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William Cowper poem: the abolition of the slave trade...
William Cowper poem: the abolition of the slave trade...
Item # 705982 GAZETTE OF THE UNITED STATES For The Country, Philadelphia, May 25, 1807
* "Morning Dream" poem
* Abolitionist William Cowper
* Anti-slavery - slave trade
Page 3 has: "THE ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE TRADE" which is the timely reprinting of the William Cowper poem "The Morning Dream" (shown here issue simply as "A Dream").
Nice to have the printing of Cowper's poem so soon after the enactment of the Slave Trade Act of 1807. It would still be another quarter-century before slavery in the Britain Empire would be abolished.
Also a letter from Alexander Petion, the first President of Hayti, to the "men of color" from his country who were seeking asylum in the United States, signed: Petion. and another from President Thomas Jefferson to General Andrew Jackson, signed: Th. Jefferson.
Four pages, damp staining.
AI notes: William Cowper’s “The Morning Dream” (1788) is a concise but forceful abolitionist poem written during the height of Britain’s campaign against the transatlantic slave trade, using the device of a revelatory dream to indict national hypocrisy. In the poem, Cowper imagines awakening from sleep to a vision in which enslaved Africans appear in chains while Justice and Religion silently condemn Britain for reconciling Christian piety with systematic cruelty, exposing slavery as a moral crime rather than a distant economic practice. The dream functions as a moral shock, suggesting that the truth of slavery is already known but willfully ignored, and that the nation must “awake” to its guilt. Distributed as a broadside and abolitionist handbill, often in conjunction with “The Negro’s Complaint,” the poem was designed for rapid public circulation and emotional impact rather than literary elaboration, reinforcing Cowper’s central argument that abolition was an urgent Christian obligation. Though overshadowed by his longer works, “The Morning Dream” contributed meaningfully to the moral rhetoric that helped mobilize public opinion and sustain pressure leading toward the eventual abolition of the British slave trade in 1807.
Category: Pre-Civil War
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