[SLAVERY & ABOLITION]. A group of 4 issues of the anti-slavery paper, The National Era. Washington, DC: American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 1848.

4pp., folio, 19 x 26 in. Dates include 10 August 1848; 17 August 1848; 12 October 1848; and 2 November 1848.

Most issues contain ads for a number of anti-slavery publications and apolitical publications, such as Lysander Spooner’s “Unconstitutionality of Slavery” and Godey’s Ladies’ Book. All advertise access to the Free Reading Room at the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society publication office in New York.

Other ads include Law offices (Chicago, Columbus and Cincinnati, Ohio, Syracuse, NY), patent offices, boarding schools, nurseries (i.e. Buffalo’s fruit tree farm), Glenhaven and Brownsville water cures, other medical, even a piano manufactory.

Published from 1847 to 1860 with Gamaliel Bailey, Jr. as Editor and Proprietor. Bailey died in 1859 and his wife continued the paper for a short time before it folded. In the prospectus, the claim is made that "... the great aim of the paper will be a complete discussion of the Question of Slavery…” Contributors included John Greenleaf Whittier (corresponding editor); Nathaniel Hawthorne (contributor).

The early issues serialized Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1851) and carried Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story, “The Great Stone Face” (Jan. 24, 1850). Most issues contained a number of poems as well.

[SLAVERY & ABOLITION]. A group of 4 issues of the anti-slavery paper, The National Era. Washington, DC: American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 1848.

[SLAVERY & ABOLITION]. A group of 4 issues of the anti-slavery paper, The National Era. Washington, DC: American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 1848.