[Lundy, Benjamin]

The war in Texas; a review of facts and circumstances, showing that this contest is a crusade against Mexico, set on foot and supported by Slaveholders, Land-Speculators, &c. In order to re-establish, extend and perpetuate the system of slavery and the slave trade. [Second edition, revised, and enlarged.] By a citizen of the United States

AN ABOLITIONIST JEREMIAD AGAINST THE REPUBLIC OF TEXAS 

 

Philadelphia: Merrihew and Gunn “for the publishers,”[1] 1837. Second edition, expanded.

Octavo in 4s (9 ¼” x 5 ¾”, 236mm x 147mm): 1⁴ 2-8⁴ [$1 signed]. 32 leaves, pp. 1-3 (title, prefatory note, text) 4-64. With a lithographed map integral to the text (p. 49).

Bound in the publisher’s printed blue wrappers. The front wrapper reprinting the title-page, the rear with a table of contents.

Peripheral chips, splits and creases, with some losses along the spine. A vertical crease to the rear wrapper and final three leaves or so. Foxed generally.                                                                                                                  


Stephen F. Austin’s group of colonists — the Empresarios — were set on claiming the lands north of the Rio Grande for settlement, and Austin allowed these members of “The Old Three Hundred” to purchase an additional 50 acres for each enslaved person they brought with them. Slavery was outlawed in Mexico in 1829 by the Guerrero decree (with an exception for Texas until 1830), and fully banned by Mexico’s congress in 1837 — and that contributed to Texas’s secession from Mexico 2 March 1836. Given Austin’s American background (born in Virginia), his independent republic was seen by some (e.g., then-Senator and future Secretary of State Daniel Webster, as quoted on p. 57: “a desire, or an intention, is already manifested to annex Texas to the United States”) as a mere way-station toward adding a slave-state to the Union.

Benjamin Lundy (1789–1839) was a passionate abolitionist, “the first of our countrymen who devoted his life and all his power exclusively to the cause of the slaves” (William Lloyd Garrison in his eulogy). In 1836 he published the first edition of the present work, decrying the creation of a slave-holding nation that circumvented the 1819 Missouri Compromise (viz., that each slave-state would be matched by a free-state). He continued to amass “facts and circumstances,” including a speech by John Quincy Adams, the Gorostiza pamphlet (from which the map, the first printed map of the Republic of Texas, is drawn), a speech of Daniel Webster and a debate on the subject held as far afield as Edinburgh. Thus the present work is printed from entirely re-set type and considerably augmented (including the map) from the first edition.

Howes L 569; Sabin 95134n; Streeter, Texas 1217A.

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[1] The Philadelphia A. S. (Anti Slavery) Society?

Item #JLR0688

Price: $1,600