1852 E. P. HURLBUT ON HUMAN RIGHTS. Foundational Text for Women's Suffrage and Abolitionist Movements

A very nicely preserved expanded edition of Elisha Powell Hurlbut’s work on Human Rights, one of the most intellectually influential antebellum works integrating natural law theory, legal reform, and emerging thoughts on social justice. It remains a significant text in the early thought of both women's rights and suffrage and on the issue of human enslavement. A significant edition, including notes by Scottish thinker, George Combe.

Rights know no distinction of sex. If man has rights, woman has rights also; if man can claim a natural right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, woman can claim the same. [On the Co-Equality and Co-Agency of Women]

No human legislation can create a right to a single human being to enslave his fellow-man; for the right to liberty is innate, and coeval with human existence. . . Man cannot hold property in man. The law which attempts to establish such a property is an outrage upon nature, and a nullity in the sight of Heaven. . . If one man can be born a slave, all men may be born slaves; for nature has made no distinction in the original rights of human beings. [On the Outrage of Chattel Slavery]

With regard to women's rights, the treatise functioned as a foundational legal and philosophical blueprint for the early feminist movement. Hurlbut dedicated two entire chapters to "The Rights of Woman," forcefully arguing for women's full legal equality, married women's property rights, total divorce rights, and female enfranchisement. The book deeply impacted Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who drew heavily on Hurlbut’s constitutional arguments when drafting the seminal 1848 Declaration of Sentiments and remained so reliant on his ideas that she continued seeking copies of the text decades later. 

And with regard to human enslavement, Hurlbut equally applied his framework to condemn human bondage as a fundamental violation of inherently endowed human rights. Because he argued that rights originate from nature and human constitution rather than state grant, no legislation could morally or legally justify chattel slavery. While his ultimate vision for political inclusion of formerly enslaved people involved gradual steps rather than immediate universal suffrage, his principled anti-slavery stance was strong enough to prompt his permanent departure from the pro-slavery Democratic Party. 

Hurlbut, E. P. with Notes by George Combe. Essays on Human Rights, and their Political Guaranties. Sixth Thousand. New York. Fowlers and Wells. 1852. 249pp.

Good+ to very good example in original embossed publisher's cloth, some bumping and minor staining at top of front board as shown. Generally solid and clean with a small stain to foredge and some scattered foxing.