"The Death of Slavery"... William Cullen Bryant (1st printing).....

Item # 718056

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THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, Boston, July, 1866

* "Death of Slavery" poem
* William Cullen Bryant
* re. Thirteenth Amendment ratification
* Very first printing in a publication

This issue includes the first-ever appearance of William Cullen Bryant's famous poem: "The Death of Slavery" - taking two full pages. A bonus feature is that both are opposing pages enabling the entire poem to be viewed without turning the page. Would be great for display.
Several additional literary items are also present including: "The Great Doctor - Part I", "Passages from Hawthorne's Note-books", "Indian Medicine", and more.
Complete in 128 pages, disbound, measures approximately 6 by 9 1/4 inches, overall nice.

AI notes: In his poem The Death of Slavery, published in the July 1866 issue of The Atlantic Monthly shortly after the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, William Cullen Bryant personifies slavery as a “great Wrong” whose “cruel reign is o’er,” and he celebrates the liberation of the enslaved with images of falling shackles, freed limbs, and the land newly basking in “a serener day.” The poem juxtaposes past horrors—father separated from child, the lash dropping blood, the slave‑pen’s festering shame—with a triumphant present in which “the great land and all its coasts are free.” Bryant frames emancipation not simply as a political act but as a moral and divine intervention: “He who marks the bounds of guilty power … hath heard the captive’s cry.” The final stanzas consign slavery to the past, placing it “with many a wasting pest … and bloody war” among the aged relics of wrongdoing—while insisting that its symbols remain as a “warning to the coming times.” In short, Bryant’s poem is a bold assertion of freedom’s dawn, a searing indictment of America’s slavery system, and a triumphant anthem for the nation’s moment of moral rebirth.