The Evils of Slavery, and the Cure of Slavery (1839)

The title page to *The Evils of Slavery*.

In this installment of “Students in the Stacks,” Rare Books student assistant Claire Peterson shares another of work from her list of top Civil War books. April is National Poetry Month, so this month’s featured book is an abolitionist text by poet Lydia Maria Child, bound with the stirring John Greenleaf Whittier poem “Our Fellow-Countrymen in Chains.”

In the first section of the work, Child quotes the writing of prominent southerners on the subject of slavery, using their voices to argue that slavery is morally reprehensible.

The Evils of Slavery, and the Cure of Slavery by Lydia Maria Child is a collection of evidence compiled against slavery in 1830s America. First published in 1833, the book includes quotations from celebrated American men such as George Washington, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and James Monroe, all of which, Child argues, demonstrate the evils of slavery from the mouths of southerners themselves.

A poet and an abolitionist, Child was criticized for expressing anti-slavery sentiments in her 1833 publication An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans, and sales of her books suffered greatly.

The better-known — and emotionally charged — broadside publication of Whittier’s poem.

SLU’s copy of The Evils of Slavery, and the Cure of Slavery is a second edition pamphlet that includes a reprinting of Child’s friend John Greenleaf Whittier’s poem “Our Fellow-Countrymen in Chains.” Whittier’s poem is best known for its appearance on a broadside in 1837 under the image of a slave in chains with a banner reading, “Am I not a man and a brother?”