1851 FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT. Christians to Disobey the Government - Inscribed to Fellow Abolitionist

A superb artifact and document issued during the high stakes season of political and spiritual resistance in Massachusetts following the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

The author, Jacob Gilbert Forman, was a minister in West Bridgewater who had taken a particularly uncompromising stand against the Act. In the present discourse, he explicitly compareds contemporary abolitionists to early Christian martyrs. While he did not attempt to equate the severity of their suffering, ideologically, he argued, there was continuity; in both cases, moral law and divine obedience superseded unjust civil legislation and called for Christians to disobey the Government. His radical anti-slavery preaching and his refusal to comply with the Federal mandate to return escaped enslaved people eventually caused his forced removal by.a small group of powerful pro-slavery parishioners. He comments on this situation in the second part of the pamphlet.

This particular example is inscribed from Forman to his fellow abolitionist, John Gorham Palfrey. Palfrey was a monumental figure in the anti-slavery movement, a former Dean of Harvard Divinity School, Free-Soil politician, and a U.S. Congressman who famously sacrificed his political career by refusing to compromise with Southern slaveholders. Palfrey had also personally emancipated a group of enslaved people he inherited from his father's estate in Louisiana, a high-profile act of conscience that mirrored Forman's own sacrifices.

By sending this inscribed copy to Palfrey, Forman seems to have understood his pastoral ousting and Palfrey's broader personal sacrifices against the Slave Power as sharing in the same spirit. It serves as an intimate, primary-source testament to how the Fugitive Slave Act fractured New England churches and communities, and transformed theological debates into direct acts of civil disobedience.

Inscribed by J. G. Forman, "Hon. J. G. Palfrey, Cambridge, with the fraternal regards of the Author." 

[Fugitive Slave Act] The Christian Martyrs; Or, The Conditions of Obedience to the Civil Government: A Discourse by J. G. Forman, to which is Added, A Friendly Letter to Said Church and Congregation on the Pro-Slavery Influences that Occasioned His Removal. Boston. William Crosby and H. P. Nichols. 51pp.

Good - in original wraps, quite chipped and tender as shown. Textually clean, though the binding not sewn, so quite tender.