A finely preserved example of one of the most significant anti-slavery texts to originate in the South. Helper was a pragmatist. He argued slavery was a short-term fix for the South that would, in the long term lead to economic decline. He further argued that slavery and slave-holding were injurious to non-slaveholding whites economically and should therefore be abolished. It became a significant and influential abolitionist text, was used extensively as Republican campaign material, and caused a predictably fierce Southern backlash.
Howes notes:
Voicing the conclusion that slavery was economically unsound, this work of a southern poor white, officially banned in the South, vied in popularity with the sentimental Uncle Tom's Cabin.
From the DAB:
The book caused a greater sensation than Uncle Tom's Cabin and was a powerful contributing cause of the Civil War.
Catalog in the rear advertises for Burdick's catalog of Presidential Candidates [which highly commended Abraham Lincoln], abolitionist material by Henry Ward Beecher, George B. Cheever, and John Greenleaf Whittier, and for traveling sales agents for Burdick publishing.
[Confederate, Civil War, Slavery, Abolition]. Helper, Hinton Rowan [of North Carolina]. Compendium of the Impending Crisis of the South. New York. A. B. Burdick. 1860. 214pp.
Very good. An unusually fine example in the original wraps, retaining the subtle pink exterior wraps. Very solid and clean with some minor foxing at extremities. Minor handling and a few short, closed tears on wraps.
