1852 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD. Chattel Slavery a Sin against God & Man. Owned by Underground Railroad Conductor!

A significant little volume; the present represents the single most influential print contribution of the Wesleyan-Methodist movement to the Christian conversation in America regarding slavery. 

Smith was a Wesleyan-Methodist minister in Ohio and editor of The Wesleyan Expositor. Many original American Methodists were loath to decry slavery with too much vigor as the national Methodist church was right on the brink of a split over the issue. Not so with Smith. For him, there was no middling on the issue:

. . . there never was a slave-holder in the church of God, either under the patriarchal Jewish, or Christian dispensations, until after the days of the Apostles; and that the Great Head of the same never allowed one to be in it.

Not written only for Wesleyan-Methodists, of course, Smith argues that his work should settle forever the question whether any person involved in chattel slavery could ever be a member in good standing of any authentically Christian church . . . and that answer was a clear, blistering, no. 

Rare and desirable in any state [not seen at auction since 1978], this copy stamped, signed, and initialed 6 times by important Indiana Abolitionist, and conductor on the Underground Railroad, James H. Arnett. Stamped with his custom stamp once, signed four times, and initialed once. 

James H. Arnett was born in Guilford County, North Carolina [1816] and there had been an active member of the Society of Friends, which were the earliest abolitionists in America. He emigrated to Wayne County, IN and there married in 1839, moving once again, in 1854, to Monroe Township in Howard County near New London. A person of strong moral views, and to the point of the present volume, Arnett was known as: 

. . . a pronounced and uncompromising Republican and so great was his antipathy to human slavery that he disregarded the law protecting the system whenever possible and during the troublous times just preceding and during the war of the Rebellion, assisted many poor black men to escape from their masters and find freedom across the Canadian border . . . he maintained a station on the "underground railroad" at his place, where the refugee was assured a welcome and safety until he could be assisted to the next station on the way to freedom, considering his efforts in thus thwarting the designs of the officers of the law among the most righteous and praiseworthy acts of his life. In due time this sterling citizen and fearless advocate of justice and right was gathered to his fathers . . . [Morrow, History of Howard County, Indiana].

Just before Arnett's death, he corresponded with the most important late 19th century researcher on the Underground Railroad, Wilbur Siebert, author of The Underground Railroad. From Slavery to Freedom. In the letters, Arnett describes his work, at one time helping a company of some 30 slaves flee to Canada. 

Smith, Edward. An Inquiry into Scriptural and Ancient Servitude in which it is Shown that Neither was Chattel Slavery; with the Remedy for American Slavery. Mansfield, Ohio. Published by the Author at the Western Branch Book Concern of the Wesleyan Methodist Connection of America. 1852. First Edition. 244pp. 

Good + example with some minor spotting and rubbed through just at extremities. Very solid and generally clean with moderate sporadic foxing. A wonderful little piece of abolitionist history.