Beschreibung:

Letter by Boston anti-slavery orator to passionate young Abolitionist Author: Phillips, Wendell Place: (Boston?) Publisher: Date: [c.1857] Description: 2 pp. Autograph Letter Signed. To H. B. Sprague. A hurried scrawl by the busy anti-slavery crusader: “Glad to hear from you – every one must decide for himself on these matter. I rejoice with you what you have settled, that’s a comfort I’ve no doubt we shall feel your aid on all fitting occasions and we need all sort of men in all sorts of places. You can do as good service where you are as elsewhere and I’ve full faith to believe you will. Success to you…I would take full time to think before connecting myself again, even with your views, with any church.” Boston lawyer and orator Wendell Phillips was one of a trio of “preeminent” anti-slavery “radicals” of the antebellum years, together with William Lloyd Garrison and Charles Sumner. What distinguishes his letter is its recipient: Homer Baxter Sprague was a Yale graduate in his late 20s who had apparently just “settled” in Worcester, Massachusetts as a high school principal after some years as an itinerant lawyer, tutor, lecturer and prolific author of anti-slavery essays. He may have felt this position was not a prominent enough commitment to the Abolitionist cause and thus asked Phillips for reassurance. Phillips’ postscript about “connecting” with a church probably refers to Sprague’s concern that the pastor of his local church did not share his uncompromising opposition to slavery. In 1859, Sprague led a campaign within his congregation to “renounce all church association and connection with slaveholders” and those who “knowingly and persistently uphold or countenance slavery” and to sanction the (illegal) rescue of fugitive slaves, pursued by “man-stealers” with “chains, pistols and bloodhounds” while “escaping to a free country”. During the Civil War, Sprague became a Union Army colonel, imprisoned for a year in a Confederate POW camp. Postwar, passionately devoting himself – like Wendell Phillips - to women’s suffrage and higher education, he would become President of Mills College in California, the first women’s college west of the Rockies, and later President of the newly-created University of North Dakota. Lot Amendments Condition: Lower left corner clipped off with no loss of text; nick to left margin, old glue residue on verso; good overall. Item number: 318217