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[Portrait of Harriet Beecher Stowe]
Harriet Beecher Stowe rocketed to celebrity with the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), selling 300,000 copies during its first year in print. -
I Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance [cabinet card]
Feminist and abolitionist Sojourner Truth was one of the towering figures of nineteenth-century America. She was born into slavery in 1797 on a rural farm in Ulster County, New York. At age thirty, she drew strength from her Christian faith and found the courage to escape with her infant daughter. By the 1860s, Sojourner Truth had moved to Battle Creek, Michigan. Between 1863 and 1875, Truth had at least fourteen different photographic portraits made. She sold them to provide income for herself. These cartes-de-visite and cabinet cards were portable and far cheaper to produce than copies of her Narrative. She controlled every aspect of the way she is depicted in these images—genteelly, in cap and shawl, often with her knitting, a book or photograph in her lap, obscuring her disabled right hand. -
Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave, Emancipated from Bodily Servitude by the State of New York, in 1828
Feminist and abolitionist Sojourner Truth was one of the towering figures of nineteenth-century America. She was born into slavery in 1797 on a rural farm in Ulster County, New York. At age thirty, she drew strength from her Christian faith and found the courage to escape with her infant daughter. A spiritualist, in 1843 she had a vision and changed her name from Isabella Baumfree to Sojourner Truth. She became a preacher, earning her living as she moved through Long Island and Connecticut, eventually joining a Garrisonian, abolitionist, utopian community, the Northampton Association of Education and Industry in Massachusetts. In 1850, noting the success of Frederick Douglass’ autobiography, Truth dictated her life story to her friend Olive Gilbert, who was a fellow member of the Northampton Association. Truth wrote, published, and distributed the book herself. She used the proceeds to support herself and to buy a house of her own in Northampton. -
Manuscript blurb for Sojourner Truth’s Narrative
Harriet Beecher Stowe rocketed to celebrity with the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), selling 300,000 copies during its first year in print. Abolititionist and feminist Sojourner Truth saw an opportunity. Truth asked Stowe to write a promotional statement that would bring notice to her autobiographical Narrative. She and Stowe met for the first and only time in 1853. This signed statement appears as an introduction in some copies of the 1853 edition of the Narrative. -
Letter to Robert Adams
In 1842 schoolteacher Sophia Foord moved to Northampton, Massachusetts, to join the recently formed utopian Northampton Association of Education and Industry. Founded to promote social reform through cooperative work, the NAEI was race-, class-, gender-and religion-equal. Foord writes that “this has become quite a depot for fugitives,” noting that “the slaves escape so frequently that their masters say . . . the Abolitionists must have ‘a railroad under ground.’” She also describes rather sarcastically a visit to writer and abolitionist Lydia Maria Child. -
Fanaticism: its source and influence, illustrated by the simple narrative of Isbella, in the case of Matthias, Mr. and Mrs. B. Folger, Mr. Pierson, Mr. Mills, Catherine, Isabella, &c. &c.: a reply to W.L. Stone, with descriptive portraits of all the parties, while at Sing-Sing and at Third street, containing the whole truth, and nothing but the truth
Feminist and abolitionist Sojourner Truth was one of the towering figures of nineteenth-century America. She was born into slavery in 1797 on a rural farm in Ulster County, New York. At age thirty, she drew strength from her Christian faith and found the courage to escape with her infant daughter. A spiritualist, in 1843 she had a vision and changed her name from Isabella Baumfree to Sojourner Truth. In 1842, she came under the influence of a self-styled prophet, Robert Matthews, who established his “Kingdom of Matthias” on an estate in Sing Sing, New York. It was a questionable enterprise. Isabella was attracted by Matthias’ spiritualism and the promise of egalitarianism, which was unfulfilled. The community disbanded after a trial for murder and sexual impropriety. -
Manuscript medical certificate
In this fragment of a certificate, Dr. J. H. Fairfax notes that he has examined an enslaved woman named “Alsy, belonging to the estate of R[. . . ?] in the employment of Mr. Charles Mothershead and find her to be labouring under a ‘procidentia uteri, or falling down of the womb,’” a prolapsed uterus. This condition sometimes occurs after childbirth and can be caused by severe beatings. Fairfax determined that Alsy “may be made usefull by the application of an instrument properly adjusted, to keep the part from coming down.” -
A portraiture of domestic slavery, in the United States: with reflections on the practicability of restoring the moral rights of the slave, without impairing the legal privileges of the possessor; and, a project of a colonial asylum for free persons of colour, including memoirs of facts on the interior traffic in slaves, and, on kidnapping: illustrated with engravings
In November 1815, Ann Williams and her daughters were torn from their family and sold to Georgia slave traders. In desperation, Williams jumped out a third-story window. Jesse Torrey, a physician visiting Washington, hearing her story, sought to interview her. He found her in bed with a broken back and broken arm. Her daughters had been taken south to be sold. Torrey subsequently published this account along with other narratives that he chronicled. In 1816 Williams’ suicide attempt prompted a Congressional inquiry into interstate slave trade. Williams later successfully petitioned for her freedom and for that of her children. -
Deed of emancipation, Court held for Norfolk County, Virginia
This deed attests that Thomas Smith used Susannah Mallory’s own money to purchase her freedom from attorney Charles King Mallory of Elizabeth City County, Virginia. Susannah Mallory paid sixty dollars to emancipate herself. Some enslaved persons in Virginia were permitted by their masters to earn money from work done on their personal time, including hiring out their labor. Smith notes he acted only as her “Friendly agent,” and he resigns any legal right to her service. Susannah was then about fifty-five years old. -
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