Stuart, Charles:

$750 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

THE WEST INDIA QUESTION. IMMEDIATE EMANCIPATION WOULD BE SAFE FOR THE MASTERS;–PROFITABLE FOR THE MASTERS;–HAPPY FOR THE SLAVES;–RIGHT IN THE GOVERNMENT;–ADVANTAGEOUS TO THE NATION;–WOULD ... The first separate printing of this passionate and oft-republished argument against slavery in the British colonies. The author, Charles Stuart, was actually born in the British West Indies in 1783, though he moved to Belfast shortly afterwards. After a brief stint in the army, Stuart emigrated to Canada where he established a settlement for fugitive slaves who had fled across America's northern border and set his pen to the abolitionist cause.Originally printed in The Quarterly Review just a few months prior, the present pamphlet represents one of the author's earliest and most influential additions to anti-slavery literature. Stuart found an equally receptive audience in the United States, and this work was swiftly reprinted in New Haven in 1833 and twice in Newburyport, in 1835 and 1838. The title sums up the author's main points aptly – to save Great Britain herself from "the crimes gnawing at her heart," nothing short of immediate and full emancipation will do. As one of his main arguments, Stuart points out how the northern, "free" states in America have grown considerably richer and more populous than their slaveholding counterparts, despite the "unsurpassed fertility" of the South. He concludes the pamphlet with a detailed plan for effecting emancipation and compensating slavehol

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