Page 32 - Swann Galleries - Printed & Manuscript African Americana- Sale 2308 - March 21, 2013

39 ● (SLAVERY AND ABOLITION.) The Anti-Slavery Record, Volume I, No’s 1
through 12 * The Anti-Slavery Manual by Rev. La Roy Sunderland. 12mo.
Together three volumes. 17 woodcut headpieces in the first 2 volumes. Original publisher’s
cloth; some wear and staining, SHOULD BE SEEN New York, 1836-1837 [300/400]
All three volumes bear the following hand written in old iron gall ink: “Free Library. To be
Returned three Weeks after it is Taken. “Given the subject matter, these no doubt were part of
an anti-slavery society’s lending library. Articles include one on Phillis Wheatley.
40 ● (SLAVERY AND ABOLITION.) GREEN, DUFF. Autograph Manuscript
Receipt of $300 from John Brown [?difficult to decipher] “being the sum for
which I have agreed to manumit his wife, my servant girl Jane, and I promise to
execute the proper deed of manumission at my earliest convenience.” Signed
“Duff Green.” Small sheet of paper (5 x 8 inches), written on both sides, with a receipt
dated a day later for the sale of the slave to someone else.
[Washington?], 10th and 11th December, 1838 [800/1,200]
Duff Green (1791-1875) military leader, politician, journalist and printer. In 1825, in
Washington, D.C., he bought and later edited, The United States Telegraph, which became the
principal organ of Andrew Jackson’s backers, helping him defeat John Quincy Adams in the
presidential election of 1828. With this unusual document, Duff Green accepted $300 and
promised to execute a “proper deed of manumission” for Jane, this man’s wife at his “earliest
convenience.” However what follows on the reverse of Green’s receipt and promise hints at
either a betrayal-or a convoluted process of manumission. Because, on the day after, an agent of
Green’s acknowledges receipt of $300 for the sale of a slave to a Mr. J.G. Rives, “on condition
that the bill of sale shall be made out to such person as said Rives shall approve.” Did Green
renege on his promise to manumit the man’s wife, or did a third party have to buy the man’s
wife for him? Very unusual.
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