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Adams Defends U.S. Constitution, First French Edition
[CONSTITUION]. JOHN ADAMS,
Défense des Constitutions américaines, ou, de la nécessité d’une balance dans les pouvoirs d’un gouvernement libre. Paris: Chez Buisson, 1792. 2 volumes, 8vo (197 x 124 mm). Half-titles; a fresh, bright copy. Contemporary French paste paper boards, vellum-tipped corners, smooth mottled calf spines gilt, red and green lettering and numbering pieces; some worm damage to joints.
First French edition, issued at a crucial moment in that country’s history, as the Revolution was becoming more radical. In 1792 the French Assembly stripped Louis XVI of his power and declared him a prisoner of the nation. They called together the Convention, in order to draft a new constitution to replace that of the prior year. Adams’s treatise explaining and defending the principles of the constitution of the government of the United States would have been a timely and informative work for the emerging French government.
Item #26600.99, $2,000
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Early Printing of the Original Twelve Articles of the Bill of Rights
[BILL OF RIGHTS],
Acts Passed at the First [-Third] Session of the Congress of the United States of America, Begun and Held at the City of New-York, on Wednesday the Fourth of March, in the Year M,DCC,LXXXIX. Philadelphia: Printed by Francis Childs and John Swaine, 1791. 3 volumes bound in one, 8vo (368 x 305 mm, uncut). Library stamp on B1 of the first session, repair to lower right corner of Yy4 in the third session. Modern quarter morocco over marbled boards.
Early reprint of Childs and Swaine’s first official printing, which was issued in New York in 1789. This issue appeared in Philadelphia after the nation’s capital was moved there, and the printers had set up shop. All early printings are scarce, especially those of the first three sessions.
Item #26629.99, $20,000
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Opposing the African Slave Trade - 1790 New Haven Sermon
JAMES DANA,
Pamphlet. The African Slave Trade. A Discourse Delivered in the City of New-Haven, September 9, 1790, before The Connecticut Society for The Promotion of Freedom. Half-title: Doctor Dana’s Sermon on the African Slave Trade. New Haven: Thomas and Samuel Green, 1791. Evans 23308. 33 pp., 4¾ x 8¼ in.
“Our late warfare was expressly founded on such principles as these: ‘All men are created equal: They are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’.... Those who profess to understand and regard the principles of liberty should cheerfully unite to abolish slavery....”
In 1784, Connecticut passed a law that all slaves born after March 1, 1784, were to be freed before or when they reached the age of 25. In 1790, a group of clergymen, lawyers, and academics formed the Connecticut Society for the Promotion of Freedom and for the Relief of Persons Unlawfully Holden in Bondage to support the law. Yale University president and Congregationalist minister Ezra Stiles, formerly a slave owner, served as the society’s first president. Here, Rev. Doctor James Dana reviews the history and extent of slavery in the world. Calling it unjust, unchristian, and against the principles of the American Revolution, he urges abolition. Dana’s sermon, and those preached at the Society by Jonathan Edwards Jr., Theodore Dwight, and others, were among the most popular anti-slavery literature from the period. However, the Connecticut Society lapsed and disappeared after the turn of the century.
Item #24464, $1,900
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Charter of the Marine Society of the City of New York, Printed in 1788 with Franklin’s Passy Type
[NEW YORK],
Printed Pamphlet, Charter of the Marine Society of the City of New-York, in the State of New-York, to Which are Added, the Bye-Laws, and a List of the Members of the Society. New York: Francis Childs, 1788. 34 pp., 6 x 7.75 in. Octavo, contemporary marbled boards (detached), title page toned, some edge tears – but very rare.,
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