1810 THE BOOK THAT ENDED SLAVERY IN AMERICA. Rare Book on Race Owned by Thirteenth Amendment Swing Vote.

What a storied little volume.  The text of the present volume is that of Samuel Stanhope Smith [1751-1819], Presbyterian divine and later President of Princeton. At the Philosophical Society in 1787, he delivered what was, for the time, a significantly progressive set of lectures with regard to the origin and meaning of race, as well as theological and practical proposals for the future.  He argued, controversially for the time, that race was not "set," but environmentally conditioned. This he demonstrated practically by geography, etc., and even recording that house slaves over multiple generations tended to be lighter than field slaves. The import of it all was evident, i.e. that the "negro" race was not separate, something to be thought of as distinct from the white race, and thus not to be treated as less than or as less in the image of humanity's shared Creator. The lectures were delivered the same year that Wilberforce and Co formed the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the