Search results

Title: The holiday dance
Description: Set on a plantation, this merry scene portrays a harvest dance. A man and a woman dance bare-foot to the music of a fiddler, who is perched high upon a stool. Others look on. A young man kneels in the foreground, his straw hat and hoe lying on the ground. In the background, two stocky, resolute-looking white women observe the festivities. Both wear kerchiefs, the ties of which, in one case, resemble devil's horns., Plate at the front of Charles Peterson's The Cabin and Parlor: or, Slaves and Masters (Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson. Stereotyped by George Charles. Printed by King & Baird, c1852), np., Fels Afro-Americana Image Project, Scenes from Slave Life.
Creator: Beeler, Charles H., engraver
Date: [1878]
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Books & Other Texts | Rare 2 Wright 1878a 10231.D np, https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/Islandora%3A2654

Title: Must have their baskets full
Description: Illustration included in Chapter XXVII, "Compromise of 1850." Set on a plantation, it shows two slaves, a man and a woman, at work in a cotton-field. Woman balances a basket of cotton on her head, while the man carries his on his shoulders. Image relates to the following description of slave life: "From the auction-room they went to the plantation to work in the cotton-fields, beneath the broiling sun, driven by a brutal overseer sitting on a horse, with a whip in his hand, which he delighted to crack over them, or to bring down upon the back of any one that lagged. The weak and feeble must keep up with the strong in wielding the heavy hoe. When the fields were snow-white with the bursting bolls they must perform their allotted tasks in picking; the baskets must be full and running over: the number of pounds specified for a day's work to be tipped by the steel-yards, or in default they would be flogged." (p. 387), Engraving in Charles Coffin's Building the Nation: Events in the History of the United States from the Revolution to the Beginning of the War between the States (New York: Harper & Brothers, Franklin Square, 1883), p. 388., Fels Afro-Americana Image Project, Work Scenes.
Date: [1883]
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Books & Other Texts | Rare Am 1883 Cof 23709.O p 388, https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/Islandora%3A2832

Title: A Negro funeral
Description: Engraving accompanies T. Addison Richard's narrative, "The Rice Lands of the South," which, among other topics, describes slave life on southern rice plantations. It shows a slave funeral, set in a heavily wooded grove, in which numerous mourners take part. A preacher with raised, out-streched arms leads the service; mourners kneel, pray, and weep. Engraving corresponds with the following passage: "The state of excitement and exaltation to which their [i.e, the plantation slaves'] impressionable natures are so easily wrought, especially in religious matters, is manifest in their singing even more strangely than in their preaching and praying. These performances though, are, with all their grotesqueness and absurdity, often very effective and beautiful. Not seldom has it been our pleasure to listen to impromptu music, wondrously sweet and wild and weird, which, well counterfeited on the lyric stage, would bring fame and fortune. Perhaps the most remarkable of these exhibtions are those which are wont to occur on occasions of funeral solemnities, celebrated, as they generally are, in the deep night-darkness of some dense old wood, made doubly dismal by the ghostly light of the pine torches and the phantom-like figures of the scarcely visible mourners." (p. 735), Illustration in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, vol. 19, no. 114 (November 1859), p. 731., Fels Afro-Americana Image Project, Scenes from Slave Life.
Date: [November 1859]
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Books & Other Texts | Rare Per H 9 62992.O v 19 n 114 November 1859 p 731, https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/Islandora%3A2876

Title: [Outdoor group]
Description: Set on a plantation, this outdoor scene of casual socializing aims to portray everyday slave life. Six slaves and a young white woman are loosely arranged in seated and standing positions, with the white woman occupying a central place in the image. Although one slave (front left) holds a pitchfork and another (front right) is positioned next to a small shovel and an over-turned bucket, the slaves appear to be at rest., Title page vignette in Charles Peterson's The Cabin and Parlor: or, Slaves and Masters (Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson. Stereotyped by George Charles. Printed by King & Baird, c1852)., Fels Afro-Americana Image Project, Scenes from Slave Life.
Creator: Beeler, Charles H., engraver
Date: [1878]
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Books & Other Texts | Rare 2 Wright 1878a 10231.D title page vignette, https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/Islandora%3A2656

Title: [Proof vignette of Southern planter and scenes from the South]
Description: Proof vignette that was probably to be incorporated into a larger print. Shows a white man plantation owner, seated on a bale of cotton, surrounded by Southern agricultural iconography, including a twig of cotton, a mill building, and Black men laborers, possibly enslaved men, picking in a cotton field near a docked side-wheel paddle steamer. A horse-drawn wagon by a line of people is visible at the dock. Contains registration marks and a color mark., Title supplied by cataloger., Gift of David Doret, 2007., Description revised 2021., Access points revised 2021., Part of digital collections catalog through a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services as administered by the Pennsylvania Department of Education through the Office of the Commonwealth Libraries, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett, Governor, 2013-2014.
Date: [ca. 1860 - ca. 1870]
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department GC-Allegories [P.2007.39.25]

Title: Slavery as it exists in America : Slavery as it exists in England
Description: Racist, anti-abolition print challenging Northern abolitionists' view of slavery by favorably contrasting the living conditions of enslaved African American people in America with that of British industrial workers. First image depicts enslaved men, women, and children playing music, singing, and dancing during a hoe-down while Southerners and Northerners observe and comment about how the false reports to the North about the hardships of slavery will now be rectified. Second image portrays a British cloth factory where several emaciated white factory workers, attired in torn and worn clothes, have gathered, including a woman and her children referring to themselves as slaves; two workers discussing running away to an easier life in the coal mines; and workers commenting on their premature aging. A rotund priest and tax collector observe. Soldiers march in the background. Below the image is a small portrait of the "English Anti-slavery Agitator" George Thompson., Title from item., Date from copyright statement: Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1850 by J. Haven in the clerk's office of the District Court of Mass., Manuscript note on verso: Deposited April 9, 1851, Recorded vol 26. pag, 145., Lib. Company. Annual report, 1967, p. 55., Part of digital collections catalog through a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services as administered by the Pennsylvania Department of Education through the Office of Commonwealth Libraries, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett, Governor, 2013-2014., RVCDC, Description revised 2021., Access points revised 2021.
Date: 1850
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department Political Cartoons - 1850-6 [P.9675]

Title: Turning the tables on the overseer
Description: Bitter anti-slavery print depicting a group of slaves about to whip their white overseer, who has been bound to a tree on the plantation grounds. Before the overseer, the male slave holding the whipping lash boldly pulls up his sleeve as the slave next to him takes off his hat in a mock gesture of respect. Smiling men, women, and children of all ages stand, sit, and lean on a fence, surrounding the overseer in anticipation of his whipping., Illustration in New York Illustrated News, November 28, 1863, p. 73., Also published as a loose print by the African American press, Robert and Thomas Hamilton, possibly the first black press to publish separate prints., Fels Afro-Americana Image Project, Resistance.
Date: [1863]
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Books & Other Texts | Rare **Per D 8.5 1571.F Nov 28 1863 p 73, https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/Islandora%3A2863

Title: Turning the tables on the overseer
Description: Abolitionist print depicting a group of enslaved African American people about to whip their white plantation overseer, who has been bound to a tree on the plantation grounds. Before the plantation overseer, the African American man holds the whip and pulls up his sleeve as the enslaved man next to him takes of his hat in a mock gesture of respect. Smiling men, women, and children of all ages stand, sit, and lean on a fence, surrounding the overseer in anticipation of his whipping., Title from item., First published in New York Illustrated news, November 28, 1863 (LCP **Per D 8.5, 1863). Later published as a loose print by the African American press, Robert and Thomas Hamilton, possibly the first Black press to publish separate prints., LCP exhibition catalogue: African American Miscellany p. 38., Originally part of a McAllister scrapbook of Civil War caricatures and photographs. McAllister Collection, gift, 1886., Description revised 2021., Access points revised 2021., Part of digital collections catalog through a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services as administered by the Pennsylvania Department of Education through the Office of Commonwealth Libraries, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett, Governor, 2013-2014.
Date: [1863]
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department *GC-Slavery [5780.F]

Main menu