A Sabbath Scene

Illustrations by Baker, Smith, and Andrew. Green wraps, 12mo. 29, (3)pp. Printed recto-only with an engraved vignette on each page. All edges gilt. Faint gift inscription on the verso of the title page, "No. 7, Frank R. Moon, from Mother." Good only with considerable soil to wraps with small chips at the corners; shallow tidemark to the bottom edges of the first two and last four leaves, intermittent fingersoil but textblock still crisp. Scarce in wraps. An enslaved woman runs into a church as she runs from a captor—and a deacon throws down a Bible to trip her. A literary repudiation of the Biblical justification for slavery. It was republished in The Works of John Greenleaf Whittier prefaced with the author's note, "This poem finds its justification in the readiness with which, even in the North, clergymen urged the prompt execution of the Fugitive Slave Law as a Christian duty, and defended the system of slavery as a Bible institution."