American Anti-Slavery Society | An important founding document of the American abolitionist movement

American Anti-Slavery Society

Declaration of the Anti-Slavery Convention. Assembled in Philadelphia, December 4, 1833. [Philadelphia]: Merrihew & Gunn, Printers, No. 7 Carter's Alley, [1833]

Broadside printed on silk (465 x 315 mm). Text in two columns within a typographic border, engraved vignette of Hercules and the Nemean lion at head; scattered light staining, edges folded under and lightly sewn to an antique linen backing. Framed and glazed; not examined out of frame. 

An important founding document of the American abolitionist movement

"The Convention assembled in the city of Philadelphia, to organize a National Anti-Slavery Society, promptly seize the opportunity to promulgate the following Declaration of Sentiments, as cherished by them in relation to the enslavement of one-sixth portion of the American people..."

Issued on the occasion of the first meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society, the present broadside manifesto enumerated their goals, chief among them the immediate end to slavery throughout the United States. The society was founded under the leadership of William Lloyd Garrison, who authored the text of this declaration of sentiments. 

By 1840, its auxiliary societies numbered 2,000, with a total membership ranging from around 150,000 to 200,000. The leadership of the society was, on the other hand, fracturing over their divergent approaches, with Garrison and his more radical followers denouncing the United States Constitution as a pro-slavery document. He would go so far as to publicly burn a copy of the Constitution in 1854, decrying it as "a covenant with death, and an agreement with Hell."