History of the Antislavery Measures of the Thirty-Seventh and Thirty-Eighth United-States Congresses, 1861-1864.

A COMPREHENSIVE COMPILATION

First edition. 8vo. Publisher's blindstamped cloth, spine sunned, headcap repaired, bookplate to front pastedown, two ms. ownership inscriptions to front free endpaper. xv, [i], 384, [2ads]pp. Boston, Walker & Wise Co.,

A very good copy of this wartime publication documenting the legislation brought to Congress from the outbreak of the Civil War.

 

Henry Wilson (1812-1875) was first elected to the lower house of the Massachusetts Assembly in 1840 and in 1855 to the US senate. He first encountered slavery on a trip to Washington DC in 1836 and became a dedicated opponent to it thereafter. ANB notes: "The causes that dominated his political career [...] were the abolition of slavery and the establishment of equal rights for black Americans." An important figure in mid-nineteenth-century American politics, he was a key organiser of the Republican Party itself. In 1872, he was elected Vice-President of the United States, serving under Ulysses Grant.

 

Wilson remarks in the preface: "Since the breaking-out of the Rebellion, the exigencies of the nation have forced upon the 37th and 38th Congresses the consideration of a series of antislavery measures. The measures, so comprehensive in their scope and character, cannot fail to have a lasting influence upon the future of the country." The book itself presents the various arguments for and against legislation regarding the use of enslaved labour for insurrectionary purposes; the repeal of fugitive slave laws; the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia; coloured soldiers, their pay and the status of their wives and children. It reads similarly to the publications produced by the House of Commons in the UK during the debates over the abolition of slavery which came into effect in 1807.

 

A revised, second edition was published in 1865. Not in Work; LCP/HSP Afro-Americana, 11287.

 

Stock Code: 234108