Documenting Black Intellectual Achievement in the 18th Century Abbé Grégoire’s Foundational Antiracist Work "An Enquiry Concerning the Intellectual and Moral Faculties and Literature of Negroes", First American Edition

Henri Jean-Baptiste Gregoire

First Edition

[African American][Slavery and Abolition] Grégoire, Henri. "An Enquiry Concerning the Intellectual and Moral Faculties, and Literature of Negroes..." First American Edition. This work constitutes one of the earliest sustained Enlightenment arguments in print asserting the intellectual and moral equality of people of African descent. Originally published in French in 1808 as De la littérature des nègres, Abbé Henri Grégoire’s treatise directly challenged racial pseudoscience and proslavery ideology by assembling biographical and literary evidence of Black achievement. Appearing in English in 1810 in both London and Brooklyn, the present Brooklyn printing represents the first American edition and marks the earliest circulation of Grégoire’s antiracist argument within the United States, issued just two years after the federal abolition of the transatlantic slave trade and decades before emancipation. A Catholic priest, revolutionary statesman, and Constitutional Bishop of Blois, Grégoire was among the most visible European advocates of racial equality and universal civil rights; this text stands as his most focused intervention into transatlantic debates over slavery, human capacity, and citizenship.

Grégoire, Henri. An Enquiry Concerning the Intellectual and Moral Faculties, and Literature of Negroes; Followed with an Account of the Life and Works of Fifteen Negroes & Mulattoes, Distinguished in Science, Literature and the Arts. Brooklyn: Printed by Thomas Kirk, 1810. First American edition of the first English translation, translated by D. B. Warden. Sabin 28728. Blockson 18. Octavo. 253 pages. The text systematically dismantles claims of Black inferiority through documentary case studies, examining figures such as Phillis Wheatley as evidence of Black literary achievement, Olaudah Equiano as moral and intellectual witness against slavery, Benjamin Banneker for scientific accomplishment, and Toussaint Louverture as an exemplar of political and military leadership. By grounding abolitionist argument in documented intellectual production rather than abstract sentiment, Grégoire constructs what may be understood as an early printed compendium of Black intellectual history, aligning Enlightenment universalism with emerging Atlantic abolitionist discourse.

Original marbled boards heavily worn. Spine crudely retaped with losses; spine cracked where tape is lacking and back board partially detached. Front free endpaper loose. Title page and contents leaf with partial tear without loss of text. Early manuscript ex-libris note affixed to front pastedown. Textblock clean and complete with scattered foxing. Overall condition fair. Issued contemporaneously with the London printing of 1810 and at a moment when the United States had prohibited the slave trade but not slavery itself, this Brooklyn edition represents one of the earliest and most explicit antiracist works printed in the early republic, asserting Black intellectual and moral equality through documented achievement and thereby providing foundational documentary evidence for the development of American abolitionist thought.

Item #18183

Price: $2,850.00