American Antislavery Writings: From Colonial Beginnings to Emancipation

For the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, here’s a assortment of writings that charts our nation’s lengthy, heroic confrontation with its most toxic evil. It’s an inspiring ethical and political battle whose evolution parallels the story of America itself. To advance their trigger, the opponents of slavery employed each obtainable literary kind: fiction and poetry, essay and autobiography, sermons, pamphlets, speeches, hymns, performs, even kids’s literature. That is the primary anthology to take the complete measure of a physique of writing that spans almost two centuries and, exceptionally for its time, embraced writers black and white, female and male. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, Phillis Wheatley, and Olaudah Equiano supply unique, even revolutionary, eighteenth century responses to slavery. With the nineteenth century, an already numerous motion turns into much more assorted: the impassioned rhetoric of Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison joins the fiction of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Louisa Could Alcott, and William Wells Brown; memoirs of former slaves stand alongside protest poems by John Greenleaf Whittier, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Lydia Sigourney; nameless editorials complement speeches by statesmen equivalent to Charles Sumner and Abraham Lincoln.

This library America edition includes helpful notes, a timeline of the antislavery movement, and a 16-page color insert with illustrations. It covers important aspects of the antislavery movement in America, spanning 000 pages and originally published in 1979.

Since 1979, LIBRARY OF AMERICA has been a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving America's literary legacy. By publishing and keeping in print the most significant works, the collection now boasts over 300 volumes. These authoritative editions span 1,000 pages each, featuring durable material covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers. Printed on premium acid-free paper, these timeless treasures are designed to last for centuries.