"NEVER MORE TO SEE THEIR NATIVE LAND AGAIN, BUT TO DRAG OUT A MISERABLE LIFE IN CHAINS… AND PERPETUAL SLAVERY": RARE FIRST EDITION OF REIGNING ABOMINATIONS, 1788, BY ONE OF AMERICA'S FIRST ANTISLAVERY VOICES

WINCHESTER, Elhanan. The Reigning Abominations, Especially the Slave Trade, Considered as Causes of Lamentations; Being the Substance of a Discourse Delivered in Fairfax County, Virginia, December 30, 1774. And Now Published With Several Additions. London: H. Trapp, 1788. Slim octavo, period-style three quarter black cloth and marbled boards; pp. 32.

First edition, first printing of this very early indictment of slavery, a powerful sermon delivered in Virginia in 1774, declaring slavery a "national sin," with accounts of slaves brutally tortured and his ominous warning "that some revolution is at the door."

Massachusetts-born Winchester, one of America's first antislavery voices, "spent the years 1774-80 in South Carolina preaching to both whites and blacks. He delivered this antislavery sermon on December 30, 1774, in Fairfax County, Virginia, calling on slave-owners to renounce slavery because 'it is an accursed thing, for which the wrath of God will be poured out upon this nation,' and ominously predicting 'that some revolution is at the door'" (American Antislavery Writings, Library of America). An electrifying orator, he came of age just as Americans began their Revolutionary struggle for freedom, when "the language of liberty, war, and frontier migration opened debate on the meaning of freedom, authority, and democracy… Winchester's writings against slavery gained him fame among northern abolitionists during the 1840s. During his southern travels Winchester became convinced that slavery was an 'abomination'… he argued forcefully that slave holding and slave trading were evils that debased all involved" (ANB).

One of the first in South Carolina to baptize African slaves, Winchester called slavery "an unparalleled 'national sin' that would inspire 'national punishment,' including military defeat. In effect, he foresaw a civil war" (Gilbert, Black Patriots and Loyalists, 54). First published in London in 1788, this was likely printed "to bolster the newly formed English Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade (henceforth English Abolition Society) while Winchester was living there" (Gould, Barbaric Traffic, 17). Just as famed British abolitionists Anthony Benezet and Thomas Clarkson would appeal "to the commercial interests of Britons to countervail the greed they see fueling the trade… Winchester argues in his antislavery sermon that 'avarice tends to harden the heart, to render the mind callous to the feelings of humanity'" (Gottlieb, Global Romanticism, 180). He powerfully evokes the brutality of the slave trade and Middle Passage, writing: "Loaded with chains, confined in putrid air, exhausted with hunger, thirst, sorrow and despair, many die in the voyage… This abomination is sufficient to make the land desolate and waste… If the words of Christ are true, the slaves will at length be free." ESTC T150025. Sabin 104732. Howes W554. Faint inkstamp, "Bound N.Y.H.S. May 10 1943," with deaccession inkstamp "Withdrawn N-YHS."

Text fresh with only light scattered foxing. A rare about-fine copy.