Two Altars.
Stowe Anti-Slavery Tract
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. The Two Altars; Or, Two Pictures in One. Anti-Slavery Tracts. No. 13. New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, [1855].
Small 8vo.; 12p.; string-bound; two pin holes; text clean and bright.
Harriet Beecher Stowe's first antislavery story, published initially in her 1853 collection Uncle Sam's Emancipation. This tract was published for “gratuitous distribution at the Office of the American Anti-Slavery Society,” in New York, and also at the Society offices in Boston, Philadelphia, and Ohio. The Society also published a number of other tracts in this series, many of which were written by female abolitionists, including Susan B. Cabot (Tract No. 14, “What Have We, As Individuals, To Do With Slavery?”) and Society Executive Committee member Marie Chapman (Tract No. 15, “How Can I Help to Abolish Slavery?”).
“The Two Altars,” was written by Stowe when she was a young Cincinnati housewife, in response to the Fugitive Slave Law. In two parallel parts, “The Altar of Liberty, or 1776” and “The Altar of _______, or 1850,” it tells the story of a middle-class African American family while simultaneously contrasting the optimistic ideals of the American Revolution with the grim realities of contemporary America.
(#13498)
Print Inquire
