Just as the abolition movement harnessed the power of the printed word in newspapers, periodicals, tracts, and almanacs to spread its antislavery message, it also used printed visuals in the form of lithographs, engravings, and political cartoons. In some cases, these were based on news events related to the slavery question, such as the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, part of the Compromise of 1850 intended to quell tension between North and South. The act forced citizens to assist in the recovery of escaped slaves, and if they were unwilling to assist or aided a fugitive in escaping, they were subject to a fine and prosecution. Likewise, the act denied fugitives who claimed to be freemen the right to a fair jury trial and put all fugitive cases under federal jurisdiction. Southerners believed that the compromise met its goals in stopping the South from seceding from the Union, at least temporarily. But the compromise made many Northerners more determined than ever to end slavery.

This lithograph, Effects of the Fugitive Slave Law, portrays what many saw as the results of the Fugitive Slave Act. It shows four black men being shot by white men as they tried to escape capture. It is unknown if these black men were free or fugitives, though their relatively polished clothing would suggest they were free. To their pursuers, however, it wouldn’t have mattered, as under the law they could have attempted to capture them anyway. The text under the image on the left side is a quote from the Bible (“Thou shalt not deliver unto the master his servant which has escaped from his master unto thee”), and that on the right is from the Declaration of Independence. Many abolitionists invoked the “all men created equal” clause of the Declaration to argue for the end of slavery.

The artist, Theodore Kaufman (b. 1814), was born in Germany, immigrated to America, fought in the Civil War, and then lived in Boston. He is best known for his Civil War paintings.

]]> AAS Catalog Record]]> View Larger Image]]> The Anti-Slavery Alphabet is a reader that was published in 1846 for the purpose of being sold at the Anti-Slavery Fair in Philadelphia. The fair was organized by the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society (PFASS) and raised money for abolitionism by charging a small admission fee and selling antislavery publications.

While this popular alphabet book was published anonymously, authorship was later ascribed to Quaker Hannah Townsend (b. 1812), who worked with the PFASS, and her sister Mary (b. 1814). The sisters’ Quaker background, which encouraged equality between the sexes, likely allowed the Townsends some comfort in their activist roles, as morally educating youth was considered a socially acceptable mission for women writers.

This book, like most antislavery and abolitionist texts, was not read in the classroom but rather would have been read in antislavery and abolitionist households as an attempt to inform the next generation about abolitionist politics and to inspire future activism. Devoid of any illustrations besides the woodcuts of each letter, hand-painted and decorated with concentric circles and diamonds, the simple design of the book directs the reader’s focus toward its activist message rather than its artistry.

Using direct, instructive language as well as the second-person perspective, the text entreats readers to both acknowledge the system of slavery and take action to further the abolitionist cause. Its introduction, which is titled “To Our Little Readers,” urges children to take part in the abolitionist movement by imploring slave masters, educating peers, and boycotting “[c]andy, sweetmeat, pie or cake,” all of which contained sugar, a slave-cultivated staple. It then introduces troubling concepts associated with slavery, such as cotton-field labor (“C is the Cotton-field, to which / This injured brother’s driven”), corporal punishment (“D is the Driver, cold and stern / Who follows, whip in hand”), and kidnapping (“K is the Kidnapper, who stole / That little child and mother”). In the penultimate “Y” quatrain, the reader is told “Bravely to war” against slavery, and the final four lines introduce the young audience to a role model, “the Zealous man, sincere, / Faithful, and just, and true.” Though the text mainly highlights the cruelty of slavery, it also offers hope, depicting an alternative society in which the free black man is “rambling free” and “Delighting ‘neath the palm trees’ shade.”

Click the image below to browse the full book.

]]> AAS Catalog Record]]> View full book]]> As veterans of the Bible and religious tract movements, the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) believed in the power of the printed word to convert sinners, including those whose sin was slaveholding. Immediately after its founding in 1833, the society began publishing a broad range of newspapers, tracts, circulars, and periodicals. Within two years, AASS was printing more than a million copies a year. In 1835 the society launched a dramatic effort, dubbed the Great Postal Campaign, to flood the South with antislavery tracts and periodicals. This has sometimes been called America’s first direct-mail campaign. In the South the result was not conversion but outrage and hysteria. Though federal postal law guaranteed the security of the mail, Postmaster General Amos Kendall (1789-1869), a close ally of President Andrew Jackson (1767-1845), gave permission to Southern postmasters to refuse delivery of abolitionist materials. Thus, the U.S. postal service, the great nationalizing institution of the American political experiment, became an instrument of states’ rights in the realm of slavery and abolition.

This lithograph shows two examples of “Southern Liberty” from the abolitionists’ point of view: the mobbing of “Northern Fanatics” and the 1835 attack on the post office in Charleston, South Carolina. In Charleston a mob hauled the bags of antislavery publications out of the local post office and burned them. Southerners were especially hostile to the illustrations in antislavery materials, which they feared might fall into the hands of illiterate slaves and incite insurrection. Not surprisingly, then, the abolitionists used illustrations even more extensively in their publications—woodcuts and engravings as well as lithographs. In the Great Postal Campaign of 1835, as well as in many other episodes, the Southern attack on antislavery print media became the subject for more antislavery print media.

]]> AAS Catalog Record]]> Samuel Salisbury (1739-1818) and his brother Stephen Salisbury (1746-1829) were in business together importing and selling merchandise from England and the West Indies. Samuel was located in Boston while Stephen came to the central Massachusetts shire town of Worcester in 1767. Both brothers would eventually side with the Whigs, but they did so gradually and somewhat reluctantly, preferring to remain apolitical and concentrate their efforts on their private business. Eventually, Stephen would serve on several committees during the war.

In this poignant letter Samuel describes to his brother his reactions to watching from Beacon Hill in Boston the American militia engage with the royal infantry as they retreated from Lexington and Concord. He laments the beginning of this “Civil War” that will become the American Revolution. He chides the royal government for being “backward,” that is, not forthcoming and honest about the number of causalities the troops incurred. There is also a clear sense of pride in how well the American militia fought. Yet this remarkable letter also clearly shows how difficult and uncertain the situation was at the time.

A transcription of the letter can be found here.

]]> AAS Catalog Record]]> Transcription]]> Almanacs, diaries, and newspapers shared a basic structure. Each organized events by the calendar: by day, by week, by month, by year. Each was a kind of annals or chronology, and in New England there was an underlying belief that chronology, whether personal or public, had direction and meaning. A similar, but more unusual, medium for organizing the flow of events was the newspaper index. Newspapers in colonial America were considered less ephemeral than they would be by the nineteenth century. Readers often preserved them, sometimes binding them into annual volumes. They each had an issue number to help readers keep track of them and to cross-reference them. A few readers compiled their own handwritten indexes.

One such newspaper index, the “News Letter Book for 1737,” was kept by an anonymous Boston reader and preserved, along with that reader’s copies of the Boston News-Letter and the New England Weekly Journal. The reader’s method was simply to list, by issue number, stories that caught his attention and to annotate some stories in the margins of the papers. For example, he briefly noted the John Brocas fire in the margin of the Weekly Journal of March 8, and he annotated the market riot stories in the News-Letter of April 1. In his index entry for that issue of the News-Letter (no. 1726) he wrote: “Boston Middle Markett Pulled Down in Night in a Riotous Manner. Lt. GovrPhypps Proclamation 100 pounds to find out the Ringleaders of it.” Throughout the index, this reader seemed especially interested in deaths, accidents, fires, and anything related to liquor—for example, the Hugh Henderson execution. However, the reader rarely made judgments or inferences. Typically, he just noted facts, though on occasion he added a laconic personal response, such as “sad” or “comical.”

]]> AAS Catalog Record]]> The Soldier’s Letter was a military camp newspaper published in Kansas City, Missouri, and Fort Riley, Kansas. It was issued by the Second Colorado Cavalry and edited by Private Oliver F. Wallace with contributions by other enlisted men and a few wives. It included poems, regiment history, rosters, features about camp life, and letters to the editor.

The scarcity of paper meant that the stock used varied over time, some issues appearing on blank white paper, some on blue, and still others on ruled paper. Each issue was three pages and left one page blank for a soldier to write a letter and mail it home. In the issue seen here, the letter is dated September 5 from Independence, Missouri, and reads:

Dear Mother
Nothing of interest has transpired since I sent you the last two copies of the Soldiers Letter. We are still staying in Mo and will probably remain here some time. My health is good first rate. Plenty of fun Plenty to eat and nothing to do Capt Moses was maried [sic] last Thursday He givs [sic] a party to nite night at his wives fathers you bet we will have a good time.
My love to all
Pleas [sic] write as often as convenient And believe me your dutifufull [sic] son
Jesse. C. Strickland
Co. M. 2^nd Colorado Cav
Independence MO

Many camp newspapers during the Civil War were fleeting due to movements and fighting, but the Soldier’s Letter lasted a remarkable fifty issues between August 1864 and November 28, 1865. The Second Colorado Cavalry was stationed in western Missouri and Kansas to protect the region against marauding Confederate guerilla groups and Native Americans. While the troops were from a territory and not a state, the Soldier’s Letter promoted strong ties with the Union, regimental unity, and the abolition of slavery.

]]> AAS Catalog Record]]> View more images]]> Nathaniel Paine (1832-1917) was a prominent Worcester banker and civic leader who counted among his friends and mentors Edward Everett Hale (1822-1909) and Senator George Frisbie Hoar (1826-1904). An avid lifelong collector, he was a member of the American Antiquarian Society for sixty-six years and served on its Council for sixty.

As part of his collecting activities, he kept scrapbooks on a variety of topics, including the Civil War. Paine had this volume, called A Record of the War of Secession, Vol. I, created and bound specifically for his scrapbooking purposes. It includes portraits of important men and local soldiers, but mostly it is a series of newspaper clippings about war news that would be of particular interest to people in Worcester. As the typed preface states, “The matter contained in the following pages, consists of a collection of cuttings from various local newspapers of the day, showing the part taken by the citizens of Worcester and vicinity, in their efforts to assist the government of the United States, in suppressing the rebellion of the Southern States.” It makes the newspaper central to the development of the war and illustrates how civilians, in both the North and South, were closely following the news and processing what they were reading.

]]> More information about the Paine Family]]> AAS Catalog Record]]> View larger image]]> This set of letters was written by Daniel E. Burbank (1841-1920), a soldier from Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire. Burbank enlisted in the Second New Hampshire infantry, Company A, in the spring of 1861. His letters, mainly to his family, talk about camp life, his equipment, letters sent and received, and battles in which he partook. On the subject of news, he notes that while his parents are continually asking him for the latest war news, they know as much if not more than him through the newspapers. He also talks about the importance of oral news, through both rampant rumors and soldiers returning to the home front, and mentions attempting to get his photograph taken to send home, but missing the “salon” that was set up in camp to do so.

He often writes on pictorial letterhead featuring the Capitol building, the United States flag and eagle, and other patriotic images. This inexpensive letterhead, printed lithographically in two colors, was intended specifically for the troops, as it often included blank lines to fill in regiment, company, and camp. In some cases it was even produced for a specific regiment, with the name included as part of the design.

Burbank’s letters stop abruptly, for he was wounded and captured on May 5, 1862, at Williamsburg, Virginia; released on May 17, 1862; and discharged on May 22, 1862. He went on to become an engineer, marry Ann H. White on December 22, 1864, in Keene, New Hampshire, and have a family of his own. He died in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1920.

This transcription of excerpts of his letters focuses on how Burbank gathered (or didn’t gather) news and how he shared it with his correspondents. Digital versions of all of his letters are available here.

]]> AAS Catalog Record]]> View more letters]]> Transcription of a portion of the letters]]> Diary and journal keeping was a common practice during the Victorian era and particularly during the Civil War, by both men and women, North and South. Unlike the generally terse and dispassionate diaries of the eighteenth century, nineteenth-century diaries tended to be more detailed, personal, and expressive. Some kept them for self-reflection and improvement, others as a record of events, and still others for an emotional or even political outlet. Those extant from the war years give insights about every angle of the conflict, including the gathering and processing of news on the home front.

This diary, belonging to Caroline Barrett White (1828-1915), is full of references to and opinions about war news. White was an upper-middle-class woman living in Brookline, Massachusetts, with her husband, Francis (Frank) Adams White (1824-1910), a tanner by trade, and their four children. She started her thirty-volume diary in 1844 at the age of sixteen and ended sixty-five years later in 1914, a year before her death. She was a prodigious record keeper, detailing the events and tasks of every day. She wrote about the weather, calls to relatives and friends, letters she wrote and received, her teaching career, courtship, marriage, and later on her additional duties as a wife and mother—hiring servants, redecorating, nursing her husband and children, shopping trips into Boston, and plays, concerts, and lectures she attended.

She was also an active, insightful, and politically engaged observer of the war. She wrote about her staunch opposition to slavery, her home front contributions to the war effort, and her reactions to news from the front lines and about emancipation. Her diary provides a glimpse not only into one woman’s thoughts about the war, but also into the role the news media played throughout the conflict. From avidly waiting for newspapers to arrive to making sense of conflicting reports to reflecting on the emotional and political impact of events, White demonstrates the importance of the news media to those on the home front. The pages pictured above include her reactions to the news of General Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Courthouse and then that of President Lincoln’s death only a few days later.

In later years, White’s interest in national affairs would continue through commentary on subjects such as the transatlantic cable, the Spanish-American War, and her opposition to women’s suffrage.

This transcription includes excerpts from White’s diary focusing specifically on her relationship with news throughout the Civil War. A digital version of the volume of her diary covering February 1861 to June 1862 is available here.

]]> AAS Catalog Record]]> View more of the diaries]]> Transcription of a portion of the diaries]]>