[Heyrick, Elizabeth]:

$2,000 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

IMMEDIATE, NOT GRADUAL ABOLITION; OR, AN INQUIRY INTO THE SHORTEST, SAFEST, AND MOST EFFECTUAL MEANS OF GETTING RID OF WEST INDIAN SLAVERY. A scarce early American edition of English Quaker and abolitionist Elizabeth Heyrick's influential pamphlet. First published in London in 1824 and quickly reprinted several times in Britain and across the Atlantic, Heyrick's call for immediate, personal action against the evils of slavery found a wide audience and influenced a generation of future abolitionists. As the title suggests, Heyrick fought against the arguments for gradual abolition, citing the success of immediate abolition on St. Domingo, outlining how ending the slave trade did nothing to curtail actual slavery, and arguing that "a gradual emancipation would beget a gradual indifference to emancipation itself." On the topic of economic injury done to slaveholders, Heyrick emphasizes that emancipation and the profits of planters are entirely separate questions: "The West Indian planters have occupied much too prominent a place in the discussion of this great question...abolitionists have shown a great deal too much politeness and accommodation towards these gentlemen." The best and only way to effect immediate emancipation, she claims, is a public boycott of West Indies sugar, as only direct action against the profits of planters could break down their resistance.She writes:"It is high time, then, to resort to other measures, - to ways and means more summary and effectual. Too

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