Heading: (1856 Inscribed to Richard Henry Dana Jr. as anti-slavery lawyer)
Author: Read, John M.
Title: Speech of Hon. John M. Read, on the Power of Congress Over the Territories, and in favor of free Kansas, free white labor, and of Fremont and Dayton. Delivered on September 30, 1856 at Philadelphia
Place Published: Philadelphia
Publisher:C. Sherman & Son
Date Published: 1856
Description:

46 pp. (8vo) salmon colored wrappers, printed in black.

Inscribed on front wrapper: “Richard H. Dana Jr. Esquire, with respects of John M. Read.” Both Dana, author of the maritime travel classic, Two Years Before the Mast, and Read, one of the most distinguished jurists of his time, were fellow Abolitionist lawyers who defended fugitive slaves in courtroom battles of the Dred Scott era, Dana as counsel in the Anthony Burns cause célèbre. A decade earlier, after Dana had published the historic account of his seaman’s voyage from Boston to California, Read’s nomination as Justice of the US Supreme Court had to be withdrawn because of opposition from Southern Senators, angered by his anti-slavery stand. In this booklet which he sent to his friend Dana, Read presented the legal argument for congressional power to control slavery in “bleeding Kansas” and other territories, as well as touting the presidential candidacy of John Fremont, standard-bearer for the new Republican Party, of which Read was a founding father. Two years later, Read was elected to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, a position he held throughout the Civil War and beyond. An important association of two notables of the antebellum years.

Near fine.