Two more years of THE LIBERATOR now available! (Scanning Project, Week 1 update) posted by Rad Geek 09 May 2014 12:21 pm
I’m happy to announce, as an update to the ongoing Liberator online archive project that two more volumes of The Liberator — Vol. XII and Vol. XIII — are now available, in full page-scan PDF facsimiles — at the Liberator online archive:
- Vol. XII of The Liberator (Jan.-Dec. 1842) at Fair Use Repository (52 issues)
- Vol. XIII of The Liberator (Jan.-Dec. 1843) at Fair Use Repository (52 issues)
The early 1840s were eventful and contentious years in the American Abolitionist movement, with much of the controversy centered on Garrison, Abby Kelly and their radical allies — especially the ultras’ strident opposition to electioneering and political parties, and their principled defense of women’s freedom to participate equally in the Abolitionist movement. In May 1840, the American Anti-slavery Society underwent a schism in the conflict over both propositions; more conservative, politically-oriented and anti-feminist abolitionists attempted to purge Garrison from the AAS, and when they failed to run him out, they left to form a new, conervative American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. The pages of The Liberator in 1841-1842 were full not only of news about national events, slavery, war, but also internal debate within the movement over the AAS/AFAS split and the electoral campaigns of the recently-formed Liberty Party, as well as new reports and arguments over the Come-Outer
religious movement, endorsed by Garrison, Abby Kelly, and others, which called on Christians to come out
of mainline denominations that did not reflect their conscientious beliefs on spiritual practice or which refused to take a moral stand against slavery, alongside established features such as the Refuge of Oppression
columns (in which Garrison quoted, verbatim, the words of defenders of slavery and racism, in order to demonstrate the inhumanity of their views), international updates on the Caribbean and on the speaking tours of British Abolitionists, reflections on religious and moral topics, and pages of bad moral reform poetry. To see it as it happened, you can now check out 104 more issues of The Liberator available online, in full, for free, from January 1841 to the end of December 1842.
If you enjoy this project or find the materials useful, you can help support the work and speed up the on-going progress with a contribution to the project, in any amount, through the Molinari Institute — the not-for-profit sponsor of the Fair Use Repository. You can read more about the fundraiser and the archive project in the introductory post here at Fair Use Blog.
