CAMPBELL, John.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Negro-Mania: First edition, presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, "Wm Lloyd Garrison. Boston Liberator. From the author". Garrison founded and edited the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, and Campbell evidently sent him this vitriolic anti-abolitionist diatribe either to provoke or convert him.Campbell was a Philadelphia bookseller and virulent racist who believed racial hierarchy was divinely ordained. Spurred by the question, "can the coloured races of men be made mentally, politically, and socially equal with the white?", he wrote this book, combining his own ravings with extracts from other writers on racial inequality. "Will the white race ever agree that the blacks shall stand beside us on election day, upon the rostrum, in the ranks of the army, in our places of amusement, in places of public worship, ride in the same coaches, railway cars or steamships? Never! Never!" (p. 545). Campbell attacks Garrison specifically: "Massachusetts is the State, and the good city of Boston the place where the English emissary, George Thompson, was allowed to insult every slaveholder in America, and to abuse our institutions, state and national: but have Theodore Parker, William Lloyd Garrison, Phillips, Abby Folsom, Quincy and other abolitionists ever attempted to arrest the rascality of the Cotton Lords... by having a ten hour law passed to protect helpless women and little children?" (p. 470).

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.