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(MILITARY—REVOLUTIONAIRY WAR.) ATTUCKS, CRISPUS.
STEPHENSON, ISAIAH H.
Stephenson’s Oration on Attucks.
Printed broadside.
Folio (12-7/8x8-1/2 inches); creases where folded, paper lightly and evenly toned.
[Harpers Ferry,WV], 1893
[1,000/1,500]
A RARE BROADSIDE PRINTING OF THE VALEDICTORY ADDRESS
delivered by Isaiah
Stephenson at the commencement exercises at Storer College in 1893. Storer was one of the
oldest black colleges in the U.S., founded in 1869 by the Freedmen’s Bureau. Stephenson’s
“Oration” tells the story of Attucks’ life as a slave, his escape and how he came to in Boston
that day in 1770.We could find nothing more about Isaiah Stephenson other than the fact
that he was living in Arlington, Virginia at the time this address was delivered and later
became an attorney, settling in Anderson, Indiana. Given the fact that there were only 200
students at Storer at the time of this printing, we can assume that no more than 200 copies
of this broadside were printed—and probably at the college on a hand press. No copies of this
Oration could be located in OCLC or any other reference. Storer closed its doors in 1955,
and its holdings are presently stored at the University of West Virginia.
374
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(MILITARY—CIVIL WAR.)
BRYANT’S MINSTRELS.
“Raw
Recruits, or Abraham’s Daughter, as
sung with great applause by Bryants
Minstrels of New York, Words by
Charley Fox, Arranged by W. L.
Hobbs.”
Lithographic cover and five
pages of engraved music, standard sheet
music size; spine with some damage having
been removed from a larger volume of
sheet music; paper evenly toned.
NewYork: Firth and Pond,
1862
[600/800]
Bryants Minstrels was a black-face minstrel
troupe that performed in the mid-19th century,
primarily in New York City.The troupe was
led by the O’Neill brothers from upstate New
York, who took the stage name Bryant. The
eldest brother Jerry, a veteran of the Ethiopian
Serenaders, Campbell’s Minstrels, E.P.
Christy’s Minstrels and other troupes, sang and
played tambourine and bones. Dan Bryant,
who had toured with Losee’s Minstrels, the
Sable Harmonists and Campbell’s Minstrels, sang and played banjo.The lithographic cover is an early
barb, lampooning the idea of using black soldiers. In May of 1863, Lincoln established the Bureau of
Colored Troops to manage the burgeoning numbers of black soldiers. By the end of the Civil War,
roughly 179,000 black men (10% of the Union Army) served as soldiers in the U.S. Army and
another 19,000 served in the Navy. Nearly 40,000 black soldiers died over the course of the war-
30,000 of infection or disease.
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