Beschreibung:

Title: Miscellaneous Writings of the late Samuel J. Smith Collected and Arranged by One of the Family Author: [Smith, Amelia], editor Place: Philadelphia Publisher: Henry Perkins Date: 1836 Description: 222 pp. Frontispiece engraving of the author's home, Hickory Grove. (8vo) original green cloth, gilt-lettered spine. The editor’s own copy, signed by her on flyleaf above a later presentation by another relative, historian Amelia Mott Gummere, who probably added the few ink notes in the text. With a manuscript publisher’s statement of the cost of the book’s very limited production pasted to rear endpapers; 2 manuscript poems, signed SJS and RMS, laid in loose; and several newspaper clippings pasted in, including an obituary of the author. Most significantly, inserted before the front flyleaf is an original 8 x 11 illustrated certificate of Samuel J. Smith’s membership in the New Jersey Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, Signed by Society President Joseph Bloomfield and Secretary Robert Smith Jr Undated, but probably issued ca. 1799-1800, before Bloomfield took office as the fourth Governor of New Jersey. The document bears the striking engraving of a man in colonial dress holding a tablet with a quote from Isaiah (“proclaim liberty to the captive”) and a kneeling Black slave in chains, captioned with the familiar Quaker Abolitionist catch-phrase “Am not I a Man and a Brother?” Descended from a distinguished Quaker family of New Jersey, Samuel J. Smith’s grandfather wrote a classic history of the colony while serving as its treasurer; his father also held government posts during the Revolution, but Smith himself was a shy bachelor who always alone, and apart from visits to a few close relatives, remained locked away in the library of his ancestral estate, reading voraciously, and writing the verse assembled in this book by his admiring cousin. Related to the Mott family of prominent Abolitionists, the one political cause which Smith espoused was his fervent opposition to slavery, and it’s significant that his cousin chose to proudly insert in this book the handsome document which recorded Smith’s early adherence to that cause. This book is desirable in itself as an antiquarian rarity, being the collected verse of an early American poet. But the insertion of the rare certificate of one of the first anti-slavery societies in America gives it special significance. Lot Amendments Condition: small chips at spine ends, corners exposed, soiling and darkening; certificate at front endpapers tearing at centerfold, with a few yellow spots; contents foxed; good. Item number: 234035