Raynors 2012-09
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 9/27/2012
Manuscript Speech, [N.p. N.d., but ca. 1840s]. 4pp. Folio. Old folds. Repairs to vertical fold on verso of one leaf, not affecting text. Lightly soiled; some bleed-through from ink. Very good. Four pages of debate on whether the "Africans of America" have suffered more than the native peoples, with the unidentified author's arguments that the suffering of the Indians is undoubtedly and obviously greater. It is written as though for public speech or letters with intent to persuade. The author writes: "In considering the question we are to understand, I suppose, that the condition of these two species [of] the human race, are to be compared from the time they were both known to the civilized world, or after America was discovered by Columbus. Taken in this light, we easily discern that there is and has been a great difference in their condition. The African, to be sure, suffers the cruelty of slavery, but what is this when placed even within sight of what the poor Indian has suffered." The author writes of the gentle and acquiescent savage, receiving the white man as a superior being, only to be cruelly enslaved and wiped out by him; in this vein, the pillage and murder of the Spaniards upon Peru and Mexico are used to illustrate the cruelty imposed upon the natives. "In the island of St. Domingo, as the white population increased...the Governor, to supply the necessary laborers, was obliged to get 40,000 of the inhabitants of the neighboring islands. But in about 30 years after scarcely 150 were alive, being carried away by disease, and a species of labour to which they were unaccustomed. Now an equal number of Africans never suffered anything that could bear comparison with this, much less what the Mexicans suffered when Cortez invaded that country." To the author, the fact that the Africans have not suffered nearly to the same extremes as the Indians is "evident to every candid, impartial and discerning person." A fascinating manuscript, possibly written by an Indian-rights activist in the 1840s, incensed, perhaps, by the cruel removal of the Indians along the Trail of Tears and other resettlement plans.
Click on a thumbnail above to display a larger image below
Hold down the mouse button and slide side to side to see more thumbnails(if available).
Click above for larger image.