Philadelphia: Publishing House of the A.M.E. Church [for the Afro-American League of Tennessee], 1894.
Price: $1,600.00
Hardcover. First edition. Introduction by Frederick Douglass. Thick quarto. 851, [48]pp. Several in-text tables and illustrations, plus 14 plates. Publisher's beige cloth, stamped in maroon and gold. "With compliments of the Afro-American League of Tennessee" label affixed to the front pastedown, and a 20th Century bookplate on the front fly. Printed letter referring to "The Ashley Souvenir" by Benjamin W. Arnett and addressed to Charles Ballard, Esq., of Toledo, Ohio, laid in. Some bumping to the boards, very light dampstain in lower margin of most leaves (not affecting text or images), and the front hinge starting while the rear hinge is seamlessly restored, very good or better.
The first and evidently only distributed edition of a collection of the speeches of Radical Republican Congressman James Mitchell Ashley (1824-1896), published by the Afro-American League of Tennessee in recognition of Ashley's long service to the antislavery cause and postwar efforts towards full Black enfranchisement. Ashley was a white congressman from Ohio's 5th District and a staunch abolitionist who accompanied John Brown widow to his execution and introduced a bill in 1863 that helped establish the 13th Amendment. The original Souvenir was presented to James Ashley by its editor, Benjamin W. Arnett, an A.M.E. bishop and trailblazing politician and educator, on Emancipation Day, September 22, 1893, in the Colombian Hall of the World's Parliament of Religions at the Art Palace of Chicago in a ceremony attended by some 5000 guests.
This "Duplicate" was actually a published edition of the Souvenir issued with an appendix containing a record of the Chicago presentation, including speeches by President of the Afro-American League of Tennessee William H. Young, Bishop Arnett, and Ashley, together with the words by Arnett's young son, Daniel Payne Arnett, as he handed the original volume to the honoree.
The work also contains an introduction by Frederick Douglass (one of the last writings published during his lifetime), correspondence in both print and facsimile, several portraits, and various additional supplementary materials. Ashley's speeches span from his first year as an Ohio congressman in 1859 to an 1891 "address before the Ohio Society of New York in favor of Nominating and Electing the President and U.S. Senators by direct vote."
Item #450314
