Philadelphia: Merrihew and Thomson, Printers, 1839. 12mo. xii, [1], 188, [2]pp. Original publisher's embossed cloth. Slight spine slant; general foxing, light creases at corners of some pages, else near fine. A stellar copy of the scarce first American edition. Assisted by his daughter Priscilla Buxton, Thomas Folwell Buxton's anti-slavery work was crucial. He was the successor of William Wilberforce and widely regarded as the foremost British abolitionist of his time. In 1823, Wilberforce and Buxton founded the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery through the British Dominions, e.g. the Anti-Slavery Society. After numerous parliamentary debates in 1830, led by Buxton, Wilberforce, Clarkson and others, immediate emancipation throughout the Empire was won in 1833. "The British contest was of tremendous importance to the United States." (Dumond) With a 4-page Preface tailored to the American edition, noting the prevalence of slavery in the United States, Texas, Brazil, and Cuba, and concluding with a stirring appeal to American readers: "It is to be hoped that the readers of the painful facts detailed in the following pages, will feel themselves summoned, as by a voice from the suffering millions of Africa, to engage at once in the efforts now making to destroy the Slave Trade, by annihilating its CAUSE ;-and that, instead of looking to temporizing expedients for the mitigation of the evil, they will, from henceforth, lay the axe at the root, until that poison tree of lust and blood, and of all abominable and heartless iniquity, shall fall before them, and Law, and Love, and God, and Man, shout VICTORY over the ruin." The best copy we have seen, the binding and bright spine gilt unblemished. Work p257. LCP, Afro-Americana 1903. This edition not in Blockson, Catalogue, underscoring its scarcity.
