In March of 1886, the abolitionist Eli Thayer gave a series of two lectures to the Worcester Society of Antiquity. The subject of those lectures was the history and influence of the New England Emigrant Aid Company as it fought to keep slavery from gaining a legal foothold in the future state of Kansas. This booklet is an edited and annotated version of those lectures.
Thayer’s lectures outline the legal and political landscape at the time of the company’s founding in the wake of the of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise in 1854 and establish the company’s “mission [as] to dispute with Slavery every square foot of land exposed to its control” (p.5).
According to an inscription on the front cover, this particular copy was a gift from the author to Massachusetts mill owner Amos L. Doane. The title page bears the author’s autograph written in ink.
- Title: The New England Emigrant Aid Company and its Influence, through the Kansas Contest, upon National History
- Author: Eli Thayer
- Publisher: Franklin P. Rice
- Place: MA
- Year: 1887
- Length: 48pp
- Dimensions: 6” x 9.75” x 0.25”
- Condition: Softcover booklet. Green paper cover with 2 staple binding. Staples moderately rusted. Both front and back covers completely detached, quite brittle, with significant tanning and chipping along the edges. Internal pages clean with some small folds and wear. No marginalia. The back of the title page bears a separate pencil inscription from 1918.