Report of the Twenty-Fourth National Anti-Slavery Festival

Boston: Printed for the Managers, 1858. First Edition. Slim octavo (17cm); original printed and hand-stitched wrappers; [1],2-32pp. Light wear and dust-soil to wrappers, though contents are fresh internally; Near Fine. A report on the 24th National Anti-Slavery Bazaar-Festival, held in 1857, with the goal of raising money for abolitionist causes. "The aim of this institution is at once moral, religious, political, and financial; and all these twenty-four years, it has been successful in no ordinary degree in its four-fold operation, – raising money to educate and direct the public mind, and to stimulate and strengthen the public heart" (p.1). The report indicates that the event raised $3800 "at a moment of general bankruptcy and complete commercial prostration, for an object against which Church, State, and individual interests are yet arrayed." Contents of the report reprint letters from John Quincy Adams, Frances Anne Vane Londonderry, and Margaret Bracken, with the notable inclusion of a letter from Harriet Beecher Stowe to Maria Weston Chapman (BAL 19403). The inner rear wrapper contains the first book printing of Oliver Wendell Holmes's poem "The Chambered Nautilus". Elusive in commerce. BAL 8779.