Very Rare Kentucky Printing of Thomas Clarkson's Foundational Anti-Slavery Text "An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species", 1816

Thomas Clarkson Kentucky Printing

Book

[Slavery and Abolition] Clarkson, Thomas. An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African (1816 printing), one of the foundational intellectual works of the Anglo-American abolitionist movement, here issued in a rare Kentucky imprint juxtaposing transatlantic antislavery thought within the slaveholding territories of the American South. Originally published in the late eighteenth century, Clarkson’s treatise compiled moral, economic, and documentary evidence against the Atlantic slave trade and became instrumental in mobilizing British abolitionists, contributing to the passage of the 1807 Act abolishing the British slave trade. This 1816 Georgetown, Kentucky edition demonstrates the continued circulation and influence of British antislavery arguments in the early American republic, particularly in a state deeply where slavery was deeply entrenched from the time of its founding. The appearance of this text in Kentucky underscores the gradual growth of abolitionist sentiment reform movements active in the region during the early nineteenth century.

Clarkson, Thomas. An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African. In Three Parts. Georgetown, KY: J. N. Lytle for Rev. David Barrow, 1816. Contemporary sheep binding. Measures approximately 4¼ x 7 inches. Provenance: signed by Helen Love Van Rensselaer. This edition was issued for Reverend David Barrow, a prominent Kentucky Baptist minister known for his antislavery convictions, reflecting local reform networks committed to circulating abolitionist literature despite prevailing proslavery sentiment. John Winston Coleman, author of Slavery Times in Kentucky (1940) and a major collector of Kentucky slavery and abolition materials, described this Clarkson imprint as “one of the rarest of Kentucky anti-slavery tracts,” attesting to its scarcity within regional print history.

This printing embodies the persistence of organized moral opposition to slavery prior to the Civil War. Clarkson, an important figure in the British abolition movement, provided reformers with a systematic critique of the slave trade’s violence and corruption. The Kentucky edition reflects how transatlantic abolitionist discourse was adapted and disseminated within American slave societies, contributing to early nineteenth-century debates that would intensify in the decades preceding the Civil War. Some staining and spotting throughout, with minor marginal chipping; binding worn but intact. Overall good only. A significant and regionally scarce Southern imprint of a cornerstone abolitionist text.

Item #20149

Price: $1,600.00