Vignette accompanies the essay "Opinions of Travellers," a compilation of excerpts from various travel accounts. In addition to an American flag, the image includes a coffin and an assortment of weapons and objects associated with slavery. Many of these objects figure in the various authors' accounts., Vignette in Lydia Childs's the Oasis (Boston: Benjamin C. Bacon: Tuttle and Weeks, printers, No. 8, School Street, 1834), p. 241., Fels Afro-Americana Image Project, Anti-Slavery Movement Imagery.
Creator
Croome, William, 1790-1860, engraver
Date
[1834]
Location
Library Company of Philadelphia | Books & Other Texts | Rare Am 1834 Chi 70173.D.5 p 241, https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/Islandora%3A2737
Frontispiece accompanies Cowper's poem "The Morning Dream," which appears on the opposite page. The engraving features an allegorical figure representing Liberty/Britannia, who sailed westward to America "to make freemen of slaves." Shedding light "like the sun," this divine and beautiful figure "sung of the slave's broken chain, wherever her glory appeared." In accordance with the verse, two chained slaves kneel before her, praying for freedom. At the left, a slave-owner drops his whip. ("In his hand, as a sign of his sway, / A scourge hung with lashes he bore, / And stood looking out for his prey, From Africa's sorrowful shore. / But soon as approaching the land, / That angel-like woman he view'd, / The scourge he let fall from his hand, / With the blood of his subjects imbru'd."), Frontispiece for John Greenleaf Whittier's Poems Written during the Progress of the Abolition Question in the United States, between the Years 1830 and 1838 (Boston: Published by Isaac Knapp, No. 25, Cornhill, 1837)., Fels Afro-Americana Image Project, Anti-Slavery Movement Imagery.
Date
[1837]
Location
Library Company of Philadelphia | Books & Other Texts | Rare Am 1837 Whi 51405.D frontispiece, https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/Islandora%3A2759