Claims of the Africans: or, the History of the American Colonization Society

Boston: Massachusetts Sabbath School Union, 1832. First edition. Frontispiece map of the West Coast of Africa. 252pp. 16mo. Later cloth-tape spine, marbled paper-covered boards. Front hinge cracked. Ex-library copy, with bookplate, inked stamps and other markings. First edition. Frontispiece map of the West Coast of Africa. 252pp. 16mo. A book for children, teaching students the history of the American Colonization Society (and Liberia), history of the slave trade, and the early role of Africans in American history (including Paul Cuffee), written in the form of a dialogue between a mother and father, and their two children (Charles and Janette Granville, and Mr. and Mrs. Granville) [and later incorporating "Aunt Caroline"]. Most chapters close with questions for the reader, based upon each chapter's lessons. "'Claims of the Africans' and 'The African Traveller,' which was published the same year... comprise Tuttle's diptyche on Africa, throughout which the same group of American children act as her pedagogical objects. Taken together, the two books... point to the role that American children ought to play in connection with African colonization... [even] enlisting U. S. black youths to evangelize in Africa..." [see Taketani, 'U. S. Women Writers and the Discourses of Colonialism, 1825-1861,' pp. 53-54, etc.]. Sarah Tuttle is also the author of 'Letters and Conversations on the Cherokee Mission' (1830),' The African Traveller, or Prospective Missions in Central Africa' (1832), 'Conversations on the Missions to the Arkansas Cherokees' (1833), etc

With early provenance to the Society of Inquiry of Hanover College & Indiana Theological Seminary. Scarce. Sabin 81931; American Imprints 11811. Not in Work or Blockson