IN THE ORIGINAL PRINTED WRAPPERS
172. [LUNDY, BENJAMIN]. The War in Texas; A
Review of Facts and Circumstances, Showing that This
Contest Is the Result of a Long Premeditated Crusade
Against Mexico, Set on Foot and Supported by Slaveholders,
Land-Speculators, &c. with the View of Re-establishing,
Extending, and Perpetuating the System of Slavery and the
Slave Trade in the Republic of Mexico. By a Citizen of the
United States. Philadelphia: Printed for the Author,
Merrihew and Gunn, 1836. 56 [1] pp., printed in double
column. 8vo, original blue printed wrappers. Light
waterstain affecting upper right front wrapper and title,
occasional inconsequential foxing, overall a fine copy in
the rare wraps (this is the only copy with original
wrappers that we find offered in the market, back to 1975).
The upper wrap bears the contemporary ink ownership
inscription of the "Plymouth A[nti]-S[lavery] Library, No.
1" and ink notation below "2 cts. per week" (repeated at
foot of title). Provenance: This copy belonged to Thomas W.
Streeter, the premier bibliographer of Texana; the cream of
his Texas collection now resides at Yale. On the title are
Streeter’s distinctive diminutive pencil notes on
title-page pointing out list of empresarios, Galveston
& Texas Land Company, John Quincy Adams’ famous
speech on Texas and its publication in Mexico, etc.
Preserved in an archival half brown mottled tan calf and
beige cloth folding case.
First
edition of one of the most influential anti-slavery
treatises on Texas. Eberstadt, Texas 162:503:
"Copies with wrappers are the exception....While entirely
innocent of the slightest impartiality, Lundy’s
dialectics are fortified with careful personal observations
gleaned from three trips to Texas in 1832, 1833, and 1834."
Howes L569. Library of Congress. Texas Centennial
Exhibition.88. Rader 2266. Raines, p. 141: "Anything
but favorable to Texas." Streeter 1217. "Believing that the
slavery problem could be solved by settling free blacks in
thinly populated regions, [Lundy] visited Haiti and Canada
and between the years 1830 and 1835 paid three visits to
Texas in hopes of obtaining land for such a colony. While
in Texas he talked to free blacks, planters, and Mexican
officials and visited Nacogdoches, San Antonio, and the
Brazos and Rio Grande areas. He concluded that Texas was an
ideal place for his colonization experiment; the Mexican
government was friendly to his proposal. The Texas
Revolution intervened before Lundy could carry out his
plans, however, and the Republic of Texas legalized
slavery. Lundy charged that the revolution was a
slaveholders’ plot to take Texas from Mexico and to
add slave territory to the United States. He began
publishing the National Enquirer and Constitutional
Advocate of Universal Liberty in Philadelphia in August
1836 to set forth his thesis. In the same year he published
The War in Texas, a pamphlet arguing against the
annexation of Texas to the United States. Lundy won many
influential adherents, among them John Quincy Adams, who
represented his views in the United States Congress. Adams,
Lundy, and their followers were instrumental in delaying
the annexation of Texas for nine years."—The
Handbook of Texas Online: Benjamin Lundy).
($600-1,200)