Raynors 2012-09
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 9/27/2012
Newspaper, a complete and authentic issue of The Liberator, October 19, 1860, 4pp., never bound, quarterfolded causing a minor hole at the intersection, VG. The entire front page and two columns of the second page are taken with several reports of the imprisonment of John Hossack. Hossack was an abolitionist whose home was a "station" on the Underground Railroad. He gained notoriety in 1860, the case reported here, when he was tried and convicted for violating the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 by helping Jim Gray, an African American, avoid slave catchers. The column heads are “The Punishment Due To Him Who Assisted In Rescuing a Fugitive Slave,” “Speech of John Hossack,” “Letter From Jail,” “Shall Hossack Rot in Jail,” “The Ottawa Sedition Case,’ and Imprisonment of John Hossack.” Hossack’s speech, 3 columns, is presented in full. The speech was also printed as a pamphlet and a broadside. In part, “the jury have found me guilty; yes, guilty of carrying out the still greater principles of the Declaration of Independence; yes, guilty of carrying out the still greater principles of the Son of God. Great God! Can these things be? Can it be possible? What country is this? Can it be that I live in a land boasting of freedom, of morality, of Christianity? How long, O, how long shall the people bow down and worship this great image set up in this nation? Yes, the jury say guilty, but recommend me to the mercy of the Court. Mercy, sir, is kindness to the guilty. I am guilty of no crime. I therefore ask for no mercy; I ask for justice. Mercy is what I ask of my God. Justice in the courts of my adopted country is all I ask. It is the inhuman and infamous law that is wrong, not me.”
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