1865 CIVIL WAR - SLAVERY. Harriet and Ellen; Or, the Orphan Girls. Reform Tract and Book Society.

A very scarce work from the Ohio Abolitionist press, the American Reform Tract and Book Society, which goes far beyond many abolitionist works. Much anti-slavery writing of the time continued to see colonization in Liberia, ongoing segregation, or some sort of paternal relationship between whites and blacks as the future vision for race relations in America.

The present novel, written for the young, puts forward a much more robust vision of the future of "colored" and white people in the United States. The issue of integration is forced right from the beginning as the child brought into the Ohio home is a "quadroon," i.e. mulatto, in the form of a child causing the reader to wrestle with the impossibility of moving backward to separation and setting the stage for Gospel integration and equality as the newly adoptive parents take in a white child and a mulatto child at the same time*.

Overtly abolitionist and gospel-centric view of race. No copies on the market at any price and none offered at auction in the last 50 years. A copy of Aunt Sally from the same juvenile series by the American Reform Tract and Book Society just sold at auction for just over $1,000.00. The present apparently more rarely offered. 

Lois [Anon.]. Harriet and Ellen: Or, The Orphan Girls. Cincinnati. American Reform Tract and Book Society. 1856. 122pp + catalogue [2 full-page engravings]. 

Fair only in original ARTBS cloth, heavily rubbed, but structurally sound, signatures unevenly forward in binding, though again sound, both full page plates intact with some handling and lightly cocked. Textually complete, inclusive of title, plates, front matter, and the publisher's catalogue. Note the 1865 on the title is in error; the work was copyrighted 1856 and published in but one edition, being that same year. 

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*For an extensive academic review of the present volume, see Project MUSE - “Those people must have loved her very dearly”: Interracial Adoption and Radical Love in Antislavery Children’s Literature (jhu.edu)