made her heroic exploits widely known to interested Americans was sold by subscription to provide financial support to Tubman.  HSP/LCP Afro-Americana

Catalog 1467; Blockson 3950; Work p. 476                                                                          $ 1500.00

4. (African Americans) Bradford, Sarah H., Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman.

Auburn: W. J. Moses, printer, 1869, first edition, 12mo, portrait, 132 pp., original cloth, binding is worn and rubbed, spine ends frayed, covers somewhat spotted and dampstained, scattered foxing to text, else a good copy. Blockson 3950; Work p. 476; Afro-Americana 1467                                                                                                                                             $ 1250.00

5. (African Americans) Bradford, Sarah H., Harriet The Moses of Her People

New York: Published for the Author by Geo. R. Lockwood & Son, 1886, first of this edition, 12mo, 149 pp., original cloth, binding is worn, rubbed and shaken, inner hinges cracked, front free endpaper missing, one leaf, pp 9-10, is detached, but present, else a good copy.

There is a presentation inscription on the preliminary blank leaf “signed” Harriet Tubman, the inscription reads as follows: “To Miss Margie Let Your sufferings be long or short remember the cross. I pray that God may throw a mantle around you as he did Job and keep you all the days of your life. Harriet Tubman March 31^st, 1888” Harriet Tubman was illiterate however it is probable that the inscription was written by Tubman’s friend Jane Kellogg, who occasionally wrote letters for her. The Miss Margie is probably Tubman’s niece, Margaret Stewart Lucas. The inked sign of the cross at the top of the page may be in Tubman’s hand.  The second edition of Bradford’s biography of Tubman, this edition contains substantive changes from the 1869 edition, the work is much more racist in tone, although it does provide some new stories of Tubman’s life while altering others from the 1869 edition.  These changes make the work a clearly different one than the 1869 Scenes, the 1886 version, ironically, has been the reprint of choice for the last 115 years. Afro-Americana 1466; not in Blockson Catalog; Work p. 476                                                                                                                            $ 2000.00      

6. (African Americans) Bradford, Sarah H., Harriet The Moses of Her People

New York: J. J. Little & Co., 1901, 12mo, 171 pp., original cloth, some minor spotting to covers, else a very good clean copy. This reprint of Bradford’s 1886 biography includes an additional twenty pages of heretofore unpublished stories about Tubman’s life Some Additional Incidents in the Life of Harriet, carried on pages 133-153. This edition not in Blockson Collection Catalog or Work; not in Afro-Americana                                                                                               $ 750.00

7. (African Americans) Morse, Jedidiah, A Discourse, Delivered at the African Meeting-House in Boston, July 14, 1808, in Grateful Celebration of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the Governments of the United States, Great Britain and Denmark.

Boston: Printed by Lincoln & Edmands, 1808, first edition, octavo, 28 page pamphlet, removed, lacking wrappers, some scattered foxing to text, else a very good clean copy. This address was occasioned by the passage of laws in Britain and America which outlawed the slave trade in 1808, the smaller Danish trade was ended in 1802. Afro-Americana, 6860; American Imprints 15651; Dumond p. 82; cf Sabin 50953; Blockson 9358                           $ 450.00

8. (African Americans) The Party of Freedom and Its Candidates. The Duty of the Colored Voter.

Washington: Published by the Union Republican Congressional Committee [1868] octavo, 4 pp., circular, removed from bound volume, text slightly browned, else a very good copy. Caption title. Illustrated with a cut of both Lincoln and of Grant. Republican campaign circular for Grant the “successor” of “the emancipator,” aimed at “newly made citizens,” i.e. emancipated slaves, in the form of a dialog between “a newly made citizen and a Radical Republican” on reasons why African Americans should vote Republican.

Monaghan 908                                                                                                                              $ 175.00

9.   (African Americans) Pim, Bedford, The Negro and Jamaica. Read before the Anthropological Society of London, February 1, 1866, at St. James’s Hall, London

London: Trubner and Co., [1866] octavo, 72 page pamphlet, original printed wrappers, wraps are chipped and worn, old tape repairs to spine and rear wrapper, else a good clean copy. Despite the hints at an anthropological discourse, this work is a political statement critical of British policy in the West Indies. Pim writes in defense of the governor of Jamaica in his efforts to deal with a Negro rebellion on that island, which Pim believed could result in the flight of white settlers, thus endangering the empire. Pim also was of the opinion that efforts to elevate the Negro were not practical, since he believed that the Negro was inherently incapable of equality with whites. HSP/LCP Afro-Americana Catalog 8225; Sabin 62873; Work,p. 641;not in Blockson catalog.                                                                                   $ 300.00

10. (African Americans) Putnam, William A., [Autograph Letter Signed, Louisville, KY, May 22, 1864 to his brother, George A. Putnam, Rutland, Worcester Co., MA]

folio, 4 pages, folded, light damp-stain, accompanied by original mailing envelope, in good clean legible condition.

Putnam, a southern sympathizer, writes to his brother in the north, who disagrees with his positions. He discusses, in this letter, in the most racist terms African Americans, newly freed slaves, their “inherent inferiority,” politics, the constitution its “destruction” by Lincoln and the government, the War, the Fort Pillow massacre, etc.   “…I was somewhat amused when in the course of conversation he said that free niggers could not come into Illinois, no sir, the door is barred against our being ever troubled with them. I said and still you Ill. Have sent some two hundred thousand men to take away their masters’ land, corn and bacon and set them free, as they suppose, to go where they please at the north, but when these free niggers knock at your door to warm their shins and beg a morsel for their little ones, your only answer will be “Go away niggers, we have set you free and now go about your business”…concluded that it looked hard to exclude a free man from the rights guaranteed to freemen by the constitution. I told him that the same power that had broken the constitution of Kentucky by taking the slaves for soldiers would soon find a way to break a hole in the constitution of Illinois big enough to push the nigger through…”You do not care a damn for the nigger” “give him his freedom and let him keep his end up if he can, and if not let him go under” when you have most positive evidence that he is of so inferior race that he must be cared for, and that be cannot keep his end up. This is bad humanity. As for “the whole country being better off without it” I believe if it had never been brought to this country by our ancestors and the English, (for the South never imported one) it would have been better for the country…”                                                                                                                       $ 650.00