Sale 2471 - Printed & Manuscript African Americana, March 29, 2018

30 c   (SLAVERYANDABOLITION.) Bradburn, Samuel. An Address to the People Called Methodists; Concerning the Evil of Encouraging the Slave Trade. 24 pages. 12mo, later cloth-backed boards, minor soiling; outer leaves tipped to endpapers with a few letters of text obscured on the last page; uncut. Manchester, England:T. Harper, 1792 [400/600] first edition of a frequently reprinted pamphlet, urging Methodists to join in the English boycott of slave-produced rum and sugar. Sabin 7202. 7 copies in OCLC; none of any edition known at auction. 31 c   (SLAVERY AND ABOLITION.) Benjamin Banneker’s famous correspondence with Thomas Jefferson, as published in an issue of the newspaper The Mail; or Claypoole’s Daily Advertiser. 4 pages, 19 3 / 4 x 12 3 / 4 inches, on one folding sheet; disbound, toned. Philadelphia, 16 October 1792 [1,000/1,500] African-American scientist Benjamin Banneker (1731-1806) is perhaps best known today for the annual almanacs he published in Baltimore. In an effort to promote his first almanac, he sent a draft to Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, also a man of science, and received a thoughtful response. Their exchange was published in the Virginia Gazette, and is here reprinted. Banneker starts by noting “the almost general prejudice and prepos- session which is so prevalent in the world against those of my complexion. . . . We are a race of beings who have long labored under the abuse and censure of the world.” He compares his race’s quest for freedom to the efforts Jefferson and other patriots made during the recent Revolution, and concludes by sending a manuscript of his astronomical calcu- lations “that you might also view it in my own hand-wrighting.” Jefferson’s response is short but at least somewhat sincere: “No body wishes more than I do, to see such proofs as you exhibit, that nature has given to our black brethren talents equal to those of the other colours of men; and that the appearance of the want of them is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence, both in Africa and America.” He hopes for the means to educate Afri- can-Americans “as fast as the imbecility of their present existence, and other circumstances which cannot be neglected, will admit.” He calls Banneker’s almanac “a document to which your whole colour had a right for their justification, against the documents which have been entertained of them.” As is well documented, Jefferson had deeply conflicted views on race. 32 c   (SLAVERY AND ABOLITION.) Branagan, Thomas. A Preliminary Essay on the Oppression of the Exiled Sons of Africa. Frontispiece plate. 282, [2] pages. 12mo, disbound; contents toned, moderate wear to corners, minor dampstaining, substantial wear to the frontis- piece and final leaf; inked library number on remnants of backstrip. Philadelphia, 1804 [250/350] first edition . The author,Thomas Branagan, a reformed ex-slaver, wrote several books condemning the slave trade.The frontispiece by James Poupard is one of the earliest anti-slavery illustrations in an American book.The final leaf is a prospectus for Branagan’s epic poem “Avenia; or,ATragical Poem on the Oppression of the Human Species”; among his agents for this work are Richard Allen and James Forten.Afro-Americana 1483; Hamilton,American Book Illustrators andWood Engravers, Supplement 1898; Shaw & Shoemaker 5901; Sabin 7379.