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SLAVERY - CLARKSON, T[homas]. An Essay on the Sla

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Georgetown, K.[Y].: Published by the Rev. David Barrow, J. N. Lyle, Printer, 1816. 12mo (167 x 105 mm). Contemporary full-leather, spine ruled in gilt with red lettering label in gilt. Condition: endpapers foxed, text lightly so, old ink initials (SB) to front pastedown; very light wear to extremities, spine headcap broken but present, upper joint cracked but holding. rare early kentucky imprint of an important british essay on abolitionism. "One of the rarest anti-slavery tracts" (Coleman). First published in England in 1786, the dissertation won first prize at the University of Cambridge and was printed twice in Philadelphia (1786 and 1804) before this early Kentucky printing by the abolitionist preacher David Barrow. Clarkson writes of the slave trade, "no custom established among men was ever more impious; since it is contrary to reason, justice, nature, the principles of law and government, the whole doctrine, in short, of natural religion, and the revealed voice of God." AI 37261; AII KY 584; Coleman 3302; Dumond 40.

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