"DOOMED FOR NO OTHER CRIME, THAN THAT OF A BLACK SKIN": VERY SCARCE VOLUME I OF THE FIRST YEAR OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY'S SOCIETY'S LANDMARK ANTI-SLAVERY RECORD, 1835, WITH DRAMATIC WOODCUT ENGRAVINGS, RARE IN ORIGINAL CLOTH

(SLAVERY) (GARRISON, William Lloyd). The Anti-Slavery Record. Volume I, January, 1835… [to] December, 1835. New-York: Published by R.G. Williams, For the American Anti-Slavery Society, 1835. Small octavo (4-3/4 by 7-1/4 inches), original blind-stamped brown cloth. Housed in a custom clamshell box.

First edition of Volume I of the 1835 Anti-Slavery Record, the groundbreaking first year of its brief three-year run, containing all 12 monthly issues (including the rare January-July first editions), issued by the American Anti-Slavery Society only two years after its founding at the direction of William Lloyd Garrison—hailed by Frederick Douglass as abolitionism's "chief apostle"—complete with eleven woodcut-engraved images on monthly covers and appendix with two in-text engravings.

The American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), formed in 1833, was "the single largest and most influential organization against slavery up the end of the Civil War" (Rodriguez, Slavery in the United States I:162). Under the leadership of William Lloyd Garrison, its Constitution proclaimed its goal was "the entire abolition of slavery in the United States." Aside from "Frederick Douglass, there is no more significant American reformer in the 19th century… Garrison left a legacy like few others." In 1835 the AASS first began publication of this Anti-Slavery Record, issued monthly in its brief three-year run through 1837. It was also, in 1835, that Garrison was nearly murdered in the streets by a Boston mob. To Douglass, Garrison would always be "the 'chief apostle' of abolitionism" (Blight in Stewart, William Lloyd Garrison, 1-10).

This complete Volume I of the Anti-Slavery Record contains the first year's 12 issues. Featured are excerpts from newspapers and speeches, reports on the slave trade and slave auctions, contributions by abolitionists such as Timothy Weld, John Rankin and Elizur Wright, excerpts from Seabrook's proslavery Essay on the Management of Slaves (1834), and eyewitness accounts of the torture and murder of slaves. Of particular importance are the dramatic woodcut-engravings, rarely found together, with the first image appearing as issued in the February 1835 issue, depicting an ironic parade of manacled slaves herded by a man flashing a whip—a "march of despair" beneath an American flag that is "carried by a hand literally in chains" (emphasis in original). The AASS published the Emancipator, this Anti-Slavery Record (1835-1837) and its quarterly Anti-Slavery Magazine from its offices on New York's Nassau Street, where publishing agent R.G. Williams and his fellow abolitionists forged a powerful national anti-slavery front. In the South, mobs burned these and other antislavery publications and Williams would be indicted by an Alabama Grand Jury for inciting insurrection, with its governor unsuccessfully calling for Williams' extradition to the state for trial. First edition of "Vol. 1, for 1835": first editions of Nos 1-7 (January-July 1835), second editions of Nos. 8-12 (August-December 1835). Containing woodcut engravings for Nos. 2-12 (No. 1 as issued without engraving), along with Appendix containing two woodcut-engravings (162). As published without the separate issues' original wrappers. Only a few leaves with tiny bit of marginalia, minimal underlining.

Text and plates generally fresh with lightest scattered foxing; text block expertly reinforced; faint rubbing, only light edge-wear to original blindstamped cloth.