• 19 • “GIVE LIBERTY TO WHOM LIBERTY IS DUE, THAT IS, TO EVERY CHILD OF MAN”: FIRST AMERICAN EDITION OF THOUGHTS UPON SLAVERY, 1774, BY FOUNDER OF METHODISM JOHN WESLEY, THE FIRST EDITION FEATURING ABOLITIONIST ANTHONY BENEZET’S KEY ADDITIONAL TEXT 19(BENEZET, Anthony) WESLEY, John. Thoughts upon Slavery. IN: A Collection of Religious Tracts. London, Printed: Re-Printed in Philadelphia, 1774. Small octavo, early full brown sheep. Housed in a custom chemise and clamshell box. $12,000 First American edition, preceded only by the same year’s much shorter English edition of Wesley’s influential and controversial early attack on slavery and the slave trade, the first to contain abolitionist Anthony Benezet’s expansive notes and afterword not in the English edition, bound with a separate title page with four other works in publisher Joseph Crukshank’s A Collection of Religious Tracts. Wesley, a “founder of Methodism…was noted not only for outstanding powers of leadership, but also for practical holiness, social concern and immense courage” (Oxford Dictionary of World Religions, 1037). He first witnessed the horrors of slavery as a missionary in Georgia and South Carolina. “By the time he published his Thoughts upon Slavery, he clearly opposed the cruelties and violations of the slave trade… It is striking that in this attack on slavery Wesley explicitly does not use the Bible as the basis for his position. Instead he argues that slavery cannot be reconciled with justice and mercy, and derives his understanding of justice from natural law… Jennings reports that Wesley went even further in moving from protest to transformation” (Sample, Future of John Wesley’s Theology, 58-9). Wesley's work also stands out in that he was a political conservative who rejected democracy and “strongly criticized mass action… here, however, he legitimated slave resistance and rebellion as an expression of natural liberty in contradiction of biblical injunctions to slaves” (Field, 6). This edition was issued at the urging of Benezet after reading the same year›s much shorter English edition. Benezet quickly "arranged with Philadelphia printer Joseph Cruikshank to reprint Wesley's pamphlet, but not before he added five expansive footnotes and a lengthy afterword… the general tenor of these additions was to clarify and amplify points Wesley had made" (Crosby, ed. Complete Antislavery Writings of Anthony Benezet, 197). In England “the public response to Wesley’s Thoughts upon Slavery… would soon be so great that 229,000 people signed petitions against the slave trade to be presented to Parliament” (Jackson, Let This Voice Be Heard, 126). Sabin 4671, 102699. Small early ink notation to the title page. Minor marginal dampstaining to last leaves of final title (Sermons or Declarations); expected age-wear to early sheep binding. Very scarce.
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