The duty of the American scholar to politics and the times. An oration delivered on Tuesday, August 5, 1856, before the literary societies of Wesleyan University..

New York: Dix, Edwards & Co, 1856. 8vo, pp. 46; original printed green wrappers; slight soiling, spine a little cracked; very good or better. An important oration in the slavery debate by the Rhode Island writer and speaker George William Curtis. Curtis (1824-1892) was involved in the founding of the Republican party, and this speech was his first to explore the critical national question surrounding slavery. He spoke in favor of African American equality and civil rights, and it is arguably his most important address: "Human Slavery annihilates the conditions of human progress. Its necessary result is the destruction of humanity; and this not only (truncated) directly by its effects upon the slave, but indirectly by its effect upon the master … As American citizens, we are called upon to fight that battle by resisting the extension of the institution which I have described … Young scholars, young Americans, young men, we are all called upon to do a great duty. Nobody is released from it. It is a work to be done by hard strokes, and everywhere … the voice of our brothers who are bleeding, no less than of our fathers who bled, summons us to this battle." Not in Afro-Americana; BAL 4271; Sabin 18049. (Inventory #: 57393)