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The May Anti-Slavery Collection
In 1870, White was instrumental in bringing an extensive collection of
slavery and abolitionist materials gathered by his close friend, Reverend
Samuel Joseph May, to the Cornell Library. Numbering over 10,000 titles,
May's pamphlets and leaflets document the anti-slavery struggle at the
local, regional, and national levels. Much of the May Anti-Slavery Collection
was considered ephemeral or fugitive, and today these pamphlets are quite
scarce. Sermons, position papers, offprints, local Anti-Slavery Society
newsletters, poetry anthologies, freedmen's testimonies, broadsides, and
Anti-Slavery Fair keepsakes all document the social and political implications
of the abolitionist movement.
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News of the arrival of Samuel May's collection at Cornell spread, and in 1874 the abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and Gerrit Smith, wrote, signed, and circulated an appeal to their friends and supporters in America and Great Britain, urging that it was of "great importance that the literature of the Anti-Slavery movement...be preserved and handed down, that the purposes and the spirit, the methods and the aims of the Abolitionists should be clearly known and understood by future generations." The effort was successful, bringing in further scarce and original manuscripts and publications, allowing the Cornell Library to develop an Anti-Slavery collection that is unique for its depth and coverage. Andrew Dickson White also developed his own collection of documents, pamphlets, and letters on the progress of the Civil War. He saved the letters his students sent him from the battlefield, and gathered maps, newspapers, prints, clippings, and other ephemera. When White's library was transferred to Cornell in 1891, his Civil War collection contained hundreds of bound volumes of pamphlets, documenting all aspects of the War-social, political, and religious. The pamphlets in Samuel J. May's great Anti-Slavery library are now available as electronic searchable text for the first time. The May Anti-Slavery pamphlets can be accessed through Cornell's catalog, and by searching the collection from this Web site. |
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appeal to preserve the literature of the Anti-Slavery movement |
Copyright
© 2002 Division of Rare & Manuscript
Collections
2B Carl A. Kroch Library, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14853
Phone Number: (607) 255-3530. Fax Number: (607) 255-9524
For information about copyright issues and securing permission to publish digital reproductions of images from the Samuel May Anti-Slavery Collection, please consult our Copyright & Permissions Page.
For
reference questions, send mail to:
rareref@cornell.edu
For questions or comments about the site, send mail to: webmaster.
