"THE FIRST AFRICAN AMERICAN TO PRODUCE A SCHOLARLY HISTORY ABOUT AFRICAN AMERICANS": FIRST EDITION OF WILLIAM C. NELL'S COLORED PATRIOTS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, 1855, WITH TWO FULL-PAGE ENGRAVINGS INCLUDING CRISPUS ATTUCKS IN THE BOSTON MASSACRE

(AMERICAN REVOLUTION) (STOWE, Harriet Beecher) Wm [William] C. Nell. The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution, With Sketches of Several Distinguished Colored Persons: To Which Is Added a Brief Survey of the Condition and Prospects of Colored Americans… With an Introduction by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Boston: Robert F. Wallcut, 1855. Octavo, modern half black morocco, marbled boards and endpapers, raised bands.

First edition of the pioneering African American's history, where Nell writes—"the Revolution of 1776, and the subsequent struggles in our nation's history… by colored Americans have… left the necessity for a second revolution"—featuring vivid accounts of Crispus Attucks in the Boston Massacre, Peter Salem at Bunker Hill and hundreds of black Revolutionary soldiers, along with coverage of the Denmark Vesey Rebellion, the 1816 Massacre at Blount's Fort and much more, with an introduction by Harriet Beecher Stowe and full-page engravings of Crispus Attucks and Peter Salem.

Born into an abolitionist family in Boston in 1816, William Cooper Nell, the son of a black Revolutionary War veteran, was the "first African American to produce scholarly history about African Americans." A highly regarded journalist and orator, Nell worked with Frederick Douglass as editor and publisher of The North Star, and was long affiliated with William Lloyd Garrison. In the 1840s Nell, who also led a decades-long struggle to end segregation in Boston schools, began the years of research that led to Colored Patriots. In 1851 he issued a 24-page pamphlet, Services of the Colored Americans in the Wars of 1776 and 1812, and in 1855 published Colored Patriots, his most expansive and influential work. It is "the first African American history that utilized historical sources rather than relying solely on the Bible as a primary source (such as the histories written by black scholars such as Robert Lewis and James Pennington)." Here Nell drew on countless "historical documents and primary sources such as local and national newspapers, military records and antislavery written works" (Encyclopedia of African American History V.I:488-89).

In Colored Patriots, Nell notably "sought to highlight the hypocrisy" that denied African Americans "the fruits of a victory they had helped to win." In this very rare work, he pointedly reminds his readers that only one year before this was published, fugitive slave Anthony Burns "was dragged back to slavery… over the very ground that Attucks trod." In 1973, the Smithsonian organized an exhibit entitled, "The Black Presence in the Era of the American Revolution." Its catalog "began, quite appropriately, with Nell's Colored Patriots" (Journal of American Ethnic History V.11, No. 4:102). Here Nell's research and "interviews with survivors of the Revolutionary War and their descendants… gathered every available scrap of information on African American involvement on the patriot side of the Revolution." Martin Delaney, "often called 'the 'father of black nationalism,' proclaimed that Colored Patriots 'should be read by every American the country through'" (Historians Against Slavery).

In addition to honoring the hundreds who served in the Revolution, including Peter Salem at the Battle of Bunker Hill, Nell also writes of slave uprisings in the decades that followed. He chronicles the rebellion led by Denmark Vesey, who "died a martyr to freedom," and describes the 1816 Massacre at Blount's Fort, where nearly 300 fugitive slaves and their descendants were killed by U.S. forces. They were, in Nell's words, "butchered in cold blood… for adhering to the doctrine that 'all men are endowed by their Creator with the inalienable right to enjoy life and liberty.'" His primary goal in Colored Patriots was "to provide ammunition for his black colleagues around the nation in their war against exclusion and hostility. It was a job that needed doing" (Kantrowitz, More Than Freedom, 201). In his conclusion Nell writes: "The Revolution of 1776, and the subsequent struggles in our nation's history… by colored Americans have… left the necessity for a second revolution." Colored Patriots remains "a primary source for research on the black presence in the American Revolution"—and much more (Journal of Negro History V.66:No.1, 37). With engraved plate of Crispus Attucks; engraved plate of Peter Sale. Bound without folding facsimile leaf of Honorable Discharge for an African American soldier, sometimes lacking. Containing "Author's Preface" dated in print, "Boston, October, 1855"; "Introduction" by Harriet Beecher Stowe dated in print, "Andover, October, 1855," and printing of Wendell Phillips' "Introduction" from the 24-page pamphlet. With "Omission" and "Errata" leaf. Blockson 2621. Work, 397. Bookplate of African American editor Phil W. Petrie, who was an editor of Crisis Magazine and Black Enterprise, and an executive at Howard University Press. Early marginalia line to one leaf; inked number to margin of contents page.

A handsomely bound copy.