African Americana

3 pages, folio, 7 1/2 x 12 in., address panel on integral leaf verso, with red "WHEELING / Va. / FEB 18" postal stamp, separations along old folds with repairs, some toning, loss from wax seal. 

McClean writes to US Representative Francis James regarding politics and the ongoing Supreme Court freedom suit United States v. The Amistad: "My particular object in addressing you at this time is to ask the favor of you to send me the fullest report of the debate and proceedings in your power. Also, if in print, I would be much gratified to get the speech of Mr. Adams before the Supreme Court in the case of the negroes of the Amistad." Mr. Adams, former President John Quincy Adams, and US Representative of Massachusetts argued successfully on behalf of the African enslaved who had revolted and seized the Spanish ship Amistad. 

The author continues with an eloquent discussion of enslavement in the United States, in part: "The undue weight conceded by the constitution to the slaveholders gives them an influence in the councils of the nations to which they are by no fair principle of representation entitled. By a sort of moral or political legerdemain, when it suits their purpose to maintain their right of property in their fellow men, they degrade the slaves to the level of the brutes & make them goods & chattels; again when desirous of increasing their power they metamorphose the degraded negro into three fifths of a man. Such is the consistency of political man when he suffers sordid interest to trample on the principles of justice."

Concluding with reflections on Southern attitudes towards enslavement and emancipation, in part: "There is a sensitiveness, a touchiness on the subject of slavery prevailing in the minds of southerners which indicates a morbid feeling - an uneasiness -apprehension that their favorite institution is not safe. This inordinate anxiety impels them to acts of violence and menace...In their eagerness to suppress everything which in their imagination has the slightest tendency to emancipation, or to loosen the shackles of personal bondage, they do seem to be abandoned by the righteous Governor of the universe to the folly of their own avarice, injustice & indiscretion."