Picture of Slavery

Item Details

Middletown, Conn, Edwin Hunt, 1834, Hardcover

First Edition, Very Good

Original brown cloth with printed paper spine label. 6" by 3 3/4"  (2), [iv] 5-227pp, (1) index. Complete with eleven woodcuts including the frontispiece. Small amount of occasional foxing. Very good. Sabin 6921

Picture of Slavery is a highly charged graphic illustration and indictment of slavery. It includes some material from Bourne's 1816 pamphlet "The Book and Slavery Irreconcilable," but adds much more material, as well as powerful engravings such as “Flogging American Women”, “Torturing American Citizens” and “Kidnapping”. 

George Bourne, a Presbyterian minister, stood out even among abolitionists of his day by describing enslaved people as citizens, and slave owners as men stealers. He is credited as the first public proclaimer of "immediate emancipation without compensation" of American slaves and is considered one of the pioneers of the anti-slavery movement in the United States. He was also expelled from the Presbyterian church over his uncompromising views.