Leaven for Doughfaces; Or Threescore and Ten Parables touching Slavery by a former resident of the South.
1856. Cincinnati: Bangs and Company, 1856.
8vo, 332 pp. Frontis. and 7 plates. Original green cloth, a version of the frontis. stamped in gilt on upper board and in blind on lower board. Backstrip sunned, a few spots on the upper board, foxing throughout, new endpapers. Author identified in pencil on the title page. Very good.
§ A spirited attack on slave holders, weak abolitionists, and the government (esp. the President and Congress) in the form of a series of moral anecdotes. A "doughface" was someone who was pliable or easily influenced, especially a politician, and was used here to refer to Northern Democrats who agreed with the Southern Democrats. The plates include "A Dangerous Woman" shown in the act of teaching enslaved children to read; another shows some men robbing mail bags and burning the Declaration of Independence (an allusion to the robbing of US mailbags of anti-slavery papers mailed to the South); and another depicts a pleading black man outside the White House with a man in the upper window exclaiming, “I am not a Man, but a President.” Apparently this was the only contemporary printing of this book, although it was reprinted in 1971. Sabin 39545, under title. Item #107549
Price: $325.00