The Report and Proceedings of the First Annual Meeting of the Providence Anti-Slavery Society. [Incomplete Copy]

Providence, Rhode Island: H.H. Brown, 1833. Lacking wraps. [12pp] booklet measuring 5 x 8 inches. Quite foxed with some damage to edges; fair condition.. A short booklet reproducing a series of abolitionist principles attributed to the Providence Anti-Slavery Society alongside William Lloyd Garrison’s Declaration of Sentiments from the 1833 convention of the American Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia. This section presents the case against enslavement and responses to common objections to abolitionism, such as the fact that the “Government recognizes the slaves as the property of the slaveholders” and the claim that “The language of the Abolitionists [is] too severe.” The group states that its aim is to persuade the slaveholding states of the “unparallelled iniquity” of enslavement by publishing about it “throughout the land, and press[ing] it home upon the consciences of our countrymen”—in other words, the Society held a moderate, non-violent position on emancipation, which would grow less popular as it proved unsuccessful. The Providence society would become part of Garrison’s New England Anti-Slavery Society in 1836. OCLC 23243511.