THE BURNS CASE HELPED FOSTER "LINCOLN’S PRESIDENCY, THE SOUTH'S SECESSION AND THE CIVIL WAR"
(SLAVERY) (BURNS, Anthony). Boston Slave Riot. Boston, 1854.
First edition of a seminal pre-Civil War pamphlet on the 1854 arrest and Boston trial of fugitive slave Anthony Burns, whose return to his Virginia slave owner at the order of the Boston court sparked public fury and "set Boston on its ear in the spring of 1854," inspiring Whitman to write his Boston Ballad and Thoreau to deliver his speech, Slavery in Massachusetts, to a July 4, 1854 antislavery rally, with highly elusive front wrapper featuring an engraved portrait of Burns. $5200.
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