Mitchell margaret

1860 · 64001 — London UK: William Tweedie 337 Strand 1860. Small 4to. 5.25 x 7.5 in. xv 1 3-172 xi 1 pp. Woodcut-engraved frontisp. of the author still preserving tissue guard. Publisher’s ribbed plum-coloured cloth dark maroon coloured title label & price of 1 shilling 6 pence mounted front cover very minor chipping head & foot of spine slight fraying title label stamping dimmed and minor bumping to a couple corners still a VG copy w/ London UK bookseller’s label partially removed at gutter margin front pastedown. First edition first printing of the first book wholly devoted to the Underground Railroad published only in England and by an African-American/Native-American author. Mitchell was a pivotal figure in the Underground Railroad who also aided the escaped slave “Eliza†whose escape over the Ohio River ice inspired the key dramatic moment in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s pivotal Uncle Tom’s Cabin. “Eliza†was sheltered originally in the network by noted abolitionist John Rankin passed on to Mitchell who then subsequently ensured her safe passage along the network overseen by Levi Coffin 1798-1877. Ironically the passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act which criminalized those aiding in the Underground Railroad to free slaves with fines of $ 1000 and six months imprisonment fueled resistance and forced Mitchell to publish this seminal work in Great Britain rather than the U.S. As a freeborn orphan Black in North Carolina Mitchell was forced into apprenticeship with a North Carolina plantation owner where he witnessed the deprivations of slavery and became inspired to aid African-American slaves to escape to Canada. From 1842-1855 he helped over 1300 slaves reach Canada from his Washington Court House Fayette County Ohio way station. This memoir recounts many anecdotes of the formerly enslaved including: one enslaved woman who died from frostbite while protecting her three children and a former slave John Mason brought Mitchell in just 19 months of that 13 year span “265 human beings whom he had been instrumental in redeeming from slavery.†Mitchell further recounts Mason’s recapture in Kentucky and later escape from New Orleans to Canada. Mitchell estimates in his book that 60000 enslaved peoples escaped into Canada on the Underground Railroad modern estimates range from 40000 to 100000. At the end of the 1850’s he moved to Toronto and began serving as a minister to African-American Baptist Free Mission congregations largely composed of freed slaves and the final section details the lives of these Canadian Black immigrants. In the final appendix he urgently pleads for a boycott of Southern cotton by Great Britain attempting to overcome resistance to the economic impact and hardship it would have on British cotton mills and related industries. Mitchell c. 1826-c.1879 was encouraged to write this historic work by W.H. Bonner A British abolitionist and had toured Britain in 1860 with William Howard Day and British abolitionist George Thompson to oppose the condition of slavery before the outbreak of the Civil War. This work is quite scarce with only 2 copies at auction in the last 50 years and both those appear to have been the 2nd edition which removed the hyphen in “Under-Ground†extended the title and a couple other revisions. William Tweedie, 337, Strand, hardcover